What the Culture War Needs Now
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Collective Journaling. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
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December 18th, 2021
I had this thought recently…
Aw man. Am I an empath?
Before we left for Europe, I went to the house of my good friend Lubomir for a goodbye party, as he was leaving Canada as well. Lubo has a lot of interesting spiritual friends, and I got chatting with this Swedish girl who said she was an empath. Her essence felt very light, with a delicate transparency. She described how she has difficulty going outside sometimes, relaying stories of how she picks up people’s emotions around her, to the point where she can sense what is happening in their lives, e.g. a person has a death in their family or they are suicidal.
This was the first card-carrying empath I spoke to, and while her empathic capacities seemed much greater than mine, I related with her experience greatly. Looking back at things, I was a super-sensitive kid, and I was called a pussy for it. As a boy growing up in the 90s, the last thing I wanted to be called was a pussy, so I quickly adopted traditional masculine roles quite early, and could be quite aggressive, ensuring I cried only when and where nobody could see.
As I mused about before, I probably leaned into Stoicism, cultivating a more disciplined mind by developing a capacity to reason, because I was such a slave to the emotions of the people around me. Being the “reasonable one” afforded me to keep fidelity to sound arguments while people around me were emotionally flying off the handle. My mother had such a strong will, and our interactions would often emotionally flood my body; this reasoning disposition helped defend against that, but I was often completely drained afterward.
The more emotional shitstorms came my way, the sharper my reason became. I do think this defense response via reason has exaptive benefits, because my critical thinking game is pretty tight now, especially compared to all the memetic tribalists out there, who are bending reality to fit the contours of their memetic parameters. Now that I think of it, I sense The Club was attempting to recreate this dynamic - flood the questioner’s body with emotional intensity, to allow them to respond, not react, with reason, in the spirit of truth.
One failure mode of getting good at reason, especially for a man, is becoming what Ben Burgis calls “logic bros” – men who learn a bunch of fallacies and dorkily start weaponizing them in conversation. Just like how some people gain dominance via imposing emotional intensity, other people can gain dominance by bashing people with their reasoning prowess. There were probably times in my early life where I was logic bro-ish, but there was always so much bubbling underneath the surface, I would quickly feel like I was losing integrity if I simply stayed in the realm of reason.
As I mused recently, I returned back to Canada to spiritually get right with my family. On the second day back I had this emotionally heavy conversation with one of my family members. I was so drained afterward, momentarily regretting that I returned to Canada for this. But yeah, I quickly stopped myself, because this is exactly what I returned for. I noticed something in that conversation - the more emotionally heated they got, the more reasonable I performed. It dawned on me that this has been a pattern that occurs with many important people in my life.
I also noticed something else this time, something I was not conscious of other times when these kinds of conversations occurred - I was feeling a lot of intense emotions myself, that I was denying expressing, in order to maintain the performance of being the reasonable guy. I was actually somewhat impressed with this skill - like cool, I can actually hold intense emotions at bay, while still producing tight argumentation. The thing is though, after these conversations, all the emotions I was denying end up filling my body with so much intensity, I become unable to do anything productive after. When I was younger this unproductivity lasted days, if not weeks or months.
I also realized that this approach does not lead to connection, at all. What usually happens in these conversations - the more emotionally expressive party keeps changing the content of the conversation, with topics shifting rapidly, making me, the “reasonable one,” feel like I am unreasonably under attack, with things unrelated to the “reason” of why we are talking. I attempt to point out how unreasonable these topical inconsistencies are, which is received as a counter-attack, because it probably is.
At this point, we are playing different games, weaponizing whatever tools we have at our disposal, emotional flooding or weaponizing logic, to come out the other side as the winner. I actually want to refine that statement - we may be playing different games on the level of expression, but we both end up unconsciously playing the same game: winning, being right, not wrong. The expressive games are different, but the unconscious desire to “win” at being right becomes the same.
Nobody really wins these games. And what a Pyrrhic victory this winning would be. I do not want to win against my dad, my mother, my friends, or anybody else with whom I have a relational foundation of love. I want the foundation of love to be so strong we can handle any propositional disagreement or emotional tension in a way that leads to deep understanding and exploration.
I managed to sense into all of this during the emotionally heated conversation I recently had, and pivoted with a different move - I stopped my performance of being reasonable, expressed how much I loved them, and let all the heavy emotions I was feeling underneath the reasons express themselves. I suggested we pause, and continue later, as I was becoming emotionally exhausted. Expressing my emotions was tough here, because I would no longer appear to be the reasonable guy, but would appear to be the sensitive guy.
I am pretty comfortable with myself these days though, hence I am cool with appearing to be the sensitive guy, because I am. I am also cool with appearing to be the reasonable guy, because I am. You can be both, but there is no school that teaches us to be both. I want to change that. It is one of my daemonic desires to create some kind of experience that cultivates an embodied reasoning, where you can maintain a fidelity towards striving to have valid, sound, strong, and cogent arguments, while acknowledging and giving space for all the emotions at play. The foundation of such conversations is of course love.
My empathic abilities seem to be increasing these days. I cannot walk outside without feeling the other people near me. Given all the culture war energy in Toronto, it feels quite intense, especially when I feel into both sides of the polarity spell. I can see why all these cool spiritual types that Lubo hangs with, who have strong empathic qualities, are oriented to hang with good-hearted people, with high-vibrational frequencies. I sense an empathic bias forms though, and it becomes easy to avoid people stuck in unpleasant emotional cycles, and instead to surround yourself with people doped up on emotional highs. This leads to a skewed reasoning that supports a framework that lets in people who experience joyous emotions in their life, while shaming people who carry unpleasant ones.
As a self-proclaimed “liminal being,” someone who is between the “games,” I can hang with both the emotionally expressive and the “reasonable ones.” So perhaps my part is to help bridge these groups together, who are currently not speaking to one another, and more importantly, not “seeing” one another. We need new ways of speaking and seeing one another. I was going to say new “training” will be needed. I am so traumatized by the educational system though, that any words associated with putting frameworks and institutions around the “learn drive,” our natural proclivity to learn, is deeply uninteresting to me.
Instead, I am called to create art. I am called to convert the whole fucking world into a work of art actually. Perhaps I can create a kind of art that through experiencing the art, or being a part of the art itself, affords the capacity to embody reason. This is what the culture war needs now. People need both to be able to reason better, and together, while having the courage to face and love all the emotions they and the other sides are feeling. The thought of doing art like this brings me such a sense of aliveness.
It seems obvious to me the art the world needs now will be found in what is between us: our emotions, our reasons, and all of the selves at play. This is where the aliveness is. This is how communitas will be found. All of us are a part of the spirit’s art after all.
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