I’m turning 40 in a couple weeks; A time often ripe with action(s) that get labeled a midlife crises or perhaps a touchstone of personal achievement. Following a somewhat disorienting few years, the later tends to feel untrue; I’m consistently hopeful that actions deviating from my “norm” will be considered not as a crises, but a consistent effort to avoid tragedy, or to be less dramatic, missed opportunity. I regard myself as a “slow mover” but I tend to be moving.
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In 2017, a year metaphorical of beginnings (using the numerology utilized in Katonah Yoga), I was separating from a 2 year marriage (7 year relationship) and on a path toward divorce. Just over a year later I separated from Yoga and Movement Sanctuary (my former Yoga/Movement Studio), closed permanently in 2020. The recent year+ of Covid-19 considerations has added to the feeling of disconnect, who’s seeds I suspect were planted for me in 2017. I’ve learned through numerous “failed” relationships that quietly swallowing feelings is not a virtue; Yet I see myself repeat the habit on a societal level, aware that the outcome will be less than desirable. Passing misanthropy is generally sublimated through practice and other disciplines, but I’ve learned “Spiritual Bypassing” and other forms of addictive distractions do little than pass the time until an event makes an intuition into experienced reality.
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Teaching and engaging with students, friends and colleagues, though having diminished significantly in size as a community in recent time, continues to be a very powerful source of grounding and foundational security. Familial relationships and romantic partnership have served as important girders that could allow a structure for future successes to be achieved. Many have suffered in these past couple years, I have not. I consider myself, blessed, privileged or whatever word you want to use for the luck of having necessities available as society is being shaken. I have however struggled with considering myself helpless in the affairs of the world and the outcomes of epistemic crises. I assume many will resonate with a personal variation on this feeling. The feeling of disquiet aroused at every utterance of variations on the question “what’s next?” Anxiety or depression may arise as one notices the shadows that obscure a meaningful path forward in the world.
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In 2001, I turned 20, my 4th year with a computer connected to the internet; the possibilities for an individual to create and share with a large community was increasing exponentially. Soon, the ability to communicate with friends I’d never met on America Online would evolve into creating a blog, building a website, recording and distributing a podcast. These opportunities experienced by many “creators” would allow cultures to build around virtual spaces of connection. Incalculable examples arose, some dark and others light. Reality (both virtual and physical) displayed its qualities of plurality and mutability. Lessons of postmodernists seem to be manifest as all truths are possible and in interaction. **
**I have listened to discussions between people believing in flat earth and those who accept the heliocentric model that replaced the old geocentric… So you might be able to imagine the dark corners of debate, discourse and dialect I am willing to entertain on the portable multiverse that “is” the modern phone.
As exhibited, this example of the complete democratization of information has proven a paradoxically complex situation; Enlightening us all to the complexity of our eternal interconnectedness, and that web’s interaction with the provisional nature of individual independence. Are we ready for this grand responsibility? Are our authorities well suited to continue wielding tools of power? If so… Which authorities? And on what subjects?
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As teams continue to shout memes of scapegoating “the” “other” as confidant solutions. I find myself contemplating this convoluted labyrinth of interconnectedness and am reminded of a quote from the paradoxical teachings of the Tao Te Ching:
“Others are bright,
I alone am dull,
Others know the way,
I alone am unsure.”
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Despite a perceived increase in my personal understanding the multitude of multifarious historical and current narratives, I am less sure about anything. With the exception of flat-earth, where I’m 99.9% confident the heliocentric model “is” our best yet. Facts are few and “truth” appears fluid and myriad. The Aristotelian two valued logic of true/false, or good/bad, no longer seems to mesh with these convoluted world(s) that simultaneously ought be considered a web of interconnectedness and singular strands. I sense we are presented with an opportunity to move from a postmodern philosophy into a meta-modern reality**
**While I am not confidant of it’s origin, I first learned of the term “meta-modern” from Zachary Stein.
I use the term meta-modern in this moment to differentiate the deconstruction of postmodernism (where structures and institutions are broken down), from the emergent construction of the meta-modern where we look to unite disparate realities. The meta-modern is glimpsed in Ken Wilbur’s philosophical system of “Spiral Dynamics” looking to unite the magical, mythical, tribalistic, modernistic and postmodernist approaches not by conquering an outdating approach but through an integral model, in which transcendence is achieved by including all old models in a holistic approach to reality. Yet another example of a meta-modern approach can be found in David Bohm (scientist and author of Wholeness and the Implicate Order) who looks to use the lessons of the Copenhagen Experiment of Quantum Mechanics to unite a fragmentary understanding with a wholistic instinct: not a sum of the parts arranged like puzzle pieces to construct a grand narrative but rather a paradox where “both observer and observed are merging and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalyzable.”
A meta-modernist knows (as in the intuitive spiritual idea of Gnosis) “truth” can never be completely mapped (certain variables will be considered and others excluded). While this might allow one to sink into the epistemic nihilism of “Nothing is real,” a mystic may be taught that understanding and Gnosis are separate, inviting a possibility to work with one’s best guess in the present moment to effect desired change.
The madman forgets to hold both truths present, and in a society dominated by fear and anger, madness “is” imminent. Unifying complex realities seems the more appealing path toward transcendence.
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The meme of “Think globally, act locally.” continues to feel relevant for the practitioner of the meta-modern. In areas such as farming and the exchange of commercial goods, it may be an important avenue toward averting existential risk. Though “think globally, act locally” isn’t a perfect or complete meme (as no model is ever complete); The definition of “local” becomes as fluid as “truth” in a space/time where virtual “is” a reality. I’m currently contemplating the variation “think interpersonally, act personally.” Our sense making will need to be a collective effort, though meaning may be personal (even in the cases where it is shared with other persons).
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In struggling to find the “right” project that feels meaningful and also contributes to collective sense making, I’m mostly realizing it has to be one that is community building. As I have mentioned in previous emails I’m beginning to host rooms on Clubhouse an audio only app. While social media has largely seemed a source of division and destruction, most of the apps currently available are not mediums of communication as the name implies. We have been provided a platform to project, with a vapid “validation” in the form of likes, or at best a comment that signals a shared reality or worse a comment well crafted to cut down the idea presented and the person behind an avatar.
I feel fulfilled in sharing my vision and am incredibly grateful if you have read this far. I find immense value in newsletters and blogs, but social media, with the with the push for content over quality impels ideas to be shared without a process of editing and resolution. Art, if it is to be a tool to include and transcend the rational, can not become a masturbatory assault. We have likely all seen a piece of brilliant “street art,” which is not equal to a graffiti tag; As we find ourselves impelled to create the later because “content is king” the well becomes polluted and our greatest insights become equated to a momentary impulse.
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As a fan of hiding behind the written word, I tend to be less comfortable in the space of spoken discourse. Unlike writing where I can pause for long periods to find better logic and prepared metaphors to best present my position, the vulnerability of spontaneity can arouse a palpable anxiety in my being. Despite personal preference: Growth rarely happens in spaces of comfort and our species has proven the evolutionary advantage of collaboration. I hope you will consider joining me on the evening of my 40th birthday: Sunday July 18th 7pm EST (and the next several Sundays to follow) for a shared creation, where one’s plan is but an obstacle to participatory discourse. The topic of the room “Synchronicity, meaningful coincidence and other BS” will be an exploration of the borders between subjectively transcendent experience and the emergence of an objective sense of the archetypal nature of experiences that instill a sense of order and connectedness.
If you need an invite to download the Clubhouse app, send an email request with your phone number. Follow me @noahmoves and the club "Speculative Nonsense" to be updated on club events.