I've Been Up To Cambridge & Meta-Stoics

A new commitment & name dropping.

I almost didn’t get any writing done this past week, but did quite a bit of exciting meetings and harried commuting between LA, NYC, London and Cambridge. So much things to say right now. So please forgive my absence and buckle up for a hot week. Here’s a preview with about as much accuracy as any Yogi Berra could predict about the immediate future.

1. I am committed to make it clear how what I have learned about information technology can alter our orientations between identity, race, associations, learning and democratic processes. The short answer is that it can be gamified better than it can be negotiated through the processes of the status quo. This is my lesson, should you care to listen, about how we should and should not think about race in the 21st Century.

2. This commitment comes from an advanced sense of confidence I have just gained by my attendance at the recent Equiano Project Conference in Cambridge. I have been re-energized by my recent face to face conversations with and hearing out of Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Coleman Hughes, Ian Rowe, Lord Tony Sewell, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and with special props to the young people I immediately recognized myself in, Renie, Tomiwa, James, Inaya, Ayishat and at least a half dozen more whose names I’d rather omit than misspell here.

3. It has to be mentioned that I was almost practically floored by the recognition of John McWhorter of my previous writings at Cobb. Every month or so I get a poke on the shoulder that reminds me that my paragraphs have touched somebody in a serious way. None have resonated more than his declaration of my writing as “erudite and cranky”. I hope to be at least as erudite here and an order of magnitude less cranky and perhaps more informative here at Stoic Observations.

4. I’ve seen the Marbles. I’ve walked through London rain, and I’ve appropriated more language and code-switching skills. Most impressively I have dined at Kings College and I have drunken deep in my run at the bases in England. This being my fourth trip, my impressions have rounded me out. Europe is a bit more transparent if I may be so bold to say something about that and our ‘special relationship’.

5. I’ve decided that I will publish video Tales from the Yellow Truck, specifically for my black British friends. You all need to know me in Los Angeles. I hope to be an honest broker and your casual, reliable buddy.