The Stoic Circle
A work in process.
Trust
One thing I’ve said many times is that trust is the fundamental currency of civilization. As time goes on it feels to me as if there are fewer and fewer entities and people that we can trust. I feel oftimes that I have been naive in my expectations of civilization. I say this even laughing derisively at NYC Mamdani voters who realize that they are the ‘wealthy’ people whose taxes are now up on the auction block. At the same time I have a similar chuckle at one billionaire who recently said he’d gladly pay 90% taxes to have his kind of America. My sentiment is with the intent of both, but I think it’s still wishful thinking.
In the last few essays I’ve been thinking about the extent to which this publication might be at its best when it serves as a forum for the literate. Or in other words a book club. In that way it is something like a blog, but most of my blogging was political and cultural in a broader way than it is now. Nevertheless there are many occasions in which I’ll find writers echo my sentiments broadly and they get an order of magnitude more likes from more pedestrian declarations. It doesn’t bother me being peculiar, as I’m confident that it doesn’t bother you to continue to sip from this dipper. But is that all there is?
Us
All that is to say is that I’m going to begin implementing my Circle Protocol with some seriousness. It may be that internet links are weak links, but they are links that we are all going to have to start taking more seriously. There is about to begin a storm of content and noise that’s going to upset a lot of conventions. The fact of the matter is that there is no other occupation I have ever had in which my communications and ideas have landed directly on the plate of so many hundreds of people. Yes I did a stint at NPR from 2007-09, but that was then.
What I would like to have in about a year from now is a way that you, my subscribers whether paid or free, can find on a new kind of collaboration site I would build, any number of ways to connect with each other. In this act of discovery, I would invite you to establish, by any means you decide, to invest some levels of trust in each other.
That’s basically it.
I know some fraction of you might follow me on Goodreads. I think that’s a good place to start as well. What doesn’t exist today is a kind of non-cultish way of self-identification that allow people who curate their minds to find like-minded folks. I don’t mean to suggest that we’re all shut-ins incapable of finding our own friends and neighbors. I do mean to suggest that some of us live on different parts of the planet and don’t maintain websites of any sort. Another very big part of this is about agents.
The Agency Problem
OK here is where I do my weird thing with the sideways thinking and relate something that sounds entirely unrelated into what Flip Wilson’s Reverend Leroy would preach from the pulpit of the Church of What’s Happening Now.
So I wanted to listen to more trance music for Focus and I happened on Phillip Glass’ music from Koyannisqatsi. Prophesies is literally playing now. So, also in my parallel search for Beauty this year I decided to watch the film Baraka. It turns out that I have watched it before, but forgot how meditative and touching it could be. Primarily it reminded me how many people live on this planet without being remarked upon. Relatively speaking we are all alone; we just don’t know how many people don’t know us and never will. How can we be alone together? We’re going to find out as massive aerodynamics of intelligence move hypersonically above all of our heads. Flyover country is about to get even more massive. We need to make our own networks of connections with each other.
You could have never guessed 30 years ago that the main avenue of communication with you for business and social connection might be anything other than a telephone number. Nor could you guess how many meaningless people and bots would be calling your phone number to pester you. As someone with a dozen domains I own and at least six public emails, I need agents to sort and filter all of that traffic. All of us will have to take control or have it taken from us. I need smart agents today, you will probably need them tomorrow. I don’t want to buy one from Target.
How?
The technical details will be put over at Tessellations over time for those of you with the interest. But I can tell you that I want it to be a combination of a lot of cool things that have existed, do exist and have yet to exist around identity and security. You may have heard of PGP, tailscale, Keybase, urbit and/or OAuth2. Well, it’s coming somewhere out of that left field with a little help from my AI friends.
When?
God only knows. I’ve been thinking about without doing this for at least a decade since I found out how easy MFA and IAM was with AWS in 2011. The economics of AI assisted software development are making stuff affordable for garret-dwellers like me. So, we’ll see if my half-baked ideas get baked. But this is one of those things I’ve always wanted to do. I just thought I would be retired rich by now. So hedge your bets appropriately.
Metaphor
There was something about Forest Whitaker’s character in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai that represents transcendent freedom in the repressive mob-controlled urban hell. Pigeons fly above the gritty streets. We all need our pigeons
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Best of luck with your project. Hope it pans out, though the journey itself may be its own (and only) reward.