August 2019 was a pivotal time for me and changed the trajectory of my life. I wrote about that in my essay About Gregg Henriques which I posted on December 14, 2022. Now I want to bring my story up to date by focusing on Peter Limberg.
I clearly remember where and when I first heard of Peter Limberg. Henriques published Can You See the Elephant Sun God? An Open Letter for a Vision of Humanity in the 21st Century in which he shared his own journey. It had many links which I explored.
David Fuller discussed the Deep Web concept with Peter Limberg, who had co-authored with Connor Barnes, a crucial white paper on how the cultural landscape is changing from a bipolar left-right culture war to a “multipolar” culture war with many different factions vying for influence and attention.
That soon led me to the Rebel Wisdom YouTube video The Intellectual Deep Web? Peter Limberg. Currently, it has 13,869 views. Rebel Wisdom, which was shut down in November 2022, had Peter back several times.
I also soon found the article Peter wrote in 2018, The Memetic Tribes Of Culture War 2.0. This article has deservedly become a classic and made Peter well known in what I label the SPACE. Rebel Wisdom produced a film based on this article, Culture War 2.0, Peter Limberg. I still find looking at current events through the lens of the culture wars quite useful. Likewise, Peter's Memetic Tribes spreadsheet remains useful. Unfortunately, I have close relatives captured by these dynamics, having their identities defined by the tribes they oppose.
I occasionally listened to the Intellectual Explorers Podcast which Peter produced but I have no memory of any specific episodes. Recently Peter commented that he now cringes at the name. The links to the podcasts no longer work but they are probably archived somewhere.
Next, Peter began writing on the Letter.wiki platform. Letter was acquired by Substack in 2021 and shut down in 2022. To the best of my knowledge, all of Peter’s articles from that time are in his Less Foolish Substack archive. I cannot claim that I have read everything Peter wrote but I have read much of it. Consequently, I was already quite familiar with Peter when he made his next move at the start of the pandemic, launching The Stoa.
Below are the three oldest articles in the archive. I have now reread them and they still resonate strongly with me. Around the time these articles were written, I began supporting Peter financially in a very small way in the gift economy.
The Stoa Is Back
19 MAR 2020
We’re living in uncertain times. The COVID-19 pandemic affects us all, and it’s becoming clear that we can’t depend on any one person or institution to make sense of our current crisis. In lieu of blindly reacting, how can we respond to this situation with wisdom?
Philosophy, dormant during times of relative certainty and ease, often comes to life just when it’s most needed. Once we admit, as Socrates urged, that we do not know what we thought we knew, this newfound knowledge of our own ignorance can help us begin to open ourselves up to what we can know together—and to how we can act in unison, based on that shared knowledge.
COVID-19
23 MAR 2020
Ta eis heauton
Six days have passed since the Premier of Ontario announced a state of emergency due to COVID-19. Ever since it dawned on me that this situation was going to become serious, I have been switching between focusing on keeping my wife and parents safe and thinking about how I can be of service to the greater whole.
My thoughts and emotions have been bouncing around. Things are moving fast. I have not discussed my Stoic practice much publicly, but, in these wild and uncertain days, it is time for me to come out of the Stoic closet. Marcus Aurelius regularly wrote to himself, which was not only a way to remind himself of his Stoicism, but to practice it as well. There is something about being patient with the written word that helps ground you in your truth. The remnants of his notes can be found in the Meditations, or Ta Eis Heauton, which is Medieval Greek for "things to one's self."
I discovered the benefit of writing to one's self at age fifteen when I started My Diary.
The Daemon
25 MAR 2020
It's hard to think straight these days. I have handed the keys over to my daemon. Here’s how I characterise the daemon, in an exchange with Jordan Hall:
I commonly describe the daemonic experience, to those situated in a rationalist paradigm, as a certain quality of intuition, which nudges me in seductive ways. If I were to assign words to the experience, it would be a single delicious whisper: go here. This is a different feeling from the impulsive urge towards hedonism, or the thumos desire for domination. It has an adventurous quality of rightness—a confidence and certainty, coupled with an okayness about not knowing what the fuck will happen if you follow the whispers.
While the term Daemon does not resonate with me, the idea of feeling and following a strong intuition does. I began writing and publishing essays because of a strong urge to do so at the start of the pandemic. Launching my website was also spurred by intuition and both of these activities are becoming more meaningful as time passes. Now launching the Vibing With Peter crew at Emergent Commons intuitively felt right.
Peter was one of my trusted sources as I faced a time of unprecedented uncertainty as I recorded in March, 2020.
As my journey continued, I developed a desire to join a community that was connected to The SPACE and the MOVEMENT. I joined Discord on May 11, 2020, and joined The Stoa community there. It was not a good experience. I did not like Discord as a platform, and I still don’t. And I made no meaningful connections with anyone there.
The Unstoa, Lifeworks, and Becoming an Outsider Artist
12 DEC 2020
This is helping me realize I never wanted to be a leader of a community. I would rather continue to listen to the daemon, and be an artist of whatever this art form is. I said or wrote this somewhere before: in the liminal the lines between an artistic expression and spiritual practice become blurred. Listening to the daemon becomes spiritually transformative. I know this is the case because I have become transformed this year, and if what others have been writing to me is true, then others have been transformed by this place as well.
Peter experienced some very serious challenges in his attempt at community building. He tried rebranding to The UnStoa but that did not last long. He soon completely shut down everything on Discord and there was a diaspora. New communities emerged but none of them resonated with me.
On December 23rd, 2020 Peter shared a private journal entry with his patrons explaining his reasons for pulling the plug on The UnStoa and I have his permission to share this at my discretion.
It was through The Stoa that I discovered Ria Baeck and Collective Presencing in 2020. That in itself is another whole chapter in the story of my life. But I will add some recent reflections here which I made in response to a question from Peter.
Collective inquiry... collective coaching... My first exposure to this approach was through Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck. But my first experience, 14 weeks at The Embodied Book Club, was not good.
I was, and remain, very impressed by Ria Baeck herself and her book. But it was almost shocking that we could all be reading the same book and come away with big differences in what the book actually said, very different senses of reality, seemed like a lot of projecting to me, perhaps by me as well. And the sessions typically had about 25 attendees, a few who were very actice in the discussions and most of us getting little opportunity to participate (which is why I now love 3 person breakout rooms). Some attendees were very enthusiastic about what was emerging from the "Middle" from Source. But I was not seeing or feeling anything emerging so I felt out of step with the group. And one attendee was obviously traumatized, very needy of professional help, what you would call a hungry ghost, very sad, needed more than what the group was giving her. Finally, I was part of a followup group that completely blew up after three meetings. And I much prefer Emergent Commons over the Sacred Ground community which I think arose after the book club.
As the first anniversary of The Stoa approached, Peter teased about the possibility that it would end. I attended the Maybe the End of The Stoa Party on March 21st, 2021. I am grateful that The Stoa continues, now in its fourth year.
After the abrupt end of The Stoa on Discord, I began a search for a community in which I would feel comfortable. In July, 2021 I found Emergent Commons. And I was pleased to discover that Peter Limberg was a member, although he is not very active in that space. However, I did find other members who were familiar with and interested in The Stoa. On October 19, 2021 Peter published a very insightful article that became the catalyst for significant events at Emergent Commons, and for me personally.
Breaking the Polarity Spell of the Covidiots and Covidians
Luckily for my sanity, most of my first-principled thinking friends do not fall cleanly on either the thesis or antithesis side, and while they may temperamentally lean toward one side, they are oriented towards discovering what I call a COVID synthesis position, a position where we are collectively concerned about effectively addressing this virus while safeguarding our freedoms.
As I reread this article now, I am again impressed with its perspective and I feel highly motivated to continue to follow Peter’s activities.
I captured my own role in the Emergent Commons events in my essay About Vaccine Mandates.
Peter noted that “a COVID synthesis is needed” but no such synthesis emerged in society or at Emergent Commons.
In August, 2022 Peter began a little project, Dispatches to Thumos, that resonated with me. Every day for the month, Peter shared a mini journal entry with his supporters on Patreon. I highlighted the thoughts in his writings that resonated strongly with me. Not everything Peter writes resonates with me and he and I are different in significant ways. Consequently, I am also revealing something in what I have not highlighted.
Peter was sufficiently impressed with Emergent Commons to invite the community to The Stoa.
Emergent Commons: A Journey in Building Grassroots Online Community w/ Emergent Commons Community
November 10th, 2022 - currently 1,397 views
Birthed from a Rebel Wisdom community, Emergent Commons is one of the few sense-making spaces in the Liminal Web with no central figure(s), organized and managed entirely by teams of volunteers. It is the members who produce content, create groups and host events. Volunteers from Emergent Commons will share their creation story and structure, their approach and relationship to conflict and moderation, learnings gathered from the experiment, what has and hasn’t worked, and what surprises have emerged thus far.
In return, Peter was invited to an Emergent Commons Coordinating Team Meeting held on December 18, 2022. A possible collaboration between Emergent Commons and The Stoa was exploded. I attended that meeting and later made notes watching the video.
I invited other Emergent Commons members to join me in an effort to follow through on the possibility of collaboration. Four of us launched a Crew, The Stoa Embassy, and we held our first meeting in early January 2023.
Emergent Commons has had two collaborations with The Stoa, providing a space for further discussion after The Stoa events, both quite successful.
Awakening the Feminine and Honouring the Masculine w/ Fanny Norlin
Fanny Norlin visits The Stoa to discuss how the emerging “creating feminine” and “holding masculine” can be in right relationship with one another. This presentation will be based on her article series, “Feminine leadership in business” …
The Developmental Tasks of the Final Stage of Life w/ Susan Campbell
There is a time in one’s life when the prospect of death becomes more real—when we find ourselves facing new challenges and new callings in both the physical and spiritual domains. Everyone’s path is unique. And yet, when we know the end is nigh, there may be specific near-universal life themes that emerge—themes like coming to terms with the hand I was dealt and reflecting on how I feel about how I played my hand, or taking responsibility for the karma I created and doing my best to clean up my messes.
Backing up a little bit to 6 MAR 2023, Peter wrote an article, Meme to Vibe: A Philosophical Report that signaled significant shifts in our culture.
The vibe shift is the shift from meme consciousness to vibe consciousness. I sense this is why there is anxiety associated with Davis’ announcement. One cannot track this shift by focusing on the movement of memes. A different way of knowing, one that is non-propositional, is needed. Not everyone will make the shift simultaneously, and the natural anxiety is some fear they will not make it at all.
Those following The Stoa for the last three years should not be surprised by this prediction: a sensefulness movement will supersede the mindfulness movement. If my read of the nascent “wisdom commons” - a place that attempts to make wisdom more common - is accurate, sensefulness-based practices focusing on the sensate body over the construal mind are gaining traction and will soon surpass mindfulness-based practices in popularity. An argument for sensefulness-based practices is that they provide all the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions while avoiding the top-heaviness of being mind-full, embodying the truth that we are animals with “bodyminds,” not mind’s with a body.
I am a big fan of Gregg Henriques and UTOK. So I was pleased that Peter was the speaker selected for the UTOK Consilience Conference 2023 closing message. In his presentation, Midwifing a Wisdom Commons w/ Peter Limberg, Peter gave a history of The Stoa and its future direction.
On June 25th, 2023 Peter presented at the small, obscure Science of Logic for the Global Brain conference. In the first fifteen minutes of his Midwifing a Wisdom Commons Part 2 w/ Peter Limberg presentation, Peter outlines his future direction with great clarity. This is work I want to continue supporting in my own small way.
I watched Breathing Into Presence: The Final Public Event at The Stoa, posted on June 28th, 2023 on YouTube. The event did not resonate with me and this reveals something about both Peter and I. It seems to me that Peter can hold more perspectives than I can and he can vibe with a much wider range of people than me. His strengths are my weaknesses which makes him someone I can learn a lot from.
Peter has gone behind a paywall on Substack and I have gladly subscribed. In a recent article, he again shares his motivation for what he does. I am in total alignment with his purpose, seeking a solution to the metacrisis.
4 JUL 2023
I am betting on wisdom to answer the meta-crisis, with a new hyperobject needed: a “wisdom commons,” a place that makes wisdom more common.
Behind the paywall, I have provided paid subscribers with an unlisted playlist of past videos at The Stoa that will give a solid practical and theoretical foundation for understanding the meta-crisis.
The playlist includes 25 sessions from The Stoa’s archive. You will not find a playlist like this in any school or anywhere else on the Internet. It is truly a “transperspectival” approach to understanding the meta-crisis.
My interest in Peter Limberg, Less Foolish, and The Stoa has not faded one iota. However, I also have a growing list of other thinkers that I try to pay attention to as detailed on my spreadsheet, The SPACE and the MOVEMENT. It is encouraging to see so many talented people interested in solving the metacrisis, arguably the most important work on earth today.
Currently, The Stoa YouTube channel shows 34K subscribers and 684 videos which are organized into 63 playlists. This is an awesome resource as are all of Peter Limberg's written articles. I am totally amazed at his bandwidth!
Launching the Vibing With Peter crew at Emergent Commons intuitively felt like the right next step. I have no specific goals beyond it becoming a space for people passionate about Peter Limberg. In an objective sense, he is not special but, subjectively, he is special to me.