Emergent Commons launched in April 2021 and I joined in July 2021.
In 2019 I discovered the Game B movement, Rebel Wisdom and Peter Limberg, the steward of The Stoa. I soon wanted to deepen my involvement and considered joining Rebel Wisdom. However, I was drawn somewhat more strongly to The Stoa and decided to focus on it. I became a patron of Peter Limberg, contributimg $10 per month in support of his work.
I joined The Stoa Discord in 2020 and began building some new relationships. However, soon some challenges for Peter Limberg emerged which he attempted to resolve by rebranding as The Unstoa. That proved unsatisfactory and he quickly shut it down. A diaspora followed leading to the creation of The Bridge and Noetic Nomads on Discord and I joined them. Both of these groups had impressive founders and but they were not attractive communities for me personally.
Also on Discord I joined Awakening from the Meaning Crisis with John Vervaeke, Rebel Wisdom, Game ~B, The Coffeehouse Academy and Future Thinkers Community. Although all had interesting content and interesting members, none were what I was looking for. And, importantly, all seemed to me to be a disorganized ugly mess and I was seeking something beautiful.
I also joined three groups on the Mighty Networks platform - Sacred Ground, GameB Home and Emerge. Again, none were what I was looking for. From time to time I visit these groups but my level of activity is quite low.
At The Stoa Discord I had became aware of James Baker, founder of the Intentional Society which I checked out. James and I traded a few casual messages. One day, for reasons unknown to me, he suggested we connect on Zoom and I agreed. During our conversation I described some of the characteristics of the type of community I was seeking. He suggested that I check out Emergent Commons. I did and I joined.
Emergent Commons was a beautiful experience for me from the beginning. Emergent Commons is led and maintained by a large group of volunteers. They have an excellent New Member Onboarding program and I immediately felt welcomed. They developed two beautiful and meaningful logos, the elephant and the hands. They developed a tag line that resonates with me: Making Sense Together for a More Connected World.
I noticed two items of content that I was already familiar with. There was a group discussing the book Recapture the Rapture by Jamie Wheal and I shared my book report. There were ongoing discussions of the John Vervaeke videos about The Elusive I. And I was pleased to discover that Gregg Henriques joined Emergent Commons as it was through him that I discovered Game B.
Emergent Commons members live the Community Guidelines, which I have captured in the next article, and these values resonate strongly with me.
The next step was for me to test the water and become active to see what would happen.