Greetings fam!

We had another beautiful gathering at The Holistic Brotherhood recently. Here’s the recording in case you missed it. This piece breaks it down.

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Humpty Dumpty Sits on a Floor: Workshopping An Affinity For Infinity

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Practicing open source epistemology is a fancy way of being selfish. When I engage with presenters and workshops, I don’t just want to know what they know. I want to know why and how they have reached their conclusions. Where are they blocked? Where are they exploring next?

I surprised myself. I had an outline. Notes. Familiarity with the subject matter. But presenting this material in front of others remains new.

We covered immortality, fungi, parasites, and other esoterica using what I call “Open Source Epistemology.”

I’m not kidding! Who talks about epistemology seriously?

I began by presenting how the esoterica would be presented. Not hedging, but setting the table to feast on some brain food.

My only disclaimer (or was it a claimer?) was that they showed up with questions and would likely leave with more of them.

Most workshops say, “come with questions, leave with answers.” However, because these subjects are ongoing for me, that felt dishonest. After all, it’s tough to claim immortality when you’re 33.

Cloaking knowing in absolutes reminds my inner child of toxic school memories, asking innocent questions but my teachers reacted as if I was inoculating them with some sort of virus!

This open sourcing creates the epistemic humility that serves as a psychological safety blanket. If Humpty Dumpty sits on the floor, he won’t fall and break. He’s more grounded that way.

The workshop forced me to develop my own definitions of terms like aging, maturing, and what aging is not. Not a sort of Orwellian redefining, rather, redefining in layman’s terms. Prior definitions I’ve danced with didn’t feel right. I’m not claiming these as absolutes. Part of open sourcing means updating appropriately.

Consider this an invite to call me on my BS!

For example, aging and maturing are quite different things. Here are my working (playing?) definitions. I’m not saying these are great! They are the best ones I have.

Maturing involves growing, building to something better. Aging is a process of degeneration. “Aging well” just means degenerating more slowly than others. Aging is not a passing of time, but rather a set of expectations and behaviors correlated with a passing of time. If aging were a passing of time, everyone would age the same, and we know that isn’t the case. What if these definitions were more true than old ones like “aging is a natural process that just happens.” What does that even mean? How does that account for some people aging better than others?

There’s real power and honesty in using rhetorical questions I hadn’t previously realized.

For example, what if we eat because of conditioning, rather than innate need? What if there were examples of people not needing to eat? What if there were people who have lived 300+ years? What if I just haven’t met them yet? What if they wouldn’t be on TV? Where would they be?

These questions give me life force and I’ll be sharing more about the answers I’m finding. They inspire me with wonder and energize me. I’ll keep asking them. For example, Leonard Orr claims to have met 8 people who lived 300+ years. Recently a 140 year old lady went viral on Instagram.

I can’t help but react with, “why not” when I see this sort of stuff.

I am a “why not” person. Starting sentences with why can come off as combative. I partially grokked this before. Sure, sometimes it is natural curiosity. However, often starting a sentence with “why” like “why would you…” carries an implicit “should” that you shouldn’t do the thing and must justify your behavior.

Starting with “why not” invites a more curious, playful way of being. Why defaults to inconsideration whereas why not defaults to consideration. A sort of “don’t go for it unless…” versus “go for it unless…”

The whole event felt like a beautiful stress test for “breaching the civility deficit,” which had me hyped years ago. Now it seems that was a proving ground for me to more boldly dance with esoterica in a judgment free zone.

If you want to dance, cultivate some conversational capoeira, I’d love to.

Looking forward to creating coherence together.

Putting the amor in immortal,
Drew