Greetings all— I hope your holiday season has been full of joy and contentment, or barring that, the stress of dealing with presents, travel, and ornery/crazy relatives has been adequately mitigated in some semi-healthy fashion.
The Infernal Tower update: I am just starting to read the feedback from the editors now; very excited to dig in. I think they’ve identified many problems I was just too close to the draft to see, and this next revision will be much stronger. I also made a sweet video trailer that I will send out in the next few months as a teaser.
Skiing: Participatory Knowing, Embodied Cognition: We finally got some snow in western NY, so my son and I hit the slopes this month. It got me thinking about how skiing is a good example of both embodied cognition from the 4E framework and participatory knowing from John Vervaeke’s four kinds of knowing. Here is another good explainer.
Story Shaper: This is a story guidebook I felt the compulsion to create. It’s one way among a million to think about a story you want to tell. I keep noodling on it, particularly since there are so many different ways to categorize genre and plotting, but I think it’s good enough at this point, to do whatever it is that it will do.
Archipelago of Design Campfire Story talk:
Here is my talk on story-telling for AOD, and this is the accompanying slide deck for reference. It was fun to get my thoughts out into the world in video form.
Favorite things I read in 2022:
Jamie Wheal is an interesting thinker and writer. Here are some summaries and various introductions to both of his books- Recapture the Rapture and Stealing Fire. He has his finger on a very vibrant and important pulse, one whose importance will only increase in the coming years.
The Revolt of the Elites by Chris Lasch. Woof. Written in 1996, this book is more relevant than ever. Here is the article version if you don’t want to read the entire thing.
The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan. This one made me much more optimistic for the future, as strange as that sounds. America has a great deal of advantages- to include geography, demographics, and a creative, industrious culture. Zeihan has an insightful geopolitics YouTube channel here.
Reality Blind by Nate Hagens. PDF of the book here, but support the author and buy a copy! This book and Hagen’s accompanying podcast have opened my eyes (Watch “The Great Simplification” video on his channel here) to the realities of the physical constraints we have on our planet and species. We have to figure out a more efficient way to use energy and material. Maybe fusion will be the answer, but then Hagens would say that Jevons Paradox will just come in.
The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie. The final book of “Lord Grimdark’s” latest trilogy, it showcases his ability as the creator of an incredibly memorable cast of characters, full of all the vices, flaws, and virtues of humanity. At this point, he has woven a tapestry of several generations of characters in a world transitioning from an age of magic to an industrial one. I feel like I know them all because I do! We’ve been together through all the triumphs (few and far between, and always sort of with that “is this all there is ?” sense of melancholy) and tragedies (some hilarious, some well-deserved, and some just….tragic tragic). If you like Game of Thrones and/or like your fantasy with grimness and darkness, you will love Abercrombie’s work.
Favorite things I wrote in 2022:
I wrote this piece for publication, but the journal in question passed on it. In it, I discuss the need to improve our civics and history education to address long-term threats to our national security.
This year I blundered across the “Liminal Web” like a bull in a proverbial China shop, something I am figuratively and literally wont to do, and I wrote this primer based on what I discovered. It is incomplete, but just my attempt to think out loud based on what I was consuming and pondering.
I started publishing on Substack — there are so many amazing voices writing there; it is a nexus for diverse, independent thinking.
This summer, I had the honor of speaking at a Shootout for Soldiers event. I talked about service, Braver Angels, and I even got in a Vervaeke reference for good measure.
Favorite things I watched in 2022:
This is not new, but it’s a great watch for the holidays. “One Voice” performed by the US Air Force Band in the Washington National Cathedral. It is such a contentious, toxic, “pick your vitriolic adjective” climate in America right now, and this video is a reminder of who we can be if we can summon ourselves to look beyond the madness of the day. This isn’t easy—there are real differences in political choices, which have life or death implications for some of us. It’s why I am working with Braver Angels to try to turn down the temperature of our political discourse. I am pleased to report that I was accepted to attend their convention this summer, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
In Search of the Third Attractor - a two-part series from Rebel Wisdom and Daniel Schmachtenberger. The below graphic by Potentialism shows the first two attractor basins- Tyranny and Anarchy, and points towards what the third attractor could look like.
A piece on 60 Minutes with two of my favorite thinkers, Tristan Harris and Jonathan Haidt. Pair with the graphic below from Harris’s Center for Humane Tech.
I hope everyone is taking some time to reflect and figure out where they want to go in 2023. The next year will continue to be filled with insane plot lines, including but not limited to: murder hornets, environmental hazards, new diseases, shock/dislocation from nonlinear advancement in technology, political instability, and a host of other events. These are guaranteed to run the gamut from interesting to disconcerting to perplexing to traumatic. It’s up to each of us to individually prepare ourselves to do our part, to add to the Pattern and the Harmony. On that upbeat note, see you next year!
Adam