Each edition contains the latest from the Grokkist Press, a roundup of events and highlights from our community, and a care package of snackable outside links selected to nurture your curiosity.
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Hey friends,
If you’ve been following along with this journey, you know it’s been a process of constantly refining ideas and creating space for people like us—those who see the world through a curious and caring lens.
Across hundreds of conversations, dozens of events, and various experiments and interactions with you all since I started this community, I’ve learned a lot about the common needs that Grokkist exists to serve.
Those needs include:
- Deep, Authentic Engagement: We need to create spaces that allow for authentic, long-form discourse, enabling meaningful conversations that resonate on a deeper level.
- Safe Exploration: It’s essential to provide a nurturing environment where people can safely and lovingly explore new, unfamiliar ideas and experiences.
- Supportive Containers: We need to offer occasions and structures that not only allow individuals to express their whole multidimensional selves but also honour and amplify their unique contributions and wisdom.
- Creative Facilitation: Our role involves being a guide or “creative midwife” who helps bring forth the innate wisdom and creativity within each person, shaping it into something tangible and joyful.
- Meaningful Accountability: We should cultivate relationships where “accountabilibuddies” support each person’s journey through transformation, offering genuine connection and understanding.
- Reflective Encounters: Our mutual interactions throughout the community act as human mirrors, helping each grokkist to see and become the truest version of themselves.
In other words, we are in the business of facilitating people towards flourishing.
We meet each person where they are in their personal journey of transformation and helping them move from generalist to grokkist, so they can relax into their gifts, step into their power, and draw on their multidimensional expertise to address the world as a champion of curiosity and care.
A new focussed offering
I’m taking everything I’ve learned so far about grokkists, education, personal development, and community-building, and throwing it all together into a curated experience I’m calling Unlock Your Grok.
Once someone recognises themselves as a grokkist, Unlock Your Grok is designed to be the obvious next step in their journey.
The experience begins with some self-paced videos and activities to help people meet themselves as their whole self, and culminates in a guided 1:1 creative project which will see them bring something wise and wonderful into the world.
Someone's Unlock Your Grok project might take the form of a talk or workshop hosted through the Grokkist Network, or a creation published through the Grokkist Press.
The experience will unlock something in them and open new possibilities, enabling them to move forward with clarity and confidence. They’ll also make new friends and create an asset they can share with their networks and with the world.
I’m currently testing and piloting with some of our existing members and will be making it available more widely in October.
Meanwhile, if you're interested and want to know more, check out my detailed post on the Grokkist Network or reply to this email with your thoughts/questions.
Grok on!
- Danu
Community Highlights
Events, creations, and updates from the global grokkist network
Learn more about the Grokkist Network ↗Grokkist Press
Adventures in Faith, Value & Action [update link]
by Nathan Dufour Oglesby (23 min read)
Does it matter if you “have faith” when you’re trying to “save the world”? An odyssey through four different contexts of ecological action, each with its own implicit claims about value, nature, and God.
Upcoming Events and Classes
Sound Lounge – listen, feel, discuss.
🗓️ Mon 9 Sep | 7–9pm ET (UTC-4) (view in your timezone)
Hosted by Grant Swift
🟢 Free and open to all
Let's connect through music!
We'll spend the first ~40 minutes individually, actively listening to a great album. Afterwards, we'll have a discussion about how the album made us feel, anything that stood out, and grok out about music generally.
Other Upcoming Events
- 19 Sep | 🟠 Authentic Relating
- 25 Sep | 🟠 Plant Communication and the Language of the Heart
- 26 Sep | 🟢 Grokkist Network Office Hours
- 1 Oct | 🟣 Grokkist Business Update – 2H 2024
Grokkist Academy
Ecosophy course Cohort 6 now open
🗓️ 15 Oct – 12 Nov | Tuesdays 7–9pm ET (view in your timezone)
Led by Nathan Dufour Oglesby
Suggested tuition USD$220*
(*Can't afford it? Forget About the Price Tag)
Every mind houses a philosophy. Learn to express and live yours, and make your existence truly home.
Join us for the next instalment of our online ecosophy course, designed to guide you through these tumultuous times of environmental and societal change.
Everyone has a philosophy, whether they know it or not.
This course invites you to explore how your personal philosophy—your ecosophy—interacts with the larger ecological and social shifts, and discover how to articulate and act upon your values with clarity and purpose.
Together we’ll take a tour through philosophical ideas and thinkers both ancient and modern.
🍬 Snackables
Assorted awesome links to nurture your curiosity
#1 - How sampling transformed music
Storied music producer and DJ Mark Ronson talks about the cultural impact of the sampled music era while demonstrating live examples – he says sampling isn't about "hijacking nostalgia wholesale, it's about inserting yourself into the narrative of a song while also pushing that story forward." That this TED Talk is now itself 10 years old only further highlights his comment that "the floodgates have opened."
#2 - What Happens in a Mind That Can’t ‘See’ Mental Images
Yasemin Saplakoglu
It's estimated that 1–4% of the general population lack mental imagery or a 'mind's eye' – a phenomenon known as aphantasia, which is better thought of not a disorder but rather a different way of experiencing the world. Mental imagery exists on a spectrum, from vivid (hyperphantasia) to absent (aphantasia), with many variations in between. “Aphantasics know what imagery is like from their dreams, but can’t access it consciously.” It reminds me of a lively discussion thread on the Grokkist Network about 'how do you think?'
#3 - Why do countries have a 'stan' in their name?
@aslanpahari What does “stan” mean? #geography #history #educational
♬ To The Grand Line - ASLAN PAHARI
A 60-second TikTok video (but still remarkably information-dense) by Aslan Pahari on the 'stans' and their linguistic origins – it usually (but not always - e.g. Pakistan) means land of a particular ethnicity. Also traces the Indo-European family resemblances to find the cognate of 'stan' in English.
#4 - Consensual castration
Jarryd Bartle
Example-laden discussion of the legal and ethical complexities surrounding consensual genital nullification (nullo) procedures, which "present profound challenges to liberal ideals of consent and bodily autonomy”. One view is that “consent is irrelevant" when it comes to extreme body modifications, particularly in relation to sexual kinks and self-destructive behaviours. Another view is that "the law needs to reflect the traditional, ethical model of BDSM", acknowledging that "many BDSM groups have now moved away from ‘safe, sane, and consensual’ in favour of ‘risk-aware consensual kink.’" This view would put the consensual castration more in line with the idea that adults can consent to other “harmful” activities — like martial arts or extreme sports. You can tell it's a curiosity-led piece because no firm conclusions are offered and it's likely that everyone will walk away from it with eyes wide open – uncomfortably so – and with more questions than answers.
#5 - 56 photo montages of music fans outside concerts
British Photographer James Mollison has created a series of panoramic portraits of music fans before and after concerts, including Madonna, Oasis, Katy Perry, 50 Cent, Dolly Parton, and the Sex Pistols. Mollison's other work includes passport-style photographs of great apes and 'Where Children Sleep', a series of diptychs of children and their bedrooms.
A pair of parting thoughts...
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” — Karen Blixen, writing as Isak Dinesen
“Existential crises are a luxury for those who don’t have real on-the-ground crises.” — John Kagg
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