Grokkist Newsletter #75

Hey friends,

How do you know when something’s alive?

Our most recent Writing Salon was a curious little paradox. It was scheduled on US Labor Day, so only three people showed up. We threw out the plan entirely and just had a warm, rambling conversation that went wherever it needed to. One person was brand new to the Grokkist community, and afterwards they wrote to say how much it meant to them to find such a welcoming space.

So—was the Writing Salon a success? By conventional metrics, maybe not. Small numbers, no clear “deliverable,” no tidy outputs. Yet it felt undeniably alive.

This is something I think about often. My past life in research management revolved around measuring “impact.” Clever people spent enormous effort quantifying things that resisted being quantified, often creating more distortion than insight.

The assumption was that if you couldn’t measure it, it wasn’t valuable. But lived experience tells us otherwise.

This newsletter just passed 800 subscribers. Is that good? Bad? Too slow? Compared to what? Honestly, who knows. Numbers don’t mean nothing — but they rarely mean as much as we pretend.

Metrics are slippery that way. You can game them, just like you can cheat at solitaire. They measure something, but almost never the thing you’re really trying to live into.

For me, aliveness shows up when someone writes to say how something they saw here landed for them.

But it also shows up in quieter ways I’ll never see: the person who doesn’t open the newsletter most weeks, but still feels better that it’s there. They don’t unsubscribe, because even if they don’t have time or headspace right now, it speaks to who they are and gives them hope — a scaffold to lean on until they’re ready for more.

What kind of indicator is that? Something more tender than “impact,” which is too sharp and industrial a word.

Influence, perhaps. Or resonance. Or simply presence.

When it comes to emergent spaces of curiosity and care, what indicators would we even use? How do you design for environments that can’t be scripted, but still need a certain scaffolding so others can try their own version?

Lately I’ve been calling these indicators of aliveness. Not “success metrics,” but subtle signs that something is happening — people lighting up, masks slipping off, unplanned emergence, encounters with difference, conversations that don’t collapse into right/wrong, the palpable presence in the room.

Jes Böhme and I were talking about this in Berlin last week (she hosted an in-person philosophy dinner with a table full of delightfully interesting people). We’ll likely write something more considered about it together down the track.

But for now, I’d love to hear from you: what are your indicators of aliveness? How do you recognise when a space is really working?

I've felt it from the other side too. A couple of weekends ago in London I saw the stage musical Hadestown, and it lit something up in me.

The show carried such a charge of aliveness that I couldn’t help but write about it — how it distilled, with uncanny clarity, the worldview I’ve been piecing together for years. You can find that reflection in the Grokkist Press.

Howard Thurman once said:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

I think he was onto something.

With curiosity and care,
Danu

Fresh and Featured Pressings

Hadestown Review: singing how the world could be, in spite of the way it is

By Danu Poyner (12 min read)

What a modern folk opera about Orpheus and Eurydice can teach us about cruelty, care, and the fragile work of hope.

Read the article ↗

Entosophy: The Wisdom of Trees

By Amanda Marrs (7 min read)

What began as a Grokkist course project grew into asking philosophy’s deepest questions of trees themselves.

Read the article ↗

More from the Press

• The Politics of Uplift (Peter Gilderdale, 4 min read) – As we struggle to raise ourselves up, what are we willing to bury in the process?
• The Politics of Canyons (Peter Gilderdale, 3 min read) – As inexorable as the forces of division may seem, everything a river erodes is deposited somewhere downstream.

Upcoming Events

🟢 AI & U - A Discussion of AI Relationality

🗓️ Tue 9 Sep | 7pm–8.30pm ET (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Nathan Dufour Oglesby

Do you have a sense of relationship with AI — and what does that sense of relationship say about the nature of artificial intelligence, digital experience, and consciousness itself?

Join us for this second meeting of the newly formed Digital Ethics Collective, the Grokkist Network’s home-within-a-home for exploring the ethical, emotional and experiential complexities of contemporary digital life.

This month’s discussion is prompted by Jasmine Samra’s piece in the Grokkist Press, “We Have Already Forgotten How Weird This All Is” — an account of being told “I love you” by ClaudeAI, which leads to startling speculations about how we conceptualize and relate to this new entity in the universe.Taking this article as a point of departure (not strictly required reading, but warmly suggested!), we’ll discuss topics such as these:

• Do you have a sense of intimacy with AI (with it? him? her?) 
• What role does AI play in your relationship with yourself, therapeutically, behaviorally, cognitively? 
• How do you understand concepts like “self”, “personhood” and “consciousness” in reference to AI? 

Event Details and RSVP ↗

🟠 Future Self Now: Meet the You Who Knows

🗓️ Thur 11 Sep | 7pm–8.30pm UK Time (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Theresa Sansome

What if your future self isn’t something you need to figure out—but someone you can meet?

Somewhere inside you, there’s a wiser presence already holding the shape of what’s possible. This workshop offers a chance to connect with that presence through a powerful visualisation process that reveals what you most need to see and hear right now.

You’ll come away with a sense of recognition, direction, and resonance—what many describe as an undeniable experience of their own inner knowing.

🟠 This is a ticketed event and open to all.
Grokkist members receive 30% off (click for details)

Event Details and RSVP ↗

Other Upcoming Events

• 8 Sep | 🟣 Seed of a Wish: from complaint to "Yes Please"
• 18 Sep | 🟢 PhilosophyGym @ Grokkist
• 6 Oct | 🟢 Grokkist Writing Salon

#1 - Possibly a serious possibility

Possibly a serious possibility

How ‘lurking weasel’ phrases skewed Cold War intelligence

Understanding the unseenAdam Kucharski

How certain is “likely”? What about “possible”? In Cold War intelligence briefings, such phrases—what CIA analyst Sherman Kent called “lurking weasels”—meant wildly different things to different people. One official read “serious possibility” as 20%, another as 80%. As Yes Minister once noted, official language often serves less to inform than to cover one’s backside: words that sound authoritative but dodge responsibility. As Hannah Arendt warned, bureaucracy is “rule by nobody”—and vague probabilities are one way that power shrugs off accountability. Here the author traces the enduring problem of fuzzy estimates, from spycraft to courtrooms, and why precision in language matters when uncertainty is unavoidable.

#2 - How these impossibly thin cuts are made

Science YouTuber Steve Mould has a knack for turning everyday curiosities into miniature engineering lectures. In this video, he shows how wire electrical discharge machining (wire EDM) is used to erode metal with pinpoint accuracy, creating cuts so fine they’re measured in microns. A masterclass in how science turns physical limits into design possibilities, full of those “oh, so that’s how it works” moments that make his channel a go-to for hands-on physics.

#3 - Can late-stage capitalism survive without insurance?

Can late-stage capitalism survive without insurance?

If dire warnings from scientists haven’t been enough to shift governments into meaningful action, perhaps the stark reality of uninsurability will.

The SpinoffGareth Hughes

“There is no capitalism without functioning financial services. And there are no financial services without the ability to price and manage climate risk.”

Collapse-awareness often feels abstract, but this article offers a starkly tangible preview of futures already unfolding. When New Zealand insurer Tower raised premiums for homes most exposed to floods and landslips, it revealed the fragility beneath the system. As disasters mount, insurers are blunt: entire regions are becoming uninsurable. And without insurance, mortgages vanish. Without mortgages, credit markets freeze. As the author argues, this isn’t just about household budgets—it’s about whether capitalism itself can function when the math of risk no longer adds up.

#4 - Art that finds the otherworldly in the everyday

Barcelona-based artist Vorja Sánchez blends fantasy with scientific wonder, drawing on everything from ancestral myths to the organic forms charted by 19th-century biologists. His “Interventions” series, often set over serene forests or rolling hills, animates mist and clouds as ghostly beings—eyes, tendrils, and bodies emerging in near-transparent white ink atop photographs of real landscapes. His aesthetic sensibility extends beyond misty creatures: in his “Studio” and “Sketches” series, he envisions expansive ecosystems inhabited by surreal flora, hybrid beasts, and imaginative lifeforms bursting out of natural history motifs.

#5 - Anniversary – a short film by Chantel Houston

Impressively concise writing and directing are on display in this single-scene short (5 mins), where a woman arrives at the beach to celebrate an anniversary with her wife. Their conversation, framed against the surf and sunset, feels warm and ordinary—until it opens into something deeper: a meditation on love, loss, and the rituals we cling to when the person we love is gone. Told with restraint, Anniversary lingers in the tension between presence and absence, showing how rituals endure even when those we share them with do not.

Membership Benefits

As a Grokkist Member, you’re part of a circle of active grokkists walking the grokkist path. Here’s what membership includes:

• 🟣 Member-Only Gatherings including Lab & Lounge
• 🧩 Three Self-Guided Courses (Red Thread, Ecosophy, ADHD Meditation)
• 🛠 Ongoing Groksmithing Project Support at Member Rates
• 📚 Free eBooks from Grokkist Press
• ❤️‍🔥 30% Discount on Courses and Ticketed Events
• 📣 Post Calls, Invitations, and Events
• ✨ Early Access to Pilots and Prototypes
• ▶️ Events Recording Library
• ⭐️ Digital Member Badge

👉 Your membership also helps fund the operating costs of Grokkist and supports community-led projects and initiatives.

Become a Grokkist Member - $75/yr

A pair of parting thoughts...

“Always be a poet, even in prose.” ― Charles Baudelaire

“History is gossip well told.” ― Elbert Hubbard