Grokkist Newsletter #87

Hey friends,

Grokkist turns four next month. And I’ve been realising that the work has moved into a different season.

For a long time, this was a zero-to-one project.

Figuring out what this even is. Testing things. Trying things that didn’t work. Following threads without knowing where they’d lead. Building something out of almost nothing.

That phase has a particular feeling to it. It’s scrappy. Generative. Slightly chaotic. You’re mostly trying to get something to exist that can hold its shape.

What I’m noticing now is that I’m no longer in that phase.

This is more like one-to-ten.

The work exists. It works. There are people in it. There are structures that hold. The question shifts from what is this? to how does this grow without breaking what makes it good?

I’ve been seeing versions of this everywhere lately.

Most people I speak to are inevitably in some kind of transition. Moving cities. Changing relationships. Outgrowing old identities. Trying to build something new while still standing in something old.

They're often living in a strange mismatch where internally, something important has shifted, but externally, things haven’t caught up yet.

So you end up in this in-between state – what I think of as a threshold moment.

Not quite who you were. Not fully able to be who you’re becoming.

I’m naturally quite buoyant (like a platypus). So when I zoom all the way out, life is amazing. And when I zoom all the way in, life is also amazing. But in the middle band, it can sometimes feel like stress, confusion, and low-level chaos.

I think that middle band is often just being in a transition between seasons.

It gets especially confusing when you start comparing across them. Looking at someone who’s in one-to-ten while you’re still in zero-to-one.

Or trying to generate something new while measuring yourself against people who are refining and scaling something that already exists.

It can look like you’re behind. But usually, you’re just in a different phase.

Each season also asks for different things.

Zero-to-one asks for exploration, mess, and a tolerance for things not working. One-to-ten asks for structure, discernment, and saying no to things that don’t fit anymore.

Four years in, I can clearly feel I'm moving through that threshold.

This isn’t an experiment in the same way it was. It has shape now. And the work is moving from finding the thread to building something that can hold it.

If you’re around Grokkist right now, you’re probably somewhere in your own version of this. Trying to bring something into existence. Or trying to grow something without losing what matters.

Or both.

To mark the four-year point, I’ll be hosting a town hall where I’ll share how this all works, where it’s at, and what the next phase looks like — including what it would take to make the ecosystem properly self-sustaining. You’re very welcome to join.

Mostly, though, this is just a marker.

If you’re in that in-between — where your inner terrain has shifted but nothing quite lines up yet — just know there’s probably nothing wrong. It might just be that events haven’t caught up with you yet.

With curiosity and care,
Danu

💌 P.S. I’m opening up three spots next month for a 1:1 Red Thread walkthrough.

This is a six-session process where we work together to trace the thread running through your experiences, interests, and instincts — and bring it into a form you can actually stand in and communicate.

It’s especially useful if you’re in one of those threshold moments described above — where something has shifted internally, but your outward story, work, or direction hasn’t caught up yet.

We use my self-paced Find Your Red Thread course as a backbone, but it’s very applied and flexible. We focus on the parts that are most alive or stuck for you.

By the end, you’ll be able to name, claim, and explain what you’re actually doing — becoming more legible to yourself and to others as you do.

You’ll have language that feels like it has some weight to it — something you can actually live into and inhabit. A clearer sense of direction, without needing everything mapped out. And, of course, a red thread you can reach for and return to, rather than starting from scratch each time.

Some people go on to share a Red Thread Talk in the community as a way of marking that shift and making it socially real.

This round is USD$750 for the full process.

A client engagement finished earlier than expected, so I’ve suddenly got a bit of space — and I’m using that to both make up some cashflow and push forward some new material I’ve been developing.

So this is a bit of a one-off. I won’t be offering it at this price again.

If you already know the work and this feels like the right moment, just reply and let me know.

Fresh and Featured Pressings

The 9-Level Citadel | Letter 4: Autonomy-in-Connection

By Margarita Steinberg (8 minute read)

It’s vital that you have authority over your world.

Read the article ↗

Tending the relational field: Why we blame people when their context is starving them

By Evelien Verschroeven (6 min read)

As we transition into more relational ways of seeing the world, how might our understanding of responsibility shift and deepen?

Read the article ↗

More from the Press

• The Illusion of Choice (Rodney King, 4 min read) – In the search for freedom, how can we learn to see beyond the choices that have been pre-approved for us?
• Open for Whom? (Eleanor Colla, 8 min read) – We're often told that all of the knowledge of the world is at our fingertips, yet it can still feel impossible to find what we're looking for.

Upcoming Events

Featured Gatherings

🟢 Coddiwomple Cafe: Ensh*ttification

🗓️ Sun 22 Mar | 8pm–9.30pm CET (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Danu Poyner

Every so often a word appears that seems to capture something people have been noticing for years but didn’t quite have language for. Ensh*ttification is one of those words.

It’s often used to describe what happens to digital platforms as they grow — when something that once worked beautifully slowly becomes cluttered, extractive, or frustrating. But the pattern shows up far beyond the internet. Organisations, institutions, tools, services, communities. Things that began with care or good intentions gradually drift, and the experience changes.

Coddiwomple Cafés are conversational spaces rather than presentations or workshops. We’ll begin with a simple round of check-ins so everyone can arrive in the room together, and then let the conversation unfold from there.

Event Details and RSVP ↗

🟢 Seeking Real Good: The first decade

🗓️ Mon 30 Mar | 1pm–2.30pm ET (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Leland R. Beaumont

About ten years ago, I arrived at the phrase “Seeking Real Good”.

It began as an essay—an attempt to resolve an old tension between what is real and what is good. Science asks what is. Moral imagination asks what ought to be. Must they live apart? Or can they converge?
This talk traces the evolution of that question. From a simple coordinate grid mapping “real” and “good,” to the development of more than 100 freely available courses in the Applied Wisdom curriculum on Wikiversity, this has been a decade-long experiment in learning aimed at wisdom.

Along the way, a working definition emerged—one that took 15 years to clarify:

Applied wisdom is doing what we ought to do.

But what does that actually mean? How do we decide what we ought to do? And how do we hold together evidence, values, courage, and action in a world facing grand challenges?

This is the story behind the phrase and how the quest for “real good” continues to shape an open curriculum for anyone who wants to apply wisdom in their own lives.

Event Details and RSVP ↗

Other Upcoming Gatherings

• 31 Mar | 🟣 Members Lab & Lounge
• 6 Apr | 🟢 Grokkist Writing Salon
• 14 Apr | 🟣 Members Lab & Lounge
• 16 Apr | 🟢 PhilosophyGym @ Grokkist
• 19 Apr | 🟢 Grokkist Town Hall: Four Years In
• 28 Apr | 🟣 Members Lab & Lounge
• 3 May | 🟢 Coddiwomple Cafe: American Dream Disillusionment Trauma

#1 - How republics unravel

“The narrative that unfolds across the six volumes of Gibbon’s history endures as a warning against the way a disease of the soul can metastasize throughout the body politic…”

Lessons from Edward Gibbon and his history of Rome's collapse. Rome’s story, as Gibbon tells it, unfolds as a long internal unravelling where decline isn’t just geopolitical but psychological, even spiritual. A civilisation continues outwardly even as "a pervasive nihilism can incapacitate a people from within." Shared values begin to thin, attention drifts toward spectacle, a fatigue of meaning sets in.

Gibbon’s account becomes a way of asking what kind of inner life a republic depends on—and what erodes it. Not doom-saying so much as pattern recognition: an invitation to notice the inner climates in which collapse becomes imaginable.

#2 - To be there but not to be seen

A former New York City pickpocket returns to the subway system where he spent years working, narrating how he did it and what it cost him. Wilfred Rose explains the craft in concrete terms—how to read a crowd, where to look, what to reach for— a way of moving through the world where being overlooked is already familiar. He describes how to choreograph people's attention, how presence can pass without notice, how close you can get without registering.

Alongside that detail is the other side of the story: arrests, family life, loss, and a habit he describes as an addiction. Returning to the subway, he steps back into that same field of perception, where what is seen and unseen has always shaped what was possible. (22 mins)

#3 - A religion without doctrine

Why I’m a Quaker

I. I’m a Quaker.

Thing of ThingsOzy Brennan

A case for a religion that doesn’t ask you to believe the right things, but to show up and practice. In modern Quakerism, what makes you a Quaker isn’t belief, but participation—an almost purely orthopraxic religion.

The structure is minimal: sit in silence, pay attention, speak only if something real needs to be said. Over time, that practice becomes a way of orienting—less about being right, more about being in right relationship with what you’re doing. At its centre is a simple claim: there’s a part of you that already knows how to act well, and the work is learning how to listen to it. Quakers call this the “Inner Light.” Other traditions call it conscience, presence, or wise mind.

It’s a compelling orientation. It also leaves open a tension many grokkists will recognise: what happens when many people, each listening carefully, still don’t arrive at the same place—or don’t arrive anywhere at all?

#4 - Watch live TV and guess the country

TVGuessr - Guess the Country from Live TV

Watch live TV streams and guess the country of origin!

TVGuessrTVGuessr Team

TVGuesser drops you into live TV from around the world and asks you to name the country. After 10 rounds I got 2 correct and a score of 5,233.

#5 - Everyday objects, slightly altered

French illustrator Romain Joly plays with simple elements – drawing, photography, everyday objects — turning them into visual jokes or nudging them into new forms. Visit his website at https://romainjolyyy.com/ or find him on Insta @romainjolyyy

Grokkist is a living ecosystem — 🟢 free to enter, powered by members 🟣.

If you’d like to go deeper, you can join as a member, explore Signature Projects, or work with Danu.

Become a Grokkist Member ($99/yr or $27/qtr)

Parting thoughts...

"Never think you've seen the last of anything." – Eudora Welty

"If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light." – Rumi