Each edition contains the latest from the Grokkist Press, a wrap-up of events and highlights from our community, and a care package of snackable outside links selected to nourish your curiosity.
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Hey friends and fellow grokkists,
I'm excited to share with you our new 6.5-min mini-grokkumentary, made by our co-founder Nathan Dufour, all about the concept of grokking and what exactly it is we do here at Grokkist.
Not only does the mini-grokkumentary contain all the joyful thoughtfulness, musical elements and animation from Nathan's other videos (such as our earlier Old School School video), it also features five of us speaking (and dancing), recorded during our very first in-person get-together in NYC last October.
We've put this video in pride of place on our Are You a Grokkist? page, which we've completely revamped as we continue to better understand the nature of the home we are building and the kinds of experiences and opportunities people in the grokkist community are looking for.
I hope it brings a smile and some inspiration to your day.
Grok on!
- Danu
This edition at a glance:
- Press: Are you a grokkist?
- Network:
- Featured Member: Jessica Böhme – practical transformation philosopher
- Featured Events: Elderhood: the Last Act and Free Your Mind with Neural Magic
- Snackables:
- Fungal Computing and the Wood Wide Web
- The Gender Pay Gap Bot
- Things Fell Apart - strange tales from the culture wars
- The flow of time shines eternally in each fleeting moment
- Every Best Picture winner ranked by how good a Muppets version would be
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From the Grokkist Press
Articles, videos, podcasts and other creations
Are you a grokkist?
by Danu Poyner and Nathan Dufour Oglesby (6.5 min watch + 9 min read)
When your insistence on curiosity and care leads you into wonderful, terrible trouble only to guide you safely home again, you are walking the path of a grokkist, where curiosity and care are both the question and the answer.
From the Grokkist Network
Events and updates from our community
Community updates and highlights
Featured member profile
Through our Featured Member portal, we like to showcase the efforts of fellow grokkists who are shaking up, re-imagining or re-enchanting their own fields of practice with an insistence on curiosity and care.
Jessica Böhme – practical transformation philosopher
The central question of my work is “How to live a good life in the apocalypse?”
I am a writer, researcher, and educator specializing in transformation research for social-ecological justice. My primary focus is helping individuals discover how to adopt a meaningful philosophy amidst what I refer to as the "metacrisis." This term encompasses climate change, social disparities, resource scarcity, species extinction, ocean acidification, rising depression rates, unpredictable technologies, post-truth conflicts, and increasing societal divisions, all of which constitute a philosophical crisis.
My approach is rooted in a nuanced relational process ethico-onto-epistemology. I strive to navigate the delicate balance between hope and despair, seeking to establish a meaningful existence within this complex framework. While acknowledging that much of what we cherish may perish, I am committed to making the world a more beautiful place to live. My work thrives in the midst of these paradoxes, embracing the challenges inherent in our modern reality.
Highlights from the Grokkist Network
- Recap and recording of Amanda Nicole's Grassroots Workshop - Opening the Door to Heart-Centered Knowing
- A new welcome video from yours truly from among the giant sequoias
- Sadique Salih is looking for volunteers to trial a competitive conversation format
- A roundup of improvements to the Grokkist Network for February
Grokkable Courses
- Our fourth cohort of Nathan Dufour's Introduction to Philosophy for Ecological Action (Ecosophy) course has kicked off and runs for the next 5 weeks
- The second cohort of my Find Your Red Thread course starts in April
Featured events and meetups
We are a global community – featured events listed below are shown in the host's timezone. For all other dates, add +1 day for Aus/NZ.
Free Your Mind with Neural Magic | Grassroots Workshop
🗓️ Thu 21 Mar | 5–7pm PT (view in your timezone)
Hosted by Sarjé Haynes
You're invited to join Sarjé Haynes for an Equinox creative gathering! Free Your Mind with Neural Magic is your opportunity to delve within and creatively communicate with your inner knowing, your ancestry, and your universe!
Sarjé is a Spiritual Archaeologist who uses Neural Magic (along with other tools and modalities) to reveal and heal intergenerational traumas within their Being. By regularly practicing Neural Magic, they gain greater spaciousness, capacity, and intuitive knowing. If you would like to grok more, consider joining Sarjé to Free Your Mind!!
Elderhood - the Last Act | Lunch and Learn
🗓️ Wed 27 Mar | 5–6pm GMT (view in your timezone)
Hosted by Gwyn Jones
After many twists and turns, dead-ends and cliff edges (yep, including a couple of "big steps forward") Gwyn's life took a decisive turn into a bright future. From his early career as a highly successful creator of management consultancies across Europe, Africa, the Middle and Far East, he chose to take a radically different path that has eventually brought him to his new role as "Apprentice Elder".
In this session Gwyn looks back, and more importantly forward, at the situations we all find ourselves in and the choices we need to make. He will draw on work and lessons from some of his greatest teachers and mentors, from indigenous people, musicians, poets, to Gen Z. And the gifts from people that maybe saw his potential and were prepared to sacrifice their relationship with him in order to help him become the best version of himself. It's only a story...
Other Upcoming Events
- 13 Mar | Religion and Ritual (Themed Café)
- 15 Mar | Grok Café
- 28 Mar | Ecosophy Café
- 5 Apr | Rethinking our Philosophies in the Metacrisis (Lunch and Learn)
- 9 Apr | Red Thread Café
🍬 Snackables
Assorted awesome links to nurture your curiosity
#1 - Fungal Computing and the Wood Wide Web
Back in 2010, researchers made headlines when they discovered that a slime mould could reproduce a map of Tokyo's transit system of its own accord. It turns out "slime mould can solve tasks of computational geometry, image processing, logic and arithmetics." The Unconventional Computing Laboratory in Bristol explores, among other things mycelial networks and the use of 'wetware' can transcend our traditional ideas and yield incredible results. Part of a growing body of work that offers to help us rethink our relationship to fungi.
#2 - The Gender Pay Gap Bot
International Women's Day has just passed, and as with many such institutionalised attempts at caring about something, we often find ourselves torn between wanting to show our support by contributing to a shared conversation about something important at a moment when people are paying attention, and feeling fatigued by an outpouring of fatuous virtue signalling, empty gestures, and hypocritical purpose-washing by opportunistic marketers.
The Gender Pay Gap Bot has brought a bit of spice to this dynamic in previous years as an elegant and pointed tool for data-driven advocacy. Using public data, whenever a company tweets key International Women’s Day phrases on Xitter, the bot automatically responds with their median gender pay gap, causing much online chaos. This has in turn prompted gender pay gap consultants to offer advice on how to navigate the existence of the Gender Pay Gap Bot. (🙏 Nora K)
#3 - Things Fell Apart - strange tales from the culture wars
Jon Ronson (The Men Who Stare at Goats, So You've Been Publicly Shamed) is journalist in the mould of Louis Theroux who looks for illuminating universal truths about human behaviour in the margins and fringes of society. His podcast series Things Fell Apart explores the surprising origin stories of culture wars that have divided us so toxically for decades, from abortion to critical race theory. Fascinating throughout, but for my money the best episode is the one about the time Christian televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker interviewed a gay man living with AIDS during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s – "wars end when people connect and listen to each other and are curious about each other instead of instantly judgmental."
#4 - The flow of time shines eternally in each fleeting moment
Time Tides is a beautiful 90-second animation by Hideki Inaba depicting the passing of time. "The waves of the sea gently ebb and flow, while the mountains silently observe the passing of time. The short life of a bee and the long transformation of continents, both are merely illusions. The flow of time shines eternally in each fleeting moment. Perhaps there are neither beginnings nor ends, nor haste nor delay, not even existence or cessation, in its true essence."
#5 - Every Best Picture winner ranked by how good a Muppets version would be
Matt Fresh
A labour of love – "Could you imagine if every year there was a new Muppet movie that adapted the latest Best Picture winner? That’s what Hollywood is taking away from you. Each of these 95 films would be improved by being Muppets, but not all of them would be equal. There’s a hierarchy to how good each of these would be as Muppet films and I’m going to tell you." Hardly the least appealing vision for the future of cinema.
A parting thought...
"Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question"
― Gertrude Stein
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