I'm not posting here at the moment. I'm posting on Substack.

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Much love,

John

Whilst that is a good way to describe it, it also feels like a place.

Here are some thoughts about that place:

An empty canvas is a gift. A shared adventure is joy.
Every week, we gather to take time for ourselves and to meet one another. The Salon each Sunday begins at 8pm UTC and is opened with time to be intentional with a self-chosen practice. Following, members meet either 1:1 or in groups of 3. There are no conversation prompts, there are no weekly themes, and there is nothing to do except stay curious.

The things worth caring about make themselves known.
Conversations develop in their own way and last for 30 minutes. Each room is a unique combination of experience and intention. What unfolds is unplanned, ordinary, and sometimes magic. Topics, pauses, and new questions arise on their own with curiosity.

We are the space in which discovery happens.
What each participant brings to the space is their own. What comes through being ourselves is more than we could plan into being. Developments that occur naturally in conversation lead to a natural development of who we see ourselves to be.

Mutual care is a commitment to reduce harm.
Everybody brings with them a life of depth and richness that we can never fully see into that makes them who they are. People change and in allowing change we discover our own innate capacity to care. By caring, we create and refine in ways that are generative over time.

Discovery is a process not an outcome.
We don’t know what will happen, we never do, all we can do is show up. Beautiful things of all kinds have been born of quiet moments with ourselves and interesting exchanges. Every moment is different and so is every meeting.

Beings Club has been on a break since our initial 3-month Season Zero.

Now, we’re preparing to re-start the adventure.

To kick off, we’re having an Open Salon on May 18th, open-to-all and entirely free.

If you’re interested in participating, you’re invited to sign-up here or email me at john[at]spacetobe.xyz.

More info on Beings Club is also available here.

In any case, stay curious.

As I write, the two co-authors of Higher's Greenpaper, have just released new pieces of writing individually - LGHT deconstructing the Matrix we are currently enslaved to: Technology, Money, Design, and Media, and Jihad speaking to networks as product and agency as a desired network impact.

Together they are pointing to the current state of things more broadly but perhaps there is no better scene to take their ideas seriously than Higher.

Situated at the intersection of Technology and Money, what if we designed media that expanded the network's capacity to distribute agency to humans, in relation to Technology and Money?

The cultural practice of the Higher scene(network) is already positioned in this way:

To explore new ways of feeling and seeing higher regardless of market action.

As previously discussed, feeling and seeing higher is a mode of perception and exploration of the ways in which this can be decoupled from a technological and monetary reality, aka market action, results in the distribution of agency, and ultimately genius.

The mechanism may be something like: we are no longer affected by market action, we have one less external factor influencing our thoughts and behaviour, we can do more with our attention, and we can birth more genius.

Agency is a function of the mind. In order to enhance agency, the site of enhancement is no other than the mind.

One could argue that technologies enhance agency, but if agency is as Jihad defines it: the ability to define a clear vision and act on it with intention. Then, the only site worth paying attention to is the one in which a clear vision and intention are cultivated and from which action originates.

In both cases, that site is the mind.

Networks are clusters of minds. Technology, Money, Design, and Media all filter through minds. We live every moment of our lives, with our minds.

If we want to truly take seriously the responsibility of freeing ourselves from the Matrix, as LGHT describes it, and to live with agency, as well as distributing the possibility of that agency to others via our network as our product, as Jihad suggests is possible, it may start with recognising that the site of necessary impact is the mind.

As you may remember, it is my belief that the core value offering of higher is the distribution of genius.

This value offering is primarily manifested by inviting individuals into the process of agency (to clarify their own vision and to act on it with intention), through interaction with the scene.

Following this, through further collaboration and agency fuelled action, innovations are discovered and genius can be distributed and recognised.

Importantly, nobody tells you what that process has to look like. There is a huge amount of freedom in what your vision can be and how you move towards what is possible. The process may look widely different for different persons who join the scene.

However, if we are to agree that the primary site of practice for engaging higher's cultural practice is the mind, it may be useful to understand what exactly the possible changes to ones mind might be and how they are allowed to occur.

Referring again to our jihad provided definition of agency: the ability to define a clear vision and act on it with intention, it appears that clarity of vision and the ability to act on it with intention are the most important faculties of mind to enhance.

Clarity of vision is an imaginal act, a direction of ones attention, and can only be as clear as ones incorporation of all the factors that make up it's possible reality.

Action with intention is an embodied reality, a direction of ones attention, and can only be as impactful as ones incorporation of all the factors that make up the present reality.

In essence, in being agentic, we are traversing the gap between the imagined and the physical, through the energy of attention.

The most valuable enhancements therefore are those that give you control over the direction of your attention. Without the ability to direct your attention to traversing the gap and to re-direct it when you've been distracted or new information arises that requires a new form of action, you cannot adequately form a clear vision or act with intention.

Therefore, we might concentrate our efforts of exploring new ways of empowering individuals to understand and direct the flow of their attention through exploration of the medium of mind.

Importantly, again, whilst I may have a vision for how to do this, the core value proposition of Higher is not in it's declaration of a singular way of doing things, but in it's invitation to be part of a scene of people experimenting along a particular line of exploration. It is through this that we give ourselves the best possible chance at distributing genius

If we coordinate and collaborate on the mission of enhancing agency, new forms of enhancing agency are then sure to arise, through the distribution of genius.

So here's an invitation into a possible future:

Whilst the Higher scene may lead to the distribution and recognition of many forms of genius, I would like to invite you into a specific mission, based on what I have written above.

My thesis is that by providing agency enhancing services to both scene participants and those outside of it, that overall participation in the higher scene will increase, and all will benefit as a result.

Here are some ideas that I'm currently engaged in:

Soon, I hope to launch higher mindfulness club entirely for free, rewarding participants with HIGHER for showing up as well as consistent participation, following funding from The Higher Party.

This will be a 6-month experiment in distributing techniques and practices that I personally have found effective in enhancing my own agency and are proven to enhance attentional capacities and improve the wellbeing of those who experience anxiety and depression.

At the same time, higher mindfulness club will provide the stage for the scene to be in conversations around clarifying vision, next actions, and remembering intentions.

Importantly, nothing that is presented needs to be taken as fact. I encourage you to come along and DYOR on these practices and techniques, as well as to get into conversation with other higher network participants on the basis of shared exploration.

My intention is, that through participation, these techniques will distribute higher agency to more individuals who are already part of the scene as well as to newcomers. You can help to distribute genius by bringing your curiosity, engaging the sessions in earnest, not taking my word as gospel, and inviting new people into the process.

Find out more here.

Even sooner, I plan to help launch the first Permapool.

Using a permapool, an organisation will be able to provide a widely recognised public good to the scene and receive funding in exchange. I suggest that this organisation be dedicated to exploring the frontiers of coordination using HIGHER and what media that enhances agency could be.

Specifically, I am suggesting that focus be on five core principles: enhancing agency, embracing uncertainty, and enabling collaboration, generating revenue, and using HIGHER.

This is because in order to successfully distribute the genius of enhanced agency to as many people as possible we have to expand participation and collaboration across the network as well as secure it's long-term future.

Here's how each of our core principles help:

Enhancing Agency
It is extraordinarily valuable to have an understanding of how and why attention flows and how to redirect it to align with ones own intention. Enhanced agency is valuable to anyone who wants to create. Distributing the skills and understanding that allows people to enhance their own agency to create is therefore incredibly valuable for a scene that wants to remain continually relevant. The more people who are empowered by the scene to create, the more people that are likely to return value to the scene through creation and experimentation.

This can be seen as a guiding principle. The organisation may exist to enhance agency, first and foremost.

Embracing Uncertainty
Things are always changing. To stay still is to risk becoming irrelevant or forgotten. We can stave off these potential dangers by embracing uncertainty and encouraging all forms of experimentation, facing realities, and remaining curious. As long as cultural exploration remains an open question, there is more experimentation that can be done. The more valuable experiments occurring in the scene the more opportunity there is for the amount of participation to increase.

This means that the organisation doesn't have to see anything as competition and can readily incorporate new innovations where participation, experimentation, and agency are increasing.

Enabling Collaboration
Scene health relies on collaboration. As participants are connected to one another network effects take hold that amplify scene activity. Participants encountering diversity amidst the scene through collaboration can enhance overall scene agency as visions are clarified and intentions and next actions defined. More agentic participants increases the set of possible experiments that can emerge from the scene and attract new participants into the scene. Collaborations can also invite non-participants to become participants directly.

This can encompass collaborations both within and beyond the scene, to foster diversity and enhance agency simultaneously. The scene will fail without collaboration, as we will fail to distribute genius.

Generating Revenue
Whilst passion can drive the activity of a scene to it's highest potential, it is also important that people are paid for their work so that they can survive in our money-driven world. In general, relying on passion alone restricts the ability of the most passionate to do what they love. Resources are necessary for survival first and foremost, after which they can enable for more expansive things to be done.

This means that the organisation should be treated as a for-profit public goods machine - seeking funds as ETH or USDC, for conversion into 50/50 HIGHER/ETH LP not only through the generosity of aligned parties, but also in exchange for work in coordination, media, and beyond. Enhanced coordination within the scene is enabled by encouraging people to contribute to the pool to signal long-term alignment with HIGHER and engender trust.

Using HIGHER
Value HIGHER. There is no point in accumulating HIGHER if the intention is solely to sell it, it is better used. The HIGHER token can be seen as a form of media and therefore it's main function to can be to enhance agency. Not through it's sale into ETH but through it's potential as a reward for contributing to enhanced agency, or as an incentive for enhancing the agency of oneself or others. Holding HIGHER should be enough to 10x a persons agency. To this end, HIGHER may be used to incentivise behaviours that promote agency and as a reward for committing to agency enhancing choices.

Through commit.wtf, HIGHER holders can be incentivised to go higher and earn in the process. Importantly, no HIGHER need be sold for ETH or USDC.

higher mindfulness club and a permapool org, are just two ways I have thought of that our collective energy and resources to be directed towards in order for higher to position itself as an important source of enhancing agency in our time.

My hope is that the Permapool concept alone could enhance agency amidst the scene. The strategy is free for anyone to use and iterate upon.

Multiple permapools, with multiple forms of governance, and multiple strategies for using the funds could be deployed, with all of them servicing the higher community through at least their liquidity provision.

The most important factor to consider will always be the plan for how permapool fees are utilised.

You may not even agree that we should focus any efforts on enhancing agency.

Whatever comes next, higher is yours.

1. Agency is important for the world.

2. The Higher scene is well positioned to concentrate efforts on enhancing agency at this time.

3. There are ways in which we could coalesce our efforts to enhance agency, if we want to.

The future is wide open.

As a result of Higher's initial introduction as a way of seeing that can inform a response to the world as opposed to a singular product or object; higher is more of a memetic primitive for integration with one's own life and aspirations, than a definable object, and is as a result both dynamic and adaptable.

Another way of saying this is that Higher is meta-transcending - which means that it is durable.

Hopefully, more people will want to contribute to higher, building their own aspirations and discovering their own genius for themselves as well as others in whatever way makes sense to them.

In this model, behaviour flows from the shared understanding and lived experiences of the brand’s participants, rather than from a singular directive. Values are dynamic, growing, and transforming as the brand community evolves. Where consensus emerges, attention concentrates, and genius is validated. The brand overall has fluidity to adapt to metas, in relation to where it's participants are learning as well as acting on their strengths and skills, also known as going higher.

If you think the vision of going higher I have presented today is worth supporting, any and all support is appreciated.

In theory, a sufficiently deep practice can be continuously refined and is continuously relevant.

In theory, a sufficiently deep practice can be continuously refined and is continuously relevant.

If a practice is of true value to the world, even if it is not of obvious financial value, it will likely persist not only because it is durable, but also as people attempt to preserve it for future generations.

In essence, the practice becomes trustworthy, as a result of the value it is able to generate for it's practitioners and the world, and scene participants act to protect it from fading into irrelevance.

As a reminder, higher's cultural practice is to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.

Essentially, decoupling perception from reality and therefore enabling more agentic behaviour.

Wisdom traditions, art, and neuroscience have all pointed to the idea that perception is not reality, with their most dedicated practitioners benefiting from the integration of this insight into their daily lives.

What is novel about higher is the location at which this insight has emerged.

Technology, Money, and Mind all intersect at the site of the higher scene as it is today. There are perhaps no more pervasive and influential forces shaping human destiny at this time.

The uniqueness of higher's location amidst these forces influences the possible innovations that could arise out of the scene. And hence so may be their value - unique.

If we want to continue to explore higher, together and preserve the uniqueness of this scene, the scene will need to continue to collaborate with one another and finding ways of ensuring that activity continues.

One effective approach to achieving this, whilst aligning all participants, is to establish a sustainable funding model where speculative market activity on HIGHER remains viable while simultaneously generating resources to support collaboration and cultural initiatives.

If people are going to speculate on the scene and gain financially, it makes sense that the scene should try and partake in some of those gains.

The possibility of liquidity being removed, in which case the token would no longer tradable, would be a return to how things were before the token.

If we don't want to go back, if you believe that there is value in what could emerge from the scene as it is today, we might wish to move forward in a way that protects the possibility of trading the token and provides funding to sustain cultural practices.

In other words, if we think the higher scene is valuable, we might do what we can to preserve it, so that we can go higher forever.

A Permapool is a 50/50 liquidity pool where pooled funds are permanently locked and cannot be withdrawn, however, additional funds can be added, and distribution of the fees generated from the pool can be configured in multiple ways.

In practice, the appeal of a Permapool is that it incorporates a form of neutral territory for a scene as the funds inside the LP continually service speculation on the value of the scene's culture whilst also generating fees that can be utilised to fund cultural activity within the scene.

Permapools not only provide a shared source of value but they also generate revenue in the process.

This is good for every kind of scene participant.

• Pure Contributors solely engaging the scene's cultural practice, benefit either through direct funding or through the effects of increased scene activity and exploration, dependent on how the LP generated funds are deployed.

• Pure Speculators solely speculating on the scene through token holdings, benefit from increased LP to trade into, and can also speculate on the potential for deployed LP generated funds to increase or decrease demand for token holdings without fear of not being able to trade the token if LP is pulled.

and

• Hybrid Speculator-Contributors, engaging both the scene's cultural practice and allocating funds to speculation, benefit from the impact of deployed scene activity funding, can bet on their own work, and also do not have to fear the possibility of being unable to trade the token in future.

In summary, through Permapools, speculative market action creates a source of sustainable funding for collaboration on scene activity which aligns all forms of participant.

Distribution of the fees is an important piece of the puzzle around Permapools and is only limited by the necessity for generated fees to be used in ways that also align all participants.

We can examine what kinds of considerations we need to make by considering each kind of scene participant:

• Pure Contributors want fees to be used for funding cultural activity.

• Pure Speculators want fees to be used to drive changes to token price.

• Hybrid Speculator-Contributors want both.

This limits fee spending to activities that drive token price action and advance scene activity.

Currently, there exist pools of funds that are centralised in the wallets of the Higher Party and Aethernet that could be used in ways that align all participants.

However, as it stands there is no clear public process or guidelines for how these funds should be distributed or requested. Both of these pooled funds were also left unmentioned in the latest (awesome) update to aimhigher.net.

However, seeing higher as a scene as opposed to a Headless Brand, I see no fatal problem with this, and simply see that these funds exist in the control of two different types of genius within a multi-genius scene.

The pooled funds in those wallets are not locked, which allows for more freedom in where they can move and how they can be used, but also means that they require protection from adversarial parties.

And these forms of genius do distribute funds, the reality is simply that there is a high friction to getting your hands on them which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Far from suggesting that these two parties operate any differently, I believe that their forms of genius may be ultimately healthy for the ecosystem.

Permapools simply offer the possibility at alternative forms of genius, which these parties could choose to support, or not.

If the scene wants to continue to evolve durably, and birth genius, this diversity is a good thing.

Diversity allows for conflict and conflict can help to refine processes. It also provides resilience, stability, and adaptability for the ecosystem as a whole.

As long as engagement in conversation, collaborations, and exploration continues, the scene can continue to distribute genius even if parties aren't always aligned.

Everything is always changing. We are in a good spot.

To examine how Permapools might be of maximal benefit, we need to take a look at:

1. How Permapools are different from current scene infrastructure

2. Why trade volume increases

3. How to support the widest range of scene participants

The two major differences between what Permapools can do for higher versus what Aethernet or The Higher Party have already done is in the permanent locking of LP funds and the possibility for alternate forms of governance over funds.

Valuably, both Aethernet and the Higher Party are currently providing LP to the market, and generating fees, but there is no guarantee that they won't pull liquidity, and their governance structures trade-off either security for speed or speed for security.

In both cases, huge enthusiasm from earnest members of the scene led to large donations to wallets that are now mostly inactive. In both cases, huge trust was required of the governance structure, and the responsibility of utilising those funds was also equally high with the potential for huge losses - a probable cause of their inactivity.

Permapools represent the opportunity for lower-risk donations from those who want to support the scene as well as more efficient ways of coordinating. As long as a Permapool is set up to automatically take donations and place all or some of them into the LP permanently, donators can be sure that they are supporting the token's stability and longevity. This creates the space for more risky forms of governance over the generated fees, as most of the donated funds are protected.

Governance is limited to what % of donations are added to the LP and how fees are distributed and used.

The opportunity is then for multiple kinds of iteration of the Permapool concept to arise, with different forms of governance that can take more risk and move quicker, with different forms of fee utilisation.

In every case, there is also the opportunity to use donations to the permapool in exchange for long-term alignment from the governing entity.

In summary, Permapools enable a new kind of participant (or form of genius) within the scene that can support the the scene both financially and culturally in ways that existing pooled funding entities cannot.

Trade volume is a measure of the total value traded. As trade volume increases, the amount of fees captured by a Permapool increases. Trade volume can be thought of as a function of demand for the token over time.

This means that, in theory, one can increase the volume traded by either increasing or decreasing demand for either of the tokens in the token pair.

This provides incredible durability for Permapools, in that almost any scenario of change that effects the tokens in the liquidity pool can generate more funds for cultural activities.

Ultimately, every kind of participant can benefit from more market activity and more cultural activity, both of which are downstream of more participants. Speculators benefit from more participants like themselves to trade against and more activity to speculate on the outcome of. Contributors of all kinds benefit from a greater total amount of participant attention, exchange, and collaboration within the scene. In aggregate, more participants supports all participants.

1. The higher scene has the potential to provide unique value to the world.

2. Permapools are a low-trust way for pooled funds to generate more funds.

3. Funds are best spent in ways that increase the number of scene participants.

Click to read the next part.

It is important to note that the higher scene began before the HIGHER token was launched.

In it's beginning, higher was simply a Warpcast channel, where people could meme higher without price talk.

But then, along comes Martin - deploying a token and airdropping it to everyone in the channel.

Importantly, distribution to the scene was whole. Meaning that everybody in the scene now had a form of financial exposure to the burgeoning scene.

Some sold, and, to this day, some believe that referencing the token at all is a bad idea.

Not only do I disagree but I believe that HIGHER (the token) is the perfect site for conversation, collaboration, and experimentation in relation to the cultural practice of exploring new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.

What is required is that we earnestly decouple our view of the token from it's price, and begin to see the token's mere existence as an opportunity.

To understand further what I mean, we can ask the question:

Simply put, immediately, a whole range of new dynamics are introduced.

Foundationally, things are much the same: scene health continues to rely on conversation, collaboration, and experimentation. However, now that a token has been introduced, there is a financial primitive that can take up scene mindshare in conversation, collaboration, and experimentation through it's association.

The obvious value of the token is that those who historically would not have experienced any financial upside for their participation in a scene can now access financial exposure to a market approximation of the scenes value.

However, this is only possible because a new kind of scene participant activity is also introduced:

financial speculation (on the whole scene.)

Just like the Cubist scene would have included participants who's sole motivation was to speculate on the future value of artworks, the existence of a token invites participants into the higher scene who do not wish to be part of the scene's culture, but instead who's sole motivation is to speculate on it's value.

This is of tremendous potential value to any scene if properly harnessed, but also increases the possibility of contributors using market action to determine how much they themselves value the scene.

Thankfully, in the case of higher, participants are explicitly asked to decouple their perception of reality from price action. So instead of being a problem, market action becomes a site of opportunity.

In order to engage this opportunity, one has to acknowledge that there exist participants who are solely part of the scene to trade the token, and some of these individuals may be actively adversarial.

Without a clear acknowledgement of this it is difficult to establish how to engineer positive sum solutions. If we are unable to trust the intentions of our scene collaborators, conversation and collaboration are hampered.

In other words, the existence of financial incentives without processes for creating alignment between different parties leads to a lack of coordination. This in turn can disrupt collaboration, leading to reduced creative output, and ultimately a decay of the scene's culture.

At this point, the scene can either completely abandon the token, or embrace the token as an opportunity for creating alignment and coordination.

The problem is the opportunity.

The problem with a token, in essence, is that it can warp the culture of a scene. As opposed to continuing to communicate, collaborate, and experiment in service to whatever the scenes particular way of seeing is, contributors become distracted by the market for the token.

If a scene's actual culture is not strong enough on it's own, it will be consumed by this financialization.

The scene will falter to produce the kinds of genius it's original culture was capable of hosting and the true value of the scene is lost.

The token is not valuable on it's own, it relies on the scene's cultural output.

The opportunity is therefore to use the token to bolster the scene's cultural output.

In simple terms, value should be captured from speculative market action, and invested in the culture.

One way to do this is to pair the token with another, provide liquidity on a DEX, and generate fees that can be used to pay people to do things. In most cases, there is no utility to tokens beyond this. However, if the fees generated do go on to fund cultural activity and lead to the creation of value for the world, there is an argument to be made that new cultural utility could arise, in which case all trading on the token pair could be said to be for the culture.

Whatever utilities arise, the true value of the scene is what it's people create for each other and the world, not it's token.

In the long-term, a token is only as valuable as it's ability to generate value, for the culture.

With the main cultural practice of higher being to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action, this is how value captured from market action should be "put to work".

As cultural activity continues, we cannot be sure of what will arise. All we know is that so far, higher has attracted and helped to shape some incredible talent, distributing genius and empowering them to realize their aspirations.

In my estimation, more of that would be a good thing.

Hopefully by now, you can see that the token is both a problem and an opportunity, and that to ignore it completely would be to ignore an opportunity to create more scene health and the distribution of more genius.

1. Higher's cultural practice of seeing higher regardless of price precedes the token launch.

2. The introduction of a scene token introduced the ability to speculate on the entire scene.

3. The token can be both a Problem and an Opportunity for the culture.

Click to read the next part.

In this series of essays, I am going to examine some challenges, and reframe them as an opportunity to come together and evolve our approach.

In this essay, I want to explain how I see higher's core offering as distributing genius, as opposed to what people have been referring to as "being a Headless Brand".

It's going to be useful because, as a genius once said:

"Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them." - Albert Einstein

I dislike the label "headless brand". The word 'headless' brings to mind a body without a brain and no clear direction. To try and build a brand or propagate a meme with nobody playing host to any form of idea, action, or direction is frankly ridiculous.

Thankfully, this isn't what's happening or has been happening with Higher. A more accurate framing is that Higher is something that is being collectively discovered by many heads, with many feet on the ground, and multiple directions being travelled in at once.

Examples of bodies that are publicly and actively using their heads and putting their feet to the ground in the name of Higher are Chic Bangs, Catra, Nishu, Colfax, Jpegpowell, JR, and Sonya, to name just a few.

Put simply, Higher is not headless, it has many heads.

In contrast to your regular memecoin or company where phrases such as "dev do something" and "the buck stops with him/her" can be expected, Higher distributes the power to create a vision for what higher should be and invites you to do something about it.

In other words, the buck stops with all of us, including you.

This framework for thinking about Higher provides enormous freedom as well as a network of potential collaborators (other heads).

Combine this with a financial primitive that can accrue value through network effects, and you have a financial incentive to utilise that freedom and collaborate.

These unique conditions are fertile ground for birthing both individual geniuses and collective genius, in an entirely new way.

A genius talks the talk and walks the walk.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge that Apple has somewhat ruined the word genius in recent years. Before Apple commodified the word "genius," it held significant weight.

While not always accurately applied, it has often been used to describe people who stand out and innovate in ways that have a lasting impact.

If you look across the Higher ecosystem, you may recognise many such geniuses.

Simultaneously, the word "genius" alone cannot accurately describe what exactly a person stands out for or their impact.

What can be defined is that "genius" is associated with intellectual ability and creative productivity.

Importantly, they not only think and reason well, but they are also able to manifest and realize their visions. A genius talks the talk and walks the walk.

This, however, is still a relatively shallow way of understanding what genius is and how it comes about. To isolate the individual is to misapprehend the reality we live in. The truth is that genius relies on people to sharpen and refine ideas, to be inspired to explore new territories, and even for novel ideas.

Though we usually only hear about geniuses that have been elevated to stardom, it would be silly to think that they always acted alone.

The more probable explanation is that genius is something that flows through a network of people via their passion for a question or area of exploration, and that the people we remember are simply the ones who were recognised as having made an impact. Importantly, all the other nodes in the network are indispensable if we want that genius.

Legendary music producer Brian Eno call's this phenomena Scenius and put it like this:

Like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and Giotto and so on who sort-of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolution.

As I looked at art more and more, I discovered that that wasn’t really a true picture. What really happened was that there were sometimes very fertile scenes involving lots and lots of people – some of them artists, some of them collectors, some of them curators, thinkers, theorists, people who were fashionable and knew what the hip things were – all sorts of people who created a kind of ecology of talent. And out of that ecology arose some wonderful work.

Although great new ideas are usually articulated by individuals, they’re nearly always generated by communities.

The key idea here is that scenes generate that which we recognise as genius.

Whilst some have suggested that Higher needs a singular leader in order to solve the problem of a lack of coordination and generate value, it is my belief that this solution would destroy the core offering of Higher.

It is the very absence of a singular authority that creates the conditions that birth genius.

Importantly, the birth of genius relies on engagement, communication, and collaboration.

There has to be active interaction between scene participants.

Scenes distribute genius and I believe that distributing genius is Higher's core offering.

The birth of genius is possible because scenes explore open questions together but without a recognised sole leader. Healthy scenes collaborate with one another, allowing genius to arise.

For example:

Not one artist that was experimenting in the time of Cubism knew what exactly they'd eventually land on, they simply had a way of seeing that guided each of a their own individual practices.

For the Cubists, reality was misrepresented by the artworks of the time - their way of seeing was more dynamic than the average artist in that they wanted to present more than a single point of view.

As a result, their cultural practice became: to explore new ways to depict space and form within a picture plane.

The problem that they found opportunity in was that paintings up until that point presented only a singular perspective when in reality objects exist within multiple perspectives.

The opportunity was to pioneer new ways in which they could represent the dynamic and multifaceted experience of reality.

The question they were asking was: how do I present multi-perspectival reality on the canvas?

This exploration, enlivened by conversations and collaboration, was their scene.

That scene birthed(and distributed) genius.

In higher's case, LGHT described a way of perceiving reality consciously through the lens of higher.

In doing so he pointed to the potential for a decoupling of perception from token price.

It's immediate resonance demonstrated a shared understanding of the phenomena even if it hadn't been fully articulated.

To articulate what was being pointed to: it is possible to separate how we perceive things as if price were higher even when price is not.

It is in this way of seeing that we find both the problem and the opportunity for the higher scene:

higher's cultural practice is: to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.

The problem that higher finds it's opportunity in is that token price can influence ones perception of reality, even whilst it's fundamental qualities remain the same.

The opportunity is to pioneer new ways to go beyond emotional reactions to token price and encourage continued seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.

The question the higher scene is asking is: How do you perceive reality in the same way as you do when price is higher even when price is not?

This exploration, enlivened now by conversations and collaboration, and a community token, is the scene.

The types of genius higher is distributing are a result of these conditions.

1. Higher is not a headless brand.

2. Scenes distribute genius.

3. Higher is a scene.

Click to read the next part.

I was pitching to him the idea of an event where we would invite people on the basis of curiosity.

I was calling it a new social experience for the curious. In essence, it involved carefully curating a number of conditions prior to the event and then letting the event happen.

People arrived at the event with very little idea of what would happen. An intentional decision was made that the way in which we would invite people to the event and the way in which all marketing materials would present the event would be ambiguous.

Importantly, we would stress the importance of curiosity, and that if you weren't curious then you'd probably have no reason to come.

In the first seven-weeks of marketing through posters and a couple social media posts, as well as approaching people in the street and engaging them in enough conversation to gauge a general curiosity level, before handing them an invitation in the form of a card - I sold 5 tickets.

In the last 4 days before the event I started inviting more people via in-person invitations. And at least six people bought tickets on the day of the event after a conversation. Overall, 20+ people found their way to the event.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what the experience of entering the event should be. Speaking to another friend Chris, a DJ who also works in the Cafe at his own Record Shop, I invited him (almost two months prior to the event) to play some music. I was clear that I didn't want him to mix with two turntables, and that I'd prefer there to be a break between the sides of a record and between each one. The little spaces became a consideration for how conversations might end, begin, and unfold. Chris understood and then also suggested that we play mostly ambient and down-tempo music. He described the reasoning for this choice and explained that this was the kind of music that could be both foreground and background, depending on where your attention was. Perfect.

On the actual day, an Israeli tourist who was visiting the UK to go to a spiritual conference, Sasha, was approached by me after I had bought a coffee for a homeless man. This is significant because whilst I was waiting for the coffee to be made, I saw Sasha outside the cafe, and he seemed to be unsure which direction to head in next. I myself had stopped walking to talk to the man and find out that he could do with a coffee, at which point I turned back in the direction from which I had been walking to get to the cafe(not the one with the bookshop and record shop). I forgot about Sasha until I found myself walking behind him almost 10 minutes later, much after I had given the coffee to the man on the road. Sasha had a cool satchel, with some interesting patterning on it, and so I said to him "I like your bag."

The resultant conversation led to him being one of the first to arrive at the event. I offered him a cup of tea when he got there and he was soon in conversation with a friend who is currently pursuing a degree in Economics. Later on in the evening I found him sitting alone and he told me how that sitting on his own could actually be one of his favourite parts of the event, allowing conversations to find him rather than looking to find them. I respected this very much.

1 hour before the event started, in the pouring rain, I stopped a guy named Hugo to let him know that the event would be happening soon, that he was invited if he was curious, and that I liked his headphones.

A woman who had seen me preparing for the event in the Cafe earlier in the day came over to ask what I was cutting up booklets for. The booklets were what I was referring to as 'Field Notes': a collection of 8 quotes, 3 of which were from women, and 5 of which were from musicians, with space for writing on every other page, a small description of the event at the beginning, and to be made available at the event alongside lots of pens.

That woman was intrigued enough to come along and invite two friends with her. On arrival, she carried in with her a handbag that looked like a pug.

People arrived at different times, most brought a friend or two, and lots of tea and conversations were had, alongside beers and an eclectic but fitting playlist of energy conducting tunes.

People at the event asked when the next one would be.

At the events end, I thought, I could do that again, but it'd have to be different.

Nearly three months ago, I started to post about something I am calling Beings Club, on the social media platform Warpcast.

This is the next evolution of the initial experiment.

We are now 6 weeks into Beings Club and it has been very enjoyable. The first month was an open-month, where anyone could join either for the full 3-month first season or just for the month. Just over a week ago, we closed our doors to new members for the season, transitioning from an open door policy to a limited-access experience. The same transition would still have come into effect even if we had reached total capacity - the total number of available memberships was 200 for only January, and 100 that included January and continued through to February and March. The only selection criteria for February and March beyond being able to invest in the whole season membership was: commitment.

Looking forward, next week there is the Perspective Session with Hanuman Das, the founder of a charity called GoDharmic that has provided disaster relief in countries all over the world, and operates on the principles of 'Love All. Feed All. Serve All.' as well as another Beings Club Salon (8 out of 12).

We are well over the half-way point now, and perhaps where the most interesting things might happen.

All thanks to experimentation-mode, which is still on right now. A way of being that wonders, takes action, and effects, that is learning and appreciating and acknowledging hiccups. Errors do happen and they're part of the curve. The terrain isn't boring when it's more than just traversed. Letting the path reveal itself, I can stay open to changes.

In the future, I think this experience may be more expensive.

It'll be an experiment to find an economic model that works. At the moment we're operating at a slight loss.

Perhaps there are other ways to provide and exchange value too.

But it has to be sustainable.

Thankfully experiments can be pretty small. They can grow bigger overtime. You can abandon ship and start something new. You can make a small change that makes all the difference. You can commit to finding out or decide to let it go.

Fancy a 1:1 chat? Organise a curiosity call.

↑

higher mindfulness club isn’t just a 6-month program; it’s an initiative designed to:

strengthen the higher scene and empower more individuals go higher.

If funding is secured, from May to October, higher mindfulness club will offer 24 weeks of free weekly meetings that connect individuals, cultivate emotional resilience, and introduce people to the higher community.

Through weekly practice and meaningful conversation, regular participants will build stronger bonds with one another and contribute to the well-being and vitality of the entire scene.

Sessions would occur twice, each Sunday, at 9am and 5pm UTC, accounting for timezone differences and opening attendance to global participation.

In addition, every participant will be rewarded, receiving $5 worth of HIGHER on their first visit - with additional rewards for continued participation.

[Using cbw to onboard, google forms to collect wallets/attendance, disperse to distribute HIGHER, and commit to incentivise continued participation. lmk, if you know a more elegant solution]

• a shared practice: Weekly, guided mindfulness practices will empower participants to stay centred and cultivate mental clarity irrespective of market conditions. By practicing together for 30 minutes at the beginning of every session, individuals contribute to a strengthening of collective resolve, as well as benefiting from the practice as an anchor for their personal growth.

• making connections: The second half of each session offers spaces for conversation. In breakout rooms, participants can discuss their experiences, share insights, and collaborate on personal and collective intentions. This regular contact allows members to forge deep, lasting connections and contribute to the health of the scene. It’s an opportunity to find support, inspiration, and collaboration from others going higher.

• expanding the network: Every new participant will be rewarded with HIGHER, with special rewards reserved for those who make successful referrals, as well as those who attend in 8 or more weeks. This incentivises both onboarding and continued involvement, helping to spread the ethos of higher to those who are ready to live life with collaboration, emotional resilience, and innovative thinking as part of their regular schedule.

• emotional resilience for living higher: higher mindfulness club distributes practices and techniques for cultivating resilience and strength of mind, helping participants to stay grounded and clear-headed despite market fluctuations. By cultivating this resilience, we align with higher as a mindset - one that allows us to navigate life with balance, poise, and creativity, rather than reacting impulsively to factors like token price action.

Dedication to higher mindfulness club won’t go unrewarded. Firstly, all first-time attendees are rewarded with $5 of HIGHER. Secondly, all attendees that participate in at least 8 weeks of the programme will receive an equal share of 400,000 HIGHER, or $3200 (approximate at the time of writing) via commit.wtf. Finally, 100,000 HIGHER of rewards will be split between those who successfully refer two people to club (also via commit.wtf).

This design incentivises both onboarding and continued involvement, helping to spread the ethos of higher to those who are ready to bring more mindfulness, emotional resilience, and innovative thinking into their weekly routines - those who resonate with living higher.

To make higher mindfulness club a sustainable, impactful initiative, I’m seeking funding from the Higher Party in the form of ETH and HIGHER.

These funds will cover:

• Expanding the club’s reach and inviting more participants into the community.

• Time, expertise, and resources needed to host weekly sessions over the course of four months.

• Operational costs inclusive of distributing rewards and ensuring a smooth experience for members.

5 ETH is requested so that I can sustain higher mindfulness club for 6 months.

An additional 0.5 ETH could be allocated to support a trip to Farcon NYC, where I’ll offer mindfulness in-person and engage with both the wider farcaster network as well as potential new members, further expanding the reach of higher mindfulness club and inviting more people to experience the benefits of mindfulness and the higher scene, firsthand.

For attendance and referral rewards 1,000,000 HIGHER will cover:

• 500,000 HIGHER ($5 of HIGHER for 800 persons) who attend their first session (more people if HIGHER rises in price)

• 400,000 HIGHER split between those who attend in at least 8 out of 24 weeks.

• 100,000 HIGHER split between those who refer at least 2 people.

In total, if fully funded, 5.5 ETH and 1,000,000 HIGHER. Any additional funding received from the party or elsewhere can be used to extend the initiative, increase rewards, and further spend on promoting the club.

• wide distribution: higher mindfulness club would be a globally accessible initiative distributing the idea of higher as a lifestyle - a lifestyle based on mental wellbeing, emotional resilience, and innovative thinking.

• collaboration and innovation: Through regular conversation, participants would have the chance to learn about higher, collaborate with others, exchange ideas, and spark innovation that benefits the entire scene.

• mindfulness for emotional resilience: Attendees would learn practices and techniques that empower them to navigate life with clarity, flexibility, and resilience, no matter what challenges arise.

• higher mindfulness club as a public good: higher mindfulness club would provide accessible tools for mental clarity and emotional regulation in turbulent times, in addition to strengthen existing bonds within the higher scene as well as attracting new members to engage in what higher as a lifestyle can be.

My name is John, I first entered the HIGHER ecosystem via purchase of the token on March 10th 2024 and I have been a contributor to the scene through conversation, the creation of memes, music, both, and /openair.

I have trained as a mindfulness meditation teacher twice, once through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach's MMTCP, and again through Dharma Moon and Tibet House's MMTT led by David Nichtern, investing thousands of dollars and over two years of my life.

I have also been practicing mindfulness meditation for nearly a decade.

In the past, I've moderated large communities for projects such as Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult.

At the moment, I'm building Beings Club.

higher mindfulness club represents my most recent thinking on how communities can remain healthy in combination with improvements upon my intentions with openair.

higher mindfulness club is more than just a program - it’s a catalyst for transformation, both individually and throughout the greater higher scene. By practicing mindfulness, connecting with others, and cultivating emotional resilience, we can create an ecosystem that elevates everyone who gets involved.

I am a member of the higher network and I have deep expertise and experience in practicing and teaching mindfulness meditation, as well as managing online community.

As of the time of writing there is a proposal to withdraw accumulated fees from a party LP to support - please consider voting.

aka @know

Only a month ago, everyone around me was celebrating the turn of the New Year in the UK.

There’s a certain energy that surrounds these holidays, and it’s a real privilege to have the opportunity to ‘do it twice’. To be surrounded by people feeling optimistic, renewed, and channeling their energy towards feeding each other and sharing food, celebrating, and wishing each other good luck and prosperity over the next 12 months.

The qualities of these time periods that I feel most are freshness and gratitude.

And there is incredible value in feeling these things.

Freshness feels like a kind of openness to what is happening right now as well as toward the possibilities of the future. It’s an invitation to let go of things that are no longer serving me and to consider the directions I’d like to be channeling my energy in and how I’d like to be spending my time.

Gratitude feels like a kind of appreciation for what is happening right now as well as towards all that has happened in the past that has come together for this moment to be here. It’s an invitation to let go of wanting and wishing for more and to simply enjoy what life has already offered.

Together, these two qualities are like fresh air, easily enjoyed and easily let go of.

I think we would do well to invite these qualities into our lives as often as possible.

Where we resist change or refuse to accept where we find ourselves, we suffer.

With freshness and gratitude, we can be free from our fixed stories about life and discover the abundance of what is here.

A short phrase passed to me by my teachers encapsulates this:

Suddenly free from fixed mind.

Like sitting out in the sun with a fresh glass of water and taking a sip after a long day of work.

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh :)

This post has been cross-posted from Substack. Last week I released a first paid post there. You can check it out and subscribe here.

The answer to all of these questions is No. 

It does, on the surface, make sense to ask these questions. It’s quite natural to want to know what to expect. Especially if you’re paying money for something, you want to know if it is going to be worth it. 

However, I think if you look more deeply, you’ll find that the decision to offer little more than ‘stay curious’ as a general prompt for conversation, is well thought through and allows for interesting possibilities. 

In the end, this intentional choice was made for three main reasons:

1. To Attract the Genuinely Curious

By not offering any guidance beyond ‘stay curious’, Beings Club naturally attracts a certain type of person - one who is genuinely curious and open to the organic flow of discussion. This creates the ideal conditions for interesting things to emerge, because participants already come with an intrinsic willingness to engage thoughtfully - and with curiosity.

2. There is Power in Spontaneity

There’s an immediacy and rawness to the conversations that happen at Beings Club. With no prompt or theme to hide behind, each exchange is more authentic. There’s a spontaneity that allows for unexpected moments of insight and connection, which is where the magic really happens.

3. For the Freedom to Explore

The absence of set topics or themes invites freedom - freedom to wander, explore, and discover new perspectives and ideas. Without the constraints of a predefined structure, conversations can go places you might never anticipate, allowing for truly unique and surprising outcomes. 

"The amount of random conversations that lead to culture-shifting ideas is insane." - Virgil Abloh

In the empty space where a prompt, theme, or topic might have existed, there exists instead a place to collaborate and play in conversation. With the curious gathered, the present a shared opportunity, and an open field to explore, conversations are primed for interestingness. 

With conversations happening weekly and the opportunity to be in conversation with the same curious individuals again week-to-week, it’s a community like no other. 

In general, collaboration happens as relationships develop.

Join us for the experiment. 

Click here to learn more.

This has occurred through an evolution of my beliefs around discipline and love.

The sources of authority in my upbringing punished unwanted behaviour and used fear and shame as tools for warding off future repetition. I don’t believe I am particularly alone in this kind of experience, nor do I feel like a victim, I had a privileged and wonder-filled childhood with two loving parents, it’s just the way things unfolded in relation to disciplining a very curious little me. 

It has been common practice for parents, teachers, and other authorities to discipline children under their care with punishing words and actions. 

However, for me, it also led to a certain kind of internal voice. One that was scared, critical, and punishing when things didn’t quite go my way or I felt that I had failed or made a mistake. As a result, I could find myself spiralling, doubling down on less wholesome behaviours, or feeling helpless and defeated in the face of difficulties.

On the bright side, this internal experience and it’s impacts on my life did eventually lead me toward studying the workings of mind through both scientific and spiritual lenses.

The changes in the past year are the latest chapter of that silver-lined journey. 

Since making contact with the book ‘The Wisdom of No Escape’ by Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron through Dharma Moon’s Summer 2024 Cohort, I have been working with the ideas of Gentleness, Precision, and Letting Go. 

Through employing these qualities in meditation practice, as well as in everyday moments, I now recognise that the disappointment that I feel when something goes wrong or I engage a behaviour that I thought I had left behind, is actually an energy of self-love. 

I am disappointed in myself because I love myself, and I know that I could do better. 

This contains the gentleness of recognising my goodness and the precision of knowing I could do better, and thanks to those two, I can let go, and begin again. Taking things task-by-task, moment-by-moment, and day-by-day. 

Prior to engaging these concepts in any great depth, these moments of lapse would not solely trigger disappointment but afterwards a cascade of self-denigration would follow, as a result of the habitual reactions of my environment as my brain was developing. 

One could call the way that I was punishing myself precise. I was seeing clearly that something I would rather not happen was happening, and I was letting myself know. However, without gentleness, I was unable to let go. 

Precision is like a knife. The intention with which we imbue our actions with a knife determine the outcome of its usage. For a surgeon, there is a certain kind of care (or gentleness) with which the blade can be a tool in healing. For a revenge attacker, there is a violence and aggression with which the blade cuts and may lead their victim to retaliate with greater force. 

By inviting gentleness into the experience of disappointment, I slowed down my minds habitual reactions of punishment, and have been able to take action that is balanced and has ultimately led to an improved treatment of myself, through both behavioural change and in moments of self-disappointment. 

The major belief change I have undergone is that I now believe I can create sustainable change without self-aggression, and solely through love. 

This love contains the gentleness of self-understanding, the precision of clear self-knowledge, and the letting go of the need to get it right every time. 

This change has allowed me to see that every situation is workable, that every moment is an opportunity, and that any perceived transgressions contain their own secret wisdom. 

I practice meditation to increase this self-awareness, and this year I am more able than ever to move forward without dwelling on the misdeeds of the past years, months, and days.

A moment where this belief change was solidified for me was in a Zoom call with a Qi Gong Master named Dr. Sat Hon. He told a story about always hitting the target. He said: “If you always want to hit the target when firing a bow and arrow, you only have to do one thing. Carry a bucket of red paint with you. Then, wherever the arrow lands, you take your bucket of red paint and you draw your target around the arrow.”

For me, this is the lesson. Whatever happens, with the right approach, it's workable. 

This journey started as early as 14 years ago for me, as I began to search the internet for ways to increase confidence, whilst experiencing social anxiety at high-school. 

I would go on to study medicine at a highly-regarded university and then drop-out to focus on meditation. 

The most important learnings from my time at medical school were two:

1. The brain is changeable. (Neuroplasticity)

2. Mind states can effect the health of the body. (Psychoneuroimmunology)

Put together, for me, this was hope. As someone who was anxious, depressed, and stressed all at once at medical school, the idea that I could influence my neurology using my mind, and that this could then have impacts on my body, behaviour, and therefore life, was empowering. 

There is now even more literature than when I left to back me up when I say that meditation is good for your health and longevity. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10355843/)

I teach meditation as part of a constellation of offerings in the hopes that some people will benefit. 

I believe that meditation is not just a stress-busting tool, but a practice with benefits that can reverberate throughout your whole life. I believe it would be helpful to many already well people.

I also believe it is not for everyone and people should make their own way to it, only if they are curious. 

There is a continual tension between wanting to get better and a recognition of the goodness in how things already are. 

A quote that sums this up quite well comes from a Zen master named Shunryu Suzuki:

“Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.”

This tension is something that I have been in communication with teachers and friends about over the past five or six years.

I am delighted to report that I am still enjoying it.

In the past half decade, I've been playing with what is possible when you follow your curiosity.

I like art, I like writing, and I like having conversations. I've made some stuff, experimented with some concepts, and had a lot of conversations. It's led me down a lot of different roads, to different countries, and into different kinds of making.

All the way through, I've kept thinking back to this tea house at a Buddhist Monastery I visited once in France. I visited for a Retreat in 2019, specifically for neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists to be in conversation with monks. I got in because I was in training so that I could be one of those things.

It was at that tea house that I felt strongest that conversations could be transformative, and reflecting on it with other attendees in the years since, they too felt that it was a special situation.

At the scheduled events many fun conversations happened. However, my favourite space of all was the pagoda-like tea house, where conversations felt casual and serendipitous.

Conversations in that tea house were the ground for collective wellbeing, the flourishing of one-to-one relationships, and for individual journeys to embark toward transformation. Bolstered by the intentional practice of individuals and the interesting guest-talks that were happening, meetings at that particular spot had a kind of freedom that allowed participants to traverse any topic, whilst supported by the winds of a personal commitment and intention.

In short, that's why I'm building and taking part in Beings Club.

I'll tell you more, but before then it'd be useful for you to know exactly what Beings Club is:

Beings Club is what I'm calling 'a curiosity social club'.

It has two main components:

1. The Beings Club Salon
   A weekly space for either one-to-one or small-group conversation with other members plus a period of time for you to commit to and deepen an intentional practice of your choice.
   
   and

2. The Perspective Session
   A monthly guest-led space with time for Q+A, with guests specifically chosen for their unique experience and insight, so that you can take away practical tips for integration into your own life.

'What is the best way for Beings Club to be structured and operate?' remains an open question, with evolution an accepted possibility, but, as of now, Beings Club is like this:

The Beings Club Salon begins with a short time period reserved for members to practice with personal intention perhaps by meditating, writing, making art, etc. The rest of the time is for conversation, taking place in Zoom-facilitated breakout rooms, where conversations are either one-to-one or in groups of up-to-four depending on the week.

Participants are randomly assigned to chat rooms providing the chance to meet and meet again as well as make contact with the entire pool of members over time. The conversations at the Beings Club Salon unfold organically through curiosity, with no prescribed topic, allowing for collaboration, co-exploration, and unexpected magic to occur.

The Perspective Sessions offer insights and practices that members can apply in day-to-day life and always offer the chance for Q+A with the guest speaker. Each month a new speaker introduces a new perspective and members are invited to engage them in the Q+A. Nothing is expected to be taken at face value on behalf of Beings Club and members are invited to take what is useful and leave the rest.

Overall, it is currently thought that this structure provides the best opportunity for connection, collaboration, and transformation whilst preserving the freedom to find your own path.

I believe we need spaces that facilitate community, collaboration, and transformation, without imposing any specific artistic or spiritual dogmas, or any specific belief system.

I believe this is important so that people from all kinds of backgrounds can experience profound personal wellbeing and enjoy the transformative benefits of community.

The most significant and meaningful changes in our lives extend through our whole being but as humans in a world with other humans, we could see this whole as three layers of being: as part of collectives, in one-to-one relationship, and as individuals.

Deep transformation reverberates throughout all three layers - through how we relate to the wider world, how we relate to those we are in direct one-to-one relationship with, and how we relate to ourselves.

To leave any of them out is to deny the totality of our experience as a human being and miss the opportunity to embody our fullest expression. The kinds of transformations that occur when all three of these layers are engaged lead to some of the deepest forms of purpose and well-being that we are capable of.

There are many community traditions that have facilitated these multi-layered kinds of transformations for people and many of them are home to lineages of wisdom worth drawing from.

Perhaps the most famous of them are religions, but they also include whole countries, businesses, charitable organisations, and sports teams. The gathering of real community around values, practices, and shared goals creates the conditions for wellbeing and transformation, often through the adoption of a shared identity or belief system.

However, to draw the line between us and them on the basis of an ultimately malleable identity or inflexible belief system, as many of these communities have done so historically, also sets up a false boundary that limits the potential for distinct and innovative forms of individuality, cross-bubble collaboration, and more expansive forms of collectivism.

Beings Club has landed on a very specific set of conditions with the intention of fostering a uniquely diverse community, allowing for new kinds of collaboration and more expansive forms of personal and collective transformation.

The closest thing to a belief system at Beings Club is the invitation to be curious under the pretences that this will facilitate community, collaboration, and transformation. The closest thing to a shared identity are the words 'Beings Club'. The events are designed to facilitate the exploration of curiosity throughout the collective, one-to-one, and individual layers of being, and the nature of curiosity itself allows for an openness in meeting all kinds of experience.

It is my hope that these intentional choices create the conditions for Beings Club to facilitate profound wellbeing and transformation, and provide the space for unique and personal journeys to unfold.

That's why I'm building Beings Club. And I'd like to invite you to come along for the adventure.

Beings Club can also be viewed as a response to a particular problem.

In short, that problem is that the technology that was supposed to connect us has isolated us and we are feeling the consequences. Now more than ever we need spaces that offer the benefits of a connected world without sacrificing the humanity of meaningful connection.

When posting to social media, whilst posts might reach a wide network and we might even get a rush of feel-good engagement, ultimately we're left without the richness of real-time connections.

Division and isolation has exacerbated the problem through continual exposure to narratives and content that trigger our emotions to maintain our attention and warp our view of others and the world at the same time. Algorithms have already intensified the subjective point of view and entrenched intellectual, political, and cultural bubbles, with the increasing prevalence and power of AI threatening to only deepen the hole we find ourselves in.

If we want to collaborate with all the diversity and global opportunity that the world has to offer, transcend our bubbles and echo-chambers, experience deeper connections online, and meet the changing landscape as it changes, I believe we have to stay curious.

It is my belief that engaging curiosity in relationship to ourselves, others, and whole systems, offers us the best possible chance at being humans that are best equipped to meet change and harness it to the benefit of ourselves and others simultaneously.

In other words: in order to meet a transforming world, we are challenged to transform too.

Click here to find out more.

A collection of strangers, on the internet, with no fixed-aim, exploring ideas and conversation for a whole year could end up in a number of different situations. 

The idea of meeting with people you don’t know to engage in conversation can be scary.

However, I think if you’re reading this you’re probably not the average person. For one thing, you’re probably more curious than most. And that is a great start. 

There is nothing quite like Beings Club. The truth of this endeavour is that it requires a unique combination of qualities in it’s participants. 

Not everybody is going to “get” Beings Club and that is in part what will make it special. 

If you do “get” Beings Club it’s because you have either experienced, or have a hunch, that the best conversations are like magic, and that magic is invited through the door of the unexpected. 

The only proper guarantee I can give you about the conversations you'll have at Beings Club is that if you are willing to take the leap on the basis of a genuine curiosity, everyone else you're in conversation with will have done the same thing. 

In doing so, you and everyone else are embarking on a journey. 

This is the vision for Beings Club. 

Accept the invitation, and be part of something special. 

Beings Club is a curiosity social club.

It is made up of two distinct sessions: the Beings Club Salon and the Perspective Sessions.

Every Sunday, there is a Beings Club Salon, an online space where Beings Club members can meet for one-to-one and small group conversations with reserved time for intentional practice. 

Once-a-month, there is the Perspective Session, where a guest speaker will share unique insights and practices for life, through what could be a special workshop, or talk, with dedicated time for Q+A - recorded for asynchronous viewing. 

Through these private experiences, you'll meet other curious and high-agency individuals, learn more about yourself and other ways of being, and co-create a radically different kind of community based on a culture of curiosity.

For Beings Club, building on a foundation of curiosity and real-time conversation is an intentional decision designed to empower individuals to connect on a deep level and feel supported to pursue their truest self-expression.

• Access the whole of season zero for $79 (or 0.025ETH) - this price is fixed and grants you access to every session.

After season zero we'll rest, reflect, and re-assess, with the goal of returning better and bigger.

Individual and Collective wellbeing is also at the heart of what Beings Club hopes to achieve and it is for those reasons that revenue is shared*:

5% of all revenue, for Season Zero and beyond, is reserved for supporting collective wellbeing through financially supporting organisations and projects who’s activity is aligned with this aim.

In Season Zero, the organisation we are supporting is Go Dharmic.

*(benefactors to be re-assessed each season)

John (@know)

In this uncertain world, we have come a long way in a relatively short time. When measuring progress in terms of technological innovation, we have never been further along.

On the other hand, as a global community, different kinds of oppression continue and we are more exposed than ever to volatile argumentation online.

Yet, one can also suggest that representation across roles in society and mixing between groups and cultures is at an all-time high. 

One thing is for certain, however you assess the culture, things have been changing. 

These developments, both socially and technologically, point to a driving quality that leads to the discovery of new ways of being. 

This quality is curiosity.

Without curiosity, you would not be reading these words. 

Curiosity can be boiled down to the question, “What is happening?”

In essence, curiosity is a way of orienting toward uncertainty.

With curiosity as a driver, we continue to ask questions, discover more precise ways of understanding, and experience change, despite the fundamental mysteries of our existence.

One way to understand how curiosity operates is to think of it as a way of distributing attention throughout a latent space of possibility. Solidified conceptions of the world are momentarily suspended allowing for the presented material to be met, unfettered by our own biases. 

In other words, curiosity is an openness to possibility.

Whilst curiosity can be distorted when referencing a desired outcome (such as asking questions because you want to confirm your own biases), genuine curiosity is an open form of attention.

The value of this kind of attention is hard to understate.

In a world that is always changing and deeply complex, curiosity is the optimal strategy for both staying in touch with reality and letting go of outdated mental-models. With the openness that curiosity enables we are continually becoming and discovering what is - as it unfolds.  

Whether it is trying out the new restaurant that has opened up in your neighbourhood, asking an additional question to the new acquaintance in your life, or observing your own mind in the midst of an unwanted pattern of behaviour - it is through curiosity that the magic of the unexpected is welcomed to occur.

It is through such moments that curiosity connects. 

We can be connected from an old reality to a new one, travelling through a space where we have allowed for things to be different. We can also be connected to the person in front of us, through a leap beyond our assumptions about who they are.

And perhaps most interestingly we can also connect ideas - birthing new ones in the process.

Importantly, curiosity creates the conditions for the meeting of ideas in conversation.

Genuine curiosity keeps us open to the possibilities of conversation. The degree to which we are able to stay open determines the range of potential avenues of exploration and then it is within those potential avenues that innumerable possible moments of innovation can occur.

Whilst a first conversation may result in conversation that traverses the bounds of normal-polite conversation, as familiarity grows the territory that can be explored expands, offering moments of both challenge and discovery. 

As long as curiosity remains the basis of interaction, there is common ground. Persons engaged in dialogue are open to the future, willing to discover where things may lead to next. Relationships implode when we are unable to remain curious and revert to solid conceptions of ourselves and others.

For as wisdom tells, we’re all changing all the time. 

As familiarity grows, whilst a growing sense of safety might allow for the bounds of our exploration to be expanded, we may also find ourselves walking the same paths over and over again, through habit or comfort. 

Here also, curiosity becomes the optimal strategy for recognising patterns, considering a different course, and re-discovering the openness of new horizons. 

Curiosity is inherently creative.

With curiosity, a simple conversation can change the course of our entire day, work, or life. 

Humans solve problems of all kinds by being willing to look uncertainty in the eye, move forwards, and create and build themselves into a new future. Curiosity is the mental attitude that supports our turning towards the door of uncertainty, travelling through the door, and into the open space beyond.

If you'd like to harness the power of curiosity, I would like to invite you to something new:

Beings Club can be thought of as an online social club, cloud-based interfaith agnostic monastery, non-dogmatic collaborative academic institution, a digital curiosity commune, or simply a gym for your reality-meeting cognitive capacities.

As a Being you qualify for membership at Beings-Club automatically.

On a weekly basis members will meet in the Beings Club Salon to engage in no fixed-agenda real-time conversations and deepen their own choice of intentional practice. With 60 minutes in dialogue, you’ll meet other members in one-to-one or small group conversation rooms. 

The Beings Club Salon is designed with your benefit in mind, with time for a blend of both externally and internally directed curiosity, supported by the container of community.

As a member of Beings Club you’ll also be invited to reality-expanding Perspective Sessions that are designed to open your mind to new approaches, practices, and ideas for every aspect of your being. Perspective Sessions are workshops, Q+As, and special talks ran by beings specifically curated for their visionary ideas, experience, special practices, and ways of living. 

Plus even more.

Designed to support your being - Beings Club is creating the conditions for extraordinary conversation, extraordinary community, and extraordinary personal growth. 

Find out more here. And remember: Curiosity Connects.

If you are a leader in community and think your community would benefit from a third-space to meet others and diversify your idea-sets, reach out for partnership.

We're building a community for the curious.

Read more on Curiosity and The Vision

John (@know)