I see the words “January 2025” in the sketch above, and my eyebrows climb up as I think of how long I’ve been working on the project I’m now inviting you to join. My sense of time has been totally out whack since 2022.

The video part of this post is a kind of a dress rehearsal that I did with Boris Shoshitaishvili (I had previously published his piece on Bannon & the noosphere) in preparation of a Psychopolitica X Nonzero livestream event that will take place next Friday, April 4, at 1pm ET. Boris,

If it goes well, Boris and I will work on making it into a regular feature.

Here is the link to the stream.

I keep changing my articulation of what this project is about every time that I talk or write about it. Here’s how I put it in an email to Boris on the day of our recording:

One dimension is community and identity building.

We want to start and maintain an on-going conversation about where we are, what we are, what’s going on with and around us, what we’re doing and what we should be doing instead; and the “we” here refers to

1. you, me, Bob, guests, viewers as individuals;

2. the Nonzero and the Psychopolitica communities, which already exist but don’t necessarily understand themselves as such, don’t necessarily have a shared identity (Bob’s Tribeless Tribe is something of a placeholder for where a positive identity should be instead); and

3. humanity, or life, or the planet, or consciousness itself. We think that we can develop an understanding of ourselves on all three of these levels by gathering together on a regular basis and exchanging ideas, experiences, and perspectives.

The second dimension is ideas.

One of the ways we can understand who we are, where we are, etc. is by continuously articulating ideas we are engaged with: some we develop ourselves, others are things we notice around (the simulation theory and the notion of an NPC are good examples).

The idea card is central to this part of the project.

We’re simultaneously mapping out our respective corners of the noosphere and conducting experiments in meme magic: what happens if I bring my ideas, and you bring yours, and everybody else brings theirs, and we let them interact?

How will the interaction change these ideas, what new ones will emerge?..

When I say “the idea card,” I mean these things:

Btw, check out the current stage of evolution of the Escapism one:

I’ve been mostly posting these cards on Notes, but one made into a post all the way back in December (my sense of time has really, really been slipping):

They’re nothing more than an approach to note-taking (except we can make them into something much bigger).

The card gives each idea a title, a short description, and an image to represent it. At first, the image can be missing, the title may be off, and the note may be barely intelligible even to myself; but I work on them iteratively, improving them step by step, rewriting, redrawing, re-understanding what it is that they’re on behalf of.

I want to use these cards in our live-streaming project.

With some regularity, Boris and I will get on a call and exchange ideas with you and with one another — and after we hang up, I’ll work on these cards for ideas that were brought up.

The first time we talk about an idea, the card will not be much to look at; the tenth time we return to it, it might become something cool. Over time, whole decks may emerge, representing different species of ideas.

Here are a couple of early sketches for the project’s identity:

I hope to see you at the next stream, and I hope that you bring your ideas with you. I want this all to feel like a game.

Here are some of the cards I had time to make, in a noticeably rushed manner, for the conversation in this post:

The are more ideas in there!

Listen to get to know them, and join us next time, on Friday, April 4, at 1pm ET, at Nonzero’s Youtube channel.

Here is the link:

LINK TO THE STREAM