Welcome to CEStoicism

Our project aims to democratically organize a reverential community around an ecologically- and socially-regenerative worldview.

We hope the conversation around these ideas will be both an active co-construction of this worldview, and a way to grow a self-sustaining dense network of trust

This site is organized as an entailment net. It is a collection of linked ideas, where the links show that one idea leads to others. (Note: There are some unlinked ideas in the 'Node List' above that need to be linked in). The initial set of ideas was a selection (or curation) of pre-existing ideas, which are informally cited. This selection continues through a never-ending bootstrapping process, by which this net can be modified into a more coherent and self-reproducing expression. We use methods of participatory democracy to create and modify our rules about how to change the community's net.

The current state of this worldview (at any time) is always a starting point, and is never complete. It can always be improved and degraded. The community decides how it changes.

We are building a collaborative-knowledge commons (a resource + a community + a set of social protocols to maintain both for the long-term). The resource of this commons is both its worldview and its members' ability to work together and nurture the worldview. CEStoicism is a mostly-philosophical worldview built from ideas centering around Simondon's idea of individuation:

• Democracy

  The word democracy derives from the ancient Greek demokratia, formed from the roots demos ("people") and kratos ("rule").From Ballotpedia↗ In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

  Democracy as a process that collective individuations can use to make decisions. Can be structured in various ways, some of which may promote division more than others.
• Cybernetics↗ (Principia Cybernetica↗ ).

  Concerned with "the general forms to be found in the dynamics and organisation of complex systems (living systems, small groups and communities, cultures and societies): how they emerge and develop, how they maintain themselves as stable wholes, how they evolve and adapt in changing circumstances." From Bernard Scott↗ Cybernetics can be described as the study of "feedback and circular causality in biological and social systems" From Bernard Scott↗

  Cybernetic processes as describing ways that biological-, psychological- and collective-individuations attempt to maintain their stability.
• Ecology

  The study of how organisms interact with one another and with their physical environment. Topics includes Panarchy and Ecological Economics.

  Ecology as describing the existential relationships that biological-, psychological- and collective-individuations must manage with their environment.
• Biosemiotics

  "...life processes themselves, by their very nature, are meaning-making, informational processes, that is, sign processes (semioses), and thus can be fruitfully understood within a semiotic perspective." from Towards A Semiotic Biology: Life Is The Action Of Signs. Edited by Kull Kalevi, Emmeche Claus

  Biosemiotics as the capability of biological-, psychological- and collective-individuations to recognize, interpret, create and modify signs.
• Naturalistic Pantheism

  "the view that the Universe (in the sense of the totality of all existence) and God are identical (implying a denial of the personality and transcendence of God)." From Wikipedia↗

  Naturalistic Pantheism as seeing all of existence as a sea of uneven and concurrent "pre-/current-/post-individuating" processes, worthy of reverence.
• Modern Stoicism

  A philosophy of how to live one's life. Goal of leading a flourishing life with a peace of mind, focusing on things within our control (mostly our own thoughts and attitudes), understanding that being a good person is primary and everything else are preferred or dispreferred 'indifferents', using a reflective mind to possibly distance oneself from the immediate raw emotions of a situation and choosing whether or not to give them assent. Practicing a virture ethics of temperance, justice, wisdom and courage.

  Stoicism's logos as recognition of the rational structure of the universe as an individuation beyond collective-individuation. Stoic teachings as guidance for psychological-individuations’ efforts at managing adversity.

Some suggested 'trails' through these ideas

• The “Self Discovery” trail:
  • Serenist/Endurist perspectives on death (last quote on NormsAndInstitutions), click “existence” -> Arrive at “Thrownness” node. Click “We find ourselves” -> Arrive at “Individuation” node. Click on "identity" -> Arrive at "Identity" node. Click “p-individual” -> Arrive at “Pask’s Conversation Theory…" node. Click “self” -> Arrive at “Self” node. Click on “maintain themselves” -> Arrive at “Survival” node.
• The "Collective Self-determination" trail:
  • Start at "Common And Enclosure" node. Click on "co-determine our social conditions" -> Arrive at Democracy node. Click on "MST (Metasystem Transition)" and be sure to have a Hypothes.is account set up -> Arrive at "The Metasystem Transition" page of Principia Cybernetica. In the Hypothes.is annotations on the right, click "nomic" -> Arrive at "Nomic" node. Click on "choice" -> Arrive at "Selection" node. Click on "Community" -> end at the "Community" node.
• The “Thousand Points of Light" trail:
  • Adaptive cycle -> R/k reproductive strategy -> fork -> selection
• The “New Story” trail:
  • Constructivism -> click on “social reality is constructed by humans and their (tacit) concepts of society” -> Community Narration and Storytelling node. Click “Communication” -> Purposes of Communication node. Click “transmit” -> "Intergenerational Transmission” node. Click “ecological crisis” -> Ecologocal Overshoot node. Click “as production has increased, so has the amount of energy and resources we need to achieve those increases” -> Optimal Scale node.

Image by Merlin2525