What makes great literary figures? Is it their fancy glasses? Maybe writing five million words? Is it their alcoholism and penchant for sarcasm? The jury is still out.
What we do know is that from the stoa and Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens all the way to the Inklings which produced Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and other great works, famous writers that shake the foundational values of their time need a group. They need a coordination mechanism to push them to become more ambitious, skilled, and disciplined.
We have many aspiring writers here. Many brilliant, clear thinking, skeptical minds who love to discuss relevant topics of the times, and try to work out ways to improve our ideas. People who hope to refine our understandings and abstractions, to ultimately help guide us out of the spiritual crisis of modernity.
After reading @urquan's recent post about the pointlessness of the Motte, my thoughts immediately jumped to defend this place, this bastion for witches who are ruthlessly curious, and tragically fall through the cracks of polite society. However, I realized that he had a point. We could be doing more as a community, we could aim higher.
What is the point of the Motte? We have accumulated a staggering amount of human capital here - I'm convinced we have many brilliant contributors, and probably far more lurkers who, with the right push, could become a massive positive force in the fight to understand the human condition. Are we here simply for infotainment, as some have suggested? Or can we coordinate to make a difference in the world?
I'd argue the latter. To that end, I'm putting out a call for a writing group formed of Mottizens. Ideally we get four to five members who are ambitious, and who want to write serious non-fiction essays similar to posts in the Culture War thread. If you have a blog outside of the Motte where you post that's great, or if you just want to increase the quality of post and discussion on this site, that's great too.
Due to the nature of this forum, the group requires strict anonymity. We'll have to rely on an honor code at first, but there must be no doxxing or sharing of identities outside of the meetings. The plan right now would be to coordinate through discord, and have one meeting per month, for 1.5 to 2 hours. This meeting will take place over voice chat, and you will be required to submit one piece every month. We will critique the submissions and give each other guidance on how to improve our writing.
If you're interested, please reply to this post, or PM me. If I get a large amount of interest, I will be selecting for prior reputation and contributions to the Motte, as that's one of the only markers available to me of someone's talent and/or discretion. If you desperately want to join but haven't contributed much, send me a sample of your writing.
In an ideal scenario if we get far too many folks interested, I'd be happy to help others coordinate similar groups. That's a good problem to have.
I'd like once more to emphasize the opportunity we have here at the Motte. It's rare to find so many intelligent and clear thinking people in one place. If you think the modern world is deeply flawed, and care about truth and good solutions to the problems our world faces, I urge you to take action and contribute something to the collective human race's efforts to correct our course.
Regardless of what you decide, it's an honor to be a part of this collection of miscreants as always. Remember that enough smart people coordinated together to solve problems can change the world. It may be the only way the world changes.
Stay strange, stay skeptical, and remember to seek light over heat.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
If you haven't met your quota yet, consider me volunteered.
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That sounds really interesting. Sign me up.
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I'd be interested. Will there be one topic per month on which members write their pieces? Or do members get full discretion on what to write about every time?
We'll probably decide as we go whether we want to do prompts or freeform. Right now we have capped out on folks, but if some people can't make it I'll keep you on the list.
Sorry I missed the cut, but I'd strongly encourage you to not do prompts.
The best posts on SSC, reddit motte, & here have always been the ones where somebody dives deep into their area of expertise and/or hobby horse.
Reading somebody's 500 words on a given topic can be worthwhile if the person is a skilled writer and spends a few hours on it.
Reading years of expertise and domain knowledge distilled down to a single essay is almost always a delight.
I worry that if everyone just sticks to the prompt two things will occur:
Exception: anything personal. Examples of prompts that are worth doing are ones where the question is essentialy free form, but just focused. Stuff like:
Also: Throwing my hat in the ring as a backup if you need another. I asked about writing groups a few months ago: https://www.themotte.org/post/436/friday-fun-thread-for-april-7/84920, but didn't want to take on starting it myself ;)
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I 100% agree, and his post similarly inspired me to start a project here. I do think that the "no recruiting for a cause" rule of the Culture War thread is biting us in the ass somewhat, there's only so far you can go with pure commentary. The problem is that I think there's also a really good reason for it - if this place becomes a hub of political organizing, you can more or less kiss everyone who's against those politics goodbye. In better times I could imagine progressives doing their organizing here right next to counter-progressives, and everyone finding a way to coexist in the same space, but a) those times are long gone, b) you'd need a much larger starting population of progressives to kick off something like this (as you're about to find out, for ever person that wants to do something, there's about 100 that just want to discuss it). This is why I went with art for my project, I think there's better chances of getting something sustainable if you offer people a way to plug out of the culture war.
On the other hand:
I'm a little confused how is that supposed to change the world. The flip side of that is that a "high-effort posts club" would probably be within the rules, and not discourage anyone who disagrees from coming here.
Fair point! I do not mean to build any sort of political coalition here.
My goal is to take a Motte style openness to different political ideas into a writing group to sharpen the overall level of writing.
As to changing the world, writers have an outsized influence. Especially good ones.
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Love everything about this. I'm not at a great point in life to commit too much currently, but if you need another I'll be happy to join in.
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I must say: I'd hate to see this rare bastion of quality discourse and relative neutrality turn into yet another political movement.
Not to discourage intellectual contribution, but I'd be careful if I were you. Cliquishness and drama are easy to fall into even with the best of intentions. Even just the recent history of rationalists should make one beware.
The rationalists have some extremely weird stuff going on, but on another level they've been extraordinarily successful. Tens of billions of dollars flowed through that group into organizations which intentionally turned around and hired rationalists. I don't think this ended up helping any of them them (I think the lifestyle they advocate for hurts more than any amount of career success, influence, etc. could help) but a slightly healthier version of that could move mountains.
Tighter-knit groups are just more. They win and lose harder, and I think this is a gamble worth trying out. It's certainly worth being aware of the risks though, yeah.
Don't get me wrong, tight knit groups are literally the only way to do politics. But that's the danger: doing politics.
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I’d certainly be interested.
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