Two months ago Rebel Wisdom held its last event: ‘The Last Campfire’. It was held in London, and it was a one-day paid event. Tickets were nearly 200 euros and sold out fast for the 50 seats available.
My goal going into it was, broadly, to ‘find my people’. For a long time I didn’t think they existed. Then I briefly thought they did, and then the organisation in which I hung out with them collapsed. I’ve been searching ever since.
TPOT, the Twitter cluster, has been like a kiss from a goddess that breathed life into my rigor mortis accursed body. It showed me, once again, that my people existed. That they were out there and I just needed to find them.
Once I realised that there were more communities like TPOT I knew I had to learn more. Rebel Wisdom was hosting its very last event, and John Vervaeke - who I’m a fan of - was the main speaker. So I hustled my way into a ticket.
I traveled to London where my friend Jess graciously got me a place to crash at. I met with some Twitter people while I was out and about and then came the day of the event. Armed with the schedule on my phone, it was go time.
The Day
First thing I noticed coming in: people were old. Average age at a TPOT event has gotta be 25. Here it was 40+. Some people were in their late 60s, maybe even 70s. Also, the event was pretty balanced, gender-wise. Women were even prioritised during Q&A.
The event was organised as a series of interviews, followed by audience Q&A, from a stage that everyone else was facing. It was a big room, with lots of chairs, and some serious videoing and recording equipment.
From the stage it looked something like this:
While what I could see was something like this:
Notice the people coming in online, projected onto the wall. That was a nice touch. There were ‘online only’ tickets for people who wanted to tune in online.
Which made sense - my understanding is that Rebel Wisdom started online, as a Youtube channel where they held all sorts of interviews about… Rebellious Wisdom. If you go to the Youtube comments of this last event everyone is talking about how these online interviews held them up during Covid. So I think a lot of the energy around Rebel Wisdom comes from that.
Anyways, I walked in, got a bracelet - as if at a festival - went up a floor and found my way to the main room where most of the event would be held. I sat at the back - maintaining my habits from back when I was a bad student - and struck a conversation with the person next to me. I don’t really recall it. (I’m sorry.) He just struck me as a rando (I’m doubly sorry!).
First to talk was one of the two co-founders (Alexander Beiner, who everyone called Ali) saying the other one (David Fuller) couldn’t attend due to health issues. (I later heard it was a burnout, but don’t know.)
He was also trying to narrate the whole thing and I think - of course - this was more for people that had followed Rebel Wisdom since the inception and less for people who were dropping in for the first time, like me.
He said Rebel Wisdom was a part of the “sensemaking web”, and that its inception had been motivated by Brexit, Trump, and the ‘Post-Truth’ era. That then it felt necessary to be rebellious, but that things had changed - as they do - and that the challenge was now to find a synthesis.
Next up, this guy, Jonathan Rowson was speaking. I don’t really recall what he said but I recall he was hilarious. He ended his presentation in the funniest way where he tried to get a quote right (‘this is not the beginning of the end but it is the end of the beginning’) and after failing multiple times just said ‘No it’s not’ and bolted off stage. I thought it was planned, but it was also genuinely hilarious.
Then, John Vervaeke - the main speaker - came on stage. John Vervaeke is a Professor at the University of Toronto (just like Jordan Peterson) and he did this insane 50-hours long “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” lecture and video series where he goes through the entire history of Philosophy and ends up where he are now, diagnosing it as a ‘Meaning Crisis’ and proposing to solve it, using his background in Cognitive Sciences. If you’re interested, there’s a summary here. It’s 330 pages long. (Not joking.)
When he came on stage he was walking with a cane. That had me worried but he soon clarified that he had just injured his leg doing Tai Chi. I found that relieving, and hilarious (the concept of Tai Chi I have in my mind definitely hardly would lend itself to injuring anyone).
Most of what he said was old hat if you’re familiar with his 50 hours of thought, but it was still rewarding to hear it from the horse’s mouth. He did say one thing that caught my attention - that his thinking is sort of an apology of the function of religion. In that way similar to Peterson but coming from a totally different angle (technica, inspired by cognitive science in Vervaeke’s case and allegorical and inspired by psychology in Peterson’s). His solution to the meaning crisis is what he calls the ‘religion of no religion’ where he sees himself as a Jesus-like figure and more as John the Baptist-like figurative (another score for the nominative determinists).
After his talk we were put in ‘Breakout sessions’. Basically find 4 people around you and go to a room, introduce yourself, say what you’re about, and what you’re hoping to get.
The people in my group were… nice. But definitely not my people. They were significantly older and… more normies than I’d care for, if I am to be brutally blunt? Still nice, pleasant conversion, and a sort of thing I’ve found at this kind of event before so people contort their ideas to fit with one another so that they feel connected.
Next event was Ali interviewing Ayishat Akanbi about empathy in the culture wars. She shared a very personal story and was temperamentally very different from me, and that’s all I remember from her. I hadn’t heard of her before.
After that was lunch time. I ended up going for lunch with my normies breakout group plus a kid who was very sharply dressed. We had lunch at some Vietnamese baguette place. It was great. Apparently when the French colonised Vietnam they brought baguettes with them and the Vietnamese put their local ingredients on them to make awesome food, or so told me the sharply dressed kid.
Sharply dressed kid was the new guy in the group so he got asked what he did. I found his slow-rolling disclosure hilarious: he first said physics, then upon further probing “physics towards sustainable energy”, then upon further, further, probing he timorously let out “nuclear” and then finally surrendered and said “ cold fusion”. Which is like - more power to you, I think that’s awesome - but evidently saying this was some sort of heresy in his field and he was afraid of being burned at the stake.
Back at the main venue it was time for Daniel Schmachtenberger - the other main speaker - to talk. I was vaguely aware of him and Jordan Greenhall and Game B, maybe from a few years back. His main deal seems to be solving the ‘Metacrisis’.
He was a very impressive speaker. He could form really long, coherent trains of thoughts, and he could do without preparation. I find this to usually be a pick-2-out-of-3 kinda deal. So very impressive. Used lots of ‘big words’ too.
His talk was followed up by a sort of ‘meeting of titans’: Vervaeke x Schmachtenberger (Why are these people known by their last names? Why do they both have weird last names? Same with Yudkowsky, or Žižek. Is it SEO optimization? I don’t know.)
Anyways, their talk was good. Shocking amounts of agreement. Especially around the need to counteract self-deception (Vervaeke) and how that ability was the highest priorities in filtering out allies (Schmachtenberger).
People have dunked on Peterson for the way he was leaning in in his 2019 debate with Žižek (the “other” meeting of Titans). I think this is precisely wrong: this leaning in is a consequence of a profound attunement and openness to learn, to dialoguing. Two of the things Vervaeke talks a lot about in his series.
And he walks the walk: he did exactly the same. Spiritually if not physically (perhaps because of his leg?), he was deeply, deeply attuned to what Daniel was saying, trying to soak it all in before answering.
The talk was great and got a standing ovation. Also - don’t let the picture above fool you - Schmachtenberger is incredibly built. Tank-built, go-to-the-gym-5-times-a-week-built.
After this it was late. This event started at 9am and it was 6pm. There was a ‘Lifecycle Sensing’ with Adriana Forte and Nick Shore. As an outsider, it was pretty random. I think their deal is that they’ve met through Rebel Wisdom and have been collaborating on … something, for years, online, and it was the first time they met irl. Pretty random to me, happy for them tho.
Finally, Ali (the not burned-out co-founder) came back to put the finishing touch on the whole event. He ended by announcing that he would be starting a new project where he’d talk about the same ideas but ‘dumbed down’. My read is that they found a niche with Rebel Wisdom and need to dilute it to sell something that has broader public appeal.
Someone took the mic from him and said he had spent the day honouring and remembering David (the burned-out co-founder) and that Ali deserved some love too. People were joyous to express it.
Finally, we ended with some music and dancing, provided by Tom Morley. This felt how movies end with a group musical number to have you leave the theatre filled with good feels. It worked.
The event was over. What followed was the night. Dinners - self-organised among attendees - and an after-party at the ‘Love Shack’.
The Night
As we left the main venue a group of 12 people assembled in the lobby and we went out for dinner. We walked quite a bit to get to some Thai place and quickly discovered the 2 tables next to us were also occupied with event attendees.
We sat down and someone said we should go around clockwise and say our names. I thought this was ridiculous. No one's gonna remember 12 names and, also - it doesn’t matter - you’ll only talk to the people who are next to you. And so, once we were done with it, I jokingly said we should do it again, counter-clockwise. To my surprise they took this seriously and started doing it. It was then that shit hit the fan.
One of the people at the table - a girl, cute - tried to say all the names before hers from memory and managed to fuck none of them except mine. She mixed up a letter. I acted overly offended, playfully, and said it was fucked up that I could spell her name and she couldn’t spell mine, and to prove spelled hers. Totally, totally by mistake, I fucked up a letter too. She called me out on that and I felt embarrassed at my previous exaggerated offence, and said, again, playfully, and to save face: “Yea, you fucked a letter of mine, I fucked a letter of your” followed by what was to me a massive grin.
To which she replied, loudly, in a table of 12 people, all of whom I knew for less than 12 hours - “You just lost all my trust”.
I was shocked (stay with me - this is gonna go somewhere), and my face must’ve shown it as she followed up with “Well, either that or you were joking?” and I said - again, jokingly, again trying to defuse - “Well, if you give me two options and one of them is ‘I lost all your trust’ and the others is ‘I was joking’ then I’ll def. take the second” followed by a grin so massive I thought I was gonna tear my mouth apart.
This made her lose her shit - “Oh my god, now you’re strategising!” she shrieked, even more distrustful now - and so I just turned to the other side of the table and avoided her for the rest of the dinner.
On the other side of the table there was this really cool guy, Jesse. I told him how I got into this event, that my homecamp was TPOT, and he asked me for my handle. He was surprised and told me he already followed me and had featured my tweets on his newsletter a bunch of times. That was fucking crazy. It had never happened to me before and I was stoked. - I’ve met a bunch of people irl who wanted to meet me because of my online persona, but I had never met someone irl who randomly already knew it.
So, that was great, and I felt better, and dinner was finishing up and we were gonna move to the after-party at the ‘Love Shack’. Emboldened by the fame I suddenly felt I asked original skirmish girl if we could debrief on what had happened, fully prepared to hear a “fuck you” or be ignored or have my request accepted but met with utter defensiveness.
And none of that happened. She was super open, in her body language and in her speech. We shared how each of us had seen the situation, what we thought had happened, and quickly realised the source of the misunderstanding (I was being playful/joking the whole time, she didn’t know me enough to be able to guess that).
It was a long-ish conversation and I was in awe of the depth and precision of her phenomenological articulation. She could do a play-by-play of what she had felt, when, with incredible depth. I asked her where that ability came from and she told me about some variety of Yoga (I sadly forgot the name) she had been practicing for years.
At this moment I felt very close to her. This is in part because my model of interpersonal closeness revolves around fighting your way into further alignment. But it’s also because we had a testy interaction, and then she was open to debrief with - effectively - a stranger, and was so open, so articulate, so thoughtful, so emotionally self-aware. I felt like I had found my people.
[Elle - God, I hope I’m spelling it right this time - if you see this, please reach out!]
Re-energised by this moment of communion we ran to catch up with the others who had already left and jumped into this very London two-story bus on the way to the after-party. The ride was really fun, like riding with your friends in school. (I now realize that probably my part of the elation was from the communion I had experienced and that others were probably already tipsy from dinner.)
We got to the Love Shack, which looked something like this:
(Maybe with not as many long-haired women)
I walked in and Jesse was already deep in conversation with some guy (I forgot your name, sorry1!!!). They were debating the merits of the vaxx and again I felt like I had found my people.
Jesse had this sort of preternatural ability to stay extremely chill even as the other guy got agitated. I found this very impressive and noted it to him later. He was a bit taken aback, but of course happy to hear it. A lesson I keep re-learning: compliments really cost nothing and often are really important to the person receiving them.
Entering the Love Shack there was a room just for the Rebel Wisdom people. I was feeling pretty loose and so walked up to the first person I saw who wasn’t talking to anyone, who seemed a bit lost. Turns out he wasn’t lost, he was just taking it all in, he was a cousin of Ali and was kinda thinking through the whole arc of the existence of Rebel Wisdom. We had a lovely chat and a friend of his joined at some point. They asked me questions and I answered them truthfully telling them about cessations, the shadow, all sorts of… esoteric subjects I’m into.
And they just rolled with it. They were well-dressed, polite, polished. Not in the least internet schizos. But they seemed pretty open to it, maybe even captivated by it. I was really feeling like I just needed to hop a tiny barrier (in the form of 200 euros to hear smart people talk) to find my people.
I had a bunch more pleasant conversations like this. Things were really flowing, socially. I had a lovely conversation with Sarah, who’s John Vervaeke’s girlfriend. It was nice to put a face to the name - he often gushes about her, in the middle of his very, very intellectual rants.
I then exchanged a few brief words with John. And brief they were as people literally ran after him every time he excused himself to go to the bathroom or what have you. Which I get - I’m certain his series has touched a bunch of people, and changed a bunch of lives.
During our talk I was very, very surprised by how attuned he was. I understood him being attuned to Daniel, but - to him - I was just a rando. He struck me as a genuinely kind person, and it struck me then that I appreciated this about him even more than his intellect.
I got a selfie with him, and nearly immediately made it my WhatsApp profile picture.
I went outside where Daniel (Schmachtenberger) was holding court. A scenario I’ve seen before, with other interesting people. He must have had 15 to 25 people around him, just asking questions, listening to his answers. One of the people listening in was the HUGE bouncer of the place. He must have been like 400 pounds and had this really quizzical look on his face. I found this hilarious.
The questions ranged from the personal (‘I feel like I’m the only person in my friends group who cares about this stuff - how do I change them?’) to the rude (‘Why do you have to use big words like ‘non-rivalrous’?)
I was impressed at his defusal of the latter question. The guy asking it was kinda crazy - there’s always crazy people at these events - and instead of saying something like ‘If learning some technical jargon is a filter for you, you’d never aid in solving the meta-crisis in the first place’ which is what I - rudely - would have said, sensing the aggression in the question. He, instead, said ‘You’re totally right. I totally agree with you. It’s not my main strength to do that sort of translation work, but I’m very interested in it and am working with someone to translate this stuff for me’ - and just generally ceded the frame and made the guy asking the question feel good about himself.
People kept throwing questions at him and leaning in more and more to hear his large trains of thought, to try to absorb some of his wisdom. This cool guy I had met earlier - Patrick - quipped ‘Funny how what Vervaeke most wants is to not become a guru’ in the context of Daniel having 20 people almost fighting for space around listening to him, nearly all standing, while he sat.
It was raining - it is London, after all - and I felt happy. Exchanged a few numbers, said bye, and left. I had found (some) of my people.