Jon, I feel your pain. Honest. I know it must seem silly, but Monist has drained every bit of cognitive power from me for the last 6 weeks. I only have about four good hours a day, in any case, and it is using up all of them. I am not complaining; I am very happy doing it, but it does use up all the time I used to have for chasing rabbits on Friam.
I have lots of loose cannons rolling around in my head. Thinking of shifting from an experiential to a metaphorical monism. ALL thought is in metaphors. Micrometaphors. Blah Blah. You are probably happy to have been spared. Of course I am full of despair about our politics and like you, feel that everbody is missing the point and if only I could get my message through.... to who? ... (going for the rhyme here, not the grammar), the world would be a better place. Narcissistic glory seeking.. I particularly think we need interviews from inside the ranks of ice. What is it like? Where do they spend their off hours? Do they show up in Glen's bar? What is that conversation like. What do their families think about what they are doing. How's morale? Also surprised that nobody has written an article called THE ICEMAN COMETH. I listed to a podcast with a former D and G fanatic who is scheduling role-playing sessions all over the country so we can think through what we are going to do when trump refuses to hand over powr in January of 29. God knows they're thinking about; we better be. And oh boy does J.D. Vance have a mean and hungry look. Anyway, that's where I have been. I also think that in the old days, we used to have complexity theory as a central theme in our discussions. I get the feeling that like all successful movements, complexity theory has gone blousy and bloated, a kind of civic christianity, rather than the nice tight little cult it used to be. Harder to disagree about, hard to know what one has agreed to. Thanks for asking the question, Jon. Nick On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 5:46 PM Jon Zingale <[email protected]> wrote: > I know I came to this group in what appears to be its twilight. The > in-person meetups are weirdly sad. I feel pressed to ask if it is the case > that everyone is either: > > 1. on vacation/ too busy > 2. too depressed / failing to find inspiration > 3. moved on to greener forums > 4. preferring the company of LLMs > ... > N. waiting for someone frail to post > > Sometimes I trawl reddit or whatever discord, but I cannot help but feel > like beacons of inspiration are becoming fewer and further between. This > group has managed to inspire me, keep my interest, for over a decade. In > that time, I pushed myself to understand perspectives that I would never > have dreamed existed. I hope there is still something to talk about. > > > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson https://substack.com/@monist
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
