On Monday this week, I attended my fifth Supper Club, a new monthly Bloomington venue for the those in this academic town who don’t suffer from mild to severe TDS virus (Trump Derangement Syndrome).
For backstory, see these posts:
TONIGHT, DATE WITH DESTINY: Brownstone Institute Inaugural Midwest Supper Club
and this:
My Experience of Last Night’s “Supper Club” launch
We Bloomington contrarians are still rare, but I sense our numbers growing. Or maybe I should say, we (or at least I ) are (am) becoming “braver,” speaking my truth for the first time yesterday, for example, on Next Door, concerning the local NoKing rally planned for Bloomington on June 14. And you can imagine how many “comments” that inspired (a few pro, mostly con). Next step: do I attend this rally with some kind of notification that I’m not going along with the crowd? I don’t have a Trump hat; but I do have a tee-shirt with “AWAKE, BUT NOT WOKE.” Maybe wear that?
If I go.
Will I go?
Waffling.
But it really does feel like it’s time, folks. The uproaring in Los Angeles especially, highlights the old adage that he who remains silent is complicit.
And it’s not that one side is “wrong” and the other “right;” not that one is “good” and the other “evil.” No. It’s that whenever one side of any polarity dominates the other, then oppression rules. And usually, at least for us in the “civilized” world,” domination is possible because the other side of the polarity prefers to remain polite, i.e., silent (and, apparently, doesn’t mind being censored?).
These Supper Clubs — each one of which I look forward to immensely as an injection of greater aliveness into my own personal (bodily/mental/emotional/spiritual) system — feel, at this point like utterly necessary (monthly, except for May) injections of food and drink, good cheer, stimulating presentations on wide-ranging topics, and spirited, unabashed, authentic conversation among those who do not hate Trump, but, on the other hand, who do who occupy all sorts of idiosyncratic niches in the constantly widening spectra of opinion. That’s what I love about these stunning events; I walk in, and all of a sudden, I feel free, utterly free. Nothing I say will be considered “too much,” “too intense,” “utterly crazy,” or just plain wrong. I can be fully myself; as we all need to be fully ourselves; no matter how wild and wonderful!
I thank Joni McGary for her continuous, indefatigible determination to get and keep this venue going, because, as she keeps repeating, “Bloomington needs it.” Exactly.
Here’s her final email to those on her growing list about this latest event, hoping to still attract enough people to go through (at Lennie’s restaurant) with what she had planned. The situation was dicey; not nearly enough people had signed up to justify the special dinner. Was it because it’s summer?
But, in the end, a total of 32 people signed on, many more than seemed possible not even two weeks earlier. Among them were folks who did not live in Bloomington, but who, like us, need this kind of venue to feel at home in conversation with others. One was an IU biology professor, who had come for her first Supper Club. One came from Michigan, one from another Indiana county, and two from the Netherlands. Sampling what this country has to offer, they came across the brownstone.org website, and the planned events, one of them in Bloomington, IN! — so they drove here from Colorado, their latest housesit. The woman of this couple, BTW, like me, holds both a PhD in philosophy, and is also an MD who, when the covid con revved up in 2020, realized she could no longer retain her integrity while practicing medicine.
And all these were sitting at my table. Lots of other tables with who knows who sitting there. I know there was at least one practicing physician in the room. The table next to me had a bunch of what I took to be aging (emeritus?) (economics?) professors (IU), likely contrarians, both in the way they talked, and by the fact that they were very much enjoying this venue together!
These Supper Clubs not only bump up my own aliveness, but feel like utterly necessary (monthly) social/cultural injections of food and drink, good cheer and spirited, unabashed, authentic conversation following a stimulating presentation.
The Supper Clubs are an outgrowth of brownstoneinstitute.org, which was founded by Jeffrey Tucker in response to the covid con in 2021. The website now sports thousands of articles, with Supper Club venues like ours in several places on the east coast. We are the first midwest supper club. Hopefully not the last!
Last night’s talk, by Bret Swanson, president of Entropy Economics, was devoted to how society is verging on an AI explosion, and what that might mean in the very near future. He personally, he says, is optimistic; lots of others there were not; in fact decidedly pessimistic. More and more, both self-described optimists and pessimists spoke up, presenting many different, and all good, interesting, real, perspectives. Indeed, this time our post-talk discussion was unusually lively, cantankerous, and fun. Nobody found what anybody else said “offensive.”
Geez! We need more of this. Yay for Bloomington Supper Club!
BTW: Mattias Desmet has a new article out, and brownstone.org is featuring it.
Censorship in Our Materialist World
Also, check this out. Found it on The Free Press, to which I just subscribed.
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-ten-warning-signs
