Intentional Society: Earnestness and courage
...finding the space between aim and ambition
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Hi, James here as usual. It's Thanksgiving today in the USA, and my social feeds are full of sincere thankfulness. It's a wholesome time within a not-usually-as-cozy space, as honest gratitude displaces some of the usual outrage and ennui.
Relatedly, I recently read the latest @visakanv essay on earnestness, and I'll also quote this re "it takes a surprising amount of courage to be enthusiastic about your own life."
The courage required to be earnest and enthusiastic rather than guarded and jaded comes, I think, in the form of a willingness to be misunderstood by those who would see your earnest "yes" and judge you as either A) a naïve simpleton or B) failing at the social norm of demonstrating that you're not a naïve simpleton by signaling your complexity. B is anchored in the (self-)socialized mindset, while A is an example of generic pre/trans perspective blindness.
Anyway, I think there's a lesson for me, and perhaps some of you, here in applying courage to earnestly owning my own desires. Much like I had to learn to detangle authority from authoritarianism, I'm seeing the space between aims and ambition. From defining them first both as "desire to achieve", I'm then refining the former into "desire to cause a future world state" and the latter into something like "desire to be (recognized as?) the person who achieved" (holding constant the size of the desired outcome). You can do one without the other. Earnestly.
Thanks for helping me find that framing. Now, what's been happening lately in Intentional Society? Well, we've wrapped up our giving-and-receiving mini-arc, did some novel "mini-cases" work last week, and will likely do some Circling this week before starting to bring home the season and year. I'm wondering if we might look at this year, at next year, and recognize some intentions that take the shape of aims — our earnest desires for future world states, owned without timidity. That very well might light up the bat-signal of earnest intention that fuels our finding of others with similar enthusiasm.
Cheers,
James