Sign-up: Philosophical experiment!
"Philosophical guide" isn't a protected title, right?
Do you want to volunteer in a groundbreaking philosophical experiment? Then you’ve come to the right place!
For a couple of years, I’ve received philosophical guidance from Peter. In the sessions, we have explored “existential knots” - situations that feel deeply important as well as very confusing, vague and unmanageable.
During the explorations, Peter helped me by keeping track of important points and sometimes catching aspects of my reasoning that I’d missed. A philosophical companion to help navigate tricky grounds. At the end of the sessions, I usually found a new sense of agency and perspective
Now, I want to try taking up the role of the philosophical guide. I will start by scheduling a few sessions, offering philosophical guidance to people. These sessions will be in the spirit of the gifting economy - if you feel like you’ve gotten something out of the session, you can send a gift. If you simply want to gift feedback and participation in the experiment, that is good as well.
I will be in contact with Peter and other people who are also exploring philosophical guidance, bouncing ideas and crafting the practice together. I have a rough outline in mind. The outline will change depending on the needs of the situation, and evolve as time goes by. Treat it as my current best guess, based on my own experiences with philosophical guidance, and influenced by a bunch of hippie stuff I’ve been doing.1
Rough Outline
The session will start with a check-in, preparing for a deep dive.
Once we feel ready, we look for a starting point for the inquiry. Something you struggle to get a grip on, something that bothers or confuses you - an existential knot. Usually, there will be a few candidates - we’ll just pick the one that’s most alive for you.
Once we’ve found a knot to explore, I will do my best to understand your world. I want to understand your confusion, emotions, perspective and reasoning. I will do this by active listening, followed by restating what you’ve shared in my own words. Once we have resonance,2 we can proceed.
We proceed by going on a philosophical exploration - an inquiry into your existential knot. The main part of my work will be helping you keep track of your line of reasoning, supporting you in your own sensemaking.3 It’s hard to reason about things that touch you on deep levels - there might be strong emotions, “scary” truths or other things standing in your way. The stuckness might be related to assumptions you don’t realize you hold, old “truths” that haven’t been examined thoroughly, or some other philosophical obstacle.
No matter the hindrance, I will do my best to join you in the journey, gently directing your attention to things that seem to slip you by.
Once things click, and the existential knot starts to unravel, there will be a clear shift in your emotional state. We will have reached a peak on the philosophical mountain range and can stand there and admire the view together.
On to a bit of a disclaimer! :)
Disclaimer
I don’t have any relevant education, even though I have some experience of this and similar practices. This is a big experiment. I think I know what I’m doing, but I might very well be deluded. Think of the practice as a good conversation with a supportive friend, rather than a new form of trauma therapy.
I don’t have any legal obligations to secrecy, but I take consent seriously and will check in with you before I share any information that comes up in the session. As stated above, I will partake in a “mastermind group”, crafting the practice together - I might share anonymized session details, replacing/omitting identifying facts while keeping the spirit of the inquiry alive.
If you are curious, but have any concerns, I’m open to having a preliminary conversation about it.
Why am I doing this?
I am curious to see what emerges. I want to get better at navigating philosophical spaces together with people. I want to make philosophy common and help people reason about the things that matter most. I want to, potentially, get paid for doing philosophical inquiry - it would make it feel more real.4
Sign-up
I will hand-pick people to start with, and maybe scale up over time. Even if you don’t get chosen in the first round, I might get back to you later. If you have any concerns or questions, please reach out to jonathan.moregard (at) protonmail.com.
So here I’ll ask you to please share this post in an ironic yet sincere way. Why do I want you to share this post? To get more people to run untrained & unlicensed philosophical experiments on, of course. Is this a good idea? Maybe? At least it’s at least an interesting one. According to me.
And I haven’t even told you about my impossibly grand plans - I want to figure out new ways of relating that make philosophy common and inclusive. At the same time, I want to be Special and become a Real Philosopher, and maybe even manage to make a living doing philosophical writings and philosophical guidance like this. This blog is even called “Honest Living”, so this makes perfect sense.
I also want to live in a circular ivory tower with a circular living room that has 360-degree view where you can see beautiful landscapes on all sides. If you want to support me in dreaming crazy dreams while potentially helping some people in the process, smash that share button and tell your craziest friend to sign up: https://forms.gle/Bc2ExWr3puA8VSCq5.
Circling, nonviolent communication, radical honesty.
“vibe together” - aka I can go into where you’re at.
=process of making sense of things.
Having philosophy as a side gig would be so cool.