The Pie: A digital manifestation of New-and-Improved Rational Conversation(!) for the curious, but not the furious, and the serious—but not imperious.

I Mean…

I’m not a rebel type. I am a wonderer though, and I do care a lot about human flourishing and the ongoing probabilities of smiles. And I’m mildly obsessive about how ideas get started, conveyed, adopted, co-opted, and otherwise morph into winged creatures that lay eggs, and so on, in a manner of speaking. 

Wondering about human flourishing, smiles, minimum-viable-misery, etc., and expecting useful reflections, requires very careful thought on account of how our brains can get hijacked from the inside or outside.  It also requires a kind of brave humility, especially in these if-you-ain’t-with-us-yer-against-us days of democratic discourse. 

I figured that if someone has too much revealed light, in their minds, double meaning intended, they might miss something important in these or any ponderings.  So, a few years ago I started casually looking for thought partners in what I called The Fellowship of the Dimly Lit. Most people tilted their head when I gave the name, but then it clicked for them that it didn’t mean dimwitted.  

Some were more dimly lit than they seemed at first, and some were less dim than they let on.  Some identified as atheists, some as agnostic, and some as plain old Christians.  I wasn’t really going for some meta-ecumenical thing; I just let it happen organically. It became clear that there were a lot more dimly lit people than we tend to think.

The context of reflection seems to be a big factor, as does perceived affiliation pressure, since that’s just how humies work, according to Stu.

Who’s Stu?  (And more)

Stu is short for Stuard, a blue and green beetle you might have come across here already.  Stu has an unexpected affection for humans, which he calls humies. 

We refer to him as Bug Stu, A coleoptera without a cause, but not without a reason. Stu has a good friend, an owl, who goes by Allie, short for Actually A. Space-Owl.  Between the two of them we get a pretty nice perspective on the micro level and on the macro level of things, as you might have guessed from their different vantage points.

If you’re at least somewhat dimly lit, like most of us here, and you don’t mind the idea of mixing some whimsy and serious wondering, a la Bug Stu, then here’s your portal for a little more dim light.  Not sure you’re ready for all the benefits in being an official insider/subscriber, a member of The Fellowship of the Dimly Lit (aka FiDdLer)? Okay, here are some posts that are good previews to the portal. And here’s some fitting, I think, instrumental music to listen to while you ponder the menu, irrespective of potential insipid, or sublime, cinematic associations.

MENU: (Sticking with The Pie and Bug Stu food pairing theme here!)

Menu Item 1: Minimally whimsical. Adorable fluffy white dog in top photo though. Both Teddy Roosevelt and Teddy Ruxpin are mentioned. Written at a very cool conference in Asheville, North Carolina last month.   

Menu Item 2: Slightly higher on the whimsical scale, here and there, although the overall subject matter is somber and serious. So it goes though, right Vonnegutians? Folks who don’t like letting their whimsy, World War history, cultural persuasion science, and poignant pop music touch might want to choose something else. For the price and time though, this features a lot of our core ingredients. Too, IMO, lots of feels more than super fun. Fun enough though maybe : ).

Menu Item 3: Some inside stuff, sort of, because I haven’t yet mentioned here the play that Bug Stu and Allie are working on. It includes some elements we could call Deconstructed Musical Memes from Back in The Day, aka Perspectives On Your Parents’ Headier Music As If It Shaped Your Outlook (It Did). If you happened to listen to the podcast trailer, this menu item gets into the very early stage of the quasi-fictional counterfactual musical meta-mockumentary I mention in the trailer.

PLUS…

Free with any selection: Okay it’s all free, but this worked with the menu theme we’re doing. This link goes to EPISODE MINUS 4: Fondness, Affection, Flourishing, Reflection. It seems like a good starting point, and you can back up or go forward from there. It’s actually a continuation of Episode Minus 5, but it stands on its own too.

YEP, LAFAYETTE IN INDIANA

According to Stu, this is the place for his IndSteadavision vision, which is part of The Pie, which is part of the campaign to turn back the Foes of Flourishing. Not that we’re affiliated with Purdue University in any way (other than that many of us and the us-adjacent are alumni), but it seems to be part of this whole convergence of seemingly unlikely events, from the technical and corporate to the communitarian and cozily expansive, according to Stu.   EPISODE 9:  The Stories of Stu: Star City, Me and You gets into the beginning of that whole story.

We have ten “Minus” episodes working up to Episode 1, and now we’re working on Episode 10. Full disclosure, I’ve been told a few times that much of this stuff is kinda dense, and I haven’t really tried to remedy that. Why? Because the stuff I like to read is also pretty dense. Some people like dense stuff. Some are high-density aversive. I get it. Thus the stories and poems. And if the new boss says fix it, yes, I’m gonna fix it. Meanwhile, it’s not that “I gotta be me,” but it’s way more convenient for the moment at least, and some like the density!

BUG STU’S SORT OF GLOSSARY: (Sort of in order of recollection/foundational rank. Alphabetizing under consideration.)

Deep Stewardship: What concepts and understandings do we want to pass along to enhance human flourishing? It’s clearly not just ecological health and material wealth. Yes, it’s literally for the children and theirs. Probably will involve looking beyond modern and postmodern paradigms, and now that’s increasingly possible. Post-Millennium Modernism might be a good name for a more introspective, mindful kind of mix. Includes meta-cognitive awareness—brain science in the new way it’s been explored since about 2001 (and without the attendent politicized “confirmation” some are using it for).

Fifty-Year Fit: The mental framings, narratives and philosophical paradigms that pit the old against the young, young against the old, personal restraint against personal freedom, individualism against communitarianism, etc. Seen as beginning around 1970.

context of reflection: Factors that affect physical and emotional conditions, which in turn affect impressions, cognition, and conclusions when reflecting on our current state and prescriptions for broad improvement.

perceived affiliation pressure: We’re herd/social beings, so social affiliations and political/philosophical affiliation get tangled. How we perceive our “degree of cognitive freedom” depends on our assessment of various relational impacts and our desire for internal consistency on various philosophical/emotional levels.

unfun reflection: That’s what’s mostly in this glossary so far!!! More happier stuff soon!

ergo-economics: Doing “work” that’s enjoyable and beneficial in the doing, not just the planned outcome. The best way to understand this is to think of economics in the most general and etymological sense of providing for one’s life or household instead of just money-related applications of the word. The ergo- is from ergonomic design, meaning mechanical design based on how a human body works.

repairians: Craftsmen and patrons of a repair ethos, as opposed to replacing. Could even go into repair-punk or repair-core, but punk has implications that are discordant with other themes here, including relative timelessness.

para-agrarians: Agrarian lifestyles on a part-time basis, either by temporarily relocating or by integrating other revenue streams with food/crop production. Generally small regenerative ag practices. Not so much concerned about the many political/philosophical evaluations of the term agrarian.

restoreans: Similar to repairians, but on a more comprehensive scale. Restoreans might look to support and promote restoration of whole houses or, neighborhoods, or districts, while repairians would be more focused on the elemental aspects within and outside of the area (i.e., window repair, tool repair, machine repair)

exploreans: People who are enthusiastic about learning more about history, philosophy, cultural, science, etc., as a way to be aware of alternative perspectives on options, politics, economics, psychology, sociology, etc.

Bright Spots: (Not original to us here, but this is an especially important social/economic phenomenon that Stu uses in 7th Pie Theory.) Also referred formally as positive deviance, meaning positive exceptions, but in more complex situations it also implies the recognition of hard-to-see synergistic effects. In 7th Pie Theory, it mostly involves the creation of Bright Spots, exceptionally positive situations,

About Everything:

Note— My new boss here doesn’t like this (not very) old About page, so its being replaced by what’s above : (. I do love having a boss in this. I actually tried to pay another pretty impressive person to be my boss for a year, but she wasn’t ready for the kind of DIRECTING that it requires, especially for me maybe. We did concoct some ingredients for The Pie at least. Actually, I think that blue-sky-and-new-pie year will come to bear fruit : ). It could well be that my new boss gets me to pull everything out of the garage, basement, and barns, you might know what I mean, and make something, possibly fermented, with it all. Anyway, although I’m working on a better way to say it, here’s what this is About, meandering metaphors and all. They might be important!

Yes, as it turns out, this is about Everything. Around two years ago I explained what I was doing to my future first boss in this and she said (in a somewhat exasperated way), “Tim…this is about…life.” I disagreed and denied it. A month later I agreed and accepted it. But it’s a little different look at things.

Not that I’m old enough to write with authority about life. My friend Guitar Steve and I hold that we need to be 68 years old, four periodical cicada generations, before we can claim to have much to say on the topic in the way of conclusions. Niether of us are there, and so I qualify any of the big stuff content here with this acknowledgement that I am too young.

But not enough of what’s presented to us comes with qualifiers like that. The Pie has a few different acronymial meanings, but the main one is Pretty Interesting Explorations. It also has a few different taglines, but the main one is Qualifying the Quotidian—a fancy way of saying it includes questioning and investigating the reasons and assumptions behind conventional thought, even political thought, even passionately disparate positions. That “assumptions behind” bit is key, and pie symbolizes the depth and sometimes unknown ingredients and poorly understood synergistic effects that the partakers, or just ponderers, might be interested in.

Much of this is done with help from the enhanced lighting of brain science. That admittedly still-dim light actually seems to be illuminating more than the presumed bright light of our particular philosophies and politics—and what I call the Fifty-Year Fit or Fray, which I believe may be tapering off despite current cultural battles.

The new light is at least providing new dots to connect and new routing for some old connections. Maybe we could say the new light has different spectral content from what’s been used up to now, which has been heavy on Left/Right philosophical framing, too much red and blue intensity that is.

With as many smart and talented people as I get to hang around with, it would be reasonable to suspect incompetence or indecision on the part of the default quarterback of this effort, our being at only the 25 yard line at best. But I’ve known since seventh grade that I’m not wired for quarterbacking as much as I am distance running.

Between that and the sabotaging Stralf aliens you’ll be learning about here, it takes a little longer than the typical successful march down the field. Anyone who knows me will wonder what a football analogy is doing there. I don’t really know, but I do remember that decision in seventh grade.

Whys

Sideline and on-field distractions, like Whys, are allowed to draw interest here at The Pie. High yield deep rabbit holes are abundant. I don’t think any worlds exist that aren’t full of deep rabbit holes. Near the bottom of those holes I’ve often found that unsung hero/weirdo Wittgenstein talking to the Daoists about reality versus language. Those are the kinds of Whys we’re interested in, rather than philosophical Whys that quickly go much too far, especially in the other direction—into the sky. “A Why Too Far” would make an interesting allegory out of the WWII movie/book A Bridge Too Far, as we’ve seen from overreliance on pet teleologies (speculative philosophical Whys/purpose) of all stripes and other patterns—not to say this is a war, but not to say it’s not, in the way of the paradigms we pass down to the kids and kids’ kids. If it is a conceptual war, it has more than two sides. And it’s kids all the way down, when I think about it, which is not quite the same as it being turtles all the way down, but in a weird way…maybe it is…as we might see as things develop. (It’s a vague hunch. I truly don’t know the end of all this yet, just some benefits along the way.)

You could say that a new fabric has been emerging for the last ten years at least, but the various forms of mental model marketing are still heaviest for conventional materials and design, as you might expect (Pleasure Activism being the latest expression of liberal convention, a sensual/sensuous form of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism it seems). The expression and adoption of new ideas is interesting to me. This is both “big” and also subtle, depending on points of view, so I’m not too surprised that it’s slow to catch on. Plus there’s the lack of clear conclusions, demagoguery, sloganeering, oversimplification, etc., like we seem to like. I guess the conclusions are more likely to appear inside each mind, and I won’t pretend to know exactly what all those might be. I still think it’s a very useful exercise for the sake of the kids’ and their kids, otherwise I wouldn’t testing my wife’s patience by doing this I guess.

Why That Pie/Color

The type of pie here is Bumbleberry, which is a mix of three fruits, usually berries, but which allows substitutes. The typical red with blue makes purple. Any other likely third color fruit will still result in purple of some shade. The mix is a metaphor for localism, variety, resilience, harmony, and the implication that the goal is “good healthy pie” and not a particular filling. More on this is embedded in the posts already at Medium and the email archives. There you’ll also see a few of the characters, and there are more to come. It takes a cosmic village…

Thanks for reading : ).

Tim