Things around here the last three weeks have been quite turbulent, as most folks who follow the podcast and the board must already be aware.
There has been a good deal of work done by Stef, to link this turbulence to the Mythology podcast series he did a week or so ago. It's a very convincing case, to be sure. The fact is, Stef does seem to be pounding rather hard, at the gates of everyone's personal mythological castles in that series (and, interestingly, I am no exception to this).
But tonight, an "alternative theory" for all this sprouted to mind, and I'd like to toss it out, and see what people think:
While the Mythology series does seem to explain a lot about the events of the last 3 weeks, I wonder if it isn't secondary to the cause for the eruption - the mythology series itself, only providing an after-the-fact interpretation of the real root reason for the outbursts. So, I wonder: does anyone recalls this podcast? It's the one subtitled "We are Not Born Small". In it, Stef is essentially putting forward a rallying cry - in fact, a "demand that we be big", if we actually want to be philosophers. There are two additional insightful assertions within it as well: First, he insists that what he is demanding is not the empty inflation of the false-self, but the full dis-inhibition of the true-self. And second, the more incendiary assertion: "The degree to which you are opposed, is the degree to which you are capable of growing big."
Now, if you look at the date on that podcast (roughly the 27th or 28th of April), in the context of the chronology of the board disturbances, it predates the initial board eruption by only 5 or 6 days. So, if we keep in mind that most folks are usually a good 2 or 3 days behind the published list, and most folks tend to need a day or two to process the contents of the podcast, at both a conscious and subconscious level, a reaction on the board of that magnitude was probably not to be expected until May 1 or May 2 (precisely the days of the worst outbursts - at least, until it was re-addressed in the board attacks podcasts).
SO, given Stef's 'shout from the mountain-top' attitude in that April 28 'cast, and his demand for people to essentially 'step up' - combined with the coincidental nexus of going full-time, and the anticipation of greater things to come (in 730/731) - it occurred to me that it might very probably have been this podcast that triggered the volcano, and not the mythology series - this podcast was the one interpreted as a direct provocation by the false-self identities that have been hovering at the fringes of this conversation for so long, and the mythology concepts in that follow-up series only gave that provocation a narrative of it's own.
I decided to listen to this podcast tonight, in the wake of the barroom brawling we've been engaged in over the last two weeks, just to try and recapture some of that sense of yearning I felt in 731. But, I found myself reinspired by it in a whole new way, after having experienced all this turmoil recently.
I think I finally get it. Stef was not talking to me (in the telephone sense). He has an audience of several thousand listeners. I am but one of them. But, indeed, he was talking to me - in a way I wasn't even fully conscious of. I was just as affected by the message of 735, as were the false-selves I spoke of above. I had consumed this demand to be big, at a seriously fundamental level, and had started turning it on others around me. I became a provocateur for "bigness" (if you will), and hadn't really quite realized consciously. And that is why I felt the need to push the people around me to rise to that standard - and why, as soon as it was made clear to me what I had done - I immediately shrank from it. Not because I had done anything wrong, but because I had suddenly realized I was rising over the rooftops, and incurred a serious case of vertigo!
Well, realizing this, I don't think I need to fear it anymore.