Vision
Hi. I’m Matt Arnold, creator of the Fluidity Audiobooks podcast 🌐, where I’ve been narrating the books of David Chapman, starting with Meaningness 🌐. I originally had the idea for Fluidity Forum because I wanted to meet up with him, and several other writers on the internet who write about metamodernity, sense-making, rationality, metarationality, thinking-about-thinking, psychology, conflict resolution, comparative religion, secular meditation, psychedelics, and the like.
It turned out they wanted to get together too.
The Format
We are excited to welcome solo talks and panel discussions from anyone who wants to present (provided they meet the requests below). Available timeslots range from half an hour to an hour and a half.
Here are some additional ideas in the original vision, which might work out in a future year of Fluidity Forum:
We would also like to have coffee chats, where a small group of attendees can sign up to have coffee with a specific person for a Q&A.
The weekend may also have a “unconference” component, for the audience to self-organize into small breakout groups to discuss what they heard.
If we can get enough submissions, it would be great to have “adversarial collaborations”, in which attendees who disagree on an issue co-author and co-present a talk about it, which presents their shared findings to reach the best understanding of the issue.
How We Measure Success
While we gather here, and until we disperse, we ask each other to attempt the following in good faith.
Ask yourself, “does this support wonderment, open-ended curiosity, humor, play, enjoyment, or creativity?”
Treat certainty 🌐, understanding 🌐, and control 🌐 as imperfect; as things we can improve, but not acheive some maximized optimal state.
Those who combine the urgency of righteousness with the futility of hopelessness will not be invited back.
Prioritize experience and reason over faith 🌐 even when they contradict your commitments or loyalties 🌐.
Reserve the direct promotion of your products or services to times designated for self-promotion. Outside those times, focus more on developing new ideas, and asking fruitful questions.
These requests will not be hard for most of us. But if they are challenging for you, do more listening than talking in those moments.