Inside the Bazaar

Hello again, brothers and sisters. It's time to enter the door. 🚪

One of the most fascinating themes to me in human storytelling is the speakeasy. Whether it's just off the beaten path or truly a black market, these places crop up in our fiction as nexuses of cosmopolitan interaction, places where anyone could appear and challenge our perception. From Rick's Cafe to the Mos Eisley Cantina to the Prancing Pony, these are places our heroes go to discover the world beyond their own. There is danger, yes, but also immense possibility. Often they set out from the tavern or the market onto a journey that irrevocably alters their own perspective. At the very least, we are treated to one of the fundamental enjoyments of fiction: plunging into the Unfamiliar.

Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash

I think this human desire to experience the unknown and interact with denizens from a parallel world is something fundamental, not merely a point on a storytelling chart. I want us to consider that it is a pathway we are meant to follow. I believe that we are constantly being pulled away from the dangerous places in the world by a force that, ultimately, desires our destruction. Or at the very least earnestly hopes we would just settle down and slowly lapse into a happy, comfortable coma. If so much energy is being expended trying to prevent us from entering the chaotic places of the world, what will happen when we finally summon the courage to push past the door?

The Book of Acts narrates the Apostle Paul's arrival at the cosmopolitan city of Athens in this way:

"Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you." Acts 17:21-23

Paul entered a place of chaos, a marketplace of ideas and philosophies, and carried his own beliefs and ideas with him. He did not leave what made him unique at the entrance to the Areopagus, but neither did he refuse to enter entirely and choose the safe way of sequestered peace. He chose to enter the bazaar, filled with competing ideas and conflicting philosophies, and make his own voice heard. Instead of conceal his strongest beliefs or chimerically mutate himself into the image of those around him, he recognized the unique opportunity he had. He chose the path of courage. After all, it really doesn't take very much bravery, intellectual rigour or faith to hold your beliefs in isolation. Anyone can believe just about anything if he never has to confront the world outside his door. But when we enter the bazaar, hear from people who disagree, maybe even violently, and even try and convince some who just don't care...it's then that we discover what we really believe. As a pastor I knew used to say, "If you can't read anyone else's books, maybe you're not so sure of yourself after all."

Photo by Anna Kurmaeva on Unsplash

It has historically been all too tempting for us humans to gather around our own fires and carefully design homogenous zeitgeists around ourselves. This done, we usually resist violently any cultural or technological force that threatens our curated thought world. But is this a repose that we should desire? Especially if you hold personally to a worldview that claims objective truth, shouldn't you welcome every opportunity to converse with those who don't share your views? We daily engage in public performative lament over the divisions and fractal ideological sorting of our age, while in our hearts we breathe a sigh of relief that we could achieve entire years of our lives without so much as encountering a truly robust dissenting opinion, if we wish it to be so. Something inside of us is afraid to push open the door, slide up to the bar, look left and right and see the oddities and surprises we are about to encounter. The thrill of the unknown has become a mortal terror for those who never bothered to plumb the depths of their own convictions much past the level of fleeting anger and inchoate preference. We don't know what we believe, or how, or why we came to believe it. And so we fear the door.

But when we finally summon our courage and enter, something wonderful happens. We discover that the experience of encountering the unknown, of answering the questions of well-intentioned disagreement and honest difference, does not summon an abyss to swallow the self whole. Instead, we become even more like ourselves in the process of explaining ourselves to others. Like Paul, some of the people we feared actually want to talk to us after all. "We will hear you again about this" they say. Others scoff and some might ignore us. But the experience of engaging with people unlike us is, after all, more than survivable. It is deeply enjoyable.

Let's make this personal. The entire reason that these letters exist, that I've been brave enough to put my thoughts down and fling them out for others to disagree with, was because of my defining experience with a bazaar of my own. After reading Thomas Bevan's wonderfully teasing introduction to his private Soaring Twenties Social Club, I subscribed to the tune of $7/month before I had completely thought through the decision. I had been floundering for years, knowing that I loved writing but trying to express my thoughts and beliefs through articles on productivity, carefully sanded free from any unique personality, and then gently deposited on a Medium blog to languish. I was frustrated but I didn't know why.

I logged into the private Discord for the Social Club and could feel myself shifting and evolving almost instantly. This was during a two-month sprint of discovery in the middle of the year in which I fell deep down the crypto rabbit hole, so I was already primed to launch myself into new experiences. But my expectations were surpassed by the Social Club. Within a couple hours I had made two or three fast internet friends, discussing theology in one private channel, cryptocurrency in another and sending back and forth terrible chapters of my long-neglected novel in a yet another. I had stumbled into a virtual speakeasy filled to the brim with a wild medley of strange and wonderful people. Here were cosmopolitans and rural village dwellers, writers, artists, software engineers, an astrologer and a sprinkling of loungers, some mystics and some sceptics and a collection of fully online weirdos. I was totally unprepared for the energy created when this many intensely unique people collided and made jokes and created inside references and codes and, most of all, shared their work. Everyone was working on something it seemed, and they dumped drafts and works-in-progress everywhere for discussion and encouragement. I felt like I had walked into a private room where the party was already happening, and everyone was at a huge table in the center smoking, talking, laughing and applauding each other's efforts at conversation and artistic creation in turn.

So of course I wanted some of the action. I shyly plopped some of my recent work onto the virtual table and waited to see whether my ideas would make an impact. And instead of a nondescript "That was great" or a couple of emoji reactions I received one of the most perceptive criticisms I have ever heard. "I haven't heard from you a lot, but I can already tell that this doesn't sound like you. What if you wrote about what you really believe in?"

I had tried to sidle up to the table with something I thought nobody could object to, and instead had been challenged by a practical stranger to be myself, totally and boldly. Within twenty-four hours I had started writing these letters. That is the power of the bazaar. To encounter people so different from you, and yet so open to hear from you, that they will demand you dig deep. Find the things you are most certain of, and bring them forth into the light. In the midst of our new virtual Areopagus, we dare not lie. We are drawn out every day by the enthusiasm of others and heartened by their insistence that, even if we hide behind a pseudonym and a silly jpeg, we can still offer honestly our best hope for the future and our surest vision of the truth. On the old internet, we feared to tell the truth because we knew that disagreements bred anger and destroyed communities. Maybe we have a chance in the new web3 world to learn again that disagreement isn't fatal, and that the best things in life are most worthy to be kindly and compassionately struggled over. I know I’ve been refilled with enthusiasm to create, create honestly, and let my uniqueness rather than my universality be my calling card.

To us, then, the Areopagites of a new age.

WGMI 😎