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an impt difference between me and people who are kind of similar-ish to me but miserable is that I am a meaning-worker, which is a way of saying I am a kind of DIY prophet-author-worldbuilder-shaman who creates homebrew narratives, talismans, ceremonies

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Visa

SF (Aug 2-14)

@visakanv

· Sep 29, 2021

this is the heart of philosophy, all else is commentary

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I want to be careful not to be somebody’s Guru. I’m not interested in recruiting people who want to be told what to do and how to live. the 👑 is about self-sovereignty, not ruling over others. I sincerely believe that, at least amongst my crew, each person shd be self-sovereign

there is no escaping talismans, ceremonies, not for long. we are a storytelling species. Our talismans are wedding rings and Olympic medals and Oscars, our ceremonies are proms and graduations, denial of narrative almost always ends up being another narrative, and trickier

this is also why I chose to get into marketing as a career, early on. because marketers are manipulators of meaning – they sell you branded building blocks of narratives and identity – and I figured that the best way not to get pwned is to study it directly myself

lol my marketer brain reading this thread is like “hell yea bro this is a killer sales pitch for whatever you’re going to sell at the end of it”. But no I’m not gonna sell you anything in this one. I’m selling u the idea of investigating your inner narratives, your meaning nexus

I doooo talk about all of this stuff in the book that I’ve been working on the last 3 years butttt I don’t want readers who think it is The Answer. It’s really just a bunch of questions. Your own questions are more important than mine. Your curiosity, your desire, your heart

Oh RIGHT the original inciting tweet was “minimum viable” lol!! See I use all this preamble in part to discourage skim-readers. Right, ok. What’s a MVMN? I think the simplest and most powerful thing I got is to use the stories and emotions from one’s childhood. Cheesy but works

For me my great childhood love was books. And so I use that as a generative seed from which to grow an entire worldview, a set of principles, beliefs, goals, ways of seeing, relating to others. To me the universe is a library and I am a librarian

visakanv.com

the library ethos - @visakanv's blog

As a child, I was radicalised by libraries into believing that life can be a glorious adventure of joy and learning. The first time my mind was blown as a child was when I visited a library. I always...

it could be anything. it could be a song, a dance, a movie, a puzzle, software, whatever. whatever is meaningful to you. whatever has emotional weight to you. whatever you get excited about. you can then use this metaphor to guide you in relating yourself to everything else

the classic central question in every narrative is “what’s the struggle”, right. otherwise there’s no story. the simplest way to think about this is to ask “who’s the villain”, but I hesitate to encourage that bc it might be *too* simplistic. the villain is a part of you too…

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

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@visakanv

this is why i kinda want to write a bunch of stories with no villains. there's plenty of struggle and conflict available in a story consisting entirely of people who are trying to do the right thing

5:03 AM · Jan 11, 2022Twitter Web App

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