* “Is Solstice primarily a rationality holiday? An EA holiday? The broader secular community?”
Empirically and normatively, rationalist.
“How essential is the journey from light, into darkness, into light?”
Pretty darn important. As you ask at the end, I could see an occasional or one time “journey from light, into darkness, and that’s it” story. It would make for a good “final episode” before the world ends. I’m reminded of the final episode of the sitcom Dinosaurs, where due to out of control technological change, an ice age ensues, and the main characters huddle together for warmth as they slowly freeze to death.
“Is it okay to have a Solstice where we don’t sing Brighter Than Today?”
No. Except maybe in the “from light to darkness” one, where we could sing a version with altered lyrics.
“How important are singalongs vs speeches?”
Singalongs are incredibly important. Speeches I could do without.
“How important is it for singalongs to sound polished, vs for them to feel like an organic part of the community? Is it appropriate to pay professional musicians?”
Organic part of the community: incredibly important. Polished: of negative value. Paying professionals: I would prefer not.
“How important is transhumanism or x-risk?”
X-risk: pretty important. Transhumanism: I think the importance of this varies with how much people think it’s a genuine light of a new day that could save us from x-risk.
“Is it good or bad to change lyrics over time?”
Gut instinct says bad but I could see arguments for it being good in certain instances. But I’m the kind of guy who still gets annoyed at Church Latin’s pronunciation of “v” and “c” etc in Adeste Fideles.
“How important is it to celebrate Solstice on literal astronomical Solstice? If you don’t, why are we calling it Solstice? Is it important for the name to be clear?”
Ideally it would always be on the literal Solstice but scheduling is important too. People ought to be able to actually attend.
“Is it okay to have one solstice someday with a ‘bad ending’, where instead of climbing back out of the darkness hopefully, we just… sit with it, and accept that maybe it might be what the future holds?”
“How important is it for singalongs to sound polished, vs for them to feel like an organic part of the community? Is it appropriate to pay professional musicians?”
> Organic part of the community: incredibly important. Polished: of negative value. Paying professionals: I would prefer not.
This is the part I care the most about. If I wanted to hear professional musicians I would go to a concert. At this community holiday, I want to hear, and participate in, communal singing. I don’t want to feel self conscious about not being a very good singer. I want me and everyone else to get swept up in the moment and the song. I can recall two different Solstices I went to, one in NYC had some technical issues and wasn’t super duper polished and which everyone sang together in, and one in the Bay was much more polished and fancy and professional and had well trained musicians singing while mic’d up. I left the former with a powerful sense of community and a sense of having undergone an important emotional journey. I left the latter with a sense of embarrassment at myself for having attempted to participate in the music, like if I had caught myself singing along at the opera, and frustration at not having gotten the emotional catharsis I wanted. I found myself thinking “maybe Solstice isn’t for me anymore”.
I genuinely can’t remember if I’ve been to a Secular Solstice since then, but I have sung Brighter Than Today to myself and been overcome with emotion and cried.
I’m not sure I understand ‘polished’ being negative? I see how it’s negative if it trades off against other things, like being a real community sing-along, but if somehow the community became better singers over the next year, holding everything else equal, that would be positive.
Is it that you think polish almost always trades off against important things in practice?
My own take is that in practice polish puts a new floor on who’s comfortable singing along, i.e. if there’s a vibe where everyone is singing really nicely, it makes someone who knows (or worries) that they’re not as good a singer feel awkward joining in. If hypothetically the entire community became better singers it’d maybe be fine, but then newcomers who weren’t as good would feel less likely to join in.
This isn’t strictly about quality, it’s also about style – certain types of singing sound more delicate and easy-to-screw-up-by-joining in (i.e. choir pieces, operatic solo pieces, etc).
(I’ve definitely gotten people telling me they felt they were supposed to sing in the middle of the 2016ish NYC Solstices because some of the Night Section songs sounded like they were supposed to be solo pieces. I’ve also gotten people who went to Bay Solstice, which often is generally fancier-feeling, and come away saying “I know Solstice is supposed to be like a big production thing, but I’d kinda like to have a small rougher solstice” and it broke my heart, cuz, like, that was the entire original point of Solstice)
in practice polish puts a new floor on who’s comfortable singing along, i.e. if there’s a vibe where everyone is singing really nicely...
That makes sense! I think Boston is far enough from where this would start happening that I don’t need to be worrying about it (and it would be positive to agree on the music more than a week in advance) but I see how it could be an issue in somewhere like the Bay where the level of polish is enough higher.
they felt they were supposed to sing in the middle of the 2016ish NYC Solstices because some of the Night Section songs sounded like they were supposed to be solo pieces
Here are my thoughts on your opening questions:
* “Is Solstice primarily a rationality holiday? An EA holiday? The broader secular community?”
Empirically and normatively, rationalist.
“How essential is the journey from light, into darkness, into light?”
Pretty darn important. As you ask at the end, I could see an occasional or one time “journey from light, into darkness, and that’s it” story. It would make for a good “final episode” before the world ends. I’m reminded of the final episode of the sitcom Dinosaurs, where due to out of control technological change, an ice age ensues, and the main characters huddle together for warmth as they slowly freeze to death.
“Is it okay to have a Solstice where we don’t sing Brighter Than Today?”
No. Except maybe in the “from light to darkness” one, where we could sing a version with altered lyrics.
“How important are singalongs vs speeches?”
Singalongs are incredibly important. Speeches I could do without.
“How important is it for singalongs to sound polished, vs for them to feel like an organic part of the community? Is it appropriate to pay professional musicians?”
Organic part of the community: incredibly important. Polished: of negative value. Paying professionals: I would prefer not.
“How important is transhumanism or x-risk?”
X-risk: pretty important. Transhumanism: I think the importance of this varies with how much people think it’s a genuine light of a new day that could save us from x-risk.
“Is it good or bad to change lyrics over time?”
Gut instinct says bad but I could see arguments for it being good in certain instances. But I’m the kind of guy who still gets annoyed at Church Latin’s pronunciation of “v” and “c” etc in Adeste Fideles.
“How important is it to celebrate Solstice on literal astronomical Solstice? If you don’t, why are we calling it Solstice? Is it important for the name to be clear?”
Ideally it would always be on the literal Solstice but scheduling is important too. People ought to be able to actually attend.
“Is it okay to have one solstice someday with a ‘bad ending’, where instead of climbing back out of the darkness hopefully, we just… sit with it, and accept that maybe it might be what the future holds?”
Yes. See above
This is the part I care the most about. If I wanted to hear professional musicians I would go to a concert. At this community holiday, I want to hear, and participate in, communal singing. I don’t want to feel self conscious about not being a very good singer. I want me and everyone else to get swept up in the moment and the song. I can recall two different Solstices I went to, one in NYC had some technical issues and wasn’t super duper polished and which everyone sang together in, and one in the Bay was much more polished and fancy and professional and had well trained musicians singing while mic’d up. I left the former with a powerful sense of community and a sense of having undergone an important emotional journey. I left the latter with a sense of embarrassment at myself for having attempted to participate in the music, like if I had caught myself singing along at the opera, and frustration at not having gotten the emotional catharsis I wanted. I found myself thinking “maybe Solstice isn’t for me anymore”.
I genuinely can’t remember if I’ve been to a Secular Solstice since then, but I have sung Brighter Than Today to myself and been overcome with emotion and cried.
I’m not sure I understand ‘polished’ being negative? I see how it’s negative if it trades off against other things, like being a real community sing-along, but if somehow the community became better singers over the next year, holding everything else equal, that would be positive.
Is it that you think polish almost always trades off against important things in practice?
My own take is that in practice polish puts a new floor on who’s comfortable singing along, i.e. if there’s a vibe where everyone is singing really nicely, it makes someone who knows (or worries) that they’re not as good a singer feel awkward joining in. If hypothetically the entire community became better singers it’d maybe be fine, but then newcomers who weren’t as good would feel less likely to join in.
This isn’t strictly about quality, it’s also about style – certain types of singing sound more delicate and easy-to-screw-up-by-joining in (i.e. choir pieces, operatic solo pieces, etc).
(I’ve definitely gotten people telling me they felt they were supposed to sing in the middle of the 2016ish NYC Solstices because some of the Night Section songs sounded like they were supposed to be solo pieces. I’ve also gotten people who went to Bay Solstice, which often is generally fancier-feeling, and come away saying “I know Solstice is supposed to be like a big production thing, but I’d kinda like to have a small rougher solstice” and it broke my heart, cuz, like, that was the entire original point of Solstice)
That makes sense! I think Boston is far enough from where this would start happening that I don’t need to be worrying about it (and it would be positive to agree on the music more than a week in advance) but I see how it could be an issue in somewhere like the Bay where the level of polish is enough higher.
Oh yeah, agreed.
Missing negative?