Interesting post! It’s cool to see the reasoning you put into it. Reader exercised:
“Is Solstice primarily a rationality holiday? An EA holiday? The broader secular community?” First 2? I could see it expanding into the broader secular community in an appealing way and generally don’t like things to be insular, but I do think that some of the weird EA prioritization/x-risk/transhumanism is like… very big to my personal worldview and so it’s really nice to bond with other people who agree.
I do think there’s often a useful thing about it for getting new people involved—so maybe, like, don’t assume everybody agrees with you or knows what you’re on about, but it seems reasonable to assume that many do, and to see it as a chance to sell it.
I just went to the NYC Solstice and, reflecting on it, feel strongly that Solstices are both EA and rationality-themed and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. <3
“How essential is the journey from light, into darkness, into light?”
Big to the tone for me. If you replace it with something better or different, I’m interested. If you just ditch the structure, why? It was good!
“Is it okay to have a Solstice where we don’t sing Brighter Than Today?”
That’s okay. What’s not okay is having a solstice in which nobody reads the snippet at the end of Matches by Guante (the last chunk at this link) at the end of the moment of darkness.
“But Eukaryote, nobody does that outside of the Seattle Solstices you’ve been to.” Yeah, and they’re great but they’ve suffered for that obvious mistake.
… Which is to say, apparently having some continuity of Big Moment Content feels important. But perhaps this ship has already sailed re: All Solstices Everywhere, so I guess I’d instead suggest that regional organizers ask around about people’s favorite parts / what they’d miss if it weren’t there, and try to keep those bits for their recurring solstices.
“How important are singalongs vs speeches?”
I think both are good. Singalongs get people involved and also the songs are very nice. To get me emotionally on board you need some speeches with un-lyrical fact-shaped material to drive the point home. Also, it seems good to have a wide variety of content types—different things resonate with different people. Get some narratives in there! Get some lists of facts! Get some poetry in there too! Get some visual art! Whoo! Yeah!
“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?”
I could go either way! Paying professional musicians, if you have the budget and interest, seems great! Some friends noodling around with 0.5 practice is also great. I just like music.
Broader than just music, but if you have artists in your community, I think this is a community thing and it’s good to have some content made by them (music, writing, speeches, other people’s writing that members thought would be good Solstice material, etc, whatever) if you can swing it.
“How important is transhumanism or x-risk?”
Big to me! I could imagine a solstice that was more normal-beliefs-appealing and still struck me as, like, a Solstice, but it’d be different, and, like, if you’re not talking about human extinction or glorious transhuman futures, you’d have set the arc up differently to have it … still mesh with what you think the future will be like. So I’d be disappointed in a solstice that just filed the serial numbers off of x-risk and living forever to be more widely appealing, but I think one designed with a different expectation of the future could be fine. … Also, I do very much like that it’s an affirming event for believing in weird things. Seattle (when I was there) included some wild animal suffering stuff in our solstices, which I think is not common. Depends what the attendees care about.
“Is it good or bad to change lyrics over time?”
I think that’s fine and I kinda like that it happens, and so organically, but also just swapping in topical new songs is fine and cool.
“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?”
Yeah. That’s fine. It’s near the solstice. It’s a metaphor. Come on.
“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?”
...Yeah, I mean, that’s fine to do, could be interesting, but by god you have got to warn people in advance; if I went to a Solstice and got really invested in it and then it didn’t bring me back up by the end, that would mess me up and probably do negative good for the world.
Interesting post! It’s cool to see the reasoning you put into it. Reader exercised:
“Is Solstice primarily a rationality holiday? An EA holiday? The broader secular community?”
First 2? I could see it expanding into the broader secular community in an appealing way and generally don’t like things to be insular, but I do think that some of the weird EA prioritization/x-risk/transhumanism is like… very big to my personal worldview and so it’s really nice to bond with other people who agree.
I do think there’s often a useful thing about it for getting new people involved—so maybe, like, don’t assume everybody agrees with you or knows what you’re on about, but it seems reasonable to assume that many do, and to see it as a chance to sell it.
I just went to the NYC Solstice and, reflecting on it, feel strongly that Solstices are both EA and rationality-themed and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. <3
“How essential is the journey from light, into darkness, into light?”
Big to the tone for me. If you replace it with something better or different, I’m interested. If you just ditch the structure, why? It was good!
“Is it okay to have a Solstice where we don’t sing Brighter Than Today?”
That’s okay. What’s not okay is having a solstice in which nobody reads the snippet at the end of Matches by Guante (the last chunk at this link) at the end of the moment of darkness.
“But Eukaryote, nobody does that outside of the Seattle Solstices you’ve been to.” Yeah, and they’re great but they’ve suffered for that obvious mistake.
… Which is to say, apparently having some continuity of Big Moment Content feels important. But perhaps this ship has already sailed re: All Solstices Everywhere, so I guess I’d instead suggest that regional organizers ask around about people’s favorite parts / what they’d miss if it weren’t there, and try to keep those bits for their recurring solstices.
“How important are singalongs vs speeches?”
I think both are good. Singalongs get people involved and also the songs are very nice. To get me emotionally on board you need some speeches with un-lyrical fact-shaped material to drive the point home. Also, it seems good to have a wide variety of content types—different things resonate with different people. Get some narratives in there! Get some lists of facts! Get some poetry in there too! Get some visual art! Whoo! Yeah!
“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?”
I could go either way! Paying professional musicians, if you have the budget and interest, seems great! Some friends noodling around with 0.5 practice is also great. I just like music.
Broader than just music, but if you have artists in your community, I think this is a community thing and it’s good to have some content made by them (music, writing, speeches, other people’s writing that members thought would be good Solstice material, etc, whatever) if you can swing it.
“How important is transhumanism or x-risk?”
Big to me! I could imagine a solstice that was more normal-beliefs-appealing and still struck me as, like, a Solstice, but it’d be different, and, like, if you’re not talking about human extinction or glorious transhuman futures, you’d have set the arc up differently to have it … still mesh with what you think the future will be like. So I’d be disappointed in a solstice that just filed the serial numbers off of x-risk and living forever to be more widely appealing, but I think one designed with a different expectation of the future could be fine. … Also, I do very much like that it’s an affirming event for believing in weird things. Seattle (when I was there) included some wild animal suffering stuff in our solstices, which I think is not common. Depends what the attendees care about.
“Is it good or bad to change lyrics over time?”
I think that’s fine and I kinda like that it happens, and so organically, but also just swapping in topical new songs is fine and cool.
“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?”
Yeah. That’s fine. It’s near the solstice. It’s a metaphor. Come on.
“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?”
...Yeah, I mean, that’s fine to do, could be interesting, but by god you have got to warn people in advance; if I went to a Solstice and got really invested in it and then it didn’t bring me back up by the end, that would mess me up and probably do negative good for the world.
that was really good thanks for mentioning it!