Sorry, poorly phrased. It was a time (when I was about 13-15 years old) when my friends and I had left our religions of origin and were looking for some other way to make meaning about our lives. Religion was the way I knew how to do that, and we all enjoyed ritual, and solstice was a good time to do that. As I remember, they were mostly on the theme of new beginnings and deciding what we wanted for the year to come.
One nice thing about prescribed ritual is that you can do it without feeling silly, because everyone else is doing it and they understand you didn’t make it up. When we made up our own rituals, I always worried about my friends thinking I struck the wrong balance of silly to serious. Which is most of why I haven’t continued the tradition as an adult.
Yeah, that was one of the biggest challenges. It needs to feel like something everyone’s already familiar with.
My job was made a lot easier because the Sequences already exist and we’re all familiar with them, plus they even come with blatantly ritualistic litanies. I made sure to write or find songs that were reminiscent of the same themes and phrasings.
I think there is still room for improvement there, but we’re definitely doing it again next year, and next year it’ll have the benefit of “having already done it before” to add credibility.
Not having any meetups within 3 hours from me (and very few people nearby to HAVE a meetup), this seems like something that might be worth organizing a carpool, for those of us who can make it to NYC within a day. (Too far of a drive for a regular meetup, but could make a weekend out of it for a “big” meetup)
So...if any Ohioans, Indianans, or Kentuckians might be interested in carpooling to this next year, send me a message!
We thought about advertising to Less Wrong, but we weren’t sure if we were ready to share this with too large a group. I am planning on advertising it next year.
I probably should have hesitated before saying that for sure. There are some legitimate reasons to keep it private. For one thing, there’s a finite amount of seating available. We can handle a few extra people, but we would have difficulty handling another 20.
One of the factors that lead to the decision this year was, did we want a big, grand Rationalist Gathering, or did we want a cozy celebration among family and friends? Both could be awesome in their own way, and I’d like to try the former next year, but this year we decided to try the latter (in particular because a lot of this WAS experimental and we weren’t sure how it’d play out). There was also an afterparty at an apartment and if we hit a certain threshold of people, we wouldn’t be able to invite everyone back.
We did have one guest who have never seen Less Wrong content before, who DIDN’T seem to think we were a crazy cult… so that was good.
Well, that’s why I said potentially open-invite. Assumption being, that if it’s not, then said carpool would not happen. I am not at all interested in party-crashing!
How about this:
Should you decide to make this an open-invite, Grand Rationalist Gathering, then I will happily organize a carpool with other people.
Should you decide to make this a cozy celebration among friends, then of course I completely understand, and wish you best of luck!
Possibly out-of-date information: some 20 years ago, I went to at least one micro sf convention—held in a motel, so there’s one function room and the whole thing isn’t very expensive. Now that I think about it, there’s one such still going on.
This is just a thought thrown in if you want to expand the solstice celebration.
Sorry, poorly phrased. It was a time (when I was about 13-15 years old) when my friends and I had left our religions of origin and were looking for some other way to make meaning about our lives. Religion was the way I knew how to do that, and we all enjoyed ritual, and solstice was a good time to do that. As I remember, they were mostly on the theme of new beginnings and deciding what we wanted for the year to come.
One nice thing about prescribed ritual is that you can do it without feeling silly, because everyone else is doing it and they understand you didn’t make it up. When we made up our own rituals, I always worried about my friends thinking I struck the wrong balance of silly to serious. Which is most of why I haven’t continued the tradition as an adult.
Yeah, that was one of the biggest challenges. It needs to feel like something everyone’s already familiar with.
My job was made a lot easier because the Sequences already exist and we’re all familiar with them, plus they even come with blatantly ritualistic litanies. I made sure to write or find songs that were reminiscent of the same themes and phrasings.
I think there is still room for improvement there, but we’re definitely doing it again next year, and next year it’ll have the benefit of “having already done it before” to add credibility.
Not having any meetups within 3 hours from me (and very few people nearby to HAVE a meetup), this seems like something that might be worth organizing a carpool, for those of us who can make it to NYC within a day. (Too far of a drive for a regular meetup, but could make a weekend out of it for a “big” meetup)
So...if any Ohioans, Indianans, or Kentuckians might be interested in carpooling to this next year, send me a message!
We thought about advertising to Less Wrong, but we weren’t sure if we were ready to share this with too large a group. I am planning on advertising it next year.
My bad! I had somehow gotten the impression that it was open invite. But I think I was just making assumptions I shouldn’t have.
Glad it is potentially open invite next year, though!
I probably should have hesitated before saying that for sure. There are some legitimate reasons to keep it private. For one thing, there’s a finite amount of seating available. We can handle a few extra people, but we would have difficulty handling another 20.
One of the factors that lead to the decision this year was, did we want a big, grand Rationalist Gathering, or did we want a cozy celebration among family and friends? Both could be awesome in their own way, and I’d like to try the former next year, but this year we decided to try the latter (in particular because a lot of this WAS experimental and we weren’t sure how it’d play out). There was also an afterparty at an apartment and if we hit a certain threshold of people, we wouldn’t be able to invite everyone back.
We did have one guest who have never seen Less Wrong content before, who DIDN’T seem to think we were a crazy cult… so that was good.
Well, that’s why I said potentially open-invite. Assumption being, that if it’s not, then said carpool would not happen. I am not at all interested in party-crashing!
How about this:
Should you decide to make this an open-invite, Grand Rationalist Gathering, then I will happily organize a carpool with other people.
Should you decide to make this a cozy celebration among friends, then of course I completely understand, and wish you best of luck!
That sounds completely reasonable.
Possibly out-of-date information: some 20 years ago, I went to at least one micro sf convention—held in a motel, so there’s one function room and the whole thing isn’t very expensive. Now that I think about it, there’s one such still going on.
This is just a thought thrown in if you want to expand the solstice celebration.