Lightning: A Manifesto
It's Time To Inspire
“It’s Time to Build,” says Venture Capitalist Marc Andreesen. He’s not wrong. But the summons to create and to break through complacency can only go so far if we do not heed another summons before, after, and alongside it: “It’s Time to Inspire.” In another moment, riffing on Heidegger, I might have said, “It’s Time to Dwell.” But Dwelling sounds a little bit too chill. We aren’t chill. We are on a search. In-spire: breathing in, breathing out, huffing from the sense that there is more to life than materialism (nihilistic metaphysics), utilitarianism (nihilistic ethics), and small-talk (nihilistic speech).
That is why I’m starting Lightning, an Inspiration-as-a-Service Company.* Lightning is a digital-first learning community; an immersive Encyclopedia that competes with Penguin, Wikipedia, and Kindle; a curator of sages, living, dead, and AI-resurrected; and, above all, an actual treasure hunt, threading tech and IRL, allowing you to choose your own learning adventure over the course of decades. In 10 years, anyone who reads the Great Books will be reading them on Lightning. Anyone who wants to chat with Socrates, Hammurabi, Keynes, Anselm, Virginia Woolf, Thucydides, Walter Benjamin, Marie Curie, Rabia, Rumi, Spinoza, or Suzuki, will be doing it on Lightning. Anyone who wants to travel the world, guided by the great texts and ideas of their destination will do so with Lightning in their pocket. The PhDs and would be PhDs who cannot make tenure or no longer want to because Humanities Departments are done for will work for Lightning—as spiritual Uber drivers, Charons taking you just beyond the bend of the familiar. Would-be rabbis, imams, gurus, llamas, senseis, priests, and shamans who seek to promote meaning-making for committed practitioners and curious travelers alike will join our platform, our “everything store” for the soul. Fortune 500 Companies, largely remote, and hybrid, will hire Lightning to help them keep their knowledge workers loyal, moved, challenged, and up-leveled. Patrons who who support the Met and the Opera will be edging to become honorary hosts of Lightning salons. Ambitious high school and middle school students will use our learning tools to supplement or replace their English and History classes. A nomad stuck in a rural part of the world with no library and no Amazon Prime will log into Alexandria and find 10,000 of the best books in the world to choose from—for free.
Robinson Crusoe, stuck on an island with nothing but his Lightning Device.
From the sayings of Confucius and Lao Tzu to the laments of Jeremiah and the visions of Ezekiel, from the Heart Sutras to Native American Folklore and Norse Mythology—the Great wisdom traditions remain relevant as ever. But the audience, mode of delivery, and goals need to be expanded. Academia and organized religion guard the authoritative interpretation of texts and ideas from “barbarians,” while neglecting the open-minded seeker. The “troubled, committed” will still enjoy Lightning’s provocations and scholarly resources, its refreshingly high level discourse, but our aim is to elevate, welcome, and encourage the amateur, to demonstrate that you don’t need to be a sage to be 10 percent wiser simply by reading and thinking every day or every week. We don’t promote a theology or a philosophy, but we do promote a method, which in Greek, means “way” (halacha, in Hebrew): Life-long learning, aided by the giants who have come before, is a (spiritual) practice. Nutritionists advocate for healthy eating and exercise but there is no real regimen for the soul. Yoga and Soulcycle emphasize transcendence through corporeality, but nobody has managed to scale Logos, to create the equivalent for the thoughtful word. Nike started as a running group. What is the running group for the thoughtful, awe-inspired mind? Lightning.
Girl with the Gold Headset
Who doesn’t love a good manifesto? A manifesto is a form of magic. You take mere words, mere gushes of air, mere lines and curves, mere tokens, and you alchemize them into something tangible. Manifest, manifold, manumission—from the Latin manus, meaning hand. Hands point and hold. Hands waive. According to Derrida, we cannot use our hands and look at them at the same time. Paul Celan calls a poem a handshake. Heidegger says that a human has hands, while beasts merely have paws. We are not speaking about disposable thumbs, but about the power of hands to manifest. Writing happens through the hand. The pen, and now the keyboard, are prosthetics. In Kabbalah, as in phenomenology, we would say that the hand isn’t merely a vessel for thought, but the locus of thought. Tradition and trade, from tradere, to hand over. Hands are everywhere from the Invisible Hand of the Market to the Visible Hand of God, pointing at Adam, in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
Do you believe:
Thinking a spiritual practice? Or simply a practice?
Wisdom and myth are portals to something real?
Subject matter expertise is not the goal of philosophy?
Good community engenders the “aha” that fuels us?
If so, Join Us:
Meditations (daily teaching with music, art, and prompts for reflection)
Chronicles (open-hearted, open-minded discussion group)
Alcibiades at Home Depot
Sounds wonder full!