Late June found a small group of us in Kodaikanal, living without an agenda and letting the week move to the rhythm of slow walks, shared meals, lighting fires, and watching a bulbul hatchling. Underneath the casual cricket games ran a raw intellectual current. We found ourselves caught in a live tension between ‘pre-computation’ - clinging to safe, formulaic plans - and the terrifying beauty of ‘just-in-time’ presence, contemplating on what it takes to trust ourselves in the moment. Through daily meditation and an intimate circle of radically honest feedback, we talked about the price we pay in personal integrity when our intellectual maps decouple from how we actually live. We talked about Internal Family Systems and ran mutual critique exercises to examine our internal contradictions.
The internal work wasn’t happening in a vacuum; it directly mirrored the macro chaos we see unfolding out in the world. Debates looped back and forth between systemic anxieties shrinking our world: anti-natalist memeplexes and the fertility crisis, the grim possibility of an AI-driven permanent underclass, and the desperate, hyperstition-fueled rush for compute. There were impassioned exchanges about what truly liberating education or nurture looks like for our children. The warmth and reassurance of a high-trust container, in combination with daily grounding rituals, insulated the group from the abstraction of these macro threats. We left Kodaikanal not with conclusions, but with a shared wish to continue growing together.
We continue to meet, talk and coordinate here.