The End of Rebel Wisdom and What's Next

Including the highlights film of The Last Campfire

Hi everyone, 

As the embers of our Last Campfire spread, I’m writing to say thank you for your support, give you a heads up about the end of Rebel Wisdom, an update around what we’re both stepping into next, and what’s happening with this Substack.

It's hard to express quite how much the support and belief of our audience has meant to us over the years. Without you, there would have been no Rebel Wisdom. You've inspired us, challenged us, and created beautiful communities like The Emergent Commons. People who met through our courses and events have made life-long connections, in one case getting married and having a kid. You connected with each other across continents to create new friendships, collaborations and birth new projects. We hope that continues, and that the end of Rebel Wisdom pollinates new initiatives well into the future.

As of today, Friday 18th November, we're closing Rebel Wisdom for good. We gave it a beautiful send-off earlier this month at The Last Campfire, and we’ve just put up the highlights on the channel as our final film. It includes the first public conversation between Daniel Schmachtenberger and John Vervaeke, which was one of the best we've ever hosted - in fact it got a standing ovation. 

As you'll see in the film, David is experiencing some health difficulties and wasn't able to attend. As I’ll explain below, he’ll be back with a new project in the new year. 

What’s Next for David

There are a lot of things that make up Rebel Wisdom; some are tangible, and many are intangible. Here we wanted to share what’s happening with the ‘tangible’ things moving forward - the YouTube channel, this Substack, and our courses.

After an extended break, in 2023 David will be collaborating with Perspectiva on a new project. While it’s a different endeavour with a new name and purpose, it will be informed by the Rebel Wisdom journey, but speaking to the new historical and cultural context in 2023. The plan is to recast what was the Rebel Wisdom YouTube channel as a platform for people interested in related work across the wider sensemaking web. While this will be a distinct project with a new name and mission, our legacy films will be hosted on there and on the Rebel Wisdom website, which we'll leave up as a library. 

Perspectiva is a non-for-profit organisation working to understand the relationship between systems, souls and society in theory and in practice, and a long-standing friend of Rebel Wisdom. They will co-lead and co-manage the platform as a community asset to be shared with other organisations in the wider ‘sensemaking web’. David will become a senior media advisor at Perspectiva and play a leading editorial role in the new initiative. Between now and February 2023 they’ll be developing the mission, purpose and branding for that new initiative to take shape, so you won’t hear much from them as they go through that creative process, but it will be worth the wait.

We have worked out with Substack a way for this list to be used across two different accounts, so you can expect to hear from the new venture soon with an initial update, and then again when they launch, which they anticipate will be in February 2023.

What’s next for Alexander

My book ‘The Bigger Picture’ comes out in June, and I plan to continue writing, running courses and in-person retreats. The process of writing the book gave me a lot of inspiration around different threads to explore around sensemaking, philosophy, pop culture and internet sociology, so I’m champing at the bit to turn them into articles and features.

While David will be recasting the YouTube channel as part of his new venture, I’ll be doing the same with this Substack, which will be called The Bigger Picture from tomorrow. Paying members have already been notified and given the opportunity to opt out, and of course you can end your free subscription at any time. My hope is that you stay for the ride, because I have a lot of new features, interviews and subscriber-only content planned in the coming months. Here’s a snapshot:

• The Truth about Trauma with Bessel van der Kolk, Rachel Yehuda and George Bonnano. I’ve been working on this piece for about six months, trying to get to the bottom of why trauma and psychological language has become such a significant feature of the cultural conversation in the west. It’s uncovered much deeper questions about our conception of trauma, how it relates to the problem of evil, and why our cultural understanding of trauma might be skewed. Paid subscribers will have exclusive access to the full interviews with the three main guests featured.

• Protopia and the State of Heterodoxy. A write-up of a workshop I led in Barcelona a few weeks ago for The Protopia Lab, which brought together 20 politically diverse people to explore how to overcome cultural polarisation. It was fascinating; a mix of heterodox thinkers, some of whom had experienced very public cancellations, and more intersectionally-minded people who work in NGO’s. Sometimes, it got tense. I learned a lot about the state of heterodoxy right now and this piece will lay out some key takeaways.

• A subscriber-only piece on the Star Wars show Andor, and why I think it’s the best show on TV right now. Drawing on Hemingway, modern authoritarianism and delving deeper into the ‘class vs identity’ arguments I explored in Nazi Elves and Cockney Orcs.

• Lost Ways of Knowing Part II. This is a follow up to a piece I wrote just before covid and intended to make a trilogy. It explores the ways of knowing that are essential for making sense of reality, but hidden from mainstream awareness - this follow up delves into indigenous knowledge systems, quantum mechanics and embodiment. 

• Subscriber-only content curating lists of books, articles, events and films I think are worth checking out, as well as some surprises 

I’ll also be helping the new Perspectiva initiative to run some of our most popular courses like Sensemaking 101, which you’ll hear about more next year. As well as that, I’ll be opening the Substack chat as a community function and inviting guest writers so that we can make this a platform for ongoing conversation and collaboration.   

You can follow David on Twitter at @fullydavid and keep an eye out for an email about his new project in collaboration with Perspectiva which can be followed @perspecteeva. The best way to keep up with my work is on this Substack, or you can find me on alexanderbeiner.com. 

The Last Word

Our last words are simple: thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you’ll join us both for the next stages of our journeys, and more importantly, that in some small way we have inspired, ignited or transformed something in you that leads to the highest expression of your unique contribution to the world. We started Rebel Wisdom as a response to the crisis of the times, and our conviction now 5 years on remains that a real response requires a collective coming together, centred on courage, insight and compassion. 

Rather than us have the last word, we wanted that to come from the community. During The Last Campfire, Adriana Forte and Nick Shore ran a session in which they asked everyone to write up the seeds they were carrying with them as Rebel Wisdom ends; what they want to grow, nurture and bring into the world. Here are just a few of them.

Thank you,

Alexander and David