May was an interesting month in the history of Practical Philosophy… On May 30th, 2024, we started the Practical Philosophy Vancouver chapter. For the first 2.5 years we just had the three groups. Minding our business. Then we opened CDMX in early 2024 and Vancouver was the 5th group. That was a turning point. After that, within a few months we had opened up another 5 or 10. One year later and we have 5x’d that number with over 25 chapters. It seems that Practical Philosophy has become an actual movement. During this month of May, 2025, we added new chapters in Montreal, Doha Qatar, Cagliari Italy and Saltillo Mexico. As well as the revival of our San Francisco chapter. For June, we have similar growth happening. What we must keep in mind, while all this exciting growth is happening, is that although growth in numbers is good, we MUST make sure that we are optimizing for the best discussions that we can have. That we are building something beautiful is evident, yes. That it’s quite massive, also yes. But that our main focus must be on the quality. When the initial exponential growth happened, it got into our head a little bit. We lost our humility for a brief period. We’ve made adjustments and remain conscious that we must maintain that humility. It’s been a balance because you also want to maintain your frame and yeah … that’s a whole other topic. Too humble is as bad as too arrogant. But we just try to keep in mind that our indicator for impact is not so much based on bodies through the door, but how well we are facilitating discussions that involve critical thinking and communication. That’s our goal. How is it that we can build a community built on honest and transparency? That’s the question we must ask. Things will continue to change, but with our focus on open discussion and connection through community, we believe that Practical Philosophy will continue to grow and change the lives of people all around the world. It started as a hangout, it has since become a movement. We are riding that wave together, and as long as we keep our focus on quality discussions, we will continue to be a space where people can connect with other deep thinkers.

It doesn't move the same for everyone. To speed it up, to live a month in 24 hours, simply put more cause into effect. If someone on your team does 100 messages a day, and you do 200, you've lived 48 hours in his 24. This is how the exponential gap that separates men is created. You have to CONSTANTLY be doing, moving, creating. Even moving at a steady pace isn't good enough. Because there are people out there who aren't, so you're falling behind. You're either spiraling up or spiraling down.

However difficult it may me to define a good life, I think this insight is a key piece to the puzzle: “People are all decent underneath. All that is necessary to prove this is to find out what the motives are for their superficial behavior—nasty, mean, or vicious though that behavior may be. Once these motives are understood, it is impossible to resent the behavior that follows. “The insecurity cycle—from this flows everything. . . . The person who behaves badly behaves so because of hurt, actual and expected, and lashes out in self-defense, as a cornered animal might. The fact is that people are good, if only their fundamental wishes are satisfied, their wishes for affection and security. Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and behavior.” ~Abraham Maslow That’s why, “Love your enemies.”

Hello all, unfortunately I have not been too active in this Skool group, and that's because we've been making progress in what has become my main priority: Practical Philosophy Club. At the start of this year, we had three groups in Mexico, Spain, and Canada. At a certain point, we felt that expansion was the next way forward, and so have been working on that. Now, we've gone from 3 groups to more than 15 that meet each week. We now have groups in Canada, Spain, Mexico, Bulgaria, Tokyo, Philippines, Vietnam, Germany, France, Iceland, and more! The goal for this is to bring people together to have deep discussions and practice their critical thinking muscles, like Socrates would have done. We've been working diligently on building the systems to help make the experience consistent across countries, and adjusting our messaging to better express what it is we're trying to do. You can see what we've built in terms of our website here: www.practicalphilosophy.club We've been making a lot of progress with streamlining everything and it's thus far been the most rewarding thing I've done in my life, but the cost is I don't really have time to post in this group. Of course, feel free to share any Stoic thoughts and I'll try to answer, but not doing so much in terms of active growth here. If you're interested in attending a Practical Philosophy session, please click here to see if we're in a city near you. If not, feel free to apply to open your own club and if it's a fit, we'll help you get all set-up and bring people together. And finally, you can see at the image below the groups that met last week for our discussion on the topic of 'Relationships and Responsibility' :) Best, Jeff

“It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.” ~Sylvia Plath While what Sylvia Plath said is true, I don't think this is the reason why many of us end up being "someone else or nobody at all". The true reason is that our civilisation makes it incredibly hard for you to self-actualize, to become your Self in the first place. So hard, in fact, that -- as I was reminded today at our meeting -- it became one of the tenets of Buddhism to deny the very existence of the Self, to claim that the Self is an illusion. And, again, I don't think that is true either. Every person can become their Self -- only the Self is not something one could find within themselves. Rather, the Self is something one have to put together, piece by piece, on their own. And before they can even start on that task, they must discover that capacity in them -- which, within civilization, can only happen by chance. I mean it's not like we are being told it in school or by our parents, "Hey kid, there is this thing -- your Self -- that you need to piece together. And here is how you do it..." That's why few people stumble on that path, end even fewer complete the journey. One day we will find a way to teach this to every child. But until then, "The world is full of actors pretending to be human." ~J. D. Salinger