Why I'm starting Lenox

One simple idea

Elf Theory recently hit a thousand subscribers. Substack tends to boost accounts that already have a following, so thank you for being here. It makes a real difference, plus it’s nice to know that it’s not just close friends who appreciate this silly little newsletter. Honestly, my whole approach has been really haphazard. I’ve never been able to keep this on a schedule, and it’s never had a clear brand identity. A thousand followers is still modest - on any other platform, a thousand rounds down to zero - but all things considered, I feel good about it.

A lot of what I’ve been writing about here is connected to other projects, like the Lenox Institute for Advanced Study (which is the main focus of this post) and the Acid Horizon Research Commons. As I spend more time in those spaces, this one will inevitably start to reflect them. In terms of topics, sometimes I think it’d be best to put the theory on hiatus and shift to describing what my life is like these days. Things are pretty interesting: I’m in entrepreneur mode for the first time ever, and I’m striking out in a niche where there are very few examples to draw from and even fewer sources of trustworthy advice. Every day gives me new stories.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to tell those stories. Probably not for a while. For now, I’m going to share some thoughts about what’s motivating me. Note that I am speaking for myself, not on behalf of all three cofounders, which is why the title says “I,” not “we.” With that said, a lot of this comes out of conversations we’ve been having since last year. Maybe one day they’ll write their own versions of this statement. I hope they do. Mine is a little wordy, but when it all boils down, it’s pretty simple…

The motivation is to bring people together. That is the alpha and omega. It’s the reason I’ve sent scores of cold emails and LinkedIn messages in recent months. It’s why I’ve had all sorts of meetings with people I never would’ve encountered in academia, including entrepreneurs; internet personalities; scholars turned consultants; career consultants who reached out to offer us their services for free; and my local Episcopalian priest, who I met one afternoon when he came up to me in a park to ask what e-reader I was using, and just a moment later asked if I’d ever heard of para-academia (the mind boggles.) So many coffees, so many Zoom calls, so many moments of panic about how my makeup looks on a Zoom call, not to mention how to get dressed to meet people from professional backgrounds I’m totally unfamiliar with.

This has been exhausting, but if I ever had doubts about the high premium I place on connection, I don’t anymore. The direct goal of all that outreach was to learn about what I might be getting myself into. An unexpected effect is that I feel more confident in the idea that learning can never be completely self-guided, and that the vagaries of interacting with other human beings are essential to the learning process, even if it doesn’t seem that way. Relatedly, investing in the social aspect of learning is a pretty safe bet. I’ve seen this bear out in my own life. Turning myself into an extrovert has made me feel more competent and at ease in the world. It’s been useful in ways that go beyond anything work-related. This has been a really nice surprise.

Fifty people paid $20 each to come to our first event. We did this without any name recognition, without any of us (my cofounders and I) having a real online presence or social capital in any relevant context, and without funding. (I haven’t mentioned this publicly yet, but we are pre-fundraise - everything that’s happened so far has been on a purely voluntary basis.) The event was only possible because right after we made our first public announcement, I started talking to as many people as I could. I never wanted this to come across as impersonal networking, so I ended up having a lot of long discussions that had nothing to do with Lenox. (Many of them were philosophical, about ideas my LEPHT HAND co-host and I have covered, or topics I’ve explored in other spaces.) Any time anyone emailed to see if I was interested in chatting, I said yes. As much time as this has taken, I don’t regret any of it. It’s not just that it helped us put our first two programs together; it’s opened me up to ways of thinking about collaboration that I could only understand in the most abstract and remote of terms before this year. Beyond Lenox, most of what I’ve done professionally has been more a solo effort than anything else. The lone wolf route is sort of natural to me, although not because I’ve ever thought it ideal. It’s just how I’m wired - and the rewards of breaking that wiring, challenging as it’s occasionally been, are pretty remarkable.

Lots of people showed up to our first event all by themselves. This didn’t surprise me - I’ve run similar things in the past; there’s a real pattern there - but it sticks out. In the marketing copy I wrote for it, I said that it would emphasize interactivity, but I’m afraid I didn’t fully deliver on this promise. Our opening exercise could’ve been done in groups or individually, but when I was explaining it, I didn’t make the group option clear enough, and everybody ended up doing it by themselves. I don’t take this as an indictment of my facilitation skills (the fact that the space didn’t have shared tables is probably partially to blame), but I am keeping it in mind. I’m sharing this as an example of what it looks like to translate a motivation that might seem vague and a little bit sentimental into thinking that’s grounded in real-world practice and situational specifics rather than abstract notions and vibes.

But to get a bit abstract for a second: I don’t see Lenox as a means to advance particular philosophical or scientific arguments. I am interested in creating conditions where all forms of knowledge seem fundamentally relational, regardless of what they express or imply. That is the one lesson I really care about imparting. Anybody who’s committed to learning and thinking has to realize how much we need each other.

There’s a bit of strategic theory behind this. A world full of strong connections within and between groups is a world where hate finds few structural footholds. By the same token, a world where social bonds are forged from the sharing and elaboration of knowledge is one where knowledge can’t be easily weaponized against the public. As idealistic as this sounds, my cofounders and I are practical about how far this can take us. We aren’t trying to alter the course of history. We will make as much happen as we can with whatever resources we can muster, without compromising on this principle.

If there’s a politics to this, it’s not politics as usual. The political framework that’s most relevant is prefigurativism, which doesn’t fall on one side of the left-right spectrum, and which has nothing to do with context-specific configurations like parties and caucuses. Prefiguration isn’t about telling people what to think or do; it’s about creating circumstances where certain values are assumed as axiomatic and then letting the chips fall where they may. It gives the individuals you’re hoping to affect a ton of latitude to respond autonomously. You don’t need to have a particular political outlook to believe in it, but you do need an abundance of optimism and trust in human nature.

Social learning is the value we’re enacting prefiguratively. Not everyone will walk away from a Lenox course with the same opinion about AI, or internet culture, or this or that theorist (etc etc.) If we do things right, though, most of our students will come away with the sort of imaginative and intellectual capabilities you can only acquire through sustained interaction with peers and mentors. These capabilities are liberating and unifying in equal measure.

That is the hope. More knowledge and more freedom, as both cause and effect of a social fabric whose strength comes from the fact that it matters more to us than anything else. My background in philosophy and political theory comes to bear on this hope, but it feels more personal than anything else. The wager is that it feels personal to others too. So far, it’s working out.

Future programs are in the works. You can sign up for announcements on our website (the newsletter button is at the bottom.) I’ll also be sharing Lenox news via Elf Theory, but this will be somewhat informal, and not on any fixed schedule. Wherever you might tune in, please know that I’m very grateful for whatever space in your mind you give to anything I’m involved with. From my head to yours - the exchange is what makes this all real.