Dissent School: Reading Outsiders, Bonding Friends

Story Club: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas [5 Pages ⟡ Free Link]

Mon, Apr 13 · 7:00 PM CDT

Central Market, 4001 N Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX, US

Tired of book clubs that prioritize consensus and small talk? We do the opposite. This group reads non-fiction, literature and critical theory written by outsiders—texts that challenge the status quo—and uses them as frameworks to practice the art of dissent. In reading and talking through big ideas together, we hope to deepen our shared capacity for critical analysis. Come read with us to sharpen your intellectual skills and learn how to better argue, debate, and disagree!

Our First Story Club: Reading 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'

For our very first event, we'll be meeting at Central Market at 7:00 PM on April 13th to read Ursula K. LeGuin's classic 5-page short story, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.

You can find a PDF here: https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf

This story is famous for being a concise, effective critique of utilitarian ethics, i.e., the idea that it's okay to sacrifice a few for the good of the many. I love this piece because it refuses to come down cleanly on one side of that ethical question, leaving plenty of room for healthy—and vigorous—debate about the mindsets of the characters.

In line with the spirit of our group, it's also a work that closely probes the moral value of dissent. By reading it now, you'll be set up to consider that question again and again in future meetings.

The rough structure of our story club will be as follows:

• Saying hello to each other
• Committing to cultivating disagreement in our discussion
• Small group discussion with forced polarization
• Reassembling to work through the moral problems in the story together in a big group, as one community
• Concluding with optional individual remarks and thanks for everybody

Since the story is so short, please come to the group having read it in advance.

Thank you in advance for agreeing to participate in this philosophical discussion and discursive experiment! I'm really looking forward to it. You can find more information about the underlying principles of this community below. I hope you will come to love being part of Dissent School.

***

The Dissent School View of Friendship

Suppressing conflict leads to performative, limited, fragile relationships. Celebrating dissent, and figuring out how to translate between divergent worlds, creates strong bonds of intellectual friendship. Stop stagnating; start debating! (You can also decide to make enemies or acquaintances instead of friends, if that is your preference. Your choice! Free rein!)

Difficult Friends: Uniting Creative Friendship Lab x Dissent School

There are things that can only happen between people who are genuinely present to each other. Not performing, not managing, not carefully calibrating what they show.

Wholehearted creative collaboration is one of them. Real intellectual encounter is another. The kind of friendship that actually sustains people through difficulty is a third.

Difficult Friends organizes two volunteer-run grassroots projects in Austin: Creative Friendship Lab and Dissent School.

Our mission is to develop in members:

(1) creative confidence,
(2) intellectual independence, and
(3) the subtle skills needed to form close friendships.

We think it’s good to be a Difficult Friend.

Friendship itself is difficult to the degree that it is both genuine and built across difference. You will find our events creatively and intellectually challenging. They will put you in touch with people in ways that are energizing but unfamiliar.

But Difficult Friends are friends worth having.

Follow us on Substack or Instagram to get access to all our events. And please consider donating to us through our Meetup page. It really makes a difference.

Dissent School's Session-Based Structure

This is a group designed to incubate close intellectual friendships. We run themed sessions that last 2-4 weeks of small, interconnected workshops and events. If you come to our sessions, you will get to know your Dissent School cohort very well over a short time period. You will read cool things together and make new friends who like to think, analyze, and debate.

Your session cohort will also have the opportunity to join a Signal thread just for people in that session. The link will only be shared at in-person events for that session. And the thread will be closed and archived after the session ends. The thread is designed to let people from the session keep in touch during their session period. The thread closes to encourage people to carry out individual connections away from the pressures of a continuing group dynamic.

However, each event will also be able to stand on its own! So you should feel free to come by whenever, regardless of your attendance at prior events. We welcome first-timers always :-) Members are free to drop in and out of Dissent School. We encourage everyone to feel a sense of freedom and lightness while doing as much or as little with the community as they please.

Guiding Principles

"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." – Walter Lippman, The Stakes of Diplomacy

“For the world is not humane just because it is made by human beings, and it does not become humane just because the human voice sounds in it, but only when it has become the object of discourse. We humanize what is going on the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.” – Hannah Arendt, On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing

"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form." - Vladimir Nabokov

Empowering All Members to Lead

Dissent School is a volunteer-run organization focused on encouraging members' independence of thought. Towards that end, we value all our members not only as attendees and followers, but also as continually developing community leaders.

Please click on this link for an overview of this organization's skill-based path to leadership development.

The Leadership Skill Tree covers everything from the powers of one-time event attendees to instructions for unseating the Lead Organizer in a general election.

We also offer an all-member feedback form. Please take advantage of it, knowing your feedback is important, helps us improve, and will be collected anonymously: https://forms.gle/NFSRWxbi416mknUY7

Statement of Inclusivity: Identity & Politics in Community Discussions

Dissent School is an inclusive community space, and we particularly seek to protect and welcome our LGBTQIA+, queer, transgender, and nonbinary members. Event attendees may be asked to share their preferred pronouns and will be asked to respect the preferred pronouns shared by other participants. Immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent folks seeking a diverse community are also especially encouraged to attend!

That said, to quote the progressive labor activist Maurice Mitchell, we do not accept “using one’s identity or personal experience as a justification for a political position. You may hear someone argue, ‘As a working-class, first-generation American, Southern woman…I say we have to vote no.’ What’s implied is that one’s identity is a comprehensive validator of one’s political strategy—that identity is evidence of some intrinsic ideological or strategic legitimacy. Marginalized identity is deployed as a conveyor of a strategic truth that must simply be accepted. Likewise, historically privileged identities are essentialized, flattened, and frequently—for better or worse—dismissed.

To be clear, personal identity and individual experience are important. And while it is true that the ‘personal is political,’ the personal cannot trump strategy nor should it overwhelm the collective interest. Identity is too broad a container to predict one’s politics or the validity of a particular position. There are over 40 million Black folk in the US. Some have great politics, some do not. One’s racial or gender identity, sex, or membership in any marginalized community is, in and of itself, insufficient information to position someone in leadership or mandate that their perspective be adopted.

People with marginal identities, as human beings, suffer all the frailties, inconsistencies, and failings of any other human. Genuflecting to individuals solely based on their socialized identities or personal stories deprives them of the conditions that sharpen arguments, develop skills, and win debates. We infantilize members of historically marginalized or oppressed groups by seeking to placate or pander instead of being in a right relationship, which requires struggle, debate, disagreement, and hard work. This type of false solidarity is a form of charity that weakens the individual and the collective. Finding authentic alignment and solidarity among diverse voices is serious labor. After all, ‘steel sharpens steel.’”

For a concise summary of my views re: identitarian politics as this meetup’s lead organizer, feel free to refer to his excellent article Building Resilient Organizations.

Supporting Our Community

Our events are offered on a donation basis to minimize potential financial barriers. Please consider making a donation if you would like to contribute to our mission, allow us to offer more meaningful events, and help defray the costs of our meetup.com hosting fees.

Or not! As always, it is your choice! We appreciate the many ways in which everyone contributes to our community, whether via financial or other means—simply by showing up and thoughtfully participating, you are doing a good thing :-)

About Me (Personally)

I'm a writer living in Austin with my dog, Cookie. If you're interested in following my thoughts, you can find me at https://substack.com/@rachelsummercheong I love long essays, fiction, and philosophy. I also like to draw and go out dancing.

Philosophy Night: Codes of Honor [4 Pages ⟡ Free Link]

Mon, Apr 20 · 7:00 PM CDT

Central Market, 4001 N Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX, US

Tired of book clubs that prioritize consensus and small talk? We do the opposite. This group reads non-fiction, literature and critical theory written by outsiders—texts that challenge the status quo—and uses them as frameworks to practice the art of dissent. In reading and talking through big ideas together, we hope to deepen our shared capacity for critical analysis. Come read with us to sharpen your intellectual skills and learn how to better argue, debate, and disagree!

Philosophy Night: Codes of Honor

For our second event, we'll be meeting at Central Market at 7:00 PM on April 20 to read and discuss several classic codes of honor. This event is a prelude to our May 4 dinner debate regarding the stoic code of Epictetus.

The short texts we'll read include: Bertrand Russell's A Liberal Decalogue, The Hippocratic Oath, the moral values of the Samurai way (Bushidō), Adrienne Maree Brown's principles for emergent strategy, the nun Corita Scott Kent's Ten Rules, excerpts from Epictetus' Enchiridion, and If by Rudyard Kipling.

Since this week's reading is so light (4 pages) please come to the group having read it in advance.

You may find the reading linked here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18rlIcVxlM-3I54eMldUVXf6FEOJObqwK2Qvt15nN1Nw/edit?usp=sharing

The rough structure of our discussion club will be as follows:

• Saying hello to each other
• Committing to cultivating disagreement in our discussion
• Small group breakout discussions
• 15-minut writing exercise to try drafting your own hand at a moral code
• Reassembling to work through our thoughts on moral codes together in a big group, as one community
• Concluding with optional individual remarks and thanks for everybody

Thank you in advance for agreeing to participate in this philosophical discussion and discursive experiment! I'm really looking forward to it. You can find more information about the underlying principles of this community below. I hope you will come to love being part of Dissent School.

***

Difficult Friends: Uniting Creative Friendship Lab x Dissent School

There are things that can only happen between people who are genuinely present to each other. Not performing, not managing, not carefully calibrating what they show.

Wholehearted creative collaboration is one of them. Real intellectual encounter is another. The kind of friendship that actually sustains people through difficulty is a third.

Difficult Friends organizes two volunteer-run grassroots projects in Austin: Creative Friendship Lab and Dissent School.

Our mission is to develop in members:

(1) creative confidence,
(2) intellectual independence, and
(3) the subtle skills needed to form close friendships.

We think it’s good to be a Difficult Friend.

Friendship itself is difficult to the degree that it is both genuine and built across difference. You will find our events creatively and intellectually challenging. They will put you in touch with people in ways that are energizing but unfamiliar.

But Difficult Friends are friends worth having.

Follow us on Substack or Instagram to get access to all our events. And please consider donating to us through our Meetup page. It really makes a difference.

Dissent School's Session-Based Structure

This is a group designed to incubate close intellectual friendships. We run themed sessions that last 2-4 weeks of small, interconnected workshops and events. If you come to our sessions, you will get to know your Dissent School cohort very well over a short time period. You will read cool things together and make new friends who like to think, analyze, and debate.

Your session cohort will also have the opportunity to join a Signal thread just for people in that session. The link will only be shared at in-person events for that session. And the thread will be closed and archived after the session ends. The thread is designed to let people from the session keep in touch during their session period. The thread closes to encourage people to carry out individual connections away from the pressures of a continuing group dynamic.

However, each event will also be able to stand on its own! So you should feel free to come by whenever, regardless of your attendance at prior events. We welcome first-timers always :-) Members are free to drop in and out of Dissent School. We encourage everyone to feel a sense of freedom and lightness while doing as much or as little with the community as they please.

Guiding Principles

"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." – Walter Lippman, The Stakes of Diplomacy

“For the world is not humane just because it is made by human beings, and it does not become humane just because the human voice sounds in it, but only when it has become the object of discourse. We humanize what is going on the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.” – Hannah Arendt, On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing

"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form." - Vladimir Nabokov

Empowering All Members to Lead

Dissent School is a volunteer-run organization focused on encouraging members' independence of thought. Towards that end, we value all our members not only as attendees and followers, but also as continually developing community leaders.

Please click on this link for an overview of this organization's skill-based path to leadership development.

The Leadership Skill Tree covers everything from the powers of one-time event attendees to instructions for unseating the Lead Organizer in a general election.

We also offer an all-member feedback form. Please take advantage of it, knowing your feedback is important, helps us improve, and will be collected anonymously: https://forms.gle/NFSRWxbi416mknUY7

Statement of Inclusivity: Identity & Politics in Community Discussions

Dissent School is an inclusive community space, and we particularly seek to protect and welcome our LGBTQIA+, queer, transgender, and nonbinary members. Event attendees may be asked to share their preferred pronouns and will be asked to respect the preferred pronouns shared by other participants. Immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent folks seeking a diverse community are also especially encouraged to attend!

That said, to quote the progressive labor activist Maurice Mitchell, we do not accept “using one’s identity or personal experience as a justification for a political position. You may hear someone argue, ‘As a working-class, first-generation American, Southern woman…I say we have to vote no.’ What’s implied is that one’s identity is a comprehensive validator of one’s political strategy—that identity is evidence of some intrinsic ideological or strategic legitimacy. Marginalized identity is deployed as a conveyor of a strategic truth that must simply be accepted. Likewise, historically privileged identities are essentialized, flattened, and frequently—for better or worse—dismissed.

To be clear, personal identity and individual experience are important. And while it is true that the ‘personal is political,’ the personal cannot trump strategy nor should it overwhelm the collective interest. Identity is too broad a container to predict one’s politics or the validity of a particular position. There are over 40 million Black folk in the US. Some have great politics, some do not. One’s racial or gender identity, sex, or membership in any marginalized community is, in and of itself, insufficient information to position someone in leadership or mandate that their perspective be adopted.

People with marginal identities, as human beings, suffer all the frailties, inconsistencies, and failings of any other human. Genuflecting to individuals solely based on their socialized identities or personal stories deprives them of the conditions that sharpen arguments, develop skills, and win debates. We infantilize members of historically marginalized or oppressed groups by seeking to placate or pander instead of being in a right relationship, which requires struggle, debate, disagreement, and hard work. This type of false solidarity is a form of charity that weakens the individual and the collective. Finding authentic alignment and solidarity among diverse voices is serious labor. After all, ‘steel sharpens steel.’”

For a concise summary of my views re: identitarian politics as this meetup’s lead organizer, feel free to refer to his excellent article Building Resilient Organizations.

Supporting Our Community

Our events are offered on a donation basis to minimize potential financial barriers. Please consider making a donation if you would like to contribute to our mission, allow us to offer more meaningful events, and help defray the costs of our meetup.com hosting fees.

Or not! As always, it is your choice! We appreciate the many ways in which everyone contributes to our community, whether via financial or other means—simply by showing up and thoughtfully participating, you are doing a good thing :-)

About Me (Personally)

I'm a writer living in Austin with my dog, Cookie. If you're interested in following my thoughts, you can find me at https://substack.com/@rachelsummercheong I love long essays, fiction, and philosophy. I also like to draw and go out dancing.

The Stoic Code of Epictetus: Dinner & Debate [9 Page Reading ⟡ Free Link]

Mon, May 4 · 7:00 PM CDT

Arpeggio Grill, 6619 Airport Blvd, Austin, TX, US

Tired of book clubs that prioritize consensus and small talk? We do the opposite. This group reads non-fiction, literature and critical theory written by outsiders—texts that challenge the status quo—and uses them as frameworks to practice the art of dissent. In reading and talking through big ideas together, we hope to deepen our shared capacity for critical analysis. Come read with us to sharpen your intellectual skills and learn how to better argue, debate, and disagree!

The Enchiridion of Epictetus: Dinner & Debate

For our second event, we'll be meeting at Arpeggio Grill at 7:00 PM on May 4 to read and discuss The Enchiridion by Epictetus. Please find the reading linked here.

This book club is a follow-up to last week's ethical debate on personal codes of honor.

At our last meeting, we tried our hand at the intellectual exercise of drafting a moral code. Epictetus lays out a bracing take on the practical labor of living one. The Enchiridion—in ancient Greek, the word could mean either a "handbook" or a "dagger" kept close at hand—takes the abstract ideals we debated and tests them against the turmoil of reality.

A former slave who became a preeminent stoic philosopher, Epictetus offers an ultimate outsider’s perspective on honor. He argues that true honor is not found in social reputation, communal approval, or professional status, but in the radical sovereignty of being the ruler of one's own mind. Is he right or wrong on this front?

As we just did in our story club on Omelas, come prepared to debate whether the Stoic path is a form of ultimate freedom or a strategic retreat—and where your own 'code' draws the line between what you can change and what you must endure.

A Social Break From Structure

Since this week's meeting will take place at Arpeggio grill, there won't be any formal structure to our discussion! Just come and enjoy a casual, free-wheeling dinner conversation with your fellow dissenters and dissidents :-)

Everyone is welcome to join us for this philosophical conversation, regardless of whether you've attended any of our prior events! I'm really looking forward to the dinner. You can find more information about the underlying principles of this community below. I hope you will come to love being part of Dissent School.

***

The Dissent School View of Friendship

Suppressing conflict leads to performative, limited, fragile relationships. Celebrating dissent, and figuring out how to translate between divergent worlds, creates strong bonds of intellectual friendship. Stop stagnating; start debating! (You can also decide to make enemies or acquaintances instead of friends, if that is your preference. Your choice! Free rein!)

Difficult Friends: Uniting Creative Friendship Lab x Dissent School

There are things that can only happen between people who are genuinely present to each other. Not performing, not managing, not carefully calibrating what they show.

Wholehearted creative collaboration is one of them. Real intellectual encounter is another. The kind of friendship that actually sustains people through difficulty is a third.

Difficult Friends organizes two volunteer-run grassroots projects in Austin: Creative Friendship Lab and Dissent School.

Our mission is to develop in members:

(1) creative confidence,
(2) intellectual independence, and
(3) the subtle skills needed to form close friendships.

We think it’s good to be a Difficult Friend.

Friendship itself is difficult to the degree that it is both genuine and built across difference. You will find our events creatively and intellectually challenging. They will put you in touch with people in ways that are energizing but unfamiliar.

But Difficult Friends are friends worth having.

Follow us on Substack or Instagram to get access to all our events. And please consider donating to us through our Meetup page. It really makes a difference.

Dissent School's Session-Based Structure

This is a group designed to incubate close intellectual friendships. We run themed sessions that last 2-4 weeks of small, interconnected workshops and events. If you come to our sessions, you will get to know your Dissent School cohort very well over a short time period. You will read cool things together and make new friends who like to think, analyze, and debate.

Your session cohort will also have the opportunity to join a Signal thread just for people in that session. The link will only be shared at in-person events for that session. And the thread will be closed and archived after the session ends. The thread is designed to let people from the session keep in touch during their session period. The thread closes to encourage people to carry out individual connections away from the pressures of a continuing group dynamic.

However, each event will also be able to stand on its own! So you should feel free to come by whenever, regardless of your attendance at prior events. We welcome first-timers always :-) Members are free to drop in and out of Dissent School. We encourage everyone to feel a sense of freedom and lightness while doing as much or as little with the community as they please.

Guiding Principles

"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." – Walter Lippman, The Stakes of Diplomacy

“For the world is not humane just because it is made by human beings, and it does not become humane just because the human voice sounds in it, but only when it has become the object of discourse. We humanize what is going on the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.” – Hannah Arendt, On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing

"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form." - Vladimir Nabokov

Empowering All Members to Lead

Dissent School is a volunteer-run organization focused on encouraging members' independence of thought. Towards that end, we value all our members not only as attendees and followers, but also as continually developing community leaders.

Please click on this link for an overview of this organization's skill-based path to leadership development.

The Leadership Skill Tree covers everything from the powers of one-time event attendees to instructions for unseating the Lead Organizer in a general election.

We also offer an all-member feedback form. Please take advantage of it, knowing your feedback is important, helps us improve, and will be collected anonymously: https://forms.gle/NFSRWxbi416mknUY7

Statement of Inclusivity: Identity & Politics in Community Discussions

Dissent School is an inclusive community space, and we particularly seek to protect and welcome our LGBTQIA+, queer, transgender, and nonbinary members. Event attendees may be asked to share their preferred pronouns and will be asked to respect the preferred pronouns shared by other participants. Immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent folks seeking a diverse community are also especially encouraged to attend!

That said, to quote the progressive labor activist Maurice Mitchell, we do not accept “using one’s identity or personal experience as a justification for a political position. You may hear someone argue, ‘As a working-class, first-generation American, Southern woman…I say we have to vote no.’ What’s implied is that one’s identity is a comprehensive validator of one’s political strategy—that identity is evidence of some intrinsic ideological or strategic legitimacy. Marginalized identity is deployed as a conveyor of a strategic truth that must simply be accepted. Likewise, historically privileged identities are essentialized, flattened, and frequently—for better or worse—dismissed.

To be clear, personal identity and individual experience are important. And while it is true that the ‘personal is political,’ the personal cannot trump strategy nor should it overwhelm the collective interest. Identity is too broad a container to predict one’s politics or the validity of a particular position. There are over 40 million Black folk in the US. Some have great politics, some do not. One’s racial or gender identity, sex, or membership in any marginalized community is, in and of itself, insufficient information to position someone in leadership or mandate that their perspective be adopted.

People with marginal identities, as human beings, suffer all the frailties, inconsistencies, and failings of any other human. Genuflecting to individuals solely based on their socialized identities or personal stories deprives them of the conditions that sharpen arguments, develop skills, and win debates. We infantilize members of historically marginalized or oppressed groups by seeking to placate or pander instead of being in a right relationship, which requires struggle, debate, disagreement, and hard work. This type of false solidarity is a form of charity that weakens the individual and the collective. Finding authentic alignment and solidarity among diverse voices is serious labor. After all, ‘steel sharpens steel.’”

For a concise summary of my views re: identitarian politics as this meetup’s lead organizer, feel free to refer to his excellent article Building Resilient Organizations.

Supporting Our Community

Our events are offered on a donation basis to minimize potential financial barriers. Please consider making a donation if you would like to contribute to our mission, allow us to offer more meaningful events, and help defray the costs of our meetup.com hosting fees.

Or not! As always, it is your choice! We appreciate the many ways in which everyone contributes to our community, whether via financial or other means—simply by showing up and thoughtfully participating, you are doing a good thing :-)

About Me (Personally)

I'm a writer living in Austin with my dog, Cookie. If you're interested in following my thoughts, you can find me at https://substack.com/@rachelsummercheong I love long essays, fiction, and philosophy. I also like to draw and go out dancing.

Leadership Training: Dissent School x Creative Friendship Lab [Collaboration]

Tue, May 12 · 7:30 PM CDT

Lazarus Brewing Company, 4803 Airport Boulevard, Austin, TX, US

A special collaboration between Dissent School and the Creative Friendship Lab! Develop as a leader at this crossover training for event organizers. Details TBA! Open to members of either organization who want to explore how they can integrate their own ideas into group activities.

Difficult Friends: Uniting Creative Friendship Lab x Dissent School

There are things that can only happen between people who are genuinely present to each other. Not performing, not managing, not carefully calibrating what they show.

Wholehearted creative collaboration is one of them. Real intellectual encounter is another. The kind of friendship that actually sustains people through difficulty is a third.

Difficult Friends organizes two volunteer-run grassroots projects in Austin: Creative Friendship Lab and Dissent School.

Our mission is to develop in members:

(1) creative confidence,
(2) intellectual independence, and
(3) the subtle skills needed to form close friendships.

We think it’s good to be a Difficult Friend.

Friendship itself is difficult to the degree that it is both genuine and built across difference. You will find our events creatively and intellectually challenging. They will put you in touch with people in ways that are energizing but unfamiliar.

But Difficult Friends are friends worth having.

Follow us on Substack or Instagram to get access to all our events. And please consider donating to us through our Meetup page. It really makes a difference.

Empowering All Members to Lead

Dissent School is a volunteer-run organization focused on encouraging members' independence of thought. Towards that end, we value all our members not only as attendees and followers, but also as continually developing community leaders.

Please click on this link for an overview of this organization's skill-based path to leadership development.

The Leadership Skill Tree covers everything from the powers of one-time event attendees to instructions for unseating the Lead Organizer in a general election.

We also offer an all-member feedback form. Please take advantage of it, knowing your feedback is important, helps us improve, and will be collected anonymously: https://forms.gle/NFSRWxbi416mknUY7