Quaker Earthcare gathering reflections

This is a set of collected personal reflections from running the Quaker Earthcare gathering in the UK a few weeks ago, and my continued efforts to get the two ~~moral ambition cults~~ I’m a part of to please talk to one another more.

The Quaker Earthcare gathering Epistle can be found at https://centralenglandquakers.org.uk/2026/10/07/quaker-earthcare-gathering-2026/ . It’s a great read, and gives real spiritual direction for Quakers on matters of climate. Notably there’s a lot around preparing to do community support which I’m hoping will translate into various infrastructure assistance for morally ambitious people, and things around ending factory farming.

The gathering itself was excellent, amazing, no notes. Turns out “make everyone sleep on the floor” really was the right way to keep the overly individualistic people out of the room and defragment things. The various new discernment clerking techniques we’ve worked out seem to be working really well. Ended up discerning through the scientific literature on the climate crisis. This is the kind of stuff I want to see in Quakers these days. None of this “oh we’re a bunch of people who like peace and equality”. We’re a methods faith and we like whatever God says we should like. A couple EAs did show up to Quaker Earthcare and got quite interested in exactly what the hell was happening in the Meeting Room, and I did try to explain during the spirituality session but this really wasn’t an introductory kind of Quaker event.

Up next for me

The Quaker discernment research continues. In the way that “Quaker stuff does stuff”, and the stuff is around soul-level modification for strengthening, sharpening, and strategizing one’s moral ambition, we’re cracking through to exactly what the best kind of stuff is for helping EAs who are secularly morally ambitious get spiritually morally ambitious (if they want to). We’ve sort of invented the concept of “spiritual coordination”, that is, it’s like Quaker spiritual accompaniment but for groups, because Quaker things are clearer and more powerful with groups. The underlying aim being not to reach a discernment result, but more along the lines of “soulfuckery for life improvements”. Official Quakers would describe it more as “getting into contact with God’s will for your life”. I’m sure this one is going to go somewhere.

Struggles with integration

I find myself generally rather exhausted at dealing with certain kinds of EAs. When I was clerking Quaker Light Group for some EAs one time and described it as “phone God for life advice”, the immediate response being “but God doesn’t exist” is completely missing the point. I was trying to give a warning brief about the kind of thing that experientially happens in Light Group. Because I really feel that if I just describe it as “Light Group” that’s nowhere near enough of a warning. I’ve had Quakers tell me after attending Light Group that they weren’t really in a proper state to do anything secular the next day because things were still spiritually adjusting.

People with a lack of spiritual experience can end up somewhat distressed by the fact that in Light Group, you phone God for life advice and you get an answer. You can be a non-theist and a Quaker, but you have to be prepared to at least respect that many Quakers think that discernment is about contacting the guidance of a real, out-there “Goddess of Everything Else” style coordinative spiritual fabric, and trying to dial in as closely as you can to exactly what it’s telling you to do. Otherwise you are going to end up really, really haunted by some things that start to happen. There are potential nontheist explanations here I think, but the methods have meaningful life impact, and I’m quite notably rational about many things and also very much a theist, for at least a particular kind of theism.

At the same time, I have so many struggles the other way, too. Being a “truth Quaker” when a lot of those around me are “love Quakers” isn’t great for me at all. Quakers has a long scientific history, but without enough truth can sometimes devolve into the kind of muddled spirituality that can’t help you make difficult choices.

Quakers and AI

The engagement with the Quaker faith-in-action grassroots witness staff lead over Quaker Earthcare led to me ending up with about 80 Quakers on a Zoom call talking about Quaker views on AI. It seems that Britain Yearly Meeting is finally getting its act together on this. One of the other effective altruist Quakers was leading the talk around governance and regulation. There were noted questions at the end of it all about taking a more discerned stance on the matter, so I guess I’ve got some more agenda planning to do. Definitely inviting EAs to that one.

EA and Concern

The thing I’m most worried about with all this is not me and my spooky research, or even the AI stuff, it’s the fact that if you get deep into group relating around moral ambition using certain kinds of methods involving silent waiting then Concern (in the Quaker spiritual sense) is going to start showing up, whether or not you think you’re doing a faith group thing. I think integral altruism is basically in the process of sleepwalking into this completely blind to it.

Spiritually sharpen your moral ambition? It’s going to start dragging you around. It’s going to start modifying your randomness selector and every choice you think you’re making alone, the Light is there making it with you. It’s going to make it flowingly easy to do certain things, and cripplingly difficult to do other things, and you’re not going to work out why until six months down the line, when you realise there was a strategy here that you didn’t cognitively know but the Light did. You’re going to start saying things that you didn’t plan on saying, and only realise long afterwards what they mean. This can go right into the territory of unhinged babbling. If you’re not religious about it, the effects of Concern can look and feel like you’re going insane.

I’m okay because I’m religious, so when I end up pulling some Cthulu-esque Lovecraftian horror possessed bullshit about my event agenda planning and discernment research, that’s just “the Quaker vibe”. I have people I can complain to about it and everything. But the deeper that integral altruism gets into spiritual sharpening of moral ambition, the more it is playing with a very hot fire without the correct kinds of fire safety tools, because it hasn’t realised that God exists (theism not required) and if you ask God for life advice in the right way you get answers and if you keep doing it the answers get stronger until they take over your life.

So, uh, watch brief on that one. You heard it from me first!