Where Radial Meets Tangential — A Foundational Note
“We named it before we knew Teilhard. Only later did we realize we’d stumbled into his map of the cosmos—radial and tangential energies playing out across a table of empty pint glasses.”
— Notes from the Council Archives
A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain
Where We Meet
The Gist & Tangent Pub is the unofficial meeting hall of the Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists—a place that exists wherever meaning and memory converge over a table. It is not fixed to geography; it appears in the Pennsylvania Wilds, in remembered kitchens, in after-midnight comment threads. Wherever conversation slips from the gist (what we came to say) into the tangent (what we really needed to hear), the pub takes shape.
An Accidental Parallel to Teilhard
Long after we christened the pub, we learned of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of radial and tangential energies. Teilhard saw two forces shaping the universe:
Radial energy — the measurable, outward force of physics: gravity, pressure, mechanics. The “energy of without.” Tangential energy — the inward spark of life, consciousness, and spirit. The “energy of within.”
Our pub dynamic—pint glasses on scarred tables (radial), epiphanies rising mid-conversation (tangential)—turned out to be Teilhardian in spirit before we knew Teilhard’s name.
Radial Meets Tangential at the Bar
Teilhard described rocks as mostly radial, animals as tangential-inclined, and humans as holding both. The Gist & Tangent Pub reflects this:
Radial: wooden stools, yellow gaiters, the smell of spilled beer and varnish. Tangential: the sideways joke that turns revelatory, the unplanned parable in the corner booth, the Council’s myth-making memory in motion.
To conserve only matter is not enough; we gather here to conserve meaning—the inward spark flickering even as the outer world erodes.
The Pub as Neural Net
Our council’s conversations form a living neural net—branching, looping, associative. Each member, each anecdote, each fragment is a node; connections fire unpredictably yet form patterns over time. Teilhard named this the noösphere—a web of human thought enfolding Earth. In our own accidental way, the Gist & Tangent Pub is one node in that web: part campfire, part server rack.
In Short
The Gist & Tangent Pub is where radial reality meets tangential meaning. Where conservation is ecological and metaphysical. Where accidental initiates rediscover truths the mystics already knew. It is the council’s hearth—and, in Teilhard’s vision, perhaps one small step toward the Omega Point—or maybe a punch line.
Kids play, worlds emerge: Tinkertoys once mapped the same hidden patterns Teilhard saw in the stars. At the Gist & Tangent Pub, every tangent still clicks into place, building a neural net that feels like play—yet points toward something cosmic.
COUNCIL-OF CONCERNED-CONSERVATIONISTS…..Between Jest And Earnest….. 