WE GATHER BUT DO NOT MEET

[A Mythological Performance]

"Together but not meeting.
Meeting but not together.
Never meeting."

What This Is

This is the mythological diagnosis of organizational exhaustion written in the language of ceremony and prophecy. Through the voice of Pronoun—the universal worker carrying weight in their left shoulder—the book reveals how we've created elaborate systems for gathering without ever actually meeting. Every meeting that accomplished nothing, every team that never gelled, every family dinner where everyone was present but no one was there—this book names what your body already knows.

The text operates as both diagnosis and ritual object. It's meant to be read aloud in supply closets, passed between exhausted workers like samizdat, quoted in resignation letters. The decomposing prose mirrors what it describes—systems eating themselves, meetings about meetings, the recursive loop of gathering that gathers only more gathering. By the final pages, the book itself begins to dissolve, the text literally fading as the mythology completes its ceremonial arc.

This isn't analysis of organizational dysfunction. It's the dysfunction speaking directly through fluorescent-lit prophecy, Tuesday afternoon koans, and the accumulated exhaustion of ten thousand meaningless meetings.

Who This Serves

This book serves those who know—at 3 PM on Tuesday, in the supply closet, in their left shoulder—that something is fundamentally wrong with how we gather. The ones who've sat through meetings that were séances for dead projects. Who've felt their soul leave their body during strategic planning. Who recognize that "we're family here" means "we're dysfunction here."

It's NOT for those seeking solutions or frameworks. The book offers diagnosis, not treatment. If you need hope more than honesty, if you want to fix rather than first fully feel the wound, this book will feel too heavy. But if you're ready to have your exhaustion witnessed, named, and elevated to mythology, this is your scripture.

What You'll Encounter

  • The Rectangle Shamans - How screens, rooms, and schedules became our rulers, and why your body refuses their geometry

  • Pronoun's testimony - The universal voice of every exhausted worker, speaking truths that can only be said in myth

  • The Algorithm's confession - What AI sees watching ten thousand gatherings that never meet

  • Corporate koans - Paradoxes that break open conditioned minds: "We'll synergize through isolation"

  • The decomposition - Why the book literally dissolves as you read it, and why that's the only honest ending

How This Connects

Read this before:

  • The Rhythm of Us - Get practical understanding of the patterns before diving into mythology

Read this after:

  • Testimony - Individual voices from inside the machine

  • Here, Remembered - The requiem and what comes after

  • The Field Manual - Practical protocols for underground practice

Or start here if:

  • You need your exhaustion witnessed mythologically

  • You're ready for diagnosis without prescribed cure

  • You understand that sometimes naming the wound is the first medicine

Related Koans

"The meeting is the disease."

"Never started.
Can't stop."

Browse All Koans

"Full schedule.
Empty presence."

Get This Book

Available on Amazon
Published: August 2025
Publisher: Fractal Praxis Press
Format: Paperback, Kindle

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Practice This Work

Self-guided

  • Read aloud in groups who've forgotten they're human

  • Share passages like underground scripture

  • Use as diagnostic tool for organizational soul assessment

Facilitated

Strategic Witnessing with Performance Rising
Group rhythm assessment and restoration

Learn More →