Mutations

Mutations podcast returns in this short, off-the-cuff episode as Jeremy offers an update on the manuscript (spoiler alert: it is now complete!), introduces a new online class happening in December, and gives listeners a rough sketch of where the show is headed next."Integral Futuring: Reclaiming Time in the Radical Present" is a three-day weekend seminar, beginning on December 5th. One might describe it as a riff on reclaiming the future, planetary thinking, and the need for a new temporality beyond the clock. Presentations are followed by breakout discussions, resource sharing, and Q&A. Join a community of fellow seekers and explorers for a weekend of in-depth conversations and fellowship.Please reach out if you might need a student discount/pay-what-you-can link. No one will be turned away.

For the fifth episode of MUTATIONS, I am pleased to bring you Michael Brooks. Michael is a political journalist, integral thinker, and host of The Michael Brooks show. Together we explore the Intellectual Dark Web (the subject of his upcoming book from Zero Books) and Jordan Peterson. We also consider the alternative depth psychologist, James Hillman (who arguably speaks more from the left), the applicability of Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to politics, a need in the consciousness culture for a historic grounding in economic theory, and building towards authentic, bottom-up planetary meshworks. SHOW NOTES / FLORILEGIUM The Michael Brooks Show on Patreon Michael’s Twitter The Michael Brooks Show on YouTube Michael Brooks on Zero Books James Hillman, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy—And the World’s Getting Worse James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (Recommended) Rebel Wisdom with Doshin Nelson Roshi (apologies for the brain fog during the recording), “A Zen Master Talks About Jordan Peterson and the Shadow” Notes: This conversation and the heated, bifurcated response to it (200k+ views) is very interesting. So much so that there was a follow-up episode with Rebel Wisdom to reflect on why it hit such a nerve. Ken Wilber, in the late 90s and early 2000s, critiqued much of postmodern academia and the progressive left as “flatland reductionism,” “mean green meme” (via Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics), and “aperspectival madness” (an unfortunate hijacking of Jean Gebser’s term, ‘aperspectival,’ which means something completely different) many years before the Peterson phenomenon in popular culture. There is some substance in these criticisms, (i.e. “true-but-partial”). As we noted in this episode by way of Mark Fisher’s essay, or Angela Nagel’s Kill All Normies, a critique from within the left is needed, and as Rebel Wisdom says often, “the left needs to get its house in order.” I’m in support of this. However, a knowledge and literacy of leftist“theory” is something I often sense is sorely lacking in the integral movement. This is something that Wilber shares with Peterson: a postmodern “allergy,” a lack of progressive metabolism. Integral oriented thinkers from the progressive left desperately need to step forward and bridge that gap.

In this episode, I am joined by Gordon White, host of Rune Soup podcast, a show about magic, culture and the paranormal. Gordon is the author of The Chaos Protocols, Star.Ships, and Pieces of Eight: Chaos Magic Essays and Enchantment. Note that I recorded this before the new year, in December 2019, but if you listen until the end you might notice some oddly prescient comments about health and wellbeing in 2020. I begin my discussion with Gordon exploring the rise of communities of magical practice during a time of planetary crisis, and naturally, we roll into a discussion on imagination and storytelling. What are the kinds of stories - the planetary myths -  we need to be tuning into right now, in the epoch of the Anthropocene/Chthulucene? Gordon talks about how to be “a pacifist in a living universe,” living artistically through a “non-tyrannical way of being in the world.” Authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and her Taoist-anarchic heroes (Georg Orr as depicted in The Lathe of Heaven, or Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea), or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, can teach us something about living this way. Gordon was a delight to speak to - and there’s much more in the conversation.  More show notes: Visit Rune Soup and check out Gordon’s community, where he hosts subscriber events, book clubs, and classes Get Gordon’s books Talking Creation, Faerie, and Facing 2020 with Dr Becca Tarnas (Rune Soup ep.) A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell Podcast music by Infinite Third, used with permission (thanks Billy) Join the Mutations Patreon community for access to early podcasts, Discord server, and book club. Next month we start our Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de Chardin reading club. Join the Mutations Discord server (link may expire)

In episode 7 of Mutations podcast, I am joined by paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield.  Michael is an artist, podcast host (Future Fossils), musician, painter, philosopher--am I missing anything? Like me, Michael wears many hats. We recorded a back-to-back episode. This is part one. You can find part two on Future Fossils.  Michael and I offer philosophical and existential reflections on the “Deep Adaptation” movement, popularized by Jem Bendell’s recent climate report paper, and Daniel Thorson’s Emerge podcast interview, by considering what we can learn from evolutionary and cultural catastrophes throughout history. While we don’t arrive at easy answers, I sense that there is a way of thinking and relating that is emerging in the age of the Anthropocene, as Sean Kelly writes, “beyond hope and despair.” This way of thinking and being leaves open the possibility of a hyper-illuminated dark age... as a way of seeing, like the owl-eyed Athena, into the dark places. LINKS: Michael Garfield on Twitter Santa Fe Institute Michael’s Homepage The Lindisfarne Tapes Sean Kelly, Living in End Times: Beyond Hope and Despair (Revelore Press) MUSIC:  Artist: Billy Mays III / Infinite Third.  Album: Channel(s) Tracks: "Vision(s)" for intro/outro, "In(to)" for intermezzo PATREON:  Join the Mutations Patreon community here for access to our Discord channel, Zoom salon calls, early podcasts and featured writing content. ARTWORK: Featured art by Archan Nair.

The inaugural solo show is finally live! I recorded this not long after my talk with Dr Becca Tarnas (episode 4). Glad it’s finally out there.CONSTELLATING “FIGURATIONS” OF MEANING Illustration by J.R.R. Tolkien In this episode, I’m linking Gebser’s insights on the phenomenology of awakening consciousness (Bewusstwerdung phänomenologie) to some of the existential problems of the hyper-mediated self, and how this all ties to the important mythopoeic image in J.R.R.’Tolkien’s Middle-Earth: Sauron’s eye. Facebook and social media seems only to rev up the cultural fragmentation of communities into smaller and smaller siloed identitarian groups in a “post-truth world” (which, alone, is worth discussing in another solo show). In the age of networks, why is it that communication is breaking down? As I argue, and as Gebser points out, or Douglas Rushkoff has been articulating in his recent Team Human book (and elsewhere, such as Life, Inc), much of this has to do with the underlying structure of consciousness we’ve been leaning on since the Western Renaissance: perspectival consciousness and its potent but immoderate capacity of ratio, to divide. Extractive capitalism, deficient mental-perspectivalism’s spatialized “eye,” and the mythopoeic image of Sauron’s eye all offer us different ways of looking (pun intended) at the phenomenology and crisis of culture (kulturphilosophie) in our own mediated moment. Illustration by J.R.R. Tolkien <img class="thumb-image" data-image="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/554fc007e4b069b360b9ef5

Mutations interviews J.F. Martel, author, filmmaker, philosopher and Weird Studies podcast co-host. Together we discuss technology, mediation, Deleuze and the virtual (and virtual reality), puppets, and much more.

Cultural ecologies and the evolution of consciousness; Deleuze and DeLanda's geographical flows and Teilhardian super-organisms; political fragmentation in the Left and the Right and the push beyond cultural romanticism.