Psychology's role in shaping our understanding of what it means to be human is entangled with industrialization, commodification, and the reproduction of the human subject.
Moving towards an animate worldview recognizes the relational nature of human experiences and the agency of non-human forces in shaping thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Embracing the mysterious, wild, and uncontrollable aspects of existence and questioning fixed notions and narratives invite new forms of worship and possibilities in response to the changing world.
Deep dives
The Urgency to Decenter Western Psychology
Bio Okomalafe discusses the need to decenter Western psychology, highlighting its complicity in the creation of Western modernity. He argues that psychology's historical disciplinarity and its role in shaping our understanding of what it means to be human are entangled with industrialization, commodification, and the reproduction of the human subject. Decentering psychology opens up space for acknowledging other psychologies and questioning the assumptions and values embedded within the discipline. Okomalafe emphasizes the importance of ontological mutiny, challenging how we think and see the world, and creating new ways of being and becoming.
The Pitfalls of Psychology Vernacular
Okomalafe critiques the dominance of psychology vernacular in evaluating success and measuring value in relationships and societies. He argues that psychology vernacular has become a theological process, elevating individual behavior as the ultimate measure of value and pathologizing experiences outside the norm. He highlights the limitations of individualistic perspectives and the reductionist tendencies of psychology. Okomalafe suggests moving towards an animate worldview, recognizing the relational nature of human experiences and the agency of non-human forces in shaping thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Beyond Safety and Control
The podcast explores the dangers of seeking safety and control as the ultimate goals in modernity. It discusses the story of Baldur and Loki from Norse mythology as a metaphor for the pursuit of safety leading to stagnation and a false sense of security. Emphasizing the importance of falling to our knees in humility and gratitude before the immense powers of the world, the episode encourages embracing the mysterious, the wild, and the uncontrollable. It suggests welcoming the trickster and exploring new forms of worship and devotion that go beyond individualism and aim for alignment with the unfolding world.
Reevaluating Individualism and Safety
The podcast challenges the dominant focus on the individual in modern psychology and society. It highlights the need to recognize the relationality and interconnectedness of beings and the limitations of individualistic perspectives. It questions the obsession with safety and control, asserting that safety often leads to a loss of movement, vibrancy, and growth. The episode explores alternative ways of understanding agency, worship, and wellbeing that embrace the mysterious, wild, and uncontrollable aspects of existence.
Finding New Gods in a Changing World
The podcast concludes by calling for the emergence of new gods and new forms of worship in response to the changing world. It challenges the fixed notions and narratives of modernity and invites listeners to open themselves to new possibilities and temporalities. The episode encourages losing ourselves in the wild places and being visited so thoroughly that we are left undone and ready for composting, ready for the impossible. It invites us to embrace the decade of the fugitive, exploring new ways of being and becoming beyond the confines of predetermined narratives.
Báyò Akómoláfé is an author, celebrated speaker, teacher, and self-styled trans-public intellectual whose vocation goes beyond justice and speaking truth to power to opening up other spaces of power-with. In this episode of The Emerald, Báyò joins Josh for a deep-dive discussion into how the Western psychological vision shapes modernity, and the need to expand into alternative stories of what 'being' means. Says Báyò: "Psychology is complicit in the creation of Western modernity. It is not a thing apart. Its disciplinarity, its history, and its legacies are tied up with the industrialization, commodification, the manufacturing, the replication and the reproduction of the human subject. How we think about what it means to be human, what it means to have agency, what it means to think, who has cognition, who doesn't have cognition — all of this is tied in with the historicity of psychology." Using animate tradition as a foundation, Josh and Báyò explore Norse and Polynesian trickster myths, trauma discourse and Puritanism, and pay homage to the gods of in between spaces as they explode open a vision of being, bodies, and sentience that is vast, wild, and porous.
