Altered States Of Conversation E145| Paradigms, Membranes, Archetypes: Digital Age Philosophy w/ Alexander Bard
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Jun 5, 2026 
Alexander Bard, philosopher, musician and author who studies digital culture and paradigms. He explores the shift from industrialism to informationalism and the rise of attentionalism. He outlines paradigmatics, membranics and archetypology. He discusses social scale, loyalty, decentralization, chronomics and how attention is being redefined and corrupted in the digital age.
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Evolved Social Sizes Shape Loyalty And Religion
- Human social sizes recur: family ~40, clan ~157 (Dunbar), and sociont ~1,200–1,500; religion often recreates these social scales as communities.
- Bard argues modern loyalty struggles center on extending care beyond these evolved sizes to avoid world-annihilating violence.
Philosophy's Central Question Is Extending Loyalty
- The central philosophical question across history is how to extend loyalty beyond the sociont to larger collectives without reverting to genocidal violence.
- Bard links 20th-century philosophy (Derrida, Levinas) to grappling with this question after industrial-scale atrocities.
Shamanoids Built Temples And Forged Larger Communities
- Bard recounts shamanoid roles as go-betweens on battlefields who could safely cross tribes to negotiate peace and later founded temples that became centers for larger membranes.
- He connects shamanoid activity to the origin of religion and the formation of cities around shared sacred centers.