Humans On The Loop

This week is part two of the intense, bizarre, and wonderful roundtable conversation with The Hypermoderns – John David Ebert, Michael Aaron Kamins, and Mimetic Value/Ikkyu Sojun) where we discuss the puzzling connection between clowns and DMT; John’s voyage into the strange realm of mediumship; and Michael’s life-altering series of UFO encounters right after college. Among other things…The Guests:Michael Aaron Kaminshttps://twitter.com/michaelaaronkJohn David Eberthttps://twitter.com/johndavidebertIkkyu Sojunhttps://twitter.com/mimeticvalueSubscribe to Future Fossils on any platform you desire:https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossilsSupport this show on Patreon. It’s good for you and makes you feel good:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldWe Discuss:How everyone gets their own language once we invent the universal translator.Addressing the question of hyperspace “entities” from nonduality and landscape agency.Clown/Harlequin Theory in the psychedelic realm.JDE:“Now I don’t wanna do DMT. You’ve ruined it for me, because I don’t wanna see a clown.”Ikkyu:“Imagine Meow Wolf…but a thousand times more.”The Joker is a floating signifier.Ikkyu talks about an extremely potent and disturbing N,N-DMT trip.The Mantis-Clown connection, vis-a-vis Michael’s Peruvian ayahuasca experiences.The clown in Eastern philosophy as Lao Wonton, the childlike “crazy” old man in kung-fu movies.Michael’s ONE critique of William Irwin Thompson (hint: “Lindisfarne,” what’s in a name?).What is the difference between the techno-optimism of Buckminster Fuller and the techno-optimism of Peter Thiel, Peter Diamandis, and Jeff Bezos?Trump the Clown, the Magician, the Alchemical Fool.Ikkyu:“What if I were like Duncan Trussell or Joe Rogan but I interview ideas, rather than people?”JDE interviews Rudolf Steiner through a medium, Shruti Campbell. He tells us of his love affair with Steiner.JDE explains how he become convinced that there are in fact legit mediums who can communicate with dead people.The theme of confinement in world myth.Exoteric lab institution science and esoteric wilderness field prospecting discovery science.Michael goes into unprecedented detail about his UFO sightings in 2006.Sufjan Stevens’ song “Concerning the UFO Sighting…”Tucker Carlson interviews Nick Pope about UFOs.Book: Who Built The Moon?Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” music video (feat. Kate Bush)Michael’s eternalist/quantum-democracy theory of our self-fulfilling origins/histories.Dan Larimer vs. Vitalik Buterin on the limits of crypto-economic governance.The connections between alien abductions and shamanic initiations.Searching for metaphors complex enough to allow us to inhabit and dwell in hypermodernity.Carl JungCrowley’s Thoth TarotTimothy Morton’s HyperobjectsJames HillmanNassim TalebThe Flying Spaghetti MonsterRupert SheldrakeJohn C. WrightSam HarrisStephen HawkingErik DavisZechariah SitchinWestworld“The Moon” Tarot CardGreg Egan’s DistressFinnegans Wake - HCE (“Here Comes Everyone”)Blade Runner 2049Charles Stross’ AccelerandoJeff Noon (Vert & Pollen)Steven Greer & CE-5Jacques ValleeJ Allen Heinich (sp?)Prometheus & AtlasMircea Eliade Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week, we have a rad roundtable conversation with The Hypermoderns – John David Ebert, Michael Aaron Kamins, and Mimetic Value/Ikkyu Sojun) where we talk Snow Crash, Linguistic Entropy, and The Metaphysics of Video Games; spoil Meow Wolf and Annihilation (warning!); and go deep on the origins of Hypnotherapy and NLP. It’s just part one of an intense three-hour hoedown with some of the sharpest minds I know…The Guests in Order of Appearance:Michael Aaron Kaminshttps://twitter.com/michaelaaronkJohn David Eberthttps://twitter.com/johndavidebertIkkyu Sojunhttps://twitter.com/mimeticvalueSupport this show on Patreon. It’s good for you and makes you feel good:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldWe Talk About:Michael Aaron Kamins:“Shigiro Miyamoto is the Dante of the Hypermodern Age.”Mario is a shaman, Link is Percival of the Round Table…NextNature.net, the Anthropocene, and the Wood Wide WebAre videogames more effective than books as a form of storytelling?John David Ebert likes Grand Theft Auto: “Video games aren’t the problem; they’re the SOLUTION to the problem of living in these bizarre cosmopolitan cities, these huge megalopolitan cities that we’re constantly stressed out by.”Narrative collapse in the shift from the serialized dramas of print-era TV and the reality shows of web-era TVMichael Aaron Kamins:“What does the hero’s journey mean in a world where we have to work 9-to-5 jobs?”Skeumorphism in digital spaces:Video games that mimic office life seem inevitable……but unlike in Snow Crash, we don’t want to walk everywhere in VR.Lists, Explosions, & FlowsWhy Michael Aaron Kamins disagrees with Daniel Pinchbeck about UFOs.If Jordan Peterson is our Confucius, who is our Lao Tzu?MG: “History is a thing that you make.”JDE:“We’ve lost the metaphysics. We have to bring back the metaphysics.”Why and how civilizations disintegrate.MG: “If you’re going to upload me, at least upload me in HD.”JDE: “It’s gotta get more fractal.”Meow Wolf is The Shimmer in AnnihilationArchangel Michael & Garuda, archetypes expressed across the world in time and landscapeMichael and Michael talk about the dragon fighting St. Michael meteor-dinosaur connection thing.Everybody tries to guess MG’s sign.Dr Blue aka Norman Katz, student of Milton EricksonJungian vs Ericksonian psychotherapy and the importance of combining the two.We talk smack on the sociopathic founders of NLP.Mimetic theory.Evolution, entropy, and the Tower of Babel.Shout-Outs:RadioLabDouglas RushkoffPac ManZelda: Breath of the WildCarl Jung’s Red BookNeal Stephenson’s Snow CrashGoogle GlassKevin KellyWilliam BurroughsMeow WolfRudolf Steiner“The Fighting Dinosaurs”Paleontologist Robert BakkerHouston Museum of Nature & ScienceTimothy LearyThe Fourth TurningHistory, Big History, and MetaHistory by SFI PressBeing John MalkovichGilles DeleuzePeter SloterdijkThe Joseph Campbell FoundationRobertson JeffersJon SteinbeckBuddha BombTimothy Morton’s HyperobjectsTom Hui Hu - A Prehistory of the CloudThe Square in the Tower by Neil FergusonThe Architects of the Internet Apologize - New Yorker MagazineJeff Van Der MeerTool & Alex GreyParvatiScott AdamsNLP Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Happy holidays! This week’s guest Tricia Eastman helps people find the holiness in every day by facilitating legal ceremonies in which ordinary membranes in between the different areas of thought and non-thought relax, and new or somehow ancient greater selves emerge appear whatever.It’s a solid conversation with a fascinating person doing very crucial work. I hope you get as much from this dense hour of passage, insight, integration…Tricia’s Sites:psychedelicjourneys.cominstagram.com/psychedelicjourneysWe Discuss:How she became a plant medicine practitioner through the festival psychedelic harm reduction undergroundLeaving a husband, four houses, and all of her possessions to be of service to humanityOvercoming her severe, debilitating eating disorders with ibogaine, ayahuasca, and 5-MeO DMTHow to smuggle the sacred into the global shopping mallReviving the ecstatic mystery schools and other lost spiritual traditionsCoping with the aftermath of collectively “waking up in a burning house” as we make last-minute moves to steer the planet out of further catastrophe“A lot of the decisions that we make are based on false structures of safety, things that make you FEEL safe - like locking your door. Does locking your door really actually make you safe? If someone wants to get into your house, they’re going to get into your house. The truth is, we are all walking around with a lot of trauma. And if we can understand that that is actually an aspect of us, that it is NOT us, then we can get into a space where we can start interacting in a more peaceful way.”Bringing back the rites of passageMoving as a culture into responsibility for the decisions that we makeGrowing up in a Christian family while experiencing “entities”“I was like, ‘If I drink this bottle of wine, this ghost cannot f-ck with me.’ Until I started understanding was that all they wanted was to be shown to the light.”Metamodernist science takes on the psychedelic Other(s)A psychedelic facilitator’s advice on how to behave with ghostsThe gods and spirits as messages from the somatic unconsciousIntegrating indigenous practices into the modern worldReplacing hierarchical teacher-student models with networked and facilitated group learning models“We are the medicine. We don’t necessarily need to take medicine.”How do we come up with something better for a world of proliferating trauma than “Accredited Facilitator from Iboga University”?Shout-Outs To:The Zendo ProjectPlant Spirit HealingCafé GratitudeThe UDVRick Doblin & MAPSBurning ManPhilip K DickBlue aviansRudolf SteinerCarl JungTerence McKennaRichard Rudd * Gene KeysSupport this show on Patreon and come be in our book club! Also, tons of cool free music, art, etc. there:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfield Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week we sit with Bill Pfeiffer – deep ecologist, shamanic guide, and spiritual coach – whose life carried him from nuclear protests on the US East Coast to citizen diplomacy to Russia, where he first encountered Siberian shamans and became immersed, over decades and dozens of visits, in their traditions of ecstasy and communion, with realms and intelligences deeper than the world of identity and politics. A friend of Joanna Macy’s, founder of the Sacred Earth Network, and leader of hundreds of spiritual ecology workshops, Bill has dedicated his life to being a bridge between Native American & Siberian cultures, between alienated humans and the wisdom of the Earth, between heart and mind, future and past.https://billpfeiffer.org/biohttp://www.sacredearthnetwork.netSupport Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon to join our book club, access secret episodes, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldIn this episode, we discuss:Reconnecting to nature, to the bodyHow political activism for nuclear disarmament changed his whole life and perspective“I began to feel like I could make a difference…like you can make a difference…in how things play out here on Planet Earth.”How Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs was appropriated from the Blackfoot tipi, and what we lost in the translation“We’re all indigenous to land if we go back far enough in our ancestry, and we have a blueprint of a balanced existence.”“Mystical experience is a birthright, if we’re open to it, or grace is there for us.”Book: The American Replacement of Nature by William Irwin ThompsonHow can we differentiate healthy and unhealthy solutions to our human need for belonging?“There’s a lot of people who are spiritually inclined, and I’m like…I’m sorry, man, you gotta vote. It doesn’t mean you have to go crazy, it means you have to PAY ATTENTION.”His journey from citizen diplomacy to Siberian shamanism, through connecting Siberians to Native AmericansWhat he learned about being human from the SiberiansBook: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle“To reclaim our power is to reclaim ourselves as cosmic beings, not just beings. It’s that big.”“It’s not that I didn’t get rejected or that people weren’t angry with me at times, or copped an attitude because of what I was doing. But largely, I have felt embraced by both of those cultures as being a bridge, of serving a bridge-building function. I feel like I know how to love people, and how to receive love, and that is the currency that gets the job done.”Episode 60 with Sean Esbjörn HargensEpisode 65 with John David EbertThe possible revival of a circumpolar shamanic tradition in the latter 21st Century after global warming“I was an amateur futurist and then I just gave up, because there were far too many possibilities, and I was wasting my time getting afraid of imagining.”What did he learn from the Siberians that were not lessons living in the Native American legacy he encountered?“The relative success that me and my cohorts have had with native people is all about listening and respect. If that’s cliche, I want more of it.”The ongoing resurrection of Native American ecstatic traditionsBook: Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler & Jamie WhealJoanna MacyHow to co-opt ecstasy for money, and how not toOne of Michael’s craziest sober experiences everConscious sexualityAnd more…Subscribe to Future Fossils on any podcasting platform:https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossilsJoin our (very active, awesome) Facebook Discussion Group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossils Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week's guests are two of the most limber and insightful minds I know, futurist Michelle Shevin and actor-artist "The Ungoogleable" Michaelangelo. Since this is episode one of a whole new hundred episodes – and since I'm a sucker for ceremony and round numbers – this week we're taking a whirlwind tour of this show's recurring themes: how life, mind, culture, psychology, art, and science all change in the Internet Age, and how to live the best lives that we can amidst these transformations...Support the show for exclusive episodes, music, a book club, and more:patreon.com/michaelgarfieldMichelle Shevinmedium.com/@micheboxMichaelangelovoidandimagination.comWe Discuss:• Kronos & Kairos, revisited• Re: JF Martel – Episodes 18 & 71 • The information science of innovation and why Terence McKenna’s Timewave Zero may not be TOTAL hogwash• Book: Geoff West - Scale• Re: “An Oral History of the End of ‘Reality’” – Episode 91 • IS our time unique at all?• WJT Mitchell paraphrase: “We’re all constantly feeling as though everything is about to happen, or perhaps it already has and we just haven’t noticed it”• #presentshock• Did we miss the singularity?• Trapped in the present• MA: “chronopractic adjustments” of pulling your past and future into alignment• MA: “I feel like all expression is a form of deception…I try to look to the deception closest to the truth.”• Plato: “Writing is a step backward from Truth.”• Biological evolution as machine learning and the domestication of humans by technology• MA: “I took a hit of GPS / got lost within the endlessness / gave up the compass in my chest / and oriented to the West”• Michaelangelo – Episode 37 • Evolution’s bias toward paedomorphy / neoteny• MS: “What happens when DNA becomes the substrate for all this information?”• Storing data in the organic cloud• The zone of proximal evolution and how “We can’t invent what we don’t have the parts lying around for”• Every new technology is a remix• David Krakauer – Episode 75 • Dennis McKenna - Episode 88 • Toxoplasmosis mind control and how nobody actually things if “my brain made me do it”• MS: “If we are midwives to new myths, then part of the project is to litter the landscape with the right raw material, so that in the future, the right raw material is just lying around for people to pick up and build the tools with.”• MA: “meme-ifying” (vs. “mummifying”)• Book: Sam Harris – Free Will• Film: Upstream Color• Film: Primer• Book: Peter Watts – Blindsight• Book: Peter Watts – Echopraxia• Re: The Teafaerie – Episode 100 • Re: Erik Davis – Episode 99 • Re: Doug Rushkoff – Episode 67 • Weird Studies Podcast is amazing, their Episode 32 on Eyes Wide Shut• MG: “At the dusk of civilization, our eyes are adjusting to the darkness.”• The digital dark age• Book: Stewart Brand – The Clock of the Long Now• Richard Doyle on Philip K. Dick and the evolutionary arms race of cameras and blind spots leading inexorably toward paranoia and then beyond into metanoia (see also, “The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast”)• An entropy-driven metabolic arms race inevitab fractal Argus, coated in eyes• When it comes to living through a Dark Age, MA suggests, “I think it comes down to learning how to glow in the dark. The agents of deception are our greatest teachers, in that sense.”• MA: “Increased surveillance creates more performative personalities.”• Re: Mitch Mignano – Episodes 57 & 98 • Elon Musk on Joe Rogan (of course that guy believes in simulation theory)• Song: Yeasayer’s “Under The Glass of the Microscope”• Linear, Circular, Helical time• MS: “Planning often disguises itself as prediction”• What is causation, anyway?• Possibility as a fractal branching lightning bolt from potential to actual• MA: “Scrye-ogenic Future” in a crystalline model of time• MA: synchronicities vs. “synchroniceties”• Book: Julian Jaynes – The Bicameral Mind• Daniel Dennett’s “software archeology”• The origins of divination• Morsels of bicamerality reinstated by our digital ecology, with someone’s agenda in it• MS: “The arrogance is in thinking that it was only ever us.”• The Neurological Explanation for Imaginary Friends• The Microbiological Explanation for “Self-Transforming Machine Elves”• Swing Low, Eukaryote, coming for to carry me home• David Pearce – “The Antispeciesist Manifesto”• Are Laboratory Burgers Vegan?• Empathy is a human (but not uniquely human) super power• Rebranding the human species (eg, “Dog Friends,” “Cat Friends”)• Book: Alejandro Jodorowsky - Where The Bird Sings Best• Expertise is knowing the right search terms• DNA as a language; microbial ecology as a language• Introspection as an escape hatch from history and “profane time”• And more... Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s guest is The Teafaerie, my amazing friend and a true one-of-a-kind psychedelic superhero.The Teafaerie writes stories, poems, movies, plays and essays, makes videos, organizes flash mobs, and is one of the founders of Prometheatrics, a big beautiful Esplanade camp at Burning Man. At various times she has been a writer, nanny, actress, flow arts teacher, childbirth doula, homeless person, aid worker, live-action storyteller, toy inventor, app designer, street performer, and party promoter. She is a frequent contributor to the worlds most excellent psychedelic information site Erowid.org. She also regularly volunteers as a festival trip sitter with the Zendo Project and RGX medical.Her most recent essay on Erowid:https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/2016/05/17/mapping-the-source/My favorite of her essays:https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/page/18/More about psychedelic harm reduction:https://www.zendoproject.org/We Discuss:Why it’s okay that the Elon Musk will get (to beta-test) immortality first (for the rest of us)The intimately cybernetic world of brain-machine interfaces and Life After Advertising“I’m just a coward. I TRIED despair and I can’t TAKE that shit.”How parenthood changes your decision to be or not to be an optimist.Simulation Theory~ ”We need to stop stressing the system and offload our consciousness offworld to L5 or VR”…or is that some whack pseudognostic transmania?“I believe the universe is art, because…”We’re the children of god, but most people act like we’re the pets of god or the toys of god.The child of a sheep grows up to be a sheep. The child of a god grows up to be a god.Mass manifestation and the Global Consciousness ProjectHow to make wishes come true by getting god’s attentionPartner yoga for engineered miraclesBurning Man is a manifestation engineWhat Are You Playing For?What evolution looks like to DNADesigner Babies & THE ETHICS OF Designer Babies“Do you know The Silmarillion?”Olaf Stapledon is the manBlack Mirror’s episode “Black Museum”Autonomous by Annalee Newitz and robot AR architectureGreg Egan’s Permutation City (and Diaspora)“Any sufficiently advanced 3D printer could tattoo you.”~ “If the universe is determined, it’s offensive to me, it devalues my art.”Getting your wishes fulfilled is of evolutionary benefitHow many things had to go right? ALL of them.“Maybe THIS is the shortest path, and it’s JUST LONG.”5-Meo DMTThe burden of publishing to an enormous audience on ErowidFangirling about my sci fi, “An Oral History of the End of ‘Reality’” (Episode 91)Future Fossils Podcast is starting a book club for mind-blowing sci fi! Learn more and sign up: https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe to this show on any platform you desire:https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossils Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

In this discussion, Erik Davis, a renowned journalist and author, delves into the captivating themes of his new book, 'High Weirdness,' exploring 1970s figures like Terence McKenna and Philip K. Dick. He examines the transformative culture of the era, including its interplay with consumerism and paranoia. Davis articulates the evolving concept of weirdness in today's context, stressing interconnectedness in a shifting world. He also critiques contemporary mindfulness and urges a flexible mindset to navigate modern challenges.

It’s a deep and wide investigation of decentralized networks of many kinds this week, drawing on the insights and wisdoms of five very different panelists in a discussion held at the legendary experimental city-under-construction Arcosanti, Arizona. Like it’s a rainforest, I don’t even know how to start talking about this conversation – too many points of entry, too many species living in it! Here are this week’s fabulous guests:Emaline Friedman of Holochainhttps://herlinus.com/Sarah Johnstone, COO of The NuMundo Projecthttps://numundo.org/aboutJacob Devaney of Unify http://www.culturecollective.org/about/“Raven” Mitch Mignano, loosely “of” Reality Sandwich & Institute of Ecotechnicshttps://facebook.com/mitch.mignano.77––Support this show, and Michael's many other awesome projects, on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe on any platform you desire:https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossilsJoin the Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsRecommend a sponsor:futurefossils@protonmail.comWe Discuss:The three forms of decentralization (architectural, logical, and political);The historical centralization of human culture around resources;Why technological decentralization is insufficient to achieve the goals of a more humane and equitable society;Decentralization of civilization through the emergence of digital nomadism and the ecovillage movement;The transition from a value of ownership to a value of access;Decentralization as an adaptation to the unscaleability of imperialism and colonialism;How the free market capitalist ideology rewards success and punishes failure, even though those are largely dependent on luck;How can we make planetary culture NOT a pyramid scheme?Distributed trust and trustless transactions, and their political consequences;Data ownership, data security, and the vital importance of restoring our ability to communicate through “unenclosable carriers”;How can we divest from abusive and exploitative giant tech companies?How decentralization as an ideology can conceal the ways that enforced consensus is a kind of “shadow centralization”;Who is affected by this decision? Who has stake in the outcome of this issue?How can we avoid #algocracy when technological literacy is a constant challenge?Incentive structures and incentive landscapes: What kind of behaviors are we encouraging?Why Facebook and Google will be seen by history as a humanitarian crisis (and what we can do about it);Market-driven shifts in consciousness;The limits of crypto-economic governance;William Irwin Thompson - At The Edge of HistoryJoshua Ramey - The Politics of DivinationJustOne OrganicsFairBnBArcade CitySteemitTrybeScuttlebuttMiVote Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s guest is Dr. Zak Stein, an author and educator whom I met as fellow students of the work of philosopher Ken Wilber over ten years ago. Zak took the road of serious high academic scholarship while I was learning the less laudable and messier way through immersion in the arts and entertainment world, but here we are converging to discuss one of the most important issues of our time: the need for a new human story that includes both modernity’s rigorous scientific inquiry and postmodernity’s revelation of how everything we know is framed by language, culture, and perspective. Without some clever, soulful balance of the two we’re stuck in a “post-truth” era where our need for answers to our fundamental questions leads us backwards into “isms” instead of forwards into something more good, true, and beautiful than what has come before.Zak’s answer (like so many other guests on Future Fossils) is to get MORE rigorous about the scope and limits of the world disclosed by science, MORE honest with ourselves about the context-bound claims we can make on knowledge, and MORE open to how all “reality” starts in direct experience, as conscious subjects – where we meet to make new, open-ended, ever-more refined, evolving answers to the questions:What is human? What is love? What are we here to do?Read Zak’s new paper, “Love in a Time Between Worlds: On the Metamodern ‘Return’ to a Metaphysics of Eros”:http://www.zakstein.org/love-in-a-time-between-worlds/‘Where modern scientists often critique the claims of metaphysics as unverifiable and thus untrue, postmodernists critique both science and metaphysics for making truth claims in the first place. Either way, to call an idea or theory “metaphysical” has become another way of saying it is unacceptable. Often with comes with some implication that the theory is a kind of superstition, which means metaphysics is taken not as an attempt to engage the truth but rather as a kind of covert power play or psychological defense mechanism. I argue the opposite: metaphysics is what saves us from a descent into discourses that are merely about power and illusion. Believe it or not, there are metaphysical systems that survived postmodernism and popped-out of the far end of the 1990’s with “truth” and “reality” still intact. These include object oriented ontology and dialectical critical realism, among others.’Zak is also the Co-Presdient and Academic Director at the Center for Integral Wisdom:https://centerforintegralwisdom.org/…and on the scientific advisor board at Neurohacker Collective:https://neurohacker.com/— In this episode we discuss:Lewis Mumford, Ken Wilber, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jurgen Habermas, Seth Abramson, Timothy Morton, Rudolf Steiner, Alfred North Whitehead, Hanzi Freinacht, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Greenhall, and many other luminaries.Right-wing and authoritarian political thought is resurgent today because of the absence of reasonable discourse about metaphysical realities during a time when exactly these realties are being put in question due to the apocalypse of global capitalism and the accompanying planetary transition into the Anthropocene .The way we answer questions like, “What is the human?” will determine the next century because of the emerging power of new technologies that render the human mailable in unpresented ways, which has been made clear by writers like Yuval Harari.“The difference between metaphysics and science is not about what you can see and what you cannot see. It is about what you are paying attention to when you are seeing.”“What we call postmodernism is just modernism with the volume turned WAY up.”The difference between modern, postmodern, and metamodern views on science and the realities disclosed by science.What does it mean to cut a definition of the human out of our education systems?The relevance of Rudolf Steiner’s metaphysics and pedagogy in 21st Century education – especially its attention to subjectivity and interiority.How fundamentalism, nationalism, racism, and other regressive movements in society are symptoms of a postmodern assault on consensus reality.“In the absence of metaphysics, there’s a vacuum of meaning…what can step into that is not always pretty.”“After postmodernism, we can’t return to some pat, totalizing answer for everybody. After postmodernism, when we begin to build a new coherence, it’s always going to be a polycentric and dynamic and always renegotiated coherence. And that’s what science ought to be, which is to say, knowledge building, and not knowledge finding. Period.”“Ideas matter – and right now, we live in a context where ideas matter only insofar as they can be leveraged for clicks on websites that generate advertisement revenue.”When did we start gladly giving our decision-making powers over to others? And who do we trust now when we know that expertise is so contextual and frequently abused?Making the Earth into a giant building is the beginning of metamodern history – the Anthropocene signaling our deep relationship with the ecosphere.Michael reveals his vision of an Eclipse Station & Black Madonna University as a nobler motivation for a second “space race.”We’ve succeeded in making mega-machines out of people but need to reframe what it means to be IN relationship…Hyperobjects and a metamodern investigation of synchronicity and time…the objectivity of time is tricky.“Animals do not build sundials, even though they would benefit greatly from them. And so you’ll notice that one of the things that sets humans apart is their ability to make metaphysics – that they relate to things that are objectively real, like time.”The eternal and the everlasting – two different things.“Who gets to decide, and how do we get to decide, on these deep questions?”“To reify a false and truncated metaphysics – for example, to say that love doesn’t exist, that free will doesn’t actually exist – to really try to build institutions based on that, which would result in a radically authoritarian society – these things have been done. But never with the technological power that we now have to, for example, to build a school around that hypothesis. Or an army. And so there’s this very sincere need to make sure that as we move through this period, we’re keeping the voices who want to simplify and reduce and return to modernity and the monological at bay. So applaud, the postmodernists, but we also want to get beyond the postmodern critique, and the whole spirit and emotion of critique, and somehow move into a space where we’re reconstructing a new metanarrative, instead of taking potshots and deconstructing anyone who steps up to offer a metanarrative. After postmodernism it needs to be provisional, polycentric, built iteratively through collaboration. But there needs to be a project in good spirits in that direction. Because the regressive tendencies on the right who want to drive us toward racism and nationalism are having questions about, ‘What is the human?,’ and answering them irrationally. We need to have VERY reasonable and profound answers to questions like, ‘What is human?,’ ‘What are we here on Earth to do?,’ ‘What is a relationship?,’ ‘How important are relationships?,’ ‘What is love?,’ ‘Is love real?’, ‘What’s the significance of love?’…these things are part of what it means to be human.”How do we build a just and humane, “post-tragic” culture on the other side of the Crisis of the Anthropocene?We are all dependent on unjust and ecologically devastating supply chains…now what?“Hate creates externalities. Love creates no externalities.”The logic of the metamodern system has to be one in which there are no externalities.Support this show on PatreonJoin the Facebook GroupSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on Google PodcastsSubscribe on StitcherSubscribe on SpotifySubscribe on iHeart Radio Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s guest is the intriguing, talented, and amazingly well-organized Malena Grosz, who is currently traveling across the United States to interview party culture professionals for her multimedia thesis on community-led party culture to gain and share their perspectives on best practices and shared challenges in cultivating better life through celebratory gatherings – and to tackle the corporate commodification of “nightlife” and its dangerous side effects.Her website-as-thesis-project will eventually be live (circa May 2019) at:http://partyprotoolkit.comWe Discuss:Gentrification and corporatization of nightlife versus community-led celebration, What urban nightlife can learn from Burning Man and festival culture, The disavowal of mundane time in spaces of celebration and how party culture does and does not need to accept the realities of our organic rhythms,Mentorship, moderation, self-control, personal agency, Reconciling the nomadic and sedentary strains of humanity,Taking responsibility for your own education (and life in general),Getting kicked out of the School of Art for consent-based body painting,Harm reduction versus the nanny state,Learning to speak party to Academia,The extraordinary importance of cognitive liberty and the freedom to imbibe,The economics of big festivals and their scaling problem, and how it turns people into cattle,Alternatives to alcohol (like tonics) and how parties can stay solvent without depending on encouraging dangerous levels of intoxication,Learning how to empower people by delegating decision-making authority as an event producer,Everything in moderation, even moderation,The importance of safe spaces within every party (like Camp Soft Landing at Burning Man),Rest stops at festivals and rests in music, quiet places where people can connect to contrast against losing yourself on the dance floor,What party culture can learn from the intensely structured environment of academia,“Festival referees” - good idea or disaster waiting to happen?,Deputizing “Knights of the Dance Floor” and empowering people to be guardians of collective space,Festival sheriffs and Night Mayors and the successful interfacing of mainstream culture and the needs of revelry populations,The New York Nightlife Advisory Board and other official groups representing the needs of party culture in city and state governments,Other promising international developments in the progress of human understanding of what safely integrated party culture looks like,Figuring out how to measure the contributions of everyone involved in an event, not just the headlining acts.And more!Support this show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldJoin the Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe on Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/future-fossils-googleSubscribe on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossilsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5vSubscribe on iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe