About Reality Podcast

'The medium is the message,' as Marshall Mcluhan said, and in this episode I begin by talking about the media which wasn't around in Marshall Mcluhan's day, but which has come to dominate our culture now, and which certainly shapes and limits and constrains not just public discourse, but private discourse as well. I didn't get around to talking about what I meant to say in this episode, when I initially hit record, but hey – there are many more episodes to come!

Check out the essays on my Substack, which supplement the development of this podcast series:

https://aboutreality.substack.com

On this Happy Halloween episode, I follow the energetic impulse of an idea which I'd been feeling all morning, but which I hadn't yet expressed in any intelligible form, even to myself, before hitting record, and I follow this idea right to the very edge of the terrifying abyss which is the unknown; on this spooky Halloween Day, in this episode, I speculate as to why it is so easy and even natural to feel terror when confronted by this chasm. I wonder if that terror is the right response, in this time we're all living in where the known—that is, all that we have come to know about the world around us, and what we've been brought up to be, by the world—this known is perhaps what is so terrifying. Into the abyss we shall go, without terror, I say—but only if you take the plunge into it in all honesty, as if it was a necessity, and you are at peace with your conscience.

After a week of pulling double shifts at the ol' gumshoe factory, in this episode I try to find my way back to where I left my philosophical development eight days ago, while also trying to interpret the feeling which walking around the uninspired avenues of the downtown core of my city leaves me with, as of late. The world has been in a suspended state, the past year and a half, and what it looked like prior to the pandemic, and what it's going to look like after, can't possibly be the same thing. So the question is: what is the world moving toward, as it moves toward the world of tomorrow? In this episode I suggest a path forward, filled with much wild, dense, humid growth, as an aesthetic solution to the problem we're currently facing, of having no shared vision of what's next for us all.

In this episode I mentioned this essay which I wrote, called 'Tragedy as a Great Art'. Here you can read it:

https://aboutreality.substack.com/p/tragedy-as-a-great-art

The conclusion of this episode's inquiry is that our freedom to choose is bounded by what choices are available to us, in this life, in this day and age. However much the choices provided to us by life in the 21st century bounds the horizon of our experience, and limits our thought of what being is and what it could be, whether or not these bounds and limits and order which this life provides us is good or bad, or enriching, for the individual, the culture, the species, is left as a matter to question, by the end of the episode which references Socrates and the Buddha, as philosophers who saw through the veil and have become enigmatic as a result.

Check out the essays on my Substack, which supplement the development of this podcast series:

https://aboutreality.substack.com

Just as the title says, in this episode there is a definition, philosophy leading one to being 'fully conscious in the moment', or if not that, then philosophical development and inquiry being of no use to the conscious individual trying to understand life and the world and their place within it. The lingering claim in this episode is: that the mistake of our contemporary lifestyle and mode of living is to default to a linear, forward-moving, tunnel-like disposition of thought and being.

My thoughts after watching the documentary film 'Roadrunner', which follows the path to celebrity of Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain is not someone whose books I read or whose shows I watched, but as I heard the way other people spoke of him he became an intrguing cultural figure for me, and this film came highly recommended for insight into Bourdain's life. I figured it was a good place to start, if I wasn't going to go right to Bourdain's own books. Here I get to talking about why Hegel came to my mind as I watched the deterioration of this man's psychological well-being.

Check out the essays on my Substack, which supplement the development of this podcast series:

https://aboutreality.substack.com

And if so, what makes us better social animals, and what makes us worse? As social animals, what world would we choose for our social habitat? How do we gain admittance to our social milieu, but especially so that our status within society is not to be questioned, even on days when we feel lesser than what image society has of us?

Be sure to check out the essays on my Substack, which supplement the development of this podcast series:

https://aboutreality.substack.com

An analysis of language as a cutting away of the excess of things, of all in this life that is not 'it', in order to reveal what is at the core of all being, the truth which is incomprehensible for the fact that it is non-linguistic, and resists articulation, because articulation is our reaction to not being able to speak the truth at the core of being. A bit of complicated theory, but I think the episode does a good job providing an outline, if not a justification.

Check out the essays on my Substack, which supplement the development of this podcast series:

https://aboutreality.substack.com

The philosopher, just like the individual, through introspection needs to come to terms with the structures of thought and belief which shape the territory of their mind, and inform their being. We used to navigate these structures together, as individuals engaged in conversation, and it was healthiest to do so honestly. It seems there are new structures of thought, newly arisen, occupying territory in the mind of individuals—maybe given rise to by the globalizing forces of a new social reality. Structures, thoughts, beliefs, which have their origin in ideology. Whatever their merit, my experience has been that their presence makes it difficult to connect to another person on a local level, through conversation.

Check out the essays on my Substack, which supplement the development of this podcast series:

https://aboutreality.substack.com

This episode isn't all about politics, though peppered throughout is an overview of the imminent Canadian federal election. The real concern of the episode is an existential analysis of an individual's relationship to the future, and of a life lived in preparation for the unexpected, whether that's necessary or worthwhile.

Check out the essays on my Substack, which supplements the development of this podcast series:

https://aboutreality.substack.com