AfterThought

The scientific, as well as political, and industrial revolutions that are key to the development of the “modern West” and its worldview from 1500 to WWII are examined. The shattering of the medieval Western worldview through discovering deep space, deep time, deep process, and finally deep consciousness, is traced; connections between this development and the podcast's earlier discussion of “expansionism” are explored. Understanding WWII  as the culmination of the modern Western period and the end of centuries of European imperialism and colonialism is discussed, particularly in relation to how the ideology of “infinite growth” transforms through the war into a global phenomenon.

Some recommended sources for “history of the West” to understand the emergence of the modern Western world & worldview:

Arendt, Hannah. (1968). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tarnas, Richard. (1991). The passion of the Western mind. New York: Ballantine Books.

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This episode examines the modern worldview in terms of its understanding of unlimited growth, and how this set the context for World War II and the Great Acceleration. Throughout there is a focus on the theme of mobilization: different ways to understand mobilization, and how to apply the precedent of WWII mobilization to our own times. In discussing this, some of the psychology incurred relative to our world in crisis, climate change, and mobilizing to meet these challenges is explored.

References:

As mentioned in the previous episode, Margaret Klein Salomon is a clinical psychologist who develops the "climate mobilization" movement in response to our climate crisis. (https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/)

Joanna Macy is one of the groundbreaking psychologists of climate change, described as the “psychologist of climate change par excellence” in this episode (https://www.joannamacy.net/main)

One person she worked with was Arne Naess (1912-2009), who coined the term “deep ecology”. What is perhaps not so well known is the strong psychological underpinnings of deep ecology, which are worth considering: the notion that a good ecological relationship to the earth is inseparable from a richer, more vital sense of self, whereas an impoverished, damaged relationship correlates to an impoverished experience of self. http://www.deepecology.org/deepecology.htm

A couple further contemporary psychologists of climate change:

Renee Lertzmann https://reneelertzman.com/

Susanne Moser http://www.susannemoser.com/

Jem Bendell is not a psychologist, but his provocative and influential “Deep Adaptation” proposal (which has become a small movement) is heavily psychological in its response to climate change https://deepadaptation.info/

We'd love to hear from you! Feel free to get in touch with us on instagram @afterthought_podcast, facebook @AfterthoughtPodcastCDK, or by emailing us at [email protected]

In this episode we look at what we’re calling “expansionism”, how the natural tendency of a species to expand into its niche, is unnaturally extended beyond those natural limits by humans. Pursuing this thoughtline brings us to a discussion of World War II as a historical precedent for our world in crisis today, particularly the theme of the war mobilization as precedent for addressing the current climate emergency.

A few of the references made:

Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962. (http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx)

Margaret Klein Salomon and the Climate Mobilization organization (https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/)

For a Canadian version: Seth Klein, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (published in September 2020, after we finished making this podcast but when we started releasing the episodes

Project Drawdown (https://drawdown.org/)

New episodes coming out every Thursday! We'd love to hear from you! Feel free to get in touch with us on instagram @afterthought_podcast, facebook @AfterthoughtPodcastCDK, or by emailing us at [email protected]

In this episode we will explore the notion of thinking at different timescales. We will look at four different time scales: the Great Acceleration (1950-2020), Holocene (last 10,000 years), Anthropocene (current epoch), and the emergence of Homo Sapiens (200,000 years). 

Some references:

On the notion of "crisis" in Chinese meaning danger + "incipient moment" (rather than opportunity), reference is to Sinologist Victor Mair. See http://www.pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html

On the Great Acceleration, the work of Will Steffen and others; graphs depicting different components of the Great Acceleration are first published in 2004, the updated in 2010. (cf. http://www.igbp.net/globalchange/greatacceleration.4.1b8ae20512db692f2a680001630.html)

On the notion of a "safe operating space", the phrase comes from Johan Rockstrom and others working out of the Stockholm Resilience Center, two major papers published in 2009 in Ecology & Society and in Nature researching "planetary boundaries".

New episodes coming out every Thursday! We'd love to hear from you! Feel free to get in touch with us on instagram @afterthought_podcast, facebook @AfterthoughtPodcastCDK, or by emailing us at [email protected]

In this episode we take a closer look at the COVID-19 global pandemic and corresponding lockdown, discussing what possibilities for reflection and potential transformation the experience of lockdown affords. New episodes coming out every Thursday! We'd love to hear from you! Feel free to get in touch with us on instagram @afterthought_podcast, facebook @AfterthoughtPodcastCDK, or by emailing us at [email protected]

In this first episode of the Afterthought series we introduce some of the global crises that our world is faced with, and start to explore what it means to think strategically about coronavirus, climate change, and the end of the world. New episodes coming out every Thursday!

For anyone interested in the reference to Chris Peet's book, it is:

Practicing Transcendence: Axial Age Spiritualities for our World in Crisis, published in 2019 by Palgrave MacMillan. (https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030144319)

We'd love to hear from you! Feel free to get in touch with us on instagram @afterthought_podcast, facebook @AfterthoughtPodcastCDK, or by emailing us at [email protected]

Meet your hosts for Afterthought podcast! Dawson Strand, Chris Peet, and Karambir Singh.