Astral Flight Simulation

A few months back, my friend Conan made a popular and controversial thread about A Song of Ice and Fire, calling it among other things, a “failure.” His thread inspired me to think much deeper about the series and make the obvious comparison, to Lord of the Rings. This episode is the discussion these two threads inspired, almost two hours discussing the merits of the two series, as well as the cultural context from whence they sprang. What does Tolkein’s world say about LOTR and what does Martins say about GoT? And what do the series, in turn, say about their worlds? We discuss this an more in what I hope is the first of many with Conan.

To read his tweets "The Failure of Song of Ice and Fire" and mine, "A Requiem for Frodo," visit my blog Astral Flight Simulation and follow us both on twitter!

Thaddeus Russel is one of my all time favorite podcasters, and as I tell him on this episode, he has the most intellectually diverse podcast on the internet. He had my friend and frequent guest Gio Pennichietti on his show and, for his online university they read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, a book beloved by the post left.

I asked Thad to come on and discuss the book and politics in America today, particularly the left after Trump. His perspective is steeped in history and political theory, and his ideas are all very clearly his own. Even though I disagree with him pretty strongly on a couple things, I can’t help but admire someone whose not only an independent thinker, but someone whose able to weigh ideas on their own merits and accept or reject them with absolutely no recourse to ideology. This quality is very rare these days, so I am grateful he took the time with me to lay out his thoughts on the shifting sands of politics in America.

If you’ve never heard his show before, I strongly recommend you visit his Patreon page. Among other things, he has book discussions with two guests of the Astral Flight Simulation: Gio and Curtis Yarvin!!

As always, the beat that goes so hard at the end was made by my friend @edenicjesus. EP dropping in the fall

Today I'm joined by one of the two or three greatest podcasters in the world, Darryl Cooper of The Martyrmade Podcast. We recorded this episode a few days after the tragic and horrific Uvalde mass shooting, and we spend the first half discussing the psychology and archetypical significance of the spree shooter.

In part two we discuss Oswald Spengler and Cormac McCarthy, particularly Spenglers concept of the Caesar figure and McCarthys book The Road. And as usual, of course, we pepper Nietzsche throughout.

Follow Darryl and me  on substack at Martyrmade and Astral Flight, respectively, and on twitter at @martyrmade and @AFScast

Nightmare Vision and I talk about the way the internet and online subcultures shape political discourse and cultural morality

Follow me on substack at Astral Flight Simulation and Twitter @afscast
Follow Nightmare Vision on Twitter @godclosedmyeyes

Is the work of art possible in the digital age? Ostensibly this is the topic Gio and I discuss, but as we often do, we veer off onto internet political subcultures and Nick Land, among many other things. We compare/contrast The Matrix and Ready Player One, discuss Walter Benjamins "The Origin of the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," "Hauntology," and much more!

Follow me on twitter at @afscast
Substack at www.astralflight.substack.com
Follow Gio on YouTube at Content Minded 
and on twitter at @giantgio

Helios and I discuss the occult and demonic forces shaping our culture through the internet, using it as a body to bring into being a God whose been sleeping since before time. The fiber optic cables are its Cthulu-like mind flayer appendages, the smartphones and laptop monitors its eyes, its users its brain cells. Dark forces have been transmitting messages to us from beyond the wall of sleep, giving us the form it needs us to bring into reality so it can raise its dark master.

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Amanda is one of the brightest and most creative up and coming film makers in America, and she's Hollywood royalty. We discuss her short film The Lotus Gun, her film school thesis, her legendary father John Milius, and the sorry state of American film making today. I hope Amanda is only in the early stages of a very prolific career, she is clearly capable of great things. And please, I want her to come back many times, so show your enthusiasm for her here in the comments and on twitter!

If you like this content, please consider visiting me on substack where I have long form content and many more podcast episodes, and if you become a paid subscriber you get access to even more exclusive podcast episodes!

https://astralflight.substack.com

We discuss Yarvin's essay "Monarchism and Fascism Today" (its decidedly anti-fascist, sorry liberal media). In the spirit of Moldbug, Yarvin shares a futuristic vision of an absolute monarch in which a cyberpunk CEO president has all sorts of high tech gadgets at his disposal to administer the government - but can be taken out at any time by a shadowy cabal of ominous "shareholders." We also discuss the passage prize for poetry, of which Yarvin was a judge, and Zero HP Lovecraft, a former guest on the Astral Flight Simulation podcast.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe to my substack, where you'll find long form essays of literary analysis, cultural criticism, and more, as well as exclusive podcast episodes reserved for subscribers. And if you become a paid subscriber, you'll have access to even more content, including long-form analysis and exclusive episodes and early-releases.

My substack can be found here: https://astralflight.substack.com/
And you can follow me on twitter: @afscast for even more exclusive content

A deep analysis on the essay "The Question Concerning Technology" by Martin Heidegger, elucidating the key concept "Enframing" via The Terminator.  Special quest Athenian Stranger.  Visit my substack for a long-from essay crystallizing the key points of this discussion, and also visit me and Athenian Stranger on twitter for updates on our work and access to lots of other content on philosophy, film, and culture.
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If you become a paid subscriber you'll have access to extensive content that is otherwise unavailable, including long form essays on philosophy and literature by myself and guests, as well as podcast episodes that are unavailable anywhere else
Find me on Twitter at @AFScast
Find Athenian on Twitter at @Athens_Stranger

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If you like my discussion of digital age science fiction, I insist you read “God Shaped Hole” by Zero HP Lovecraft, found here.

https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/god-shaped-hole/

Part 1: The Dark Enlightenment and the Digital Prison.

Platos cave is an allegory for the liberatory power of rationalism, however as history shows, rationalism isn’t always enough. Once rationalism fails, humanity regresses into what Nick Land calls a “dark enlightenment,” in which people revert to pre-rational mindsets. However, we can never really go back to the way we were in Platos Cave, and we enter novel forms of delusion. Philip K. Dick says we become trapped in the “iron prison” or rigid thought forms, however we are beyond even that - now we find ourselves more and more locked in the Digital Prison of an always online world.

Part 2: The Astral Flight Simulation

We trace the trajectory of several Science Fiction stories concerned with Artificial Intelligence antagonists, from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Neuromancer, Tron, and The Terminator, to The Matrix, Ex Machina, and God Shaped Hole. In so doing, we see how humanities will is superseded by that of technology, how like Faust we hand over our autonomy - our eternal souls - in exchange for the promise of technology, and are thereby locked in the digital prison. Once there we are in a new Platos cave, in which digital shadows play out on the walls, in a mimicry of the fulfillment of a religious or even a rational world.

All music herein used with permission by Turn Knight, check him out on YouTube