C-Realm Podcast

The profession of writing books has changed in recent decades, and now James Howard Kunstler, the author of many books both fiction and non-fiction, published by mainstream publishers, is relying increasingly on blogging and reader support through Patreon to pay the bills. Jim talks about his days at Rolling Stone and the lofty expectations he had for his first novel and what it was like to have 8 published novels under his belt and still be waiting tables. Later, Jim and KMO compare notes on their disillusionment with the behavior of the Blue Tribe in the Trump years. Jim is a registered Democrat, and KMO is a recovering libertarian, and neither of them was in a position to be disappointed by the Red Tribe's failure to ride the reality bus. Not so with the Blue Tribe.

 

The new weekly comic strip that KMO mentioned at the end of the episode can be found here:

https://www.cfpup.org/comic/probing-questions/

Charles Hugh Smith is a critic of the idea of UBI (universal basic income), but in order to understand his critique it is necessary to take a deep dive into the nature of work. Any simple formulation of what constitutes work will either over-generalize and capture too much, or it will leave out certain activities which are necessary for the functioning of a healthy society and which create benefits for people other than the one engaged in the activity but which do not generate a profit and so are often unpaid. KMO and Charles Hugh Smith talk about work, leisure, commodification and the effects of information technology and machine intelligence on how we all participate in the web of exchanges and interactions we call "the economy."

We're all familiar with the archetypal alien abduction scenario. You wake up in your bed. You can't move. Short gray humanoids with big black eyes surround you. They whisk you off to some other place for painful and humiliating procedures and then mostly wipe your memory of the event, at least in the short term. People have reported encounters with a whole menagerie of alien types. Some are beautiful and benevolent, others monstrous and hostile. But with the Grays, their intentions seem self-interested, but they're mostly just unfathomable. Larry Lowe describes how this narrative coalesced in the late 80s and early 90s and cemented itself as our cultures dominant schema for contact with alien intelligence.

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Additional materials and links supplied by Larry:

There is an enormous amount of 'Projected motive' in the various tales told most of which is homocentric.

The grays are interested in reproduction because they themselves cannot reproduce.

How much sense, exactly, does that make?  None, really.

Raymond Fowler    The (Betty) Andreasson Affair Paperback – May 23, 1980

Great art - the origin of the look, IMHO

Budd Hopkins    Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods     Mar 12, 1987

Whitley Strieber   Communion: A TRUE STORY Hardcover – 1987

Budd Hopkins  Missing Time Mass Market Paperback – March 12, 1988

David Jacobs   Secret Life: Firsthand, Documented Accounts of Ufo Abductions Paperback – April 16, 1993

John Mack   Abduction: Human Encounters with AliensDec 15, 2009

Nazis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Society

https://www.gaia.com/article/maria-orsic-vril-ufos-nazi-germany-secrets

https://www.gaia.com/article/nazi-bell-ufo-technology

Dr. Carole Griggs and Ted Strauss are the co-founders of iConscious, a project intended "to create a world in which it is normal for all human beings to awaken their whole being, bring their unique genius into the world, and live together in deeply attuned, collective consciousness." In the conversation, we consider the relationship of consciousness to human brains and how humans might awake more fully to transcendent consciousness with the help of artificial intelligence. Carole and Ted not only hope to help foster friendly AI, they're aiming for "loving AI." Toward the end of the conversation, the consider the possibility that psychedelics might have a role to play in the project of full human flourishing.

A C-Realm listener commented that some of "the denizens of various C-Realm-adjacent parts of cyberspace" aren't much impressed with the narrative that Russian interference in the 2016 election put Donald Trump in the White House. KMO isn't remotely impressed by this narrative, nor is this week's guest, Keith Preston of Attack the System. By fixating on the notion that Clinton would have won had it not been for those meddling Rooskies, DNC partisans remain blind to the fact that their party has very little to offer the people on the losing end of wealth and class polarization. Later, KMO explains why he is making a deliberate effort to disengage from the madness that is Facebook.

KMO welcomes Bill McKibben back to the C-Realm to discuss his new novel, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance. Vermont has been an independent nation in the past, and some people would like to see it make its own way apart from the United States in the 21st Century. Bill McKibben is not one of those people calling for a real-life Vermont succession, but he stresses that in the face of the Trump provocations we must mount some sort of resistance.

Rob Moore is the author of The Consciousness Papers. The book was presented to him by an entity that he considers to be his higher self. His quitting smoking was the catalyst for his own personal transformation, and addiction is a major concern and problem for rural communities across the country, and Vermont is no exception. KMO and Rob talk about the transmission of wisdom and the prerequisites for receiving and understanding it.

Increasingly in the 21st Century, we no longer make out livings as employers and employees, but as disconnected players whose coordinated actions are directed by apps. As Misha Lepetic puts it in a recent piece for 3 Quarks Daily, there are two kinds of people in the world, "those who are told what to do by software, and those who tell software what to do." You don't want to be stuck "below the API," because there's nowhere to go from there. You can never get promoted to occupy your supervisor's seat if your supervisor is an algorithm. Misha explains the hype, the promise, and the unintended consequences of trying to restructure the world of work in the image of the blockchain.

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake (R) announced that he will not be seeking re-election after the end of his current term, and he implied that it was Donald Trump's fault for coarsening the political discourse. KMO asked his Facebook tribe what they thought of Flake's actions, and everyone except Larry Lowed spewed venom in Flake's direction. Most people were responding from the left and ascribed cynical and/or cowardly motivations to him. The one response coming from the right lambasted Flake for "lashing out like a virtue signaling SJW." Only this week's guest, Larry Lowe attributed Flake's announcement to conscience. Larry, who has been a political agnostic most of his life, is so moved by the current situation that he is now actively working to get Bob Bishop (D), an airshow legend, elected to Flake's soon to be vacant seat.

KMO was interviewed back in September for an Australian radio show called Greening the Apocalypse. In that conversation, Adam and Sarah asked KMO about the evolution of his worldview. It's a question KMO has answered many times before, and he makes an effort to include details and perspectives that will make this conversation fresh for listeners who have heard that story before. The conversation navigates that passage between techno-utopianism and collapse fetishism.