Mutations

Livestreamed episode of Mutations Salon podcast on August 4, 2020. Riffing notes on my book writing process (Fragments of an Integral Futurism), review of literature (Byung-Chul Han’s The Scent of Time, Andreas Malm’s The Progress of this Storm, and James C. Scott’s Against the Grain particularly), integral temporics, climate and “temps” (as Walter Benjamin commented on), and regenerative futures. Thanks to all who participated in Q&A!

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[Crossposted from Growing Down podcast] Jeremy Johnson is joined by Ryan Nakade, Brent Cooper, Matthew T. Segall, Brad Kershner and Layman Pascal to honor the memory Michael Brooks (1983-2020) and discuss his contributions to integrative thinking in politics, "cosmopolitan socialism," and where we go from here in solidarity. Recorded on 7/25/20. Watch the YouTube livestream of this talk.

The struggle continues. #LeftisBest. #RestinPower.  

Show notes: Follow and support TMBS / TMBS Patreon / Against the Web by Michael Brooks / Jacobin's Michael Brooks Tribute / Featured Intro/Outro & Track "Nobita" by Smith the Mister. | 

Mutations Notes: Support my work via the Mutations Patreon, and access to a great community, bi-weekly salon calls, Discord, research Q&A, and sneak peaks at book drafts. 

In this episode, I am joined by Gordon White, host of Rune Soup podcast, a show about magic, culture and the paranormal. Gordon is the author of The Chaos Protocols, Star.Ships, and Pieces of Eight: Chaos Magic Essays and Enchantment. Note that I recorded this before the new year, in December 2019, but if you listen until the end you might notice some oddly prescient comments about health and wellbeing in 2020. I begin my discussion with Gordon exploring the rise of communities of magical practice during a time of planetary crisis, and naturally, we roll into a discussion on imagination and storytelling. What are the kinds of stories - the planetary myths -  we need to be tuning into right now, in the epoch of the Anthropocene/Chthulucene? Gordon talks about how to be “a pacifist in a living universe,” living artistically through a “non-tyrannical way of being in the world.” Authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and her Taoist-anarchic heroes (Georg Orr as depicted in The Lathe of Heaven, or Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea), or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, can teach us something about living this way. Gordon was a delight to speak to - and there’s much more in the conversation. 

More show notes:

Visit Rune Soup and check out Gordon’s community, where he hosts subscriber events, book clubs, and classes

Get Gordon’s books

Talking Creation, Faerie, and Facing 2020 with Dr Becca Tarnas (Rune Soup ep.)

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Podcast music by Infinite Third, used with permission (thanks Billy)

Join the Mutations Patreon community for access to early podcasts, Discord server, and book club. Next month we start our Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de Chardin reading club.

Join the Mutations Discord server (link may expire)

Mutations truly go on! As we wade further into the murky complexities of the meta-crisis, I bring you an update from COVID-19 quarantine. This is a recording from 4/2/20. Part riff, part Q&A discussion with viewers as we explore how to navigate the “meta-crisis,” including helpful ways of looking the current world state and navigating to (latent), more beautiful futures. Themes of liminality, metaxis (“betweenness”), and integral ontology come into the picture right now, as we collectively attempt to find our way to a new mode of sensemaking and culture building that is more akin to Teilhard de Chardin’s planetization, or Jean Gebser’s integral aperspectivity. Do tune in. This one definitely felt like climbing on a pulpit. 

PS: There’s now a backlog of interviews, some recorded before the COVID-19 epidemic--from another era! But they are coming. Thanks, listener, for your gracious patience.

An episode for the Epiphany.

I spoke with author, philosopher, and psychotherapist Mark Vernon about his 2019 book: A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling, and the Evolution of Consciousness.

You may have already listened on Mark's YouTube channel. Great, but also be sure to tune in below for a new introduction.

Mark has a PhD in ancient philosophy, with two other degrees in physics and theology. What brought us together was a mutual interest in the evolution of consciousness; Mark, by way of the Oxford Inkling Owen Barfield, and myself by way of the Swiss cultural philosopher and poet Jean Gebser. Mark read my book and I read his. We agreed that we simply needed to have a chat.

To my knowledge, Gebser and Barfield never actually talked with one another in life, even though their ideas find many significant convergences; the theme of participation, for instance, plays a prominent role in both of their works.

Mark's A Secret History of Christianity is also a history of religion, which is to say the history of consciousness. His documentation of pivotal transformations in the evolution of religion were highly illustrative.

(For a direct reading of Barfield I recommend starting with Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry).

We need a general "The Inklings and the Evolution of Consciousness ft. J. Gebser Remix" episode. Roundtable scholarly nerd-out imminent. Mark, Becca, and I are talking about making it happen. Stay tuned.

MUSIC:

Artist: Billy Mays III / Infinite Third.

Album: Channel(s)

Tracks: "Vision(s)" for intro/outro, "In(to)" for intermezzo

PATREON:

Join the Mutations Patreon community here for access to our Discord channel, Zoom salon calls, early podcasts and featured writing content.

ARTWORK:

Featured art by Archan Nair.

Sponsorships: off for this episode

Greetings, mutants! During the Texts and Traditions colloquium in Seattle, WA, I stole away with John Anderson (author) and Brandt Stickley (foreword) to talk about The Way of the Living Ghost. 

About the book: "This enigmatic work by Dr Anderson combs through the Daodejing, line by line, in new translation giving robust commentary to the dark side of the Dao."

It’s something like a book written by a hungry ghost, about how we, the living, are already hungry ghosts too. 

Forgive the sound quality... The microphone, alas, did not pick us up too well without some post-production audio boosting.

Then there was the fridge turning on, midway.

Hence, the kitchen sessions. Appropriate for hungry ghosts.

If you can mind the sound, tune in with earphones and listen to what both John and Brandt have to say. It’s worth it!

More Revelore recordings are on the way. Plus, these two fellows are contributors to the forthcoming anthology Mutations: Art, Consciousness and the Anthropocene.

Grab the way of the Living Ghost on Amazon, or Revelore Press. It is also available in deluxe edition (check my instagram in a few weeks for snazzy pictures). 

In this solo episode, Jeremy briefly reflects on his research for the upcoming publication, Fragments of an Integral Futurism (2019), and what that might mean for creating an integral culture.

SHOW NOTES: 

David Graeber, "How to Change the Course of Human History"

Thomas Moore, Utopia, Verso Books Edition with essays by China Mieville and Ursula K Le Guin

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/jeremyjohnson

In episode 7 of Mutations podcast, I am joined by paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield. 

Michael is an artist, podcast host (Future Fossils), musician, painter, philosopher--am I missing anything? Like me, Michael wears many hats.

We recorded a back-to-back episode. This is part one. You can find part two on Future Fossils. 

Michael and I offer philosophical and existential reflections on the “Deep Adaptation” movement, popularized by Jem Bendell’s recent climate report paper, and Daniel Thorson’s Emerge podcast interview, by considering what we can learn from evolutionary and cultural catastrophes throughout history. While we don’t arrive at easy answers, I sense that there is a way of thinking and relating that is emerging in the age of the Anthropocene, as Sean Kelly writes, “beyond hope and despair.” This way of thinking and being leaves open the possibility of a hyper-illuminated dark age... as a way of seeing, like the owl-eyed Athena, into the dark places.

LINKS:

Michael Garfield on Twitter

Santa Fe Institute

Michael’s Homepage

The Lindisfarne Tapes

Sean Kelly, Living in End Times: Beyond Hope and Despair (Revelore Press)

MUSIC: 

Artist: Billy Mays III / Infinite Third. 

Album: Channel(s)

Tracks: "Vision(s)" for intro/outro, "In(to)" for intermezzo

PATREON: 

Join the Mutations Patreon community here for access to our Discord channel, Zoom salon calls, early podcasts and featured writing content.

ARTWORK:

Featured art by Archan Nair.

A reading from the chapter, "Dead Man Sings," from William Gibson's essay anthology, Distrust that Particular Flavor.

EPISODE CREDITS

Featured artwork by Archan Nair

Featured music by Lightbath

Intro, “Guardian Suite”

Outro, "The Magic Light of Tomorrow"

Lightbath offers bonuses like patch notes, album downloads, livestreams, and one-on-one lessons at patreon.com/lightbath.

Subscribe to Lightbath on YouTube for brilliant live performances and check out his Bandcamp page for more tracks.

CONNECT WITH MUTATIONS LISTENERS ON PATREON:

Join my Patreon. Become a “Mutant” and gain access to the community forum (hosted on a private Discourse page), unpublished writings, participation in the MUTATIONS book club, and our regular, Sunday MUTATIONS salon hosted weekly on Zoom Meetings.

The inaugural solo show is finally live! I recorded this not long after my talk with Dr Becca Tarnas (episode 4). Glad it’s finally out there.

Illustration by J.R.R. Tolkien

In this episode, I’m linking Gebser’s insights on the phenomenology of awakening consciousness (Bewusstwerdung phänomenologie) to some of the existential problems of the hyper-mediated self, and how this all ties to the important mythopoeic image in J.R.R.’Tolkien’s Middle-Earth: Sauron’s eye.

Facebook and social media seems only to rev up the cultural fragmentation of communities into smaller and smaller siloed identitarian groups in a “post-truth world” (which, alone, is worth discussing in another solo show). In the age of networks, why is it that communication is breaking down? As I argue, and as Gebser points out, or Douglas Rushkoff has been articulating in his recent Team Human book (and elsewhere, such as Life, Inc), much of this has to do with the underlying structure of consciousness we’ve been leaning on since the Western Renaissance: perspectival consciousness and its potent but immoderate capacity of ratio, to divide. Extractive capitalism, deficient mental-perspectivalism’s spatialized “eye,” and the mythopoeic image of Sauron’s eye all offer us different ways of looking (pun intended) at the phenomenology and crisis of culture (kulturphilosophie) in our own mediated moment.

Illustration by J.R.R. Tolkien