Solution Space

Short Story I by Adam Stephen Wadley

Home Again by Adam Stephen Wadley

Episode one of the new podcast I'm starting called Solution Space. It is part of a larger project you can learn about by visiting reddit.com/r/SolutionSpace

This week, I interview Prester Jane (@JanePrester on Twitter) to discuss her Narrativist Framework, which can be used to analyze the weaponized storytelling behind the Trump movement and many other forms of radicalization. From January 6th to Republican Narrativism since 1964, from conspiracy theories to Occupy Wall Street, we cover a range of topics relevant to our current political moment and open up into a consideration of what we need to do going forward.

You can read more about Jane's analysis at PrestersPerspective.blogspot.com and on the breadnroses.net forum

On this week's show I discuss the "Stimulus check" policy which was enacted earlier this year. Senators Hawley and Sanders are trying to push through another round, but it looks bad. I discuss ideological, political, and economic implications of the policy and talk about the way I see forward, leaning into what I call the "personal service industry." Join me as I take on one of the most pressing issues of the day and open up into wider social and political analysis.

On this show I debut The Alliance, my new utopian council where we are scheming world peace. Check out our Discord server at https://discord.gg/wSHRMqzQEx.

I also talk about salient points Baudrillard brings into play, and context for the "postmodern" buzzword.

This week I tackle the thorny problem of the left/right divide. I dive into political history from the Magna Carta and French Revolution to the World Wars and the subsequent total war which has made the left/right distinction obsolete. Even though these are concepts whose time was really the 19th century, we are still bogged down in left, right, socialist, capitalist; in reality, the coordinates of political struggle are quite different. Dive in as I begin an analysis on the Left/Right distinction, where it came from, and what we need to do to get around it.

On this show, I delve into the problem of narcissism, narrativism, and the messiah complex to show that our self-centeredness is part of the solution as well as part of the problem. In our hyper-individuated world, it's harder and harder to communicate with others, whether they're in other countries, other groups, or just other minds. The drive toward finding ourselves at the center of our own universes is part of a larger trend in cosmological revolutions. To successfully navigate these waters, we must allow ourselves our own terms, but also accept that other people live on theirs. The two practices which can help us make the most of this generalized messianism are initiation and hospitality.

I discuss the psychological phenomenon of projection, when we see things outside us that are really happening within. It opens up traumatic self-questioning, to which I compare the Lovecraftian figure of the Eldritch abomination. Both these themes figure in my discussion of Donald Trump as eldritch horror, forcing us to confront the changing and weirding times in which we live. All this opens us up to cosmological projection in the theory of the holographic universe, and the Hindu concepts of Lila and Maya. In these ways of thinking, the whole universe is a projection. "You're projecting" is never quite so simple...

On this week's program, I continue to engage with the ongoing conversations of Jordan Hall, John Vervaeke, and Gregg Henriques concerning cognitive science. This time, they emphasize the pernicious effects of equivocation in preventing clear discourse. I bring in an example from a recent Chomsky interview, where he clarifies that all political systems are forms of state capitalism. This helps us see that debates about socialism, capitalism, communism, and fascism are irrelevant, since they correspond to 19th/20th century situations we are now past. Finally, I reference the movie Arrival, and Jordan Hall again, to broach the topic of the Non-Zero-Sum, or Anti-Rivalrous, to get into the problem of turning our power tools of computational propaganda toward finding greater harmonies and space for development on our own terms, as opposed to the increasing paranoia we see now, which can only lead to terrorism.