The Living Philosophy

In The Ritual Process the anthropologist who put Liminality on the map Victor Turner gave a list of contrasts between Liminality and Structure. There is an uncanny resemblance between these values and the values of Leftism. That is what we are going to explore in this episode which in the final episode in our exploration of Victor Turner's work in this field. 

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📚 Further Reading:

- Szakolczai Á (2003) _The Genesis of Modernity_. Routledge studies in social and political thought 36. London ; New York: Routledge.
- Turner VW (1995) _The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure_. The Lewis Henry Morgan lectures 1966. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

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🎼 Media Used:

1.  Long Note Three  — Kevin MacLeod
2.  Dreams Become Real  — Kevin MacLeod
3. Evening Fall Harp — Kevin MacLeod
4. Despair and Triumph — Kevin MacLeod
5. Permafrost — Scott Buckley
6. There’s Probably No Time — Chris Zabriskie
7.  Ether Real - Density & Time — The Grey Room

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic
Subscribe to Chris Zabriskie https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie
Subscribe to The Grey Room https://www.youtube.com/@TheGreyRoom
Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au

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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
01:31 Liminality
03:39 Leftism
05:09 The Liminal Left - Economic/Political
07:10 Authority and Liminality 
10:07 The Cultural Left and Liminality
13:39 Conclusion

"When all you have is a hammer every problem begins to look like a nail." Good philosophy is always trying to break up and recreate its map of the world. In this episode we are going to break up the Individualist model of the world a little and broaden our map to include the Collectivist perspectives. We talk a lot about Nihilism and the Meaning Crisis as if they are only to be understood as individual problems but the challenges and solutions that face us in the 21st century can't be understood merely from one angle. This episode is a case study in the Homelessness Crisis and how it looks from the vantage points of Individualism and Collectivism. 

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📚 Further Reading:
- Jerusalem Damsas's article for The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homelessness-affordable-housing-crisis-democrats-causes/672224/
- Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page's site with some fascinating graphs and a link to their book: https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/

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🎼 Media Used:

1. Dreams Become Real — Kevin MacLeod
2. Anguish — Kevin MacLeod
3.  Long Note Three — Kevin MacLeod
4.  Despair and Triumph  — Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic
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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:48 Homelessness: a Collective Problem
5:03 A vicious circle
6:55 Conclusion

Is Liminality the real root of the crisis of Nihilism? In this episode we are going to explore this question and whether Liminality is a better diagnosis of the Meaning Crisis than Nietzsche's Death of God. When looking at Turner's qualities of Liminality the relations between it and Nihilism are striking; if nothing else if provides us an alternative angle on the crisis — a different perspective from which to behold the quagmire we find ourselves in. What is particularly appealing about the Liminality-centred explanation is that it can explain Nihilism AND the value system of the Left from Marx to Social Justice — a theme we'll be exploring in a future video. 

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📚 Further Reading:
- Nietzsche FW and Kaufmann WA (1974) _The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs_. 1st ed. New York: Vintage Books.
- Turner VW (1995) _The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure_. The Lewis Henry Morgan lectures 1966. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

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🎼 Media Used:

1.   Dreams Become Real  — Kevin MacLeod
2.  Fresh Air — Kevin MacLeod
3. Long Note Three — Kevin MacLeod
4. Despair and Triumph  — Kevin MacLeod
5. Lost Frontier  — Kevin MacLeod
6. End of the Era — Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod [https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic](https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic)

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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
02:38 What is Liminality?
05:36 Nihilism
09:28 Liminality and Nihilism
12:55 Progressivism and the Dangers of Liminality
14:34 Curing the Meaning Crisis

For Nietzsche The Last Man stood as the opposite of the Ubermensch and the great danger of the "levelling" tendency of modernity. In this episode we are going to look at what Nietzsche meant by the Last Man and how his prophecy has come through. We look at The Last Man in 21st century society and what Nietzsche got right even while we should be cautious of fully embracing his ideal. 
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📚 Further Reading:
- Joseph S (2011) _What Doesn’t Kill Us: The New Psychology of Posttraumatic Growth_. New York: Basic Books.
- McGonigal K (2015) _The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It_. New York: Avery, a member of Penguin Random House.
- Seligman MEP (2013) _Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment_. Atria paperback edition. New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi: Atria Paperback.
- Nietzsche FW (1976) *Thus Spoke Zarathustra* in _The Portable Nietzsche_. New York: Penguin Books.
- Nietzsche FW and Kaufmann WA (1974) _The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs_. 1st ed. New York: Vintage Books.
- Nietzsche FW and Kaufmann WA (2000) _Basic Writings of Nietzsche_. Modern Library ed. New York: Modern Library.

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🎼 Media Used:

1.   Long Note Three  — Kevin MacLeod
2. There’s Probably No Time — Chris Zabriskie
3.  Despair and Triumph — Kevin MacLeod
4. Dark Times — Kevin MacLeod
5. End of the Era — Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod [https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic](https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic)
Subscribe to Chris Zabriskie [https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie](https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie)
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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
01:50 The Last Man in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
05:13 The Values of the Last Man
09:25 The Last Man in the 21st Century

We live in an age of Liminality. It's at the roots of the Meaning Crisis of Nihilism and Leftist value structures. Coming from the same Latin word as subliminal (*limin* meaning "threshold") it is a term that has entered the mainstream from its roots in Anthropology with the work of Victor Turner. 

Victor Turner developed the concept in his work The Ritual Process. In this episode we will be answering the question what is Liminality and we'll be exploring it and its two cousins Marginality and Inferiority and how this trifecta shape the value structure of all society in the interplay between their Communitas/Antistructure with the world of politics economics and law — of status, power and competition — (which Turner calls "Structure"). 
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📚 Further Reading:

- Szakolczai Á (2003) _The Genesis of Modernity_. London: Routledge.
- Turner VW (1995) _The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure_. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:10 The 3 Types of Antistructure
5:59 Liminality
10:27 Liminality: Beyond Ritual
14:10 Marginality
18:50 Inferiority
22:17 Overlapping Groups

Apocalypse is traditionally a religious idea but the secular age has been more alight with an Apocalyptic fervour than any preceding age. In this episode we explore why by looking at predictions through the ages and across cultures in an attempt to triangulate on what it is about the end of the world that is so sticky to the human psyche. We are going to explore the archetypal phenomenon of the end of the world and see why Apocalypse remains so compelling. 

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🎼 Media Used:

1.   Lost Frontier  — Kevin MacLeod
2.  Evening Fall Harp — Kevin MacLeod
3. Permafrost — Scott Buckley
4.  Ether Real - Density & Time — The Grey Room
5. There’s Probably No Time — Chris Zabriskie
6. Anguish — Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod [https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic](https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic)

Subscribe to Chris Zabriskie [https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie](https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie)

Subscribe to The Grey Room https://www.youtube.com/@TheGreyRoom

Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au

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⌛ Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
03:10 Secular Apocalypse
07:06 A History of Prediction
08:23 Theme 1: Calendrical Apocalypse
11:35 Theme 2: Social Chaos
13:09 Social Chaos in the Islamic World
13:59 Social Chaos in Christian History
15:54 Social Chaos in the 19th Century
18:22 Social Chaos in the 21st Century

Jung once described himself as a failed philosopher. Instead he chose the path of science with psychology. It is surprising then to see what Walter Kaufmann calls Jung's "wildly emotional overreaction" to thinkers like Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Is philosophy Jung's Shadow? In this episode we explore what Jung said about the philosophers and why. 

For this we'll draw on letters written by Jung and look at the tension in him between what he calls his No. 1 Personality and his No. 2 Personality and then we're going to explore whether this hatred of the philosophers might not come from a fault-line in Jung's own psychology. 
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📚 Further Reading:
- Jung, C.G. *Memories, Dreams, Reflections*
- Jung, C.G., 2012. _The red book: A reader's edition_. WW Norton & Company.
- Jung, C.G., 2015. _Letters of CG Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950_. Routledge
- Jung, C.G., 2021. _CG Jung Letters, Volume 2: 1951-1961_. Princeton University Press
- Freud, S. and Jung, C.G., 1994. _The Freud-Jung Letters: The Correspondence Between Sigmund Freud and CG Jung_. Princeton University Press.
- Nietzsche, F., 1992. _Basic Writings of Nietzsche_. Modern Library. 
- Kaufmann, W. ed., 1992. _Freud, Alder, and Jung: Discovering the Mind_. Routledge.
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🎼 Media Used:

1. Despair and Triumph — Kevin MacLeod
2. Dark Times —  Kevin MacLeod
3. Long Note Three —  Kevin MacLeod
4. Mermerize —  Kevin MacLeod
5. There’s Probably No Time — Chris Zabriskie
6.  End of the Era  — Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod [https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic](https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic)

Subscribe to Chris Zabriskie [https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie](https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie)

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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:42 Beyond their proper bounds
7:21 A bunch of neurotics
11:06 The Unlived Jung
15:48 Philosophy: Jung's Shadow

A summary of my Camino experience: what I hiked, why I hiked and what I learned. 

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💬 Discord 

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⌛Timestamps:
0:00 Intro: What the Camino is
02:15 What I Hiked
08:18 Why I Hiked
10:29 Liminality and the Challenges of Communicating the Experience
11:51 My Philosophical Reasons for the Hike
17:25 What My Journey was Like

83% of America's counties voted for Trump in the 2020 but these counties account for only 29% of America's GDP. Why aren't this lesser off rural/exurban population voting for the party who theoretically are most aligned with their interests i.e. the Democratic Socialists? 

The answer might lie with Karl Marx who saw this population as "rural idiots" representing "barbarism within civilisation". For Marx only the urban working class could bring about societal transformation. Every successful Communist revolution had to unlearn this bias of Marx. 

Looking at the American political situation today we see two Americas: a rural/exurban ocean and a densely populated urban and suburban archipelago. And like Marx rather than his successful revolutionary followers, the Far Left of today dismiss these ruralites as Conservative Reactionaries rather than the most readily mobilisable support. 

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________________
🎼Media Used:
1. End of the Era — Kevin MacLeod
2.  Mermerize  — Kevin MacLeod
3.  Dark Times — Kevin MacLeod
4.  Despair & Triumph — Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod [https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic](https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic)
_________________

⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:23 The Urban Rural Divide
2:55 The Deeper Roots of the Problem
5:52 Revisiting America's 21st-century Divide

Anthropologist Victor Turner, who popularised the term Liminality, found that human society has two modes of interrelatedness that function like a yin and yang — mutually dependant and without which human life would be impossible. Structure is the mode of status and hierarchy in society; Communitas of love, compassion and myth. 

These two modes show up in very interesting ways in our current society. These can be fruitfully mapped over with the religious and scientific mindsets; with the Constrained and Unconstrained Visions of Thomas Sowell's work; with the Order and Chaos of Jordan Peterson's work Maps of Meaning and with the left- and right-hemispheres of the brain in Iain McGilchrist's work. 

None of these are 1:1 mapovers but there's something rich even in this difference. This episodes marks the beginning of our explorations in this fertile model of human life. 
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📚 Further Reading:
- Turner, V. _The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure_
- Turner, V. _Revelation and divination in Ndembu ritual_ 

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🎼 Media Used:

1.  There’s Probably No Time — Chris Zabriskie
2.  Lightless Dawn  — Kevin MacLeod
3.  Underwater Exploration - Godmode — Kevin MacLeod
4.  Evening Fall Harp — Kevin MacLeod
5. Procession of the King — Kevin MacLeod

Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod [https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic](https://www.youtube.com/user/kmmusic)
Subscribe to Chris Zabriskie [https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie](https://www.youtube.com/c/chriszabriskie)

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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:30 Structure
5:30 Communitas
6:32 The Communitas Mode of Being
10:01 Structured Communitas
13:12 Religion and Communitas