On species-level fitness versus civilizational fitness, on Herbert Spencer and the colonial roots of survival of the fittest, on aggrandizing agents and the alpha-hoarding pattern, on the Radical Anthropology Group and the female coalition theory of human speciation, on Pierre Clastres and secondary primitivism, the people who ran back into the jungle, on five hundred years of Amazonian oral history as the most successful anti-civilizational politic in human history, on the Hadza and the smartphone controversy, on his rebuttal to Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, on Joseph Tainter and continually diminishing returns, on the gathering that would fall apart at thirty days, on nodal community versus rigid communes, on finding your gifts rather than peddling hope, on daughters and the stone knives,

Thirteen years traveling by small aircraft to remote Alaskan communities, fieldwork across four continents, Siberia, the Amazon, Africa, and now independent, outside the bureaucracy of both the academy and the state. His work challenges both the right-wing bunker prepper and the techno-progressive urban left, arguing instead for rural dropout-ism: not ideology, but as a true measure of human fitness.

Excerpts

On Amazonian Isolated Tribes

There's some sort of oral history passed down for generations that says: those progressive complex societies — don't go in. They're very dangerous. And they've maintained that politic for at least several hundred years, if not thousands.

Channeling Derek Jensen

You are just a puny little human. You cannot change this situation as an individual. But figure out what your gifts are: what's really in your heart, and apply them to bettering the situation even in the smallest way you can.

On Species Fitness

 And I came to the conclusion that real species level fitness is intimately connected to the natural world without all this technological mediation that's the why I've just never stopped this path because to me on a personal level, pursuing that wildlife provides me this really strong feeling of living optimally.

Connect with James @

https://www.jamesvanlanen.com/

https://www.humanrewilding.earth/

Twenty-plus years of writing against the grain, on questioning the incentives that hold our systems together and the fragilities hidden beneath them.

His work challenges both the doom-and-gloom survivalist fantasy and the techno-utopian promise, arguing instead for local community, reciprocity, and a return to something like integrity in how we organize our economic lives.

On growing tobacco as a doomsday crop, on investing locally even when the returns aren’t optimal, on strengthening the place you actually live, on the turtle instinct and why it fails, on community as the only real prepping, on systems that are self-liquidating, on the role of the critic as heretic, on the Overton window, on self-employment as a different lens on the economy, on the second matrix, on getting sucked past the event horizon of geopolitical finance and never coming back, on social media as plutonium exposure, on kindness and integrity having zero incentive in the system, on the waste-is-growth landfill economy, on progress as secular religion and challenge as heresy, on Marx as a Judeo-Christian moralist seduced by scientism, on immigration as voting with your feet, on Hawaii as microcosm, on UBI and bad poetry, on the Asperger model of self-drive, on manic depression as a prerequisite for writing that has no market, on high-touch work as the thing AI can never replace, on the wait person as part of the meal, on labor-backed currency, on Berkeley co-ops and the immediate emergence of corruption and arbitrage in even the smallest markets, on Taoism as the action of inaction, on not depending on AI without being against it, on diagnosis or prognosis, on the moral universe that AI does not live in…

Excerpts

On Fixes

I don’t think that tweaking some regulation is really gonna fix this thing.

On Criticism

 I think a lot of readers would say I’ve been wrong about everything… but the role of the critic is to open the Overton window. I’ve been wrong about the status quo being able to exist or continue as if nothing had ever happened.

In other words, whatever it’s been thrown at it, financial crises, war, whatever, it just grinds on. And so that I think has surprised me to some degree, but I still think that doesn’t mean that it’s as durable as people think that the fragilities are just being hidden behind systems that.

On Immigration

 So whatever you’re gonna do with immigration, it has to be upfront and fair, or else people are gonna find fault with it for good reason.

On Heresy

We’ve identified progress with expansion of consumption and technological innovation… I consider them equivalent to religious beliefs, because when you challenge those beliefs, you get a response akin to a heretic. We’re gonna burn you at the stake for challenging progress.

On AI

We live in a moral universe. And AI does not live in a moral universe.

Links
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

Her insights challenge mainstream as well as alternative perceptions and reveal layers of political and social complexities. She advocates for a more informed and empathetic understanding of autism that truly centers the voices of those within the community.

On being five and nearly institutionalized, on cousins who disappeared into care and were never spoken of, on the mercy of small schools and open fields, on learning to speak through rote phrases like operating systems, on meaning blindness, on writing poetry to break the blocks, on internet relay chat in 1992 and the joy of text-only communion, on autistic people discovering each other online for the first time, on the flowering of recognition, on the anti-vax people arriving in autistic spaces and tearing it all down, on being told your identity is a disease, on Scientologists using communication tech as a weapon, on the split between autistic adults and parents of autistic children that became unbridgeable, on Leo Kanner, on childhood schizophrenia, on post-immunization encephalopathy, on Bernard Rimland wearing two hats — hero to the parent community and career naval psychologist directing future technologies, on the 1958 National Defense Education Act and the state’s interest in gifted minors, on gifted and talented programs, on MKUltra, on Kim Peek, on the military search for savants, on Scientology level OT VIII, on Operation Snow White, on RFK Jr., on Generation Rescue, on Bob Wright, on ARPA-H, on the after-party to TED Talks, on Andrew Wakefield’s very small study that said nothing about the MMR, on overstimulation and the mind whiting out, on the map that is always provisional, on following the hacktivists. on the state being hostile to ordinary people, on questioning everything, on c self-expression, on being less autistic than she used to be, on identifying plants intuitively, on tending a vineyard and making wine and losing goats to wolves, on the techno-utopian dystopia not working, on the return to non-technological ways of living, on failure as liberation…

Excerpts

On Hyper Associational Autism

 we have hyper associational kind of minds, … so I do make links between things that seem unrelated… I’ve been building this map. And as the map comes together and informs, I can start to make predictions. And if it’s accurate, then I know my map is pretty close to what’s really going on.

On Autism and Scientologists

This battle between autistics and Scientologists has been going on for decades.

Bernard Rimland completely took over the perception of what autism is. On one hand , in the autism parent community, he was Mr. Hero. But on the other side, he was a career naval psychologist, a research psychologist, director of future technologies and recruit enhancement.

Scientologists don’t just, they’re very careful about who they associate with. So for a Scientologist to be an in-house lawyer at Children’s Health Defense means that organization is affiliated with Scientology strongly.” “It’s not even a cult. It’s more what is it. You could say it’s a cult that’s that’s operationalized in terms of it’s intelligence work.

On Vaccines and Autism

Vaccines don’t cause autism, but vaccines are not good. In fact, vaccines probably are injuring children, but the two things got all mixed up together and he’s (RFK JR) part of that.

 I just want to really encourage listeners to question, recognize that the Health Freedom movement is full of Scientologists and they’re not your friends. Not everybody who’s communicating with you is telling you the truth, especially, online.

Aut Naught Aut

Aut Naught Aut

What if the answer is that vaccines are injurious -- and that vaccine injury is not autism?

By Mrs. Horsley

Aspie Quiz

https://rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Artwork by Michelle Horsley

On hitchhiking as a philosophy of life, on synchronicities, on conversations continuing between strangers, on looking for the connective narrative between Blake and Nietzsche and McLuhan, on perception as incarnation, on bodying forth a world through the senses, on Nietzsche’s claim that we are all greater artists than we know, on the imagination as Christ, on supercharging passive perception into active creation, on the non-dual lurking beneath, on CS Lewis and Tolkien and the myth that is also history, on Owen Barfield and original participation, on Steiner’s evolution of consciousness, on animism as the religion of the earth, on the 8 million kami of Shinto and finding spirits in toilets and trees and rocks, on idolatry as the epoch of separation, on Philip K. Dick and the band that only played once but left many recordings, on finding God in the litter of the street, on Joyce and the refusal to separate high and low culture, on Finnegans Wake, on Vipassana, on prayer as the fastest route to sacred space, on Meister Eckhart’s , on the original sangha and the early Christians as communists, on Marx’s alienation mapped onto Barfield’s idolatry, on the potlatch and the destruction of surplus, on Robert Anton Wilson’s axiom that communication only happens between equals, on politics as the great distraction from the spiritual project, on the Chöd ritual and monks inviting demons to devour them in charnel grounds, on the eye atop the conspiracy pyramid being your own ego, on Jacob Böhme’s God of wrath and God of love as one God, on AI as both Pentecost and Antichrist, on masks as honest practice, on raising children, on quiet resistance, on the cosmic communism of saving all beings from suffering, on life, on practice, on love.

Excerpts

On Hitchhiking

Every time you’re on the road and you put your thumb out, you’re tapping into the DAO and just any ride that you get, completely alters the course of your life in a certain way.

On Imagination

The primary imagination is the imagination of the I am, which is God, but it’s reflected in us through our perception.

And so we all have this, we all have the imagination of God in the sense that we perceive things and we create the world that we behold with our senses.

 It’s already anti-authoritarian. But I’ll call myself an anarchist anyway, just to just to emphasize that, that my main focus is freedom and liberty, right? And especially that includes above all the freedom of the imagination. The liberty of the imagination.

On Politics

Cosmic communism, not related to state control and Stalinism, none of that, but it’s save all beings from suffering. That’s what my politics are all about…

Death Sweat of the Cluster: Selected Essays from Groupname for Grapejuice.
By Znore
An inebriated exploration of reality and other myths featuring Finnegans Wake, William Blake, Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick, Emma Goldman, Ezra Pound, Robert Duncan, Terence McKenna, Gertrude Stein, Carl Jung, Marshall McLuhan and others as guides and waylayers. A cast of hundreds. Blog becomes book becomes new medium entirely. Synchronicity, siddhis, numerology, psychedelics, anarchy, the gods, yes. The poetics of anti-authority. Beautifully illustrated. Read with tea.

Group Name for Grape Juice
https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/

Excerpts

On Being Detained by the Venezuelan State

 They start screaming at me, pointing guns at me, order me to take off all my clothes. Where are the explosives? Where is the plane? Where’s the CIA base.

And I’m in shock. I’m handed over over to the military counterintelligence, and that’s where things got pretty rough.”

On Being

 I liked the idea of doing something hard just because it’s hard.

On The Battle of Nasiriyah

In one firefight we had 33 Marines. Seriously wounded. Gunshots and shrapnel, and that’s out of about 120 guys. So we had a 25% casualty in, in one firefight. So when I say we had a pretty, pretty stiff resistance.

On War

 I don’t believe in using war just as any other policy tool. I believe that the use of force is almost sacred. I think that, if you break the glass and you pull the lever, that should be a big deal. I’m very supportive of the United States… If you cut my finger, I bleed red, white, and blue.

On Propaganda

 These are all propaganda tools for internal political purposes. Many dictatorships they need an external enemy to unify the domestic political situation. I don’t know, I can’t speak to how many people believe this, but I can tell you that it’s a very common tool in these dictatorships

Connect with Matthew @ https://matthewjohnheath.com/

On motivation from V. Vale, the philosophical underpinnings of punk, on Nassim Taleb’s anti-fragile thinking and auto-didactic survival strategies, on John Fahey psyche, on low-res analog magic, on creativity as automatic cascading thought, on taping paper to paper at the kitchen table, on making art without handholding or explanation, on psychotherapy as edge work for the creative unconscious, on hypnosis and ontological shock, on alien abduction and lost time, on ketamine, on UFOs and the government’s, on synesthetic perception shifts and reality’s mutability, on rescue music, on DJing in therapy, on uncertainty as the engine of therapeutic change, on not-knowing as technique, on urban exploration of the haunted margins, on freight hopping and riding trains into wasteland, on survival and longevity as an artist, on stepping outside surveillance into forgotten spaces where trees grow through living room floors, on being, on enjoying being wrong, on religion and spiritual practice, on practice, on life.

Interview Excerpts

On Returning from the Edge

 I think I say that in the book somewhere, it’s valuable to go crazy if you know how to come back.

On Paradigms

 What did it destroy? It destroyed something about my reality, and how I think about reality. So it was this kind of weapon against my paradigm that I was holding onto.

On End Points

I think it’s more a case of, it’s time to face the answer rather than to find the answer.

On Music in Therapy

It’s all you have to do. Just listen to the music. And that was very reassuring. And if you do that, you realize that the music is this carrier wave that pulls you through the experience. And it can energize the experience or it can make it more tranquil.

Interview contains samples from Matt Baldwin’s Album NEW UNIVERSAL SOLAR CALENDAR

Intro: Did you See the Eyes

Outer: Old Sand Roads

Links:

Matt Baldwin’s Psychotherapy Practice: https://mattbaldwin.net/

How To Play Guitar by Matt Baldwin

Years later these changes have materialized into what unfolds into a discussion that is part spiritual autobiography, part civilizational diagnosis. From Edward de Vere to the Bhagavad Gita, from Kundalini practice to the economics of manufactured consent, Guy draws from eclectic sources with the confidence of someone who has stopped caring whether it sounds respectable. His central provocation that all morality is the rationalized removal of compassion opens into a wider meditation on intimacy, anxiety, and what it means to listen to your body when every institution is asking you not to.

On the fake and the fabricated, on muscle testing and intuition, on leaving Canada, on synchronicity as guidance system, on economics as fakery, on trauma, on the body as truth-teller, on his critiques of feminism but not the feminine, on accountability, on the relativity of time, on Oaxaca, on expression of God, and more…

Connect with Guy Duperreault | Becoming A Refugee in the Time of Covid

Excepts

On Action

Whenever I’m blaming or complaining, I’m giving away my ability to choose action.

On Feminism vs Feminine

We deny the history through mythology of the power of the female. So one of the great lies of feminism is that women are weak. That’s bullshit, right? They’re much stronger than men in many respects, and men respect them much more because women have the ability to create life in a way that men do not have.

On Being Victim

 I was a victim of a narcissistic mother. And not only she was a narcissistic mother, she was also angry. And it turns out that she confessed to me when I was 18 years old that she had actually killed me as an infant and that I needed to be revived in some way. I have no recollection of that. Michelle has informed me that the way she killed me was by beating me to death, which I didn’t know.

Post Script from Guy:

Perhaps include a link to my essay on have to and should. That simple change of language has the power to transform life.

Spell Breaking Language-Keys to Unlock Language Locks
Unseen, We Live Bully Stockholm Syndrome And Other Oddities of Being Alive in a Miss-Spelled See of Words

Guy Duperreault. Oct 30, 2023

Becoming A Refugee in the Time of Covid

Spell Breaking Language-Keys to Unlock Language Locks

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3 years ago · 13 likes · 15 comments · Guy Duperreault

From technology as spellcraft, to collapse as ongoing reorientation, to spiritual practice as a form of quiet resistance, on his new novel, on writing, the conversation avoids doomer clichés: it’s not about despair, but about seeing clearly. Ran speaks with a rare patience that reveals thought in motion pausing, circling, revising inviting us to listen more closely to what remains alive, to re-enchant.

For an earlier conversation with Ran, I invite you to listen to my 2022 interview with Ran Prieur.

Excerpts

On Mind and Matter as Play

 “Matter is like a game that we’re playing. It’s like you’re playing a board game and if you’re playing a board game, you have to follow the rules of the game. And that’s what matter is. It’s a game. The mind is playing and that we’re all in. And while we’re in it, we have to follow its rules, but underneath it’s all mind.”

On Returning to the Non-Human World

 “We’ve pulled all this stuff where humans are going deeper and deeper into a world of our own creation, and we’ve lost the vital force which we can get by going back to the non-human made world.”

On The Zeitgeist

“ We are the fish. And our whole culture is the fish and everything is going faster and brighter as the net closes around us. That’s my sense of the zeitgeist. “

 “AI is not the painter, AI is the pallet.”

More Ran Prieur

Some works / people mentioned in the interview that might not be clear in audio transcription

Purse-Seine: a large wall of netting used in fishing to encircle and capture schools of fish

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre

John Vervaeke, Ph.D - psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto.

I’m waiting for takeout at a well-known Vietnamese restaurant in Honolulu.

A group of Japanese tourists, ten deep filing in. The owner greets them in fluent, cheerful Japanese, though every phrase carrying the tone of Cantonese. Jokes and banter flow, his voice warm, his phrasing precise though every syllable carries the tone of Cantonese. The tourists laugh, their order complete, the owner turns toward the kitchen.

He calls the dishes in rapid Vietnamese, the cooks in the back nodding without pause, he swivels back to me in English:

“Ten more minutes.”

I nod. But curiosity pulls me forward. In Japanese, I ask him where he learned to speak so well.

He begins.

He was born in Vietnam, but raised in Hong Kong. Trained as a chef there, he once met a Japanese girl, daughter of a Seiko watch salesman, traveling with her family. He smiles faintly as he recalls it, it was instant. The days unraveled into a whirlwind.

When she returned to Japan, long-distance calls in the 1970s were horribly expensive. So he began to study Japanese intensely. Already grounded with Chinese characters, he advanced quickly, he wrote her love letters, she responded in kind. Occasionally they spoke on the phone, bridging seas with voices, the current of love steady between them. He worked in kitchens, climbing and saving through the ranks, dreaming of moving to Japan, or her of coming to Hong Kong again.

I share the saying with him: the best way to learn a language is with a bedroom dictionary. He chuckles and nods in agreement.

But the dream ended.

“One day,” he tells me, “she wrote to say she was marrying a man her parents had chosen. ”

His voice dips.

“You see in that era, it wasn’t so easy, you had to listen to your parents. Not like now.”

He cried for a month. His Japanese was nearly fluent by then. Broken, he says.

Later he traveled to Japan, tried to see her, to win her back.

The door was closed.

Broken further.

I ask him if he ever heard from her again.

“No,” he answers with eyes down.

“And who did you marry?” Presuming I ask.

He slouches a bit, his voice soft, a nice Chinese girl, he says. Two kids and a full life later. He’s hoping now for grandchildren. On the wall behind him hangs a calendar with a photo of his daughter, his pride breaking the sadness for a moment.

I ask him how he came to Hawaii. He smiles, the bell rings, the cooks slide my order through the kitchen pass.

“Another time” he says.

He places the bag in my hands, a business card laid on top.

美蘭 Mai Lan

Beautiful Orchid.

I smile at the name. Knowing the meaning it carries.

He turns back to the dining room, shoulders slightly stooped. Balancing glasses of beer for the Japanese tourists, a mask of cheerfulness. But I see it — the longing irradiating the room.

I pass the wall of Japanese celebrity photos, postcards, yellowed newspaper clippings.

Takeout in hand. I wave a shaka back at him.

Stories everywhere. Deep, if you listen.

Saudade Mai Lan

美蘭 —Beautiful orchid, indeed.

Hungry Ghost Books

Spiral Seas

THEORY OF THE END - Introduction: Why I Wrote All of This Stuff

“The phenomenon called “I…

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9 months ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Jigokucake

It was Sunday night.
The kind of night made for interruptions.

The goats screamed.
They always made noise. Petty quarrels, the clatter of horns, bleating of hunger.

But this was different.
This sound was a cry sharpened by fear, carrying the weight of a wolf or something worse.

He was already awake when it came.
His wife lay beside him, snoring. He nudged her, but the cry had already entered him. There are moments when you do not move by choice. You are moved.

He rose, barefoot, into the dark.

Flaco lay stiff on his back, legs jutting upward like snapped branches.
Ashen on his side, the glaze of death in his open eye.
Wisp gone.
Pancho gone.
Lark. The pregnant one missing.
Only Ivy, the smallest, stood at the pen trembling at the open gate, waiting for restoration of order.

He shouted and something vast waved past.
A fox, a wolf, a dog, or the shape that hunger takes when it wears a pelt.
The night closed in around him. The field, the pen, the trees all the invisible threads that held them together.

The darkness became so complete only the eyes of animals could be seen, shining like distant stars.

Later he would remember details as if they were clues.

Flaco, suddenly rising, bloodied. Wisp bounding back as if nothing had happened. Ashen, throat torn, lay frozen until suddenly, impossibly, he staggered up, as if life had reconsidered its departure.

Four goats, four wounds, four survivals.

He thought of the scripture: the sheep saved and goats condemned. But hadn’t Christ meant the opposite? That the solitary, ungovernable goat was the true disciple?

Now looking at his own herd, annoying, stubborn, alive only in clusters, he wasn’t so sure.

He often thought and spoke of the field.
Not just the pasture, but the invisible order beneath it: that web deciding who shows up, who falls silent.

The field beyond form and emptiness, where all possibilities wait.
The wolves were part of the field. The scream of the goats, too.The night itself had been the field, announcing presence: not as warning but invitation.

His wife asked later if he felt guilty.
He didn’t.
Responsibility was enough he told her.
Guilt is useless, like locking the gate after the night had passed. The freedom they enjoyed not worth false security.

If the pen had been closed, the wolves might not have come. The goats would have slept, the night would have passed quietly. They would have gone on in ignorance.

But now they knew.
And knowing seemed worth something.

Perhaps the best of outcomes.

In the days that followed, Ashen lay beneath the shade tree, barely breathing. The man brought honey water, dribbling it onto his lips.

At first, nothing, then slow flickers of life, a swallow.
The frozen body thawed into trembling and slowly, almost reluctantly, Ashen came back.
And in that return, the man felt something shift himself too.

He remembered telling his sister once: “if you separate the sheep from the goats, I want to be with the goats.” Now he wasn’t sure.

Watching Ashen rest, he thought of his old guitar, untouched for weeks.
He picked it up again, clumsily.
The strings were out of tune, his fingers stiff.
The first notes awkward, broken, but alive with mistakes.
But soon he felt it: a tingling, a trembling aliveness.
The music wasn’t good, but it was true.
To do something badly can be more valuable than to do it well. Failure strips away authority.
The cup must be emptied before it can be filled.

He wondered if enjoyment was the only measure that mattered. Not pleasure, but the sudden trembling aliveness that seizes the heart when the world cracks open.

The goats had screamed.
The wolves had answered, and life had broken its still surface.

For a moment, nothing was taken for granted.
For a moment, the field had spoken.
And for a moment, it was enough.

// Zero Strike

On J.J’s lifelong journey across continents seeking wisdom in ancient teachings and living systems. On his path from Jungian psychology and archetypal studies, on the Tower of Babel as metaphor, on the relationship between material energy decline and spiritual energy ascent, and on how these forces echo through our present moment.

On how to prepare for what comes next not through fear or apocalypse fantasies, but by maintain openness, awareness, reverence, and adaptability.

Excerpts

 We are in a Tower of Babel scenario where we have had convergence for decades and we are now finally, reaching a point where we will have peak centralization, which will be temporary because when we see a major material energy decline, it would be very difficult for the centralization to be maintained and or at the same level.  

We are transitioning from a high materialism to a low materialism, more or less.

As we enter an era of physical energy declines. We might also enter an era of spiritual energy inclines in terms of we will become more spiritual, less materialistic consciously at the same time when we are, we actually need to adapt and adjust to less energy material energy in reality.

 I think the transition we will be going through will require an openness, a greater openness, let's say, to meta metaphysical concepts. Simply because I think life will become too weird really to understand what's going on without having some metaphysical understanding of what's unfolding.

J.J’s latest essay discussed:

https://energyshifts.net/mimetic-rivalry-in-the-tower-of-babel/

J.J. Montagnier is an independent writer based in the Southern Hemisphere. His main areas of interest are depth-psychology, consciousness, ancient civilisations, mythology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and metaphysics.

https://energyshifts.net/

For those interested in more depth and information on Mayan systems: Mayan Wisdom Project is a valuable resource:

https://www.themayanwisdomproject.com/

Talking with Dr. Thomas Cook, psychiatrist, writer, on navigating the crossroads science, spirituality, and myth. On psychedelics (“bad trips”) as way markers back to the natural state, as tools for dissolving the walls of modern state, on genuine religious connection. On depression ego inward-facing, a comforting puppet show of self-talk, and the bad trip as its opposite: a shattering, outward-facing vision that shocks us back into relationship with the world.

On the modern epidemic of skepticism, rationalism, and invisibility, and how psychedelics remove the Ring of Power to return us to childlike awe, returning us to visible beings once again. On demons, entities, and Tolkien’s Sauron as metaphors for the hidden darkness we deny. On Christianity, paganism, and the rediscovery of primal virtues through psychedelic experience.

On the failures of the pharmacological model of psychiatry and the limits of mainstream science, on folk medicine and scientific humility, on microdosing and sacredness, and on building a moral framework sturdy enough to contain powerful experiences. On the value of different tools, on the dangers and risks of psychedelics, on other ways. On madness as non ego. On introjection, on family as the root of culture, broken homes as the source of modern illness, on monogamy, jealousy, and the natural laws embedded in the human soul.

A conversation discussing Dr Cook’s latest essay on “The Benefits of Bad Trips”, on psychological surgery, psychedelics as spiritual compasses and tools to reconnect with awe..

Dr Cook’s Essay: The Benefits of a Bad Trip
https://beyondmentalhealth.com/the-benefits-of-a-bad-trip/

Dr Cook’s Medical Practice

2022 Leafbox Interview with Dr Cook

Excerpts

On His Latest Essay

 So the original motivation is to give a hardheaded, more traditionally psychoanalytic explanation for why a bad trip in particularly heals depression…

 Psychedelics free people not just from rationalism, but also from moralism and depression is a form of moralism. It's a moral disease. It's a moralistic disease, and science is not moralistic. It's ontological….

On Skepticism

 I see the atheist skeptical position as similar to the depressed position.

 That miraculous, wondrous outwardness that you get from psychedelics, that psychedelics restore people to a genuine religiosity, not a fake one.

And they may even break down a person with fake religiosity. I think if they use a psychedelic, it may terrify them that they're not a believer anymore. They now you're back to the square one. Now you're back to where you were when you were a little kid. And you might feel like you're a pagan again.

You may go out in the yard and look at the flowers and be tempted to worship them. And that's not a bad thing. That's natural. That's all humanity as it's in its starting point. We, for, that's just the starting point in humanity. You have to have sympathy on it.

On Universal Soul

 It's hippie dippy, but it's also Native American. It's also Catholic. It's also Pagan. It's also Roman. It's also Viking. It's also Samoan. It's also Eskimo. Just look around the world. What do people value the most is family and their souls and the state of their soul.

Dr. Cook does not recommend the use of any federally illegal drug.

Known for what he’s called an “Armageddon-like, blood-and-guts” style of crime reporting, Byron speaks about his approach to journalism and his belief in what he terms No News Release Journalism.

On the urgent need to diversify news sources in an era of collapsing public trust, and the ethical tightrope every reporter must walk. Byron recounts landmark investigations, from exposing allegations against Canadian oil companies operating in Sudan to tracking the twisting saga of convicted murderer and escape artist Richard Lee McNair.

Along the way, he shares stories of being a target of state surveillance, navigating dark and difficult subjects, and working on controversial cases, including UFO investigations, sensitive sexual abuse reports, and his work on Weibo Ludwig.

Part memoir, part introduction to fearless reporting, this interview offers a window into what it takes to stay human while holding power to account.

Excerpts

On Influences in Media

Here's the government lying to us. And the media went along with it. And that's what happens when you're on the take, where your bread is buttered and you fall into line. There are many examples of government influencing media, and I ran into that when I worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, very similar to the BBC in England and ABC in Australia.

On Interviewees:

 I treat them fairly and with respect. And I think that creates a trust, but I don't cover it for them… there's a place where you can draw a line there, but my goal is to get information from them. And you're not gonna get it by being adversarial ever. And that works with crown prosecutors, judges, lawyers, people on the street, any, so I said to him, I'm here. I'm not your friend, not your enemy. Talk. Tell me what's on your mind, what's your point of view on this?”

On UFOs and Shattering Beliefs

He said, there are UFOs, Byron. And I said, okay. And that kinda shatters your belief because here they are saying that Roswell is not true and nothing crashed there and word comes out over time. Yeah, there were crashes.... Yeah, there's like little doubt anymore that we're not alone in the universe, and I don't know what else we've been lied to.

Yeah, it's a strange world, my friend, and the more I delve into it the less I seem to know is totally confusing at times.

On Being a Target of State Surveillance

That's a surveillance house. I said, on who? He said, you stupid. You've done stories on the oil and gas industry. They'd be doing that to you right away. And I said, I don't believe it. And he said, no, you Canadians are naive about that.

He said, I'll tell you how you bust that house. It's a surveillance house. It would be run by the similar to the NSA in the United States. We have our own group here called the Communications Security Establishment, CSC. He said that's who those people are. If they're monitoring you. I said, I don't believe it.”

…you should know that the communication security establishment in Canada, that's our NSA, has files on one in four Canadians. That's documented evidence brought up in parliament.

Byronchristopher.org/

Byron Christopher on eco-activist Wiebo Ludwig

Excerpts

On Collapse Cycles

“A better word than a collapse would be the ending of a cycle.

And in order for a cycle to end, something has to die so that something else can come out.
And we see cycles in everything in nature. It could be, you could argue a base, some sort of cyclical process.

So we have this negative association with the term collapse, and we have this idea that it's, oh, it's it's bad thing and we need to have infinite better things in the future… I think it, it would probably be better if we collapse, because if we don't, I think that the future would be, I'd be more concerned about the future of a non collapse.”

On the Role of the Soul in the Spiritual Ecology

“Beyond the physical, the body extends into subtler and subtler levels. Most of us believe we are confined to flesh, but experiences suggest otherwise: premonitions, psychic contact, thinking of someone just as they call you, or calling them to find they were thinking of you.

An occultist might say these are points of contact…our subtle bodies signaling across a more refined level of reality, like sending out a flare into the astral level… that another picks up unconsciously.

We are encountering these layers all the time. We don't necessarily just realize it, we don't necessarily have a language that can conceptualize it.”

On Self Work and Externalities

“It is much better to work on changing yourself than to work on changing the world outside. 'Cause first of all, it works. It is easier and it's also less dangerous because if you start to move things shove things around. In the outside world, if you're not really careful and you're not making sure that you're really in line with where things want to go naturally, where the Dao wants to flow, as it were, then you're setting yourself up for a lot of instability.

'cause there's always second order consequences and third order consequences of everything you do. And in like occultism, that's kicked up to the max because of what you put out, you'll get back. So if you, for example if you put a hex on someone, you're putting a hex on yourself sooner or later it's gonna come back at you.”

On Self Monitoring

“ A lot of self-monitoring because anyone who's dealing with archetypes and then archetypes in their own life is at risk of going completely insane.”

On Utopian Visions

“ Fully automated luxury space communism just sounds horrific.”

Connect with Luke Dodson

Flint & Steel

This morning,
the moths,
the same ones I told you about,
the ones who had been visiting the last few days
landed on my desk.

And then they died.

I didn’t see it happen.
They were just there.
Still.
Like they had finished something.

It seems to have happened right
after I spoke with your great-great aunt.

We almost never talk.
But today, we did.
Almost two hours.
Stories your grandmother refuses to explore and tell.
A friend had encouraged me a few weeks ago:
pull at the threads.

So I have.
And it’s strange,
but I wondered—I really did
if the moths were 'aumākua.

Spirits.
Family, returning to check in.

My father,
maybe?
My sister?

Sometimes our ancestors
come back as animals,
birds,
moths.

They don’t say anything.
They just come.
And then they go.

After the call,
I felt a strange relief.

Like someone had been holding their breath
on my behalf,
and had finally exhaled.
I picked the moths up
gently
and I buried them beneath a small stone
in the planter box on the lanai
where I usually sit.

That spot where the wind moves through the leaves
just enough to remind you
that you're not alone.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this,
except that maybe one day
you’ll feel a presence you can’t explain,
and I want you to know:
It’s possible
it’s them or maybe it’s me.

And it’s okay to stop.
To notice.
To thank them
before they go.

They walked past the compost, past the woodpile, into the back lot where the grass gave way to dust and weeds. A row of old crates leaned against the fence. The boy had never been here alone. He followed close, uncertain.

The grandfather stopped and reached into his jacket. From a cloth bundle, he unwrapped a small pistol. Dull black, almost modest.

“Hoy aprenderás algo importante,” he said.

The boy looked down at the cloth. His hands tingled, a mix of nervousness and excitement.

“¿Qué es?” he asked, though he already had a sense.

“Tu primer disparo,” said the grandfather. “No es por violencia, ni por caza. Es para que sepas lo que es tener poder en las manos. Y lo que significa responder por él.”

The boy held the pistol the way he’d seen in movies, too tight, too high. The grandfather adjusted his fingers gently.

“Así. Con respeto. Nunca con rabia. Nunca por juego.”

There were bottles lined up on a plank across two stones. The kind of setup boys dream about. The air was still. Birds quieted.

The boy raised the pistol. Took a breath. Squeezed the trigger.

A click.

Then a sharp metallic crack as the slide jerked back and slammed into the soft flesh of his forearm. The gun had misfired. He yelped and dropped the gun. It clattered on the dirt, harmless but loud.

He looked at his arm. A red welt rising like shame. Eyes wide. Not crying. But close.

His grandfather didn’t rush. He picked up the gun and misfired slide, checked it, then looked at the boy’s arm. He nodded, not coldly, but with that same solemnity he reserved for the fig tree or the earth.

“Bueno, todavía podemos aprender de los fallos. Esto pasa cuando no escuchas al arma,” he said. “Cuando la tratas como una herramienta solamente, y no como una presencia.”

The boy nodded, unsure what that meant but knowing it mattered.

“Cada cosa viva o no, tiene su carácter. El metal también habla.”

He paused, then added more softly:

“Así es la vida a veces. Crees que vas a hacer un disparo limpio, y justo cuando aprietas… te pega de vuelta.”

They sat for a while under the eucalyptus. The boy pressed a cool leaf against his arm.

“You said it wasn’t for violence,” he said.

“No,” said the grandfather. “Era para enseñarte que el poder verdadero no siempre hace ruido. Y que el primer golpe… muchas veces te lo das a ti mismo.”

The boy was quiet.

Then, almost as an afterthought, the grandfather smiled faintly.

“Y ahora ya sabes: no hay acto sin riesgo. Pero tampoco hay crecimiento sin herida.”

// Zero Strike

Experts

On Being

People always say “Be Yourself.”
I say, don't be yourself, be somebody else.
It's not until you take leave of the limitations of who you believe yourself to be, that you can become who you really are, that you can become full expression.

On Elimination

A process of elimination leads to a process of illumination.

On Adulthood vs Childhood 

For me being an adult is really being a skilled child, 'cause that's the soul really. It's that untarnished part of the self that comes into the world that we must protect at all costs. And that doesn't mean, not adulting or not, doing the necessary things or growing up and maturing, but preserving all of that stuff and you just, becoming more skilled in the things, because I think play is a way to learn.

On Revaulating Meta Reality 

Meta reality instead of materiality which looks at matter in a different way because, we think of ourselves as singular self hoods moving through this world. You're Robert. I'm Michael. That's a chair. That's a guitar.

But there's actually all these cellular processes and these microbial bacterial processes and all these other living collectives that build and sustain and heal and break down this world of matter upon which the. Of the hallucination of the self rides.

 And that got me to reevaluate my worldview in a lot of ways. And looking at like the micro, the microbial microbiological implications. 'cause usually we tend to think of things as a dichotomy of materialism and idealism or spirituality which I think there's a secret third thing, which is hinged, hinged on language and the way that affects perception and affects the world.

On improvisational adaptational

I'm not a guy that gets tattoos. I'm more like a mutilation by flesh, eating parasite kind of guy. So when I was going through that the parasitic period of my life is that I'd never had expectations of life where somebody had told me that I wouldn't have flesh eating parasites mutilating me.

So just stay open-minded and improvisational and adaptational as things come, I think it's the best attitude to have rather than preconceived notion that that, that bump into the actuality or that are at odds with the actuality of life's unfolding.

The Ungoogleable Michaelanglo

Originating in The Netherlands, The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo is a creator of cosmic, comedic, and contemplative content, here to serve The Lore.

His work finds expression through visual art, written and spoken word, music, film, puppetry, uncanny impressions, performance, and Oracular Interactions.

​He is the host and creator of the podcast Self Portraits As Other People, the narrator of Consciousness and The Bicameral Mind: The Julian Jaynes Society podcast, and the author of The He & The She of It, Impatient Transformations, and Lore Spores, Vol. 1.

Self Portraits as Other People

On Spectrums

This dichotomy between abled bodies and disabled bodies is not necessary or a helpful differentiation - all of our bodies are essentially disabled or disability is something that all of us would have to come to terms with earlier or later. I see it really as a flow instead of distinct categorizations

On Art for Generating Questions

I studied occupational therapy and I worked as a therapist… but during that time I would visit art museums by myself. And in those visits I found that there was a sort of opening or space within art that seemed to be like inviting curiosity, inviting questions, and experimentation that I, I had not encountered in my previous studies… But there were moments during my education to study to be a therapist where I found myself asking questions that were unanswerable or coming up to the limits of empirical reasoning... I wasn't trying to look for answers, really. I was looking for a space where I could ask more questions…

On Ultra Pure Water

 TSMC alone accounts for 38% of the country's daily water usage.

And it's not even enough. They still like purchase water from construction sites, for example, because the creation of AI chips requires like thousands of washing with what's called ultra pure water. So it's like water that is a thousand times pure than tap water.

On the Spiritual

I collect rocks wherever I go, and I wouldn't say I worship the rocks, but that seems to be the closest spiritual practice in my life.

Visit hsurae.com/ for more information.

Postscript from Rae:

Regarding the Phantom Limb Series: It came together with the help of many: TAs, classmates, faculty at RISD. In glassblowing, especially with large or experimental forms, it’s almost never a solo effort. There's an improvised choreography in the hot shop, and I leaned heavily on that. At the time, I didn’t always know how to properly credit that kind of fluid, mutual support. But over the years, I’ve become more intentional about acknowledging those contributions.

That ethos continues in my current work. Two of my ongoing projects are being developed under a loose, evolving collective called Lythologies. It’s not a fixed group, but rather a dispersed, flexible way of holding collaboration, one that shifts and grows with each project.

Also, I wanted to highlight two upcoming exhibitions:

• Stories Written by the Sky, NTMoFA, Taiwan (10/25–12/14) (

• Human Machine, EWERK Luckenwalde, Germany (9/20–12/14)

Selections and images of some of Hsurae’s pieces discussed during interview

All photos credit: hsurae.com/

You must be happy to visit your grandma?

Well. No. She tried to kill me.

She tried to kill you?

Yes. She cooked me a spring roll on a non-stick frying pan last night.

The girl wrapped herself tighter in her towel, still wet from the pool, fidgeting on the lounge chair as she explained the dangers of modern frying pans in precise detail to the neighboring sunbather. She and her mom were ten hours from New York, three days into a visit that had started with her grandfather’s funeral.

Her mom sat nearby, rummaging through the depths of a canvas bag, anxious, absorbed in her own quiet emergency. She said nothing, just kept searching. Like something vital had gone missing.

But it was the penny-sized scratch on the girl’s knee, softened by pool water, that demanded her full attention.

The possibility of sepsis. Muttering.

She also almost killed me when I was a baby. She dropped a glass and let me sit near the broken pieces. I could’ve bled all over the floor. Could you imagine?

He sat on a recliner by the pool, legs stretched out, watching his own daughter play with a gaggle of kids at the far end. Earlier, he’d tried introducing the neighboring visitors to the group; a reprise for the tired-looking mom, friends for the daughter. But they hadn’t gelled. Some kids just don’t.

So the girl had drifted back toward him, bored of her mother. Her voice floated in the air as she played alone near the edge of the water, recounting her recent encounter with a bear and how she’d ended up in Hawaii.

I saw it right there, behind that bush. It growled. I had tried to steal its baby, I think. You’re not supposed to do that. That’s why they attack. On TV they said you should play dead, but I don’t know. I had a friend named Irvin who died of internal bleeding. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but it’s not good.

He nodded, like someone trying to keep up with a dream. Or just being polite.

There are no bears in Hawaii, he said, gently.

Maybe. Maybe it escaped from the zoo. I know what I saw.

The mom suddenly called out — she had found the Neosporin at last, hidden deep in the folds of her infinite bag. She applied it generously to the scratch, her face a mix of relief and quiet urgency.

The girl watched her, mimicking the flicker of emotions in her mom’s face; temporary relief layered with future worry.

Do you think I’ll live?

She’d asked the same thing at the funeral. Again, when the car broke down in Manoa while they waited for triple AAA. And that morning, a spider in the bathroom launched her into the same spell.

Do you think I’ll live?

A kind of incantation. Not a question, not really.

She told him how her grandfather used to sit poolside like him, with a radio too quiet to hear, peeling grapes one by one. She’d take them in both hands, whispering thank you.

At the funeral, she said nothing. Her grandmother wept, but it looked more like relief than grief.

Later, she burned the spring roll on the pan. Too much oil. Too hot. A dark spot on the plate. The girl bit into it anyway.

What happened to Irvin?

The girl shrugged. He was my friend in a dream. I don’t think he was real. But the bleeding was.

I see.

She squinted toward the trees. Next time, I’ll bring pepper spray. For the bear.

He almost laughed. Okay. Bring two. In case I forget mine.

The girl nodded solemnly. And snacks. Bears like snacks. I shouldn’t bring snacks to the pool. That could attract them.

With her knee now patched, she unwound the towel. Free to play again, she skipped once, then again, then flopped into the shallow end of the pool.

No running!