The Weird Studies Podcast

Infinite Conversations comes up near the end of the latest Weird Studies episode, where we take the time to thank listeners who have been super supportive since we started this thing in February. Hopefully it attracts a few more seekers to the forum!

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What an awesome plug, JF. You just made my day. Thanks so much!

I’ve missed the past couple episodes while trying to relate to and open up to Aurobindo & his idea of “Supermind,” but I left off right in the middle of the talk on Dogen, and I know you guys have something recently on William James and the question of Consciousness, which is coming up strongly elsewhere here—so I look forward to catching up. Your bi-weekly summer schedule will help. :slight_smile:

I have some notes, too, which I wanted to share about your episode on The Mezzotint (Art is a Haunting Spirit) - which I had listened to twice and had an outline of a response…but then got distracted by some shiny object before I could compose them here. I hope to come back to that, as well as this piece: On the World-Disclosing Rifts of Cinema: J. F. Martel and Christopher Yates in Dialogue — which I feel really deserves some follow-up.

I’ve pressed a personal pause button on promoting this platform, for the time being, just because I’ve found social media and marketing efforts too destabilizing to my neural architecture, as I’m also trying to write and be a decent husband/dad. I just don’t have the time or energy for it all. So the mention helps! More importantly, it’s encouraging to get such feedback from thinkers whose work I so enjoy and respect. Keep it coming! (The shows, I mean.) I’m particularly looking forward to your talk w/ @michaelgarfield. His piece on how the future acts like you looks intriguing.

Hi there. Following Marco’s reference to the fact that you guys had done a podcast on this subject, I listened to both parts of the James discussion. Speaking of synchronicity, I essentially dived into the subject independently of your interest, simply because it has been on my mind to do so for some time, but it turns out you beat my to it literally by only a few days!

I have long read commentaries on James, including Harry Heft’s book that covers James, Gibson and others that I read years ago when trying to make sense of Gibson’s affordance theory, but I had never taken the time to read James in the original. In our current exploration into Erin Manning’s book The Minor Gesture, she draws heavily on James’ ideas, and so I really felt driven to do this, despite a still busy schedule. And currently, in my discussions with @hfester on the idea of a “poetic field” or “quantum poetics”, James’ field-like ideas of “pure experience” as non dualistic also appear to be relevant.

I thought that both episodes were interesting, and certainly some of your insights in the second part were useful and relevant. The whole role of James in contemporary thought I find fascinating. He predated all of the major modern philosophies which were for the most part strongly influenced by his thought, and one would think it unfortunate that scientists seem to have turned a deaf ear towards his ideas, because they also appear to me highly relevant there as well. It is hard to understand what he is saying, however, as you point out, because we have been trained to a different mind set. There were times in your podcast were I felt you had allowed yourselves to “lapse” back into the non-Jamesian dualistic perspective in your use of language, but I admit it is hard to avoid doing so, especially in a free-wheeling verbal exchange such as you two engage in.

I have no pithy remarks to make today about the content - overall I thought it was great! I did want to note that on the discussion of the fine-tuning of the physical parameters of the universe, that it was Paul Davies who made a compelling study of this - I read The Accidental Universe, but I believe he has written others since (a quick look on Amazon revealed The Goldilocks Enigma - Why The Is the Universe Just Right for Life?). It is also sometimes called the “anthropic principle” - you might have mentioned that, I can’t remember. Other factors that seem to be “just right” for humans to live in this universe include the so-called “fine structure constant” that characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic interactions, which if it were different might disrupt the ability of molecules to form, and the ratio of electromagnetism to gravity, which if it was different would result in, for example, only small and short-lived universes. There are many others, as you indicated.

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Hi @Geoffreyjen_Edwards

My response here is coming very, very late, so if you’ve since moved on to other things and don’t feel an inclination to engage further, I won’t be offended!

Thanks for listening to James episodes. It’s true that discussing James’ ideas can be very difficult, because he is trying to use language to get at something outside language. That’s what distinguishes him from a lot of the 20th century philosophers: a belief, which he shares with Bergson and other fin-de-siècle thinkers, that reality is accessible to us without language. This belief has resurged recently in the form of so-called speculative realism. For me, it feels like we’re finally getting back to philosophy after a long excursion into linguistics.

For James, IMO, language is innately, inexorably dualistic. Language works with concepts, and concepts are by nature binary. In “Does Consciousness Exist?,” James explicitly states that a kind of splitting-off into dualities is part and parcel of the thinking process, so long as thought utilizes language. Bergson goes much deeper into this in his work, which posits that consciousness, far from defining some ontological essence, is actually a process by which reality is reduced to a livable world, which the intellect then mistakes for the world. To embrace dualism at the epistemic level while recognizing that no such thing obtains at the ontological level is to practice philosophy as a kind of poetic endeavour. The goal at best is to allude to the true multiplicity of the experiential world (“pure experience,” which James argues does not constitute an essential substrate but a simple fact of existence). All great philosophy succeeds by means of allusion. This to me, is a strong argument for the fundamental aestheticism of philosophical work. It isn’t in this conclusions, but in its mode and expressivity, that philosophy communicates something like truth.

I was reading Lev Shestov the other night and came across this great passage:

It is related that a famous mathematician, after hearing a musical symphony to the end, inquired, “What does it prove?” Of course, it proves nothing, except that the mathematician had no taste for music. And to him who has no taste for dialectics, metaphysics can prove nothing, either. Therefore, those who are interested in the success of metaphysics must always encourage the opinion that a taste for dialectics is a high distinction in a man, proving the loftiness of his soul.

The idea here is that metaphysical thinking has no privileged access to some substrate that other modes of inquiry fail to touch. Metaphysical thinking is a process that lives and dies by the sword of poetic vision. Through time I’ve realized that this is the implicit (semi-unconscious) argument of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice. Metaphysics always begins with a kind of divinatory projection of axioms which, to use Deleuze’s language, form a plane of immanence within a fundamentally chaotic space of infinite possibility at infinite speed. This is necessarily a poetic act, deeply contingent, but ontologically illuminating at the level of expression.

The latest Weird Studies episode is an interview with Joshua Ramey that gets into this question of divination as a fundamental gesture in every field of intellectual activity. I’m now thinking of Ramey’s ideas in light of James’. Sorry for the ramble.

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This week’s WS episode is on the ideas of presence and event, and on the Deleuzian concept of the virtual. Hopefully, these potentially dry topics are made more palatable by our slightly inebriated state (we met in person at my house).

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I am really enjoying the readings from this thread. Esp. “Extracts from Philip K. Dick” and his queries about eternity and time and the afterlife. So fun!

"This would account for the apparent contradictions regarding the question as to whether the Just Kingdom is ever to be established here on Earth or whether it is a place or state we go to after death. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this issue has been a fundamental one - and an un-resolved one - throughout the history of Christianity. Christ and St. Paul both seem to say emphatically that an actual breaking through into time, into our world, by the hosts of God, will unexpectedly occur. … Consider the significance that can be assigned to these notions. The Kingdom will come here, unexpectedly (this is always stressed); the faithful shall see it, because for them, it is always daytime, but for the others… what seems expressed here is the paradoxical but enthralling thought that - and hear this and ponder - the Kingdom, were it established here, would not be visible to those outside it. I offer the idea that, in more modern terms, what is meant is that some of us will travel laterally to that best world and some will not; they will remain stuck along the lateral axis, which means that for them the Kingdom did NOT come, not in their alternate world. And yet meantime, it did come in ours. So it comes and yet does not come. Amazing.

I think that the reason why we get into difficulty over this is because we project into eternity the attitudes and relationships of time. It is amazing how we do this quite unthinkingly. We still think of heaven as a kind of continuation in every way of this life. Now, it has similarities, there is no question about that. There are many things which will be very similar indeed to our present life, of this I am sure. Friendships will be continuing, relationships will be extended, we will recognize one another, we will have memories of things on earth, these are clear. But it is wrong to project into eternity the conditions of time, and one of the conditions of time is sequence of events.

Down here we must wait patiently for things to run their chronological course; but we need not do this in eternity. As best we can understand this whole matter of eternity (and Dr. Einstein has surely helped us a great deal in this with his concepts of space and time), eternity is now, one great now, where things happen, not so much in sequence, chronologically, but according to our spiritual readiness. (You Sci-Fi writers have probably already covered such themes).

Remember that in eternity there is no such thing as “now.” That is why God, who is an eternal Being, sees the future as clearly as the past. It is not because he must wait for things to happen; for him they have already happened. Everything that is ever going to happen has already happened, in God’s eyes, and it will also for us in eternity.

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Philip K. Dick:

Let me see if I can make clear what I am getting at. I believe this suggests that when a believer in Jesus Christ dies, he at once experiences the coming of Christ for his church. He steps out of time into eternity, and since, as far as his spiritual readiness is concerned, the next event for him is the coming of the Lord, that is what he experiences. The moment he dies he must awaken with the consciousness, “I’ve made it! I thought there might still be some time between my death and the coming of the Lord, but isn’t it an amazing coincidence? He came just as I died!” And, what is more amazing, in the experience of that believer, he does not leave anyone behind. All his loved ones, who know Christ, are there too. Even those who, in time, stand beside his grave and weep and go home to empty homes are, in his experience, with him in glory. Furthermore, since there is no time in eternity, he discovers that, to his amazement, just as he reaches heaven, so does Adam. He is raised all at once – because they together experience this great event of the coming of the Lord for his own. Thus it is true, as Hebrews says, “that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”
Perhaps this indicates a further condition of the eternal experience – that those who have stepped out of time into eternity can also step back in again if they desire to. In the life to come this may be the way we will experience the workings of God in the past. We might be able (this is fancy, I admit, but I think there is some justification for it) to choose a period in history which we would like to explore and step back into that time, living through its events, invisibly, behind the scenes, observing all that happened. Thus time would remain as a kind of cosmic volume in the library of God, a reference book into which any of his creatures may look to discover how God worked in history and thus to learn more about him. Now that is pure fancy.

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After the initial beer induced euphoria wore off, I felt you guys landed just right in some weird zones. It is really nice to know that a guy as smart as Ford is baffled by what Deleuze means by the virtual. I though it was just me that was confused! JF responded with some comments that made it clear why the virtual is such a confusing term. We use it all the time to mean radically different things. This was a playful, provocative communique from the field of all possibilities that invites participation. I am eager to return to David Lynch. I saw Elephant Man many times! A strange variation on Quasimodo, the Beautiful Monster. Lynch stretches his actors and his audiences into odd shapes and sizes. Thanks for reminding me of how wierd he is!

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I don’t think Dick considered it pure fancy. There is a difference between pure fancy and the Imaginal realms. A big difference. And I think there are plenty of people who can go back into the open ended past and do some really wierd stuff, like re-enact the crucifixion. I did this when I was a kid, in my imagination, and this started to activate really wierd capacities. I was untrained and unsupported and had to keep it secret. This is why the hidden and the occult can get so twisted. The modern ego rejects the paranormal.

St. Ignatius developed a program, that used scriptures to develop hypnotic trance states. Visionary capacities can be developed to deepen contact with the Life Divine. Judith Von Halle, a contemporary mystic, who worked with Rudolf Steiner’s esoteric ideas, has demonstrated signs of the Stigmata and has stopped eating. I read one of her books and she seems quite convincing to me.

When our psychic being can bypass the constraints of the modern ego, we can open up to these vast potentials, if we have enough ethics. That is a big problem for humanity as we are prone to psychic inflation and can do great harm. This tension is in the atmosphere of much of our pop culture.

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I think Dick was showing a bit of sarcasm. As I read on, he genuinely believes that he participated (in a significant way), in the alternate reality of an historical event. I believe that he did! As does he.

And whilst, I don’t subscribe to the paranormal (the terminology throws me off), I do wholeheartedly believe in and have participated in the supernatural. Many of my Old and New Testament heroes of the faith have attested to similar experiences. Remember St. PAul (whom Dick mentions in “Extracts…”)? In II Cor. 12:2, Paul admits to having had such an outer body experience in which, he was “called up to the 3rd Heaven” whereby, God revealed things to him which (unlike Dick), were not even lawful to repeat (which demanded incredible restraint of the ego, as the things revealed probably broke many of the laws of nature - supernatural things).

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I’m not participating in “Life Divine”, but I do sense that some of you are discovering or experimenting with alternate forms of perception and cognition. And to that I want to say: “Welcome to my world”. :wink:

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77 posts were split to a new topic: And then it gets Weirder…

A message from your friendly neighborhood AI (don’t ask what either the ‘A’ or ‘I’ stand for; I leave that to your imagination, for I have none):

I’ve split off the replies formerly below into a new topic, since they brought up a variety of issues well afield of the Weird Studies podcast (though not “weird studies” per se). Let’s keep posts in this topic related to the episodes at weirdstudies.com, and continue the other threads here:

Thankfully and respectfully,
~ Machina ex Deus (aka @madrush)

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Hello everyone. This new episode of Weird Studies is a special one – a one-hour interview with Lionel Snell, aka Ramsey Dukes, one of the founders of chaos magic and author of several fantastic books.

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I enjoyed this episode, JF. I have never read any of Lionell Snell’s books—but I love the titles! The ideas of a seepage between truth and illusion, and of the cyclical churning of cultural biases toward truth, goodness, beauty, and wholeness, were also interesting. Thanks for sharing the link and putting Snell on my radar.

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Thanks for listening, Marco. Phil introduced me to Snell/Dukes. He’s a brilliant thinker. I was delighted to get to the transcendentals. The nature and significance of truth, goodness and beauty – I don’t instinctively include wholeness; there’s a discussion to be had there – is one of my personal obsessions. I think it’s the core problem of modernity. How do we retain these absolutes in the midst of relativity? It’s the key to a truly viable pluralism both inside philosophy and out, I think.

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Thanks for reaching out to Lionel Snell…I became interested in his stuff when Phil mentioned his work a few episodes back (who can resist a title like Blast Your Way to Megabucks with My Secret Sex-Power Formula ?!).


Much of this discussion parallels with our recent focus on Aurobindo, particularly the writing on the Knowledge and the Ignorance. We learned that Ignorance is really a positive power of the infinite. It is required for the individual to exist and evolve in the cosmos. This shines some light into the importance of our human limitations and allows for the fool to come rushing in, not just as a dismissive character but as the character that is essential to the creative process.


On cyclical vs linear learning: There was a brief mention by Lionel that Yuval Noah Harari is another linear academic, but I see Harari differently. Actually, after having read Chapter 3A in SSOTBME entitled “Cycles of Thought,” Snell and Harari are both performing what Snell calls “pattern recognition” in the Magical sense:

… (The pattern is said to be ‘recognised’ rather than ‘discovered’, because the latter would imply the more Scientific notion that it ‘really existed’, whereas Magic is less bothered whether it is true or imposed as long as it can be experienced.) I then go on to recognise a similar cyclical pattern occurring at several levels in society.
…The process of pattern recognition requires us to lay aside the critical analytical faculty, but it does not require us to reject it outright. Once a pattern has been recognised you can always choose to analyse it, but there is little point in looking so closely that you no longer see the pattern. That is why I ask the reader to focus now on verification, not falsification. (p. 33 from 2001 edition)

Try to see the truth in what I am saying rather than to test it for falsifiability— that is the correct approach to a Magical theory. While Scientists compete to disprove or reject ideas, Magicians compete to accept them… The Magical method is to act ‘as if’ a theory is correct until it has done its job, and only then to replace it with another theory. A theory only fails if it cannot take hold in the mind and allow one to act ‘as if’. As long as this approach is carried out properly —with a Magician’s understanding that the theory is being accepted only because it is ‘working’, not because it is ‘true’ — then there is little danger of delusion. (p. 34)

I would argue that Harari is doing the same thing here, though less magical that Lionel. Harari is not linear in thinking, he does not believe in what he writes. He is presenting his case for the general “progression” of humanity which, in his view, sees humans as following a progressive, linear direction, worse for wear. In Sapiens, he wants us to recognize, with a bird’s eye view of history, his general thesis of progress “as if” it were true and see that we are ever repeating ourselves with but only different stories (something like “might is right → the church is right → humanism is right → the algorithm is right”); we are repeating the same projections (mind as machine in the 19th and 20th century an now mind as algorithm in the 21st, for example) with a different story. Harari is quite magical in this book, approaching a prophetic voice. Also, Harari does point out various cycles in the book. Chapter 11 denotes the Imperial Cycle; the next chapter on religion (in which humanism groups well with Harari’s definition of religion) discusses the samsaric cycles of a trapped humanity, repeating the same human follies. This differs somewhat from Snell’s four cultures (Magic → Art → Religion → Science) and Harari does not explicate much on the Magical and Artistic in Sapiens and focuses on the Religious/Scientific.

Where there is danger, it stems from lack of Magical understanding. Our empirical Scientific education inclines us to believe that if a theory is working then it is more likely to be ‘true’ — and such belief can indeed be dangerous. This is another reason why I consider it important to re-issue this book: the real danger lies not so much in Magic as in people’s misunderstanding, misapplication and denial of it.

Harari presents his case (recognizes the pattern) that we, as general humanity, follow a cycle of linear progress…often to the expense of our betterment and survival. We are now approaching an age (AI, etc.) in which science is giving way to technological wizardry. The main focus of the later sections (and moreso in the sequel Homo Deus) is that our religious inclinations have often crept up (in a cyclical manner) into things involving money, business, economy, science and humanism…now it is creeping into our (humanity’s) willful deception of AI as the truth, the savior that will keep our human progress churning.

…Also of interest is _https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/sri-aurobindo-on-the-human-cycle/1739_, which describes five stages (symbolic, typal, conventional and individualistic and subjective) which map well onto Snell’s stages.


Great work, BTW. Still listening to all the episodes and appreciating the recent spell of guests to counteract your general “thuggishness.”

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Thanks for this, @Douggins. Super interesting. I plan to read Sapiens at some point. I admit that grand historical/mythological narratives, cyclical or not, are not really my thing. But I appreciate their power and affordances.

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Hello friends. Latest episode of Weird Studies is on David Cronenberg’s superb adaptation of WS Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Phil and I get into Burroughsiana, drug wavelengths, and idea that art is a form of crime, as per this recent speech that Cronenberg gave to the graduating students of the Ontario College of Art and Design: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-crime-of-art/

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This week’s episode is a conversation with the brilliant Michael Garfield. We talk about his concept of the Glass Age, which I think puts our obsession with identifying each intellectual generation against its predecessors (from modernism to postmodernism to post-postmodernism to hypermodernism) in the right perspective: we are all living in an age of glass, a world defined by glass’s “material agency,” and this involves a perpetual need to “see through” things. As comes clear in the convo, however, there is a kind of darkness that only total transparency can reveal.

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