Category: Society (Multitudes)

“We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don’t care. We say we care but we do nothing. And nothing ever changes.” BBC documentary by Adam Curtis.

In Western culture what is “feminine” has become associated over time with what is evil or immoral… This frightening view of the collective, akin to the archetype of the Terrible Mother, is what drives a lot of the global political and social narrative.

It seemed unthinkable. A narcissistic reality show star with an authoritarian personality and a highly volatile temperament was elected to the highest office in the land on a platform of bigotry, xenophobia, and bullying. He was quite possibly the least qualified man to ever make it to the general election, let alone win the election. Yet against all expectations, here we are.

If new myths are born, re-tethered to something sacred, they must be brutally immediate, possessing unavoidable gravity, poignant, fragile, they must be anything but contrived, planned, and developed with the intention of bringing us the sacred. (She does not come to us on a platter. More likely, the platter will have your beating heart on it.)

“It would be hard to communicate to someone growing up today just how widespread was the fallout from the threat of the Atomic Bomb. From July 16th, 1945, when the first bomb was tested over the Jornada del Muerto Desert, its occult light had continued to throw shadows from each object. The danger was not abstract; it was imminent, and it changed our whole way of looking at the world.”

Dunbar proposed the limit of meaningful friendships is “150”—a far cry from our Facebook and Instagram network connections—but maybe it’s more complicated than that.

A 20-minute “unguided meditation,” this audio journey combines music, conversational fragments, and field phenomena to produce a contemplative response to current events, specifically the United States presidential election of 2016. As an immersive mindscape, the sound collage invites you to engage the world as meditation, and meditation as art.

“In their re-imagination of the Ellison/Baraka opposition, direct challenges alternate with playful taunts. These exchanges have the energy of a competition but the warmth and generosity of a collaboration.”

I felt it fitting to choose to stay at home alone and “rent” the movie right away. As the pixels on my laptop flickered with Herzog’s visions, I reveled in the juxtaposition of my solitude while consuming this film whose subtitle espouses connection….

What comes after Facebook? How can we reimagine our social networks for a planetary digital democracy of the future?

“Co-creating the world with the symbols laid out in front of us: What could be a better description of what is needed right now? We need to see what’s before us, learn to read it, internalize it, and then create it by combining it with our individuality.”

For me, the cultural shift from an identity that is based upon a nation or a territory to one based upon a state of consciousness—indeed even a seizure of consciousness—expresses the transition from politics to metapolitics.

The neon tribes of the digital age are seeking alternative spiritual streams, and yet the search for ecstatic highs within the inner landscape are fraught with frauds and superficial vendors. The marketplace has never been as full as it is now, nor as diverse and tantalizing.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon when I found myself walking through the main street of a busy business district and noticed a large billboard ahead of me featuring a woman in a glittering black bikini and a sign that read: Non-stop adult entertainmen …