The Technosocial Institute
By The Technosocial Institute
The Technosocial InstituteMar 10, 2020
Being Men 2023 with Robert Glover, Alexander Bard, John Aigner and Rowan Andrews
This episode was recorded ahead of the European Men's Leadership Summit and the MANN SEIN gathering in Berlin in June. We discuss the challenges of modern masculinity, fathers, mentorship, the art of seduction, men's groups, the history of men's work, and much more. We will all be attending the gathering on June 17-18 to continue and develop these conversations. If you are interested in hanging out or joining the conversation, then check out the event at https://mannsein.org/en/ Robert Glover https://www.drglover.com/ Rowan Andrews https://www.rowanandrews.com/ John Aigner https://malevolution.org/en/ Alexander Bard http://futuricamedia.com/
On Urbit with Jurij Jukic and Liam Fitzgerald
In this conversation we talk about Urbit, its core philosophy, the technological problems it seeks to address, and its community. We also reflect on Curtis Yarvin's thought, the influence of Jorge Luis Borges on Urbit, and more besides.
Find Jurij on Urbit at ~dilryd-mopreg
The Process of Hominization: The Girard Sessions #3
This is the third installment of our series engaging in a chapter by chapter analysis of René Girard's book "Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World", along with Girardian expert and AI professor Thomas Hamelryck. In this episode we dive into Chapter 3 of the book, "The Process of Hominization". Check out Daniel Fraga's book Ontological Design: Subject is Project, available on Amazon now: https://www.amazon.com/Ontological-Design-Subject-Daniel-Fraga/dp/B09VWMV9Y8
And check out the new Technosocial Institute website https://www.technosocialinstitute.co.uk/
Psychedelic Superpowers with Alexander Bard, Shauheen Etminan and Zachary Adama
In this conversation, Owen Cox speaks to Alexander Bard, Shauheen Etminan and Zachary Adama about psychedelics, shamanism, the state of culture, and the thesis that Mexico, Iran and Peru are the three superpowers of plant medicine. Shauheen Etminan https://linktr.ee/shauheenetminan Zachary Adama https://zacharyadama.com/ Alexander Bard http://futuricamedia.com/ Check out Daniel Fraga's book Ontological Design: Subject is Project, available on Amazon now: https://www.amazon.com/Ontological-Design-Subject-Daniel-Fraga/dp/B09VWMV9Y8 And check out the new Technosocial Institute website https://www.technosocialinstitute.co.uk/
Wagner, Nietzsche, Metamodernism and the Dark Renaissance with Brendan Graham Dempsey
Brendan Graham Dempsey joins us to talk about the explosive creative relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche, and debate the approaches to art and mythology that appear in metamodern and dark renaissance thought. Brendan can be found here
Raskolnikov's Choice with O.G. Rose
Daniel Garner, one half of O.G. Rose, joins us to talk about ethics, Dostoevsky, walking a path between extremes, and much more besides.
Find his work here: https://www.og-rose.com/
Announcing The Art of Being a Man (Starts 16th Jan) with Cadell Last
Cadell Last and Owen Cox are launching a new project in January in collaboration with Maniphesto, called The Art of Being a Man.
https://maniphestocore.com/art-of-being-a-man/
We have both been doing men's work together for some time, as well as exploring questions of contemporary culture and masculinity on our YouTube channels and in other creative work (for instance, Cadell's book Sex, Masculinity, God, coauthored with Daniel Dick and Kevin Orosz). We wanted to create a type of men's work that expresses our shared interest in existential questions, continental philosophy, and Freudian psychoanalysis (and Heavy Metal and Hip Hop music). The idea with the Art of Being a Man was to create a series of workshops to explore elements of the psyche that are often overlooked, ignored, repressed or experienced as "problems to solve". Our intention is to lead a group of men in spending time with these parts of our selves, exploring what they mean, what we can learn from them, how we can draw inspiration and strength from them - in short, to see if we can live more artfully with all parts of our selves, and sublimate the forces that move through us for expression in our creative work.
The topics we will cover in our workshops will be:
Pleasure and Infantile Drives (Kill, Eat, Fuck)
Adult Eroticism and Sexuality
Melancholy and Depression
Power
Death
Love and Community
Creativity and Art
The idea is that we begin with the early beginnings of the psyche, the drives that we are created with, and slowly move through to our own ability to express ourselves and influence the world around us. In addition to the core workshops, there will be a facilitated community platform, optional "homework" exercises and prompts for those who want to go deeper into the material, and optional extra community calls or 1on1 support. The course will begin on Sunday 16th January and run on alternative Sundays through to 8th May. Each workshop will last 5 hours, with an hour break in the middle. They will start at 4pm CET, 3pm GMT, 10am EST. If you're interested, check out the links below,. You can sign up by following the Maniphesto link. And if you have any questions, get in touch with Owen or Cadell!
https://maniphestocore.com/art-of-being-a-man/
Outline:
The Meaning Crisis is Dead - Technosocial End of Yearer with Alexander Bard and Cadell Last
Cadell Last and Alexander Bard join us to dissect the past two years and think about future projects, antagony buttons and activism. Check out Cadell's new platform for courses and ideas, including courses on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and The Art of Being a Man https://www.philosophyportal.online/
Alexander's latest book
How to Have Sex: Round 2 with Alexa Vartman
Alexa Vartman is a tantra teacher and the founder of The New Tantra. We discuss all things tantra, androgyny, orgasms, dangers on the spiritual path, and criticisms of The New Tantra.
Maniphesto Media Academy: https://maniphestocore.com/maniphesto-media-academy/
TNT workshops, private sessions & online courses: https://thenewtantra.com
Start practising tantra at home for free: http://21daychallenge.com
Alexa's book: http://50misconceptionsofsex.com
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Networked Power and Digital Conflict with John Robb
John Robb is an author, military analyst, entrepreneur, and writes the monthly Global Guerilla report. In this conversation we discuss new networks of power, conflict and warfare in the information age, the emergence of the tech elite, citizens' data rights, the concept of The Long Night, blockchain and networked consensus building.
The Global Guerillas report: https://www.patreon.com/johnrobb
Maniphesto Media Academy: https://maniphestocore.com/maniphesto-media-academy/
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Ecology, Ecognizance and the Environment with Edwin Bywater
Edwin Bywater is an engineer and author. In this conversation, we explore ideas from Edwin's book, different types of ecological consciousness, planetary desire, capitalism and attentionalism, critiques of the environmentalist movement and global power dynamics and networks.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
The Rise and Fall of the Universe with Alexander Ebert, Alexander Elung and Alexander Bard
The Alexandrian Trinity join us for an epic enquiry into metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and more. Alexander Ebert is an American singer-songwriter, composer and philosopher. Alexander Elung is a storyteller and philosopher. Alexander Bard is a music producer, TV star and philosopher. In this conversation we touch on emergence vectortTheory, transcendental emergentism, theories of the prima materia of the universe - spacetime, space, hypertime, compression, implicate and explicate orders, habits of nature vs. laws of nature, determinism and transdeterminism, Roger Penrose's physics, ontological design, ethics, the barred absolute, and aesthetics.
Ebert's writing: https://badguru.substack.com/
Bards latest book: https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Libido-Violence-Network-Society/dp/9188869237
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
The Eternal and The Outside with Jean-Philippe Marceau
Jean-Philippe Marceau is an editor of the Symbolic World blog and a YouTuber. His work explores symbolism and uniting religious ideas with scientific thinking. In this conversation, we debate and discuss ways of approaching truth and universality, Christian metaphysics and Hegelian dialectics, freedom and necessity, Christ's resurrection, and religion as pragmatic instrument.
Find J.P here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZzlvx0HHYiPOJTEOU399WA/featured
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Masculinity, Being and Technology with Ole Bjerg
Ole Bjerg is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Economics at Copenhagen Business School and the author of The Meaning of Being A Man. In this conversation we discuss Heidegger and the existential task of becoming a man, "Das Mann" and the new movement of gender moralism, entering into relationship with nature as it expresses in subjectivity, cryptocurrencies and paradigms of money, Being and technology, fatherhood and abortion.
Find Ole: https://www.themeaningofbeingaman.com/
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
How to Follow Your Inner Daemon with Peter Limberg
Peter Limberg is the founder and steward of The Stoa. Peter is a friend and an earnest, balanced sensemaker in today's chaotic cultural world. As steward of the Stoa, Peter is a respected cultural commentator, having had conversations with a vast and diverse range of powerful and insightful thinkers. He also coined the term "memetic tribes" in his celebrated medium article "Memetic Tribes and Culture War 2.0", and is a practicioner of stoicism. In this free-flowing conversation Limberg tells us about his perspective on the culture wars, on politics, creativity, the internal daemon whose advice he follows, the relationship between parental issues and political inclinations, and the concept of virtue.
https://medium.com/s/world-wide-wtf/memetic-tribes-and-culture-war-2-0-14705c43f6bb
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano: http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Religion, Desire and Machine Learning with Thomas Hamelryck
Thomas Hamelryck is a Lecturer and Researcher at the Bioinformatics Centre at the University of Copenhagen Biocenter. His academic research interests revolve around Machine learning, Bayesian statistics, Protein Structure Prediction, Probabilistic Programming, Deep Learning. In this conversation, we discuss the topics of Mimetic Desire and René Girard, Nietzche, Religion and mass culture, the Internet, the spiritual practices of Tantra, Sutra, and Tribal Dynamics in the Internet age.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
How to Have Sex with Paris Cecilia Jayer and Timo Jansen
Paris Cecilia Jayer and Timo Jansen are teachers and practitioners of tantra.
In this conversation we discuss The New Tantra and their workshops, anal and vaginal de-armouring, crossdressing, practicing sex without orgasms, polyamory and jealousy, physical techniques for working with sex, sex education, NoFap, sexual shame, porn and internet culture, playing with masculine and feminine polarities and having confidence when flirting.
Find out more:
TNT workshops, private sessions & online courses: https://thenewtantra.com
Start practising tantra at home for free: http://21daychallenge.com
Book by TNT founder Alexa Vartman: http://50misconceptionsofsex.com
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Living in the Wilderness, Facing Endings with Dylan Walker
Dylan Walker is the original co-founder of Technosocial. He spent 9 months living in the Canadian wilderness during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. We discuss Dylan's 9 months in the wilderness, technology, agriculture, ideology and civilisation, universal basic income and the Silicon Valley elite, immortality and end of history thinking, history as contraction and expansion, all-encompassing institutions like modern medicine and education, modernity's allergy to suffering, and returning death to consciousness.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Desire After Capital with Cadell Last and Raven Connolly
Raven Connolly is a thinker and facilitator on the Stoa. Cadell Last is a philosopher and YouTuber.
In this episode we explore: hyperstition; the notion of "Late Capitalism", and whether it is still meaningful to speak of capitalist societal structure; the new problems of desire created by sharing economies; using reason to work through the paradoxes of bodies, and reason's limits; what reproduces itself in a post-capitalist culture; dying a good death; defeat and the present historical moment; ego, immortality and original perception; Cadell's notion of the invisible handjob of history; commodity fetishism; creative tension between objects; the impotence of human bodies; love stories and romance, and how they might look in the 21st century; new forms of storytelling; and bringing digital subcultures into the Real.
Find Cadell here: https://cadelllast.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAdvancedApes
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Is the Intellectual Underground Politically Naive? with Brent Cooper
Brent Cooper is a Political Sociologist, behind the The Abs-Tract Organization (TATO), a Metamodern Think Tank producing political theory and critique. In this podcast we explore critiques of both Ontological Design, as explored in Technosocial by ourselves, as well as of some of the broader ideas around Metamodernism. We speak of critique, of progressivism and about activism - through political action as well as design interventions. Correction: The Centre Pompidou in Paris is not a train station but an arts centre (I swear I didn't mean it on purpose). Additionally, the Dutch artist and architect behind “New Babylon” is Constant Nieuwenhuys.
Find Brent on: https://medium.com/the-abs-tract-organization
https://twitter.com/tato_tweets
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
The Trap of Perfect Images: Sex, Death and Creation with Cadell Last
Cadell Last is a philosopher and YouTuber. In this conversation we explore: why Cadell wrote a book on sex, masculinity and God; the paradox between evolutionary theory and religious civilisation; capitalism, the collapse of religion and the explosion of sexuality; the political struggle for liberty and sex; sex as a battleground; the interplay between identity and the real of the sex drive; noopolitics and competing meme complexes; how identity constellates around memes, and how these memes are disrupted; how racial and gender struggles have replaced national and religious struggle; bringing language and knowledge to sexuality; Hegel, death and disappointment; relationships between masters and students; the Big Other and lack; Heidegger, Einstein, Being and Time; Islam, Communism and other competing universalities; the production of self creating, purely technological life; biological, cultural and technological reproduction; the prospect of a new, noological species; collapsing temporality; dialectics, division, and the trap of perfect images.
Find Cadell here: https://cadelllast.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAdvancedApes
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Drama and Dissociation: How Stories Possess Us with Jasun Horsley
Jasun Horsley is an author of a number of books on Hollywood and secret societies, and host of The Liminalist podcast.
In this conversation we discuss dissociation and movies; trauma and the nervous system; parenthood and behavioral imprinting; disassociation and fostering a docile population; child sacrifice and paedophilia and its ubiquity in society; secret societies; uninstalling social programming; memes, people, groups and superorganisms; our inheritance of the technology of drama, and its (often unappreciated) power; archetypal possession; psychological operations; embracing uncertainty with regard to conspiracy; knowledge that cannot be integrated; practices for embodiment, and their commodification.
Find Jasun here https://auticulture.com/
His latest book is on sale https://auticulture.com/liminalist/16...
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Operative Traditions and Sacred Craft with Miguel A. Fernandez
Miguel A. Fernandez is the author of the Operative Traditions book series and an industrial engineer. In this conversation we explore: how tools and creative disciplines shape human beings; how literacy has replaced the intelligence of other senses; the way a craftsman's nervous system fuses with his tools; Eastern traditions, why Westerners seek them, and how they have been coopted by capitalism; how ancient cosmologies cannot easily be applied in cybernetic or industrial cultures; the heroic path; knights templars and freemasons and their legacy in crafts; technique and technology; the constraint of bourgeois values; art as more than entertainment; approaching the internet as a raw material; using paradigms as materials; belonging to something greater than oneself; wholeness as the maximum expression of what is possible in the moment - as opposed to perfection; suffering, guilt and the myth of paradise; approaching power structures themselves as raw materials that can be learned from.
Find his work here: https://www.thesolarwarrior.com/
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/ Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Cyberdelia Fantastica with Carl Hayden Smith
Carl Hayden Smith is Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre (LTRC) and Principal Research Fellow at Ravensbourne University London. His research interests include Embodied Cognition, Spatial Literacy, Perceptual Technology and Hyperhumanism. His other projects involve Context Engineering, Umwelt Hacking, Natural Media, Sensory Augmentation, Memory Palaces, Artificial Senses and Body Hacking. In this conversation we discuss context engineering, ontological design, the brave new world of immersive and embodied technologies, our own perception of time and how psychedelics play into this.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Noomachia, the Internet and the End of Modernity with Aleksandr Dugin
In this episode, we interview Professor Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin, Russian political analyst and strategist, often called the most dangerous philosopher in the world. Duginism's influence on contemporary Russian thought, geopolitics and contemporary political discourse is widely recognized. Dugin is a traditionalist, a critic of liberalism and of modernity, and a proponent of Eurasianism. He is also a prominent student of Heidegger, of the Kaballah and a Platonist; and in this interview we explore how his metaphysics fit into in the Internet age. We also ask him about the role of creativity in geopolitics, on his relationship with Chaos Magic and about Political Angeleology - and how different Logoi and angelic entities are engaged in a war of mind, or Noomahia, as per his own work. We also asked him about his views on Ontological Design, and ended up exploring how modernity is actually an ancient phenomena, manifest in the Logos of Cybele and the cult of matter.
Don't forget to subscribe to Technosocial.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Sex, Women and Evolution with Raven Connolly
Raven Connolly is a thinker and facilitator on the Stoa. In this conversation we discuss: sexual reproduction and game theory; the Egg as a philosophical concept; technology and nature; pathos, creativity and the distinction between the complex and complicated; anarchs; design; contemporary ideology and purging the "impurities" of the past; androgyny, phallus and virtual phallus; female sexuality and pathos; Onlyfans and porn; motherhood and infanticide; the collapse of civilizations; how modern women repress and detach from their fertility; pregnancy and childbirth as female initiation ritual; adolescent development, aggression and self sabotage; modern education systems and ostracism; commodification and how it produces a risk-averse populace; social and sexual conflict and the internet; the digital avatar as a new subject position; entering a creative and exploratory state.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Scouts of the Noosphere Vol 3. Glastonbury and Hyperstition
Scouts of the Noosphere is a weekly show where Daniel Fraga and Owen Cox explore strange forms from the depths of the internet. This episode is about Glastonbury, Hippies, magic, super/hyper-stition, and reality bubbles.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Digital Geopolitics with Dan Faggella
Dan Faggella is Founder and Head of Research at Emerj and advises the UN, Interpol and global enterprises on Artificial Intelligence. He is also a former MMA coach and fighter.
In this conversation we discuss: Lotus eaters and world eaters; digital dominance and tools for today's Napoleons; advertising and future online business models; virtual reality and novel experience; political struggle in digital space and the battle for the computational substrate; the permeability of the Western online ecosystem compared with China's; how physical power interacts with digital power; noomachia, Russia and disinformation; industry and solidarity as foundations for political and economic prowess; Vladislav Surkov's short story "without sky"; societal values and survival.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Find Dan here: https://danfaggella.com/
Scouts of the Noosphere Vol 2. Work, Organisation and Cult
Scouts of the Noosphere is a weekly show where Daniel Fraga and Owen Cox explore strange forms from the depths of the internet. This episode is about the recent history and future of human productive organisation.
Support Technosocial https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Also on https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Capitalism, Anarchs and Talking to the Outside with Meta-Nomad
Meta-Nomad is the host of Hermitix podcast and a writer. In this episode we discuss: trends that the mainstream academy follows - and that it ignores; the popularity of Marxist materialism and the obscurity of mysticism and occultism; subjective and objective ways of knowing; precognitive dreams; technocapitalism as an intelligence; collapse theory and accelerationism; genius and how ideas have people; opening self to the outside; how fantasies are immanentized as fictions, which then inspire reality; how democracy shortens human time horizons, and the implications for civilisation; virtue signalling; tokenism in contemporary culture; Junger's idea of the anarch; how capitalism recuperates attempts to change it because it thrives off unfulfilled desires; accepting defeat; nonlinear time and eschatology; purpose and meaning; avoiding hypocrisy by staring the monstrosity of humanity in the face.
Support Technosocial
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Also on
https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano
http://www.salvatoreschiano.com/
Find Meta-Nomad at:
Scouts of the Noosphere Vol 1. Egregores and Superorganisms
Scouts of the Noosphere is a weekly show where Daniel Fraga and Owen Cox explore strange forms from the depths of the internet. This episode is about egregores and memetic superorganisms.
Support Technosocial
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Also on
https://anchor.fm/technosocial
Music by Salvatore Schiano
The World as Will and Meme with MemeAnalysis (Chris Gabriel)
Chris Gabriel is the visionary behind MemeAnalysis, a YouTube channel producing in depth analysis of popular internet memes, trends, and philosophies.
In this conversation we explore: meme magic and symbols; digital culture, schizophrenia, and how the internet brings out the bizarre from the collective unconscious; archaic archetypes in contemporary memes; memetic lineages; Dionysian and Apollonian drives; Hassan-i-Sabbah and the idea that everything is permitted; the personal development scene; tantra and crazy wisdom; old and new gods; the Donald; sex, masculinity and society; music subculture; the castration of art in current society; will, egoists and egotists; digital sexuality; and how apps are altering the perception of young people.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Chris here:
A New Art Aristocracy with Rachel Haywire
Rachel Haywire is a Cultural Futurist who recently founded Elixir Salon. She is the author of The New Art Right, and an entrepreneur with a love for VR and transgressive art. She posts frequently to her Substack, where she now holds her own private events.
We discuss: Elixir Salons, Rachel's digital art parties, and her history of throwing events; subcultural creativity; embracing chaos while avoiding nihilism; the idea of transcending the center; aristocratic values and gravitas in artists; exodus and outsideness; rhizomes; how the supposedly decentralised internet has centralised around Twitter, Joe Rogan and other core nodes; our projects as responses to this centralisation; attention whoring and the cult of instagram influencers; philosopher queens; the cultural fetish for liberty; embodying new artistic directions.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Rachel at: https://rachelhaywire.substack.com/
Her book is: https://www.amazon.com/New-Art-Right-Reaction-2018/dp/0648299678
And Elixir Salons: https://www.elixirsalon.net/
Operative Frameworks: Designing, Self, Society and the Machine with Moritz Bierling
Moritz Bierling is an independent researcher, writer, programmer, and open source operative. In this conversation we discuss: communities and practices for developing virtue and non-exploitative relationships with self and world; faith and choice; Peter Thiel's idea of Zero to One; becoming a Zero to One person; capitalism and alienation; operative frameworks for engineering and interfacing with reality; currencies as the grammars of cultural exchange; designing new currencies to enable new social formations; the priestly function and the barred absolute; digital monasteries as the next power concentrations in society; the prospect of AIs ruling societies, and how to adapt; the commodification of mind by technocapital; new technical interfaces for human activity; using operative frameworks to capture and optimize energy efficiency in life; genius, and the dangers of overidentifying with it; animism; oral and written communication, and the codification of language and power.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Moritz here:
https://operationautarch.com/
Artificial Intelligence and Power with Dan Faggella
Dan Faggella is Founder and Head of Research at Emerj and advises the UN, Interpol and global enterprises on Artificial Intelligence. He is also a former MMA coach and fighter.
In this conversation we discuss: AI, social media and filter bubble creation; monopolies and power concentration in Big Tech; weaponisation of social media and AI, and the difficulties in defining what can be classed as weaponisation; whether digital media culture is fragmenting nations; autocults; blind spots in public understanding of AI; the rapid increase in capability of AI image manipulation, and the end of the correspondence between images and reality; the pace at which different sectors will be affected by AI; user experience and interface design; the difference between customer facing and backend AI applications, and the amount of error they can tolerate; the prospects of friendship, lovers, teachers and other social relationships being replaced by virtual versions; Dan's concepts of Lotus Eaters and World Eaters - the former numbing themselves and escaping with tech, the latter radically extending their capabilities with it.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Dan here:
https://danfaggella.com/
https://emerj.com/
Heavy Metal and Postmodern Shamanism with David Burke
David Burke is a writer and critic.
In this conversation, we explore: heavy metal as a critical response to late capitalism and industrial society; the idea of the original metalheads as dark hippies, and what metalheads have evolved into; shamanism, esotericism and occultism; lyrical explorations of death, mortality and hedonism; black metal, terrorism, fascism and the aesthetics of death and occult iconography that often inform these movements; whether metal has a coherent political or theoretical project within it; heavy metal fashion and its roots in 60s, working class and gay culture; the self-mythologisation of metal as a reaction to postmodernity and the loss of cultural meaning; the sacred and the profane; a comparison between heavy metal and hip hop and their connections to class; the fluidity of performers and audiences within underground genres; metal concerts as postmodern shamanic circles; the Deleuzian notion of intensity as difference, and how this is reflected in metal; how heavy metal as an aesthetic of late industrialism and machinery is transposed into digital and the internet age; and how "heaviness" has become culturally canonized, and overflows into other genres and objects.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find David's writings here
https://soton.academia.edu/DavidBurke
https://astralnoizeuk.com/
Capitalism and the Antichrist with Justin Murphy
Justin Murphy is a political scientist and online intellectual and entrepreneur.
In this conversation we explore: Balancing compassion and analytical coldness, and how an excessive focus on compassion hinders the contemporary radical left; how "woke capital" manipulates this aversion to analytical coldness; accelerationism and how the global market order functions as an AI; the impossibility of computing the end goals of this "AI", and how it maps onto the religious notion of God; the Christian eschatology, and the overlap between capitalism, instrumental rationality and the antichrist; alternatives to instrumental rationality (using rationality to optimise certain outcomes; efficiency); Justin's Christian faith, and the Christian focus on the truth as the fundamental ethical imperative; eschatology and the Kierkegardian "leap of faith"; the notion that modernity and exponential economic growth may have come as a result of a Faustian pact with the devil; US geopolitical hegemony and US-China relations; political responses to the coronavirus pandemic, and how the US federal government's failings might actually motivate citizens to become more creative and self reliant; social cohesion and building small, technologically sophisticated communities; reengineering humanity to adapt to digital, and the inequalities that will open between those who experiment and adapt and those who cling to a "normal" that has disappeared.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Justin at
https://jmrphy.net/
https://theotherlifenow.com/
https://twitter.com/jmrphy
Liminal Crisis and Psychological Wellbeing with Gregg Henriques
Gregg Henriques is a clinical psychologist and professor at The University of Madison, Virginia. This is part 2 of a 2 part discussion, in which we explore: the notion that we are living through a liminal crisis and existential responses to them - depression, anxiety, following cult leaders, and transcendent pathways; the fragmentation and polarisation of American society; the value and limits of scientific thinking; regulating sex and conflict; Gregg's CALM MO approach to psychological mindfulness, an internalised "wise elder"; Jordan Peterson, male pathos, and creating interpersonal spaces to explore and regulate it; curating a healthy, positively aligned superego; creative, pathic ways to communicate; the danger of the present moment, and the possibilities opened by digital; power games, the distinction between growth hierarchies and dominator hierarchies; ethics and pluralism; and creating teams and processes for designing new social organisations and technologies.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Gregg here:
https://www.gregghenriques.com/
and his writings on Psychology Today here:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/experts/gregg-henriques-phd
Justification, Religion and the Origins of Culture with Gregg Henriques
Gregg Henriques is a clinical psychologist and professor at The University of Madison, Virginia. This is part 1 of a 2 part discussion, in which we explore: Gregg's idea of justification systems theory and the formation of culture; the development of the human abilities to ask "why?", to share and conceal our inner states and motivations, and to explain our position in the universe; the four emergence points of Gregg's theory, matter, life, mind and culture; the origin of religion and temple building; technologies and how they inspire the theological ideas of an age; the history of premodern, modern and postmodern justification systems; the failings of modernist humanism; Bard and Soderqvist's Syntheism, and the orientation towards digital as the new face of God.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Gregg here:
https://www.gregghenriques.com/
and his writings on Psychology Today here:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/experts/gregg-henriques-phd
Autocults, Algorithms and Alchemy with Alexander Bard and Patrick Ryan
Alexander Bard is a philosopher and former pop star and music producer. Patrick Ryan is an AI warfare specialist. In this conversation, we explore: a diagnosis of the state and near future of technosociety, talking about AIs, pathos and the rise of a new elite; the faulty logic of the brain/body split and the idea of uploading consciousness to machines; digital religion and religion-as-technology; mimesis and crazy wisdom; the end of the human race; tribes and the shamanic caste; the infantilization of post-1945 society; the flaws with current "revolutionary" political movements and Black Lives Matter; alchemy and its value as psychohistory; the emergence of a non-cognitive ecosystem and the breakdown of the scientific method; the replacement of democracy with sensocracy; creating shamanic communities; global conflict and factions; the battle with big tech and politics for free and open algorithms; Butterfly War as a means to disrupt and destroy identity.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Alexander's latest book is Digital Libido
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Libido-violence-network-society-ebook/dp/B07JXXRJLK
Patrick's work can be found at
https://cultstate.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnYgeV2qgTA&list=PLoZ5e3aD_LuR5BebduVA8tsXKppHDr_Vu
Cyberdelics and the Posthuman Frontier with Carl H Smith
Carl H Smith is a Cyberdelics Researcher, Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre (LTRC) and Principal Research Fellow at Ravensbourne University. In this conversation we explore:
Technologies for achieving altered states; Carl’s work on cyberdelics, using technology to design and access these states; the overlap of Carl’s work on context engineering and Daniel’s on ontological design; the loss of common ground in informational society, and the dangers of ontological design technology; distinctions between posthumanism and transhumanism; the concepts of tulpas and egregores as units of thought exchange and exploration; stories of Carl’s exploration into his consciousness; perspectives of reality and mind that transcend the subject object divide; shamanic experiences of becoming other objects; the democratization of transformational experiences; practices for grounding, and the place of magic, rituals, communities and structure within consciousness exploration.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Carl here:
https://www.cyberdelicsociety.com/
War for Eternity: The Philosophy of the New Far Right with Benjamin Teitelbaum
Benjamin Teitelbaum is an ethnographer of contemporary radical nationalism in Europe, a performer of Scandinavian folk music, and Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In this conversation we discuss: the philosophy of traditionalism underpinning the contemporary far-right and its leading figures, from Julius Evola and Rene Guenon to Alexandr Dugin and Steve Bannon; the key principles of this philosophy: a view of cyclical time; a belief in a hierarchical caste society; an opposition to progress and mass society; the belief that we are at a time of disintegration at the end of a cycle; the disagreement between Bannon and Dugin on the USA; how Bannon and Dugin see AI; the ethics of studying the far right; the intersection of traditionalism and accelerationism; the place of Trump in history; the traditionalist vision, or lack of vision, of what the supposedly coming Golden Age will look like; the political and sociological implications of digital; Dugin's view of the new political subject (against the "individual" of modernity); and Bannon's view that Dugin is the key to turning Russia back towards the USA and away from China.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Benjamin here:
http://www.benjaminteitelbaum.com/
and his latest book here:
https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062978455/war-for-eternity/
Unifying Psychology and the Fifth Emergence Point with Gregg Henriques
Gregg Henriques, professor of psychology at University of Madison, Virginia. We discussed: the flaws with the discipline of psychology and lack of consensus on what it is that it studies; Gregg's unified theory, which attempts to pull together the disparate strands of the discipline; the four points of emergent complexity - matter, life, mind and culture - and how each corresponds to a new means of information processing; how artificial intelligence and network technology bring us close to a fifth emergence point; the fragmenting effects that the digital landscape has on society and psyche, and the prospect of a 21st century digital religion to address these effects.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find Gregg here:
https://www.gregghenriques.com/
and his writings on Psychology Today here:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/experts/gregg-henriques-phd
On Debt, Sacrifice and the Plague
Owen and Daniel begin playing a glass bead game. The glass bead game is a psychotechnology designed to explore a specified topic in a way that creates space for profound insight. We play on the topic of debt, which then leads into a discussion of: debt, sacred and material; sacrifice and what it enables; the tensions of interplaying potentiality and actuality that characterise life; mythic interpretations of the coronavirus - the plague gods, the lord of the flies, the existential turning-inwards as expansionary modernity is challenged; the sense that in 2020, shit is getting real; critiques of metamodernism and the Game B subculture; and religion and technoshamanism.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Daniel's writings can be found here
https://medium.com/@danielfraga
Evolving Masculinity with David Lion
David Lion is founder of Evolving Men and an embodiment and relationship coach. In this episode, David and I discuss: our experiences running men's circles; the new culture of masculinity and men's work; the idea of masculinity, what it means and whether it is an idea worth clinging to; common issues that men suffer from in the current world, like shame, loneliness, lack of purpose; embodiment and being present with uncomfortable feelings; leadership; and thoughts on coronavirus and surviving in uncertain times.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Find David here:
http://evolving-men.com/about/
https://www.facebook.com/menevolving
On Ontological Design
In this conversation Daniel and Owen discuss the theory and practice of Ontological Design, exploring: what Ontological Design means and why it is relevant as an discipline in the informational age; the noomachia, 4th generational warfare, the battle of ideas and informational fluxes; the transformations in subjectivity brought about by digital network technology; the death of Man and posthumanism; magic, machinic phylums and technological lineages; and the insight that we create technologies and then they create us, underlining the importance of becoming skillful artists and designers of our media and technological environments.
Support Technosocial at
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Daniel's writings can be found here
https://medium.com/@danielfraga
Cultural Decentralisation and Spiritual Class Structure with Daniel Thorson
Daniel Thorson is a resident at the Monastic Academy and host of the Emerge podcast.
We explore: the end of liberal humanism as a political and personal philosophy; confronting pain and escaping entrapment in one’s feelings; how times of collapse open a space for new leaders to step forwards; the spiritual class structure (for instance, an elite with money, education, time and exposure to top teachers and traditions, a middle class practicing yoga and reading Eckhart Tolle and other spiritual bestsellers, and a lower class dabbling in astrology and crystals); how cultural decentralization and the ability to access information online creates the illusion that we can learn everything online, preventing access to (and even awareness of) wisdom that can only be imparted via human transmission; how contemporary culture conditions us to advertise our superiority, in the form of CVs, qualifications etc.; and the value of being in service to something higher than yourself.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Daniel can be found here
https://twitter.com/dthorson
And his excellent Emerge podcast here
http://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast
Find the Monastic Academy here
https://www.monasticacademy.com/
Awakened Leaders and Systems Change with Daniel Thorson
Daniel Thorson is a resident at the Monastic Academy and host of the excellent Emerge podcast. In this, part one of our conversation, we discuss: the interconnectedness of systems change and personal growth, and how the minds we use to solve today’s problems are products of systems that are destroying themselves; the work of the Monastic Academy in creating awakened leaders; the importance of being able to hold multiple, sometimes contradictory perspectives within one’s worldview; Slavoj Zizek’s critique of Western Buddhism as the hegemonic ideology of late capitalism; how the pathologies of Western Buddhism show up in the contemporary spiritual scene; and heroism and the process of being in service to a grand narrative of how to improve the world.
Support Technosocial at:
https://www.patreon.com/technosocial
Daniel can be found here
https://twitter.com/dthorson
And his excellent Emerge podcast here
http://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast
Find the Monastic Academy here
https://www.monasticacademy.com/
Film Your Sex Life! with Paulita Pappel
Our guest this time is Paulita Pappel, a Berlin based porn performer and producer and cofounder of Lustery.com, a website where couples upload their homemade sextapes. In this conversation we think about the absense of serious conversations around...