MINI-Series

PROPHETS OF THE MEANING CRISIS

DIALOGUES WITH LEADING THINKERS ABOUT CRISIS AND PARADIGM CHANGE:

In the past few months I have been having conversations with remarkable thinkers of our time, concerning education, spirituality, and the philosophy of meaning.  The first was with John Vervaeke, whose thoughts is philosophical, challenging, and intricate.  Vervaeke’s Awakening From The Meaning Crisis is a rich and eclectic survey of the history of ideas, cognitive science, and new and old ways of understanding meaning in crisis.

Next I talked with Zachary Stein, who wrote a masterful little manifesto called Education in a Time between Worlds, a book which argues for a new kind of imaginal thinking after ‘postmodernism tragedy’, which he has called ‘Concrete Utopianism’.   Zak is an educational philosopher, who, like Vervaeke, discusses The Meaning Crisis, with perhaps a more mystical but also activistic bent than Vervaeke. In dialogue, John and Zak were full of sparks and deep insights. More conversations have been planned between us.  

Also, in the series, I talked to Bonnitta Roy, who took me on a journey through process philosophy and developmental/educational theory.  Like Zak and John, Roy has a radical view of education. According to her, we train the ‘cosmopolitan’ mind, but neglect the more somatic, foundational aspects of learning.  In our discussion Roy provided a very nice overview of what she thought a holistic education would look like. 

And finally, I interviewed Jonathan Rowson, who works with both Zak and Bonnita as director of Perspectiva. Rowson is also searching for new spiritual and educational paradigms. We discuss his new book ‘The Moves that Matter’ and his journey from chess grandmaster to social activist and philosopher.  We also discussed strategies for education, spirituality, and talked about Coronavirus. Rowson explained that the Coronavirus brings about an intensification of questions of meaning in our broader ‘meta-crisis’, or underlying crisis of education, meaning, and intelligibility. 

These conversation often started slowly but then built up to an ecstatic conclusion of some kind.  At times, they felt prophetic, deep, and certainly changed something inside of me.  I hope they will do the same for you, dear reader/ listener.  

Andrew Sweeny in conversation with Zak Sein, Bonnitta Roy, John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, Jonathan Rowson and others.

Digital Libido

This is the Parallax Podcast. In this miniseries Tom Amarque interviews the swedish philosopher Alexander Bard on his worldview in general, and his book 'Digital Libido' in particular. Alexander Bard is a colourful character, being a proper philosopher, shaman, popstar and entrepeneur. But as a shaman-philosopher he looks deeply into our past, present and future, laying out new narratives on the digital era, which is just now unrfolding. In this 5 part mineries Bard and Amarque will explore some of Bard´s core-ideas. They start with a introduction, followed by lectures on the relationship between man and technology, the phallus, spirituality and power. In which sequence you listen to these episodes is completely up to you.

Sweeny vs Bard Season 2

I first met Alexander Bard a couple of years ago and we got a long like a house on fire. I read the entire series of 5 dense cyber-philosophy books that he had written with Jan Söderqvist concluded Alexander was a fucking genius, and a congenial one to boot. The closest contemporary comparison might be Slavoj Zizek and Camille Paglia—but Bard was also a complete original. How come more people don’t know about him?

We decided to put out our conversations on YouTube—even if Alexander didn’t yet have a microphone and I was still learning to edit video and sound. We jumped the gun, in other words, with a podcast we called Sweeny vs Bard—and didn’t get the technical stuff right until season 2. 

Sweeny vs Bard was a chance for Alexander to be expansive with his ideas— and some of our conversations were three or four hours long. By season 2 we had a rhythm and a loose structure. The title is a bit of a misnomer, but a fun one, reflecting Alexander boisterous love of what he calls phallus, or good natured masculine antagonism. Here mostly Bard plummets Sweeny to the ground, and Sweeny just keeps getting up and asking questions to the wall of dense ideas. But there was a real chemistry there. 

In March 2020 I met Alexander Bard and Tom Amarque in Paris to discuss a concept we have called ‘Parallax academy’. The idea was to expand Tom’s German online news platform a learning hub, to hosted events, podcasts, and educational modules. Alexander came up with the idea of the academy, which is now still in the form of a ‘possibility space’. We had all kinds of plans—but alas a pandemic appeared a couple of weeks later en masse, which has arrested them somewhat. 

Tom however did a great introductory series of Alexander’s ideas, which can be found here—which is an excellent and clear introduction and survey of Alexander’s ideas. So the humble reader should listen to that first. Sweeny vs Bard is for those who want to go deep down into the Bardian rabbit hole. This is a dangerous journey—not for the faint hearted—but a generous and congenial one—and what is life without a bit of danger? Sweeny vs Bard is growing in reach and already has a nice cult following. It was time to get it on Parallax, however, I thought. 

I will progressively put up season 2 here, which consists of 14 episodes so far. For those of you are are hard core enough for these ideas: enjoy. 

Books by Alexander Bard:

The Futurica Trilogy, with Jan Söderqvist (2012)
Syntheism – Creating God in the Internet Age with Jan Söderqvist (2014)
Digital Libido - Sex, power and violence in the network society, with Jan Söderqvist (2018)