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Hello friends!
This episode’s guest is Douglas Rushkoff. He’s one of the most important intellectuals of our time, some people call him a futurist, but he’s always a step ahead of the future.

The is the continuation of the conversation we had on Doug’s podcast, Team Human – where we talked about the how the world is responding collectively to our moment and the wisdom of the Fool. But AEWCH 294 is also a conversation unto itself, so you don’t need to listen in order.

When you listen to this one, and you want more, go over to Douglas’s podcast, the TEAM HUMAN episode “LIVE UP TO YOUR FOOL POTENTIAL”.

Doug has been in this public intellectual gig for a long, long time – and we met over twenty years ago – at small conference in upstate New York centering around the Disinformation media group.

I was there in the audience, but also there were Grant Morrison, Richard Metzger, and the visionary artist Paul Laffoley among others. It was part of the movement of the time to liberate conspiracy theory and magic and counterculture and outsider art from their constant brisk dismissal in the mainstream. Now, of course, lot of that is mainstream, not to mention often damaging. But at the time, before they were seized by overtly political agendas, they gave us ways to see the interconnections in the world between art, science, theology, philosophy, and the social sciences.

Doug has been working pretty endlessly and profoundly since then, and somewhere along the way, I entered into thew public sphere myself.

But… what is it for?

All this work – and what about you and your work and your life in this moment, whatever it is you’re doing?

The world wants to change.

I don’t just mean people, but the world itself. Its structures, its ecologies and environs… They are all are seeking some way to thrive in different ways.  Since we are a part of the world, a huge part of it, in fact, even though there are only 8 billion of us, it wants and even needs to change through us; our thoughts, feelings, and actions. 

But should those actions be big – dramatic actions of public absurdity and disruption? Should the be collective? In the forms of protest and engaging with the political apparatus? Should they be individual – where the site of action for practices, life reform, changing our rhythms…

How do we know what is to be done and how do we take an honest look at what we’re doing?

That’s all on this episode, and I’m so happy to share it with you.

SHOW NOTES
Doug’s website is here. Doug has been on AEWCH a few times, and I’ve been on Team Human a few times too. Here we are talking about novels and horror on Team Human, and here’s our first conversation on this podcast, talking all about the anti-human agenda, on AEWCH 125.

Doug is an author of many many books – recently the new version of Program or Be Programmed: Eleven Commands for the AI Future. Along with my favorites – Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, and the graphic novel, Aleister & Adolf.

And here’s the YouTube version of the latest Team Human episode if you want to look at our handsome mugs while we talk.