What an incredible and intense year 2020 was. I’m grateful for it and my circumstances in many ways, but I’m also looking forward to this year and what it will bring.
I’m sure for many of you, your thoughts and feelings are running wild, even as your actions are still mostly constrained to the home. But fears of political unrest, excitement (and dread!) about vaccines, about continuing conflicts over masks, about the environment, about neoliberal governments and fascist governments, about resources, about your job, and more, are all showing up. So what to do?
I’m trying my best to see into all of this and offer some grounding and love and assistance in navigating the year that’s unfolding.
To that end, I’ve compiled a spotify playlist of my most notable recent podcast appearances. To access the playlist, just click here or search for “Conner Habib guides for 2021” on your spotify app.
The conversations include the latest episode of my own podcast, which is spookily entitled “The Year of the Revelation of the Blood” (don’t worry, it’s good spooky!) in which I discuss the coming year from an esoteric Christian perspective.
But the playlist also includes:
• My appearance on internationally-renowned fitness and health professional Paul Chek’s podcast, Living 4D, where I talk about sexuality and God.
• My conversation and audience Q&A with Gordon White on Rune Soup (there’s also video available here) about the challenges of changing from a materialistic to a spiritual worldview in 2021 and why that is absolutely needed.
• My discussion about the war on sex and dissolving old world views with media analyst Doug Rushkoff on his consistently excellent podcast, Team Human.
• My long chat with Duncan Trussell – in which I lead him through a bunch of spiritual exercises, and he calls me a “living psychedelic substance” – about the ongoing changes in human consciousness.
Want to be in conversation with me and other patreon patrons about this year, how to achieve your goals amidst the order (AKA “chaos”) and to discuss how to make it a great year instead of an oh-shit-how-am-I-going-to-manage one? Join us for the Against Everyone Salon on the new year. Sign up for or boost your pledge to the Against Everyone Salon tier, which is $10/month. To do that, go here, and support at the $10 level or higher.
Anyway, dear friends, it’s going to be a great year for all you who can stay steady and get your sea legs for the journey across this year long oceanic gulf of what came before and what will be in the future!
This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib onPatreon! Thank you so, so much.
Wanttobuy the booksmentionedonthisep? For Caitlin’s books, and other books mentioned on or related to this episode, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 134 on bookshop.org. It will help supportindependentbookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends, what a year!
Primarily, I view 2020 as filled with thoughts about death, with considerations of uncertainty and contradictions.And to talk about all of this, I invited my friend, host of Ask A Mortician, author and death activist Caitlin Doughty on the show.Caitlin is one of my closest collaborators.
I wanted us to look into this year with as much equanimity as we could muster.
Have you noticed how hard things have been to navigate, not because of a virus per se, but because of a collapse of knowledge? Not only has information changes from day to day this year, but we’re subject to speculative news items presented as facts, questions about the virus are over-amplified scaring the shit out of everyone, case numbers and deaths are presented together creating a sense that every case number is a potential death or that every death is separate from the case numbers, we get lines like the flatten the curve lines that look like palmistry and that do and do not accurately predict futures. Add to that the many theories, the many politicizations, the many fears and anxieties, the many suppressions of information, the many debates.
It’s intense.
This episode goes a ways to help with all that, I think. I hope it grounds you and stirs up compassion for your neighbors, even the ones you wish weren’t your neighbors.
Let’s get through this together (for real!).
ON THIS EPISODE
How death positivity could change our view on handling a pandemic
The hero narrative in a time of crisis
Doing structural work instead of offering critique or sinking into your own anxiety
Why we need propositions, not critiques
When government officials are hypocritical with regulations, and how to think about that
How the crisis has amplified everyone’s worst attributes
Why knowledge can’t save us
Looking at all our values and striving for coherence
What we learned from the AIDS epidemic that applies now
Combatting the “if you got sick it’s your fault” mindset without losing sight of how to take care of yourself and others
The connectivity of suffering and how that’s going to amplify in the future
Why spiritualism and other spiritual beliefs and rituals grow during and after major world events
What will happen when we un-repress
Why it’s impossible to have the information, much less the answers about our current situation…and what to do about that
• Most of the stories about Hart Island have been corrected at this point to reflect the island’s long history of burial – but you might remember images like this one.
• I talked about mutual aid on AEWCH 131 with Dean Spade, critiques vs propositions on AEWCH 123 with Kathi Weeks, and how truly being human is the best antidote to the problems of our world with Doug Rushkoff on AEWCH 125.
• A great book on spiritualism (and occultism) and how it relates to feminist and other progressive movements is Magia Sexualis by Hugh Urban. Though I’m not sure why it’s so fucking expensive.
