Friends, On Thursday, March 28, myself and journalist & organizer UNA MULLALLY, presented the event THE BEGINNING IS NEAR in Dublin, where we talked about the end of the world and what comes after that with frequent AEWCH guests: philosopher and activist SREĆKO HORVAT, and cultural critic and writer MARK O’CONNELL. The event marked Srećko’s first speaking engagement in Ireland, and also my first attempt at creating an “AEWCH event” in Ireland. I’d love to do many more.
The night was broken into halves: first, we talked about apocalypse. Then we had a short break and spoke about renewal.* What arose was a challenging set of indications and prospects, failures and pathways.
Some questions that came up:
Is the apocalypse always happening?
What does the esoteric tell us about how to live beyond apocalypse?
What is the role of art in renewal?
Why is it important to evade the political realm?
What is the use of hope?
I’m so proud to have set up this event with Una and to share it with you!
*We also engaged with the audience via exercises which I may bring to the show down the line, but which are edited out here… So if you want the full experience, come to the next event in person or via online! I’d love to see you there!
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Friends, This episode of the show, with novelist, essayist, playwright, and organizer Sarah Schulman, connects to a quote that inspired the very first episode of AEWCH. It’s from Christian philosopher and writer G.K. Chesterton:
When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.”… But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election… the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud.”
Right now, various states’ refusals to mediate in terms of Palestinian liberation have amplified both vision and the practical action. The vision is clear: total liberation from war and state violence. And the practical actions are brought into focus each day: tactics and strategies to demand governments support ceasefire.
The movement for peace in Gaza is bridging the visionary and the practical. It is teaching us the lesson that both are vital, but that those in power generally want to diminish the vision and reduce us to what they define as “practical.”
It’s not just the political realm that benefits from keeping the vision in play while figuring out the right practical steps to take.
There are overlapping questions, also, in art: How do I tell a story but stay true to my imagination? How do I innovate but communicate through the mediums that others understand? How to I express through the astral realm of the unconscious but keep the conscious mind in play?
Friends, After a small podcasting break, AEWCH is back with a (sort of?) new ep, a crossover episode with a new and excellent podcast, THE BREAKUP THEORY, hosted by SHULI BRANSON. When Shuli and I spoke a few weeks ago about Palestine on their podcast, I was so in excited about where we went. I also wanted to link people up with The Breakup Theory. So I’m crossposting that episode here. I’ve never done this before (and probably never will again) – but this was a special occasion, an episode about politics and spirituality that encounters the challenges of our moment.
Shuli and I last spoke on AEWCH228, about how to see the world through the lens of anarchism. Obviously, a lot has happened in the world since then, and so the conditions and directions of the conversation are new here.
The episode starts by touching on a deep cut of my show, AEWCH 9 – which I later reposted as AEWCH 132: HOW TO BREAK UP WITH THE STATE. It’s an episode that iinspired some of Shuli’s thinking (and maybe the name of their podcast?). The primary question being: Why do we stay in relationships with states that obviously don’t have our interests in mind. Then it goes… well, lots of places.
Some questions that come up:
Should we be practicing good politics or anti-politics?
How are we baited by elections?
Is nonviolence effective?
What does a spiritual politics that doesn’t turn into theocracy look like?
Are a non-abstract politics possible?
How does the state trick us into discussing and envisioning things on its terms?
Why do we wait for tragedy to take action?
What are everyday practices of resilience?
How do limits in love relationships teach us about politics?
What do we do with the fact that people have different desires?
This was such an expansive conversation. I love talking with Shuli, and I hope you love listening!
Friends, Every day, it feels like world circumstances aren’t just hopeless, but impossible. Tactics for resistance don’t seem to work, new horrors appear, and the ability to access a calm and engaged life can even seem, at times, to be beyond us. How do we approach the impossibility of changing the world?
What we need is something that generates new directions and pathways, new visions and ideas, new strategies and tactics. And before we do that, we need to access the spiritual fact that these directions, visions, and strategies are available to us in the first place.
This won’t be the sort of work we’re used to, because we are pushing into the new. Working through the impossible is like walking through water when what’s needed is to walk on it.
But there is a moment when we find ourselves rising above the reflective line of surface and it will seem baffling to us that we hadn’t known all along how to do it.
We will have to locate, for instance, the promise located in our old tactics. We will have locate the usefulness in the absurd. We will have to find connections where before we saw oppositions, distinctions where once we saw enemies.
One of the best people I know to talk with about all of this is philosopher and political theorist, Michael Hardt. His latest book is The Subversive Seventies – a plain language, easy-to-read assessment of the innovation of creative and resistance movements in the 1970s.
If you hear that there’s a book on the 70s and think it’s just historical, that it won’t feel enlivening to read, or that it will feel like romanticization of another time, disregard that misleading thought. Teh Subversive Seventies is such a powerful and moving book that will restore your confidence in the ability of people to have new visions of the world and new ways of eroding obstructive power. It is, in fact, one of the most vital and vitalizing books I’ve read in a long time.
As Michael says, in many ways, the seventies were ahead of us. Why? Because the aspirations were huge. Not just resistance, but innovation. Not just stopping war, but generating togetherness. Not just replacing those in power, but generating completely new structures to live with. It certainly connects to the spiritual principle that to truly fight evil, it is not enough to directly battle with it. Rather, to fight evil, we must create good. From gay liberation, black liberation movements, and antinuclear movements in the US, to the Autonomia movement in Italy, the Sanrizuka struggle in Japan, and the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. It is a picture of a world in a liberation moment and project. The picture has all the details of differing tactics and huge ideas, as well as connections and inspirations.
Michael was last on the show on AEWCH 120 previous books with Antonio Negri are perhaps better known. They are themselves absolutely liberating. They are Empire, and its follow ups: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, which was followed by Commonwealth, and finally, Assembly.Few books about political theory come as close to a spiritual picture of revolutions, liberations, pictures of power, and pictures of how meaningful life can thrive in the midst of challenges.
On this episode we try to meet some of the challenges of today. Why do movements only really gain massive traction when they are seen to be responding to oppressive violence? Do protests work? What can we learn in their failures? Can we act in pivotal moments, or are we always too late by the time we see the problem?
This episode presents a conversation that tries to grapple. Failing, striving, succeeding, failing again. It echoes, in a sense what Michael points out again and again about movements. That movements create concepts – we’re not just acting, but we’re changing how we view the world as we act, and even how we can view the world.
I’m so happy to share this conversation with you, maybe it bring inspiration to think and feel and do differently.
This podcast is part of my good life, is it part of yours? Does it offer you new ideas or feelings of inspiration? Does it introduce you to new books and thinkers and art and possibilities? If so, do support the show. Let’s connect more to what brings us the good life in what appears to be absolute madness.
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Friends, We are always in a dance of what is happening in our time and the work of deepening our capacity for life and moving forward and offering what we can offer. There are plenty of questions and considerations of how to approach the political climate. But in the midst of war and the appearances of madness, there are other pressing questions, too. How do we live? How do we have a good life, in all this? How do we approach each day with a sense of curiosity and involvement? After all, without examining that, without thinking about the quality of each day, we have already lost ourselves to the violence and fear.
That doesn’t mean ignoring the world to focus on being happy – that’s just illusory, anyway. But it could mean looking not just into how to resist, but into the creation of good itself. Spending time in proximity to truth, love, wisdom, kindness, as well as righteousness.
I recently got a chance to do this on a short trip to create a few episode of this show. The journey ended in a cold place, the snow covered south of Norway, where I recorded AEWCH 243 with occut practitioner and writer Are Thoresen, and it began in the sun-warmed island of Vís in Croatia, talking to my friend. the philosopher, visionary thinker, and writer, Srećko Horvat.
I am struck, looking back at this short trip, where I encountered completely different views of the world – completely different possibilities of viewing life. These differences were in the landscape, the temperature, the quality of light, the plants and animals, and of course in the conversations. These experiences were not just different from each other – not just warmth and Srećko vs cold and Are – I don’t mean that at all, I mean I saw completely different worlds than the one we normally occupy. More and more, we need to do this, to see and live into new worlds, since the one that is clinging to us, holding on, is creating a tantrum of chaos as we pull away from it.
It isn’t just another school. Yes, the content of the school’s efforts are different – they’re about radical philosophy, deep contemplation, openness to complexity and interdependence of disciplines. But it’s also a space and inspiration for a new way of learning altogether; learning by encounter, learning by meeting others, learning by paying attention to new impulses, through teachers that radiate wisdom through being.
We talk about the school, synchronicity, the strength card in the tarot, and how to learn without academic education.
I’n so excited to share this episode with you. It’s one of my favorite conversations – not just on the show, but in my everyday life as well. It indicates how much is available to us in a time of repression, both illusory and real.
MORE ON SREĆKO Srećko has been on the show twice before, and they are among my favorite episodes. First on AEWCH 107 on which we mostly discussed the mythologies in our world views and language. On AEWCH 143, we talked about liberating time!
Advertisementsfromsponsorsdon‘tfitwiththemissionofthis podcast.SoIasklistenersifthey‘dliketosupporttheshowbysharingwhattheycanviapatreon.Thebestwaytosupportthisshow,my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib.You can also subscribe to the show and give it a 5-Star writing on Apple Podcasts, as well as buy my novel Hawk Mountain.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends, Are you seeing a terrible future ahead? So many of us are catastrophising – a gesture that has become exacerbated in the post-pandemic landscape. When we have a fear, rather than allowing it to rise and fall in time, it consumes more time than it should, it becomes a fantasy of the future.
We come up with scenarios in which something we thought could be stable is now laid to waste. Whether you do this by catastrophising the environment, imagining landmasses underwater, feeling a tightness over your thoughts of fascism overrunning all governments, or seeing your own beloved social movements fall to pieces…
or maybe it’s more personal? You feel a pain that you begin to conceive of as a terminal disease; your partner’s phone binging with texts signals cheating, lies, and the end of the relationship; you notice your social media posts aren’t getting likes which must mean no one is interested in what you have to share anymore.
In all of these motions, we create an image of the future and feel its resonance in the present. Catastrophising can be paralyzing, terrible, and it doesn’t help that we’re all preyed upon by various catastrophe industries, not to mention the fact that we are facing real challenges!
To talk us away from catastrophe and towards a healthier world, I asked my friend Una Mullally on to the show. Una is my closest collaborator in Ireland and has been on the show multiple times, most recently in conversation with me and author Sara Gran on AEWCH 200, pt 2.
We talk about catastrophe first, and then take apart four of the biggest challenges of our time:
fascism
climate change
AI
“groomer” moral panics
considering how we might see them differently.
This is a transformative conversation. I hope it reinvigorates your knowledge that you can change things.
SHOWNOTES
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? AEWCH 83 with Franco “Bifo” Berardi on how to breathe in an apocalypse – which we recorded in Bologna just a few months before the pandemic began. It is one of my very favorite episodes.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? I think, to go along with AEWCH 83, a great book to prefigure our moment is Bifo’s Breathing: Chaos and Poetry.
MORE ON UNA Una has a weekly, challenging, column in the Irish Times. Some of Una’a other great appearances on AEWCH include AEWCH 151 on how the world is changing (slowly!) for the better, and AEWCH 192 which featured us speaking about my novel Hawk Mountain and fiction more broadly.
Advertisementsfromsponsorsdon‘tfitwiththemissionofAEWCH.SoIasklistenersifthey‘dliketosupporttheshowbysharingwhattheycanviapatreon.Thebestwaytosupportthisshow,my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib.You can also subscribe to the show and give it a 5-Star writing on Apple Podcasts, as well as buy my novel HawkMountain.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends, We all long to develop, to learn, to deepen our encounter with the world, or at least to seek new experiences of it.
So why are the spaces we go to for learning so terrible? Not only are they often tremendous drains on money (for individuals and families in the US and for all citizens in Europe and other places where universities are state-funded).
After attending several higher education institutions, I’ve come to understanding how much they stand in the way of us truly learning, developing our capacities, and creating a better world.
So I asked Eli Meyerhoff on to the show to talk about this conundrum.
Eli is researching at the Social Movements Lab and works as an organizer, he’s also the author of Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World, an excoriating look at how academia has always exploited people, and is past the point of mere reform.
This is a radical look at education – so often held as a self-evident good. I’m so happy to share it with you.
SHOWNOTES
WHATOTHERAEWCHEPISODEYOUSHOULDLISTENTO?An academic who is doing work I am excited for – that at once starts in a university context and leads out of it – is Phil Ford. art of the Weird Studies team, along with J.F. Martel, who works in alternative education models as well
WHATBOOKSHOULDYOUREAD?I bring up the essay “Walking out on the University” by William Irwin Thompson a few times. That essay is in a book that is difficult to find, but an easier text to find by the same author is Transforming History: A New Curriculum for a Planetary Culture. While it still has some attachments to the current system of education, it proposes a new direction for it, and a new curriculum. (BTW, I found a copy of the essay with the help of Jeremy Johnson, and his efforts are worth checking out.)
MORE ON ELI Eli’s website is very straightforward, with tons of links to interviews and other contributions… including a free download of his book! And here’s Eli’s essay – cowritten with Abigail Boggs, Nick Mitchell, and Zach Schwartz-Weinstein – that I quote at the top of the show, “Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation“. Also, see the chart, co-created with Eli below, “A Non-Exhaustive Periodization of U.S. Universities from an Accumulation Perspective”
Advertisementsfromsponsorsdon‘tfitwiththemissionofAEWCH.SoIasklistenersifthey‘dliketosupporttheshowbysharingwhattheycanviapatreon.Thebestwaytosupportthisshow,my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib.You can also subscribe to the show and give it a 5-Star writing on Apple Podcasts, as well as buy my novel HawkMountain.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends,
Not only is a new world possible, but it’s happening, now. Can you feel it? The way it’s being built is by people meeting with their neighbors; talking about structures and systems; taking action in everyday life, as well as in the political realm; supporting each other through love; imagining beyond limits we thought were fixed; abolishing abusive institutions and punitive processes; and more. These movements of mutual aid, ethical individualism, and anarchism have no “leaders,” but they do have articulate participants, and one of my favorites is SCOTT BRANSON.
They’re also someone I could talk with forever about every facet of the world that could be changed by imagination, compassion, and real freedom.
We talk:
how anarchism can recreate the entirety of reality
anarchism vs Marxism
the right wing seizing leftist tactics
conspiracy vs real analysis
is anarchism moralism?
whether or not you can have anarchism without spirituality
This is one of those episodes that goes across many landscapes, but always past the surface. I’m so happy to share it with you.
SHOWNOTES
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? On AEWCH 143, I talked with theorist, writer, and educator Srećko Horvat about changing our approach to the world entirely, right down to how we encounter time and space. And the “break up” theory Scott uses is in alignment with my own thoughts on the show, from AEWCH 132 – which was a repost of AEWCH 9.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? A great book on creating and dissolving tactics, and how society forms around brilliant new imaginings and failed revolutions, is Assemblyby Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. (I also talked about this book with Michael Hardt on AEWCH 120)
MORE ON SCOTT Scott’s website, which has links to plenty of articles and appearances is here. Scott is also the translator of Guy Hocquenghem’s Gay Liberation after May ’68 as well as Lesage deLa Haye’s The Abolition of Prison.
Against Everyone With Conner Habib is funded exclusively by listeners like you. It’s not “mutual aid” exactly, but it’s not far off! SUPPORT THIS PODCAST viaPatreon
Friends, Happy New Year! Here’s the fifth and final in the series of episodes on How To Live in 2022. The first, AEWCH 175, was with occult scholar Mitch Horowitz, the second, AEWCH 176, is on why reincarnation matters for us now, the third is AEWCH 177 with philosopher Zena Hitz on how and why to be an intellectual, and the fourth is AEWCH 178 on using mysticism and the tarot in 2022 with Jessica Dore.
All those episodes, though, were geared towards being an individual navigating the world. But what about, uh, other people? Especially since according to Sartre’s much-misinterpreted line, “hell is other people”? How do we enter into much-needed organizing when groups can be so intolerable? And what about when the spiritual is excluded and groups feel cold and even like they have the wrong idea of how the world works?
I asked the amazing author and anarchist activist Dean Spade back to the show to discuss all the above. Dean was last on the show on AEWCH 131, discussing mutual aid, and his book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), in the midst of the early pandemic. It remains one of my favorite conversations on the show, ever. On this episode, we talk about what happens in groups and the when politicization leads to dehumanization. We also talk about organizing with the dead and the evolution of consciousness as the origin of hierarchies. It’s good, weird, and deep.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ? Since the origins of inequality keep coming up on the episode, I recommend the book of (AEWCH 169 & AEWCH 99) guests, David Wengrow and David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything. It’s a great book and now it’s a bestseller. Not saying I had anything to do with that, exactly; just happy to see the success of such a thoughtful book about the stupidity of takes like “we’re hard wired to be hierarchical” and “society is too complex to be egalitarian.” Get it. Read it.
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? A great look at how we all draw from commonwealths – of knowledge, of tactics, strategies, struggles, creative impulses, and sexuality – is on AEWCH 120 with one of my favorite philosophers, Michael Hardt. Michael is the co-author (with Antonio Negri) of some of the most influential political and global theory books of all time, most recently, Assembly. It’s really, really good stuff; a systems thinking approach to leftist politics. Don’t miss it.
WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK INTO FURTHER? The evolution of consciousness and its many culturally specific iterations is one direction I point to for the origins of inequality. By evolution of consciousness, I don’t just mean the evolution in what we think, but the structures of consciousness – including perception – itself. One philosopher of the evolution of consciousness is Jean Gebser, whose book The Ever-Present Origin remains a potent and detailed mapping of the phenomenon. Here’s the Jean Gebser Society’s site to learn more.
Friends, does this show have value to you? If so, I ask that you support it on Patreon! The show is funded exclusively by listeners like you, and your contribution is vital and deeply appreciated!Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? Go to my booklist for AEWCH 124 on bookshop.org! It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends, It’s been a long time since I made a porn scene for public consumption that I got paid for and so much about production has changed since then. I was used to doing studio scenes for Raging Stallion and Hot House and Falcon and Joe Gage, but now things have shifted over to an Only Fans performer-produced model. And while I’m so happy that workers have partially seized the means of production, so to speak, I’m not so sure I want to, uh, seize them myself. I’m focusing on other things, and I’m also expressing myself in ways that are a bit more interesting to me. But the fact remains that it is the most widespread and available medium for performers and viewers now. Because I stopped my just over 7 year porn career before these platforms existed, and because the world is changed, there are so many new challenges and enthusiams and tactics navigated by performers now. So I asked adult performer and writer Ty Mitchell onto the show. Ty is a brilliant performer and an articulate and thoughtful writer. His scenes give you the sense of an immediate quality of performance, and his essays, including the now classic “Boy Problems,” about navigating age and power differentials in gay experience, have given so many of us so much to think about. This is a long episode and for good reason: there’s SO much to talk about when it comes to sex, especially in our moment.Ty has emerged as one of the most thoughtful voices on gay sex & culture; and I’m so glad he has because we need people that can take this movement, and conversations that come out of it forward. This will give you a glimpse of where he’s going and the fact that he’s so articulate that many will join hands and follow him there.
ON THIS EPISODE
The guilt and doubt that follows pleasure
The mystification of porn production
The exploitative practices of self-produced scenes
The intensities of power differentials in sex
The reasons why women and gay men have trouble seeing eye to eye
The constitutive elements of homophobia
How should we view incest arousal?
Working class men in adult scenes
Joe Gage’s directing style vs other directors, and why the aesthetics matter
• I’ve talked about sex directly on the show many times, including about consent with Katherine Angel on AEWCH 101, about the good of adult work with Missy Martinez on AEWCH 38 and the not-so-good with Johnny Hazzard on AEWCH 88. About sex addiction and the problem of sex & culture on AEWCH 56. And with Whores of Yore historian Kate Lister on AEWCH 102 among others!
• We talk a lot about Joe Gage on this episode. If you don’t know him, he’s a revolutionary director, and you should check into his work, whether you watch gay porn or not. Here’s a thorough interview with him in BUTT Magazine. Also, you can watch me watching one of my own Joe Gage scenes (from After the Heist which I had three scenes in and which became Joe’s best selling film ever for Dragon Video) with a straight guy from Buzzfeed. It’s funny, gotta say.
• Probably the best-known thing I’ve written so far is “What I Want To Know Is Why You Hate Porn Stars,” about the challenges of navigating a relationship while making porn and how that relates to anti-porn sentiment in culture.
• I talk about the intensity of desire and repetition with Maggie Nelson (still can’t believe I had that conversation!) on AEWCH 95.
Conner Habib 