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Friends,
The intellect is important, but only serves as a two-dimensional reflective surface without the combined depth of experience. I try to make as much of what I say as possible stem from the ways my life has been shaped by spiritual experience meeting my philosophical and political outlook. I wanted to pull on this thread a bit, and to push the boundaries of what I discuss on AEWCH.
So I invited one of the most frequent (and liked!) guests on AEWCH to meet me in this: my friend the theologian and philosopher Peter Rollins.
This episode is a bit different: Peter and I each tell three short stories about moments of spiritual revelation and formation in our lives. Then we discuss them with each other and try to find the patterns there.
It’s a very personal episode for both Peter and I, but it’s also a picture of friends walking our separate paths, together.
I am so excited to share this with you.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO Though it’s not directly related to the content, I’m recommending AEWCH 81, with theologian and writer (not to mention Peter’s friend)s, Padraig O’Tuama, as a complement to this episode. Padraig and I talk at length about God, but rather than grounding that in experience per se, we ground it in poetry. It’s another way to address revelation.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? Since we’re on the topic of spiritual autobiography and revelation, you may want to read Rudolf Steiner’s Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life, 1861-1907, to look into the life events of a spiritual teacher and how they informed his path forward.
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Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? For Peter’s books, and other books mentioned on or related to this episode, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 135 on bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends, As the year comes to an end, we find ourselves surrounded by people holding seemingly incommensurable sets of beliefs and ideas – and those sets of beliefs and ideas are being held onto more tightly, not less, as the ship seems to be aimless. While some of you might be finding a sense of relief in the changing of the guard in the US, and the presence of a vaccine, many others feel agitated by both. 2020 was the year that one community, one group of people trying to dominate and humiliate the other, seemed to rule.At the same time, we’ve seen these amazing outpourings of mutual aid, of togetherness, of new demands for the structures that are supposed to be serving us. I wanted to understand all of this, I wanted to have a conversation about belief and politics, and the unknown. So I invited my friends Peter Rollins and Elliott Morgan to the show. You might know Elliott as part of the YouTube comedy group The Valleyfolk, or from his standup; and Peter from his work as a psychoanalytic theologian, or his previous appearances on AEWCH 14, AEWCH 55, and AEWCH 70 (with Todd McGowan); but I was interested in having them on together because they’re cohosts of the philosophy and psychoanalysis chat show, The Fundamentalists. On each episode, Elliott brings his everyday but perceptive concerns about the world, and Peter pulls them apart with psychoanalysis. This is, I think a special conversation because of that belief piece, that ideology piece – because we all have different pathways through belief in our lives, from Peter’s sport of strange revelation upon seeing an exorcism take place after leaving the theater – he’d just seen Gremlins 2 – with his friend, to Elliott’s church experiences with something called the Holy Laughter Revival, to mine growing up without much religion and then finding my life infused with occult philosophy.We also each have different psychological structures, which we discuss on this show.And we each have different intellectual mentors and perspectives. Lately, Elliott has taken up Jungian psychology, which stands in some opposition to Peter’s Lacanian/Hegelian view, and both in some opposition to my occult view deeply informed by Rudolf Steiner. So we spend a lot of this episode fleshing out some of those differences and nuances – how current events, how thinking, how the unconscious, and more, can be seen from each perspective.Gradually, throughout the episode, you get a sense of a sort of peace process. Not because Peter and Elliott and I were i some sort of deep conflict to begin with, but because the ideas and ways of living and structures of psyche meet each other and rest with each other without violent disagreement. The show presents three people, not trying to resolve contradictions and certainly not trying to win out, but rather simply taking an interest in one another.
In some ways, it offers an antidote to clinging to belief on the mast of the sinking ship of our politics, economy, and culture.
ON THIS EPISODE
Our journeys through belief
Different sorts of exorcisms and possessions
The interpretations of the concept of the lack in psychoanalysis
Why didn’t going to school for science make Elliott an atheist?
What the unconscious looks like for Freud, Jung, and Steiner
How each of – Peter, Elliott, and I – us fall into a psychoanalytic structure, and what those structures are
How to avoid turning anxiety into violence
How communism and liberalism have dovetailed with each other into a big mess
Comedy creating stability
The way love and knowledge meet to become violence in our time
SHOW NOTES
• For more on The Fundamentalists, my recommended episodes are “Success,” “Socialism,” “Fascism,” and “New Normal.” But you can really just start anywhere.
• Right off the bat we get Gremlins 2 and Alabama Snake references, which I feel like is a call to watch both.
• John E.L. Tenney went to a Catholic exorcism and we talked about it on AEWCH 133.
RT @ConnerHabib: Every time it seems like things are getting worse, remember that feeling comes from your inner knowing of what is better,… 4 hours ago
Conner Habib 