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Friends,
What a way to start the year, with author, teacher, and intellectual, Maggie Nelson. Maggie Nelson is the author of so many deep and potent books, including The Argonauts, about art and politics and the body, including her partner Harry Dodge’s experiences of gender and culture. She is also the author of two books about her aunt’s murder, The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial and Jane: A Murder, as well an incredible book about violence in art, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning. She was awarded a MacArthur in 2016 and is one of the most important intellectuals of our time (though perhaps she’d reject that label!).
This is an extremely wide ranging episode, as I’d expect from a conversation with Maggie, whose books move in and out of hundreds of different thinkers and artists, translating her encounters with them into a new kind of light. I love her writing.
I’m so proud to share this conversation with you.
We talk about (among other things):
Passion as an affirmation against materialism
Escorting as permission for desire
Why frustrated desire might be worse than death
The value of losing your self
Why a shrug against danger matters
Thoreau, Emerson, and being a good artist or a bad prism
The shapes and lives of art
The uses of occult perspectives
The ruse of the anti-social
Wittgenstein and the music of the spheres
The uses, rituals, and boundaries of seeing violence
• The Rudolf Steiner verse, which you can try reciting inwardly, too, to see how it feels:
More radiant than the Sun
Purer than the snow
Subtler than the ether
Is the Self
The spirit within my heart
I am that Self.
That Self am I.
• The Emerson quote is: “It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”
• Helen Keller’s mysticism informed her politics and her work in the world. You can read about in in her book Light In My Darkness.
• Maggie’s quote, “I think I give in the writing, mostly, but also as a teacher, and just by being. I don’t think of it as “giving back” per se. And mentoring doesn’t always mean holding someone’s hand. It’s often just by example… We can be for each other beacons of possibility. Often that’s the most important thing.” set me to thinking so much about being a beacon that I spoke about it at length on Rune Soup 195 with Gordon White. I also talk about speaking poetically on there, as well as on AEWCH 93, with Sara Maria Griffin.
• The dead spiritual teacher I prayed to for guidance after being exposed to violence on the guy’s phone, Daskalos, who I talk about at length with his student (a spiritual teacher in his own right), Daniel Joseph, on AEWCH 67.
• Narrow Roomsby James Purdy is one of the most extraordinary novels I’ve ever read. Read it.
• A good quote on violence from Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta: “(Violence), by its very nature, to suffocate the best sentiments of man, and to develop all the antisocial qualities, ferocity, hatred, revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny, contempt of the weak, servility towards the strong.”
• You can look at some of Tala Madani‘s work on the 303 Gallery website, including an excerpt of “The Audience” which Maggie talks about at some length.
• I loved talking with Franco “Bifo” Berardi on AEWCH 83 about the challenge of white noise.
Hello friends!
Here’s episode 20 where I go deeeeeeeep into the woods and tall grass and the reaches of space with Dr. David Shorter. David is the the author of We Will Dance Our Truth: Yaqui History in Yoeme Performances, a healer, and a professor at UCLA, where he teaches courses like “Aliens, Psychics, and Ghosts,” “Meditation for College Students” and more. David is awesome, and we don’t hold back in this conversation, and I’m so happy with it. This is the first episode in February – and one of three in a row that will be looking at reality claims, objectivity, and postmodernism. All in plain language, hopefully, even if there’s a little inside baseball here and there.
How to avoid appropriation but not blind yourself to other cultures
Allies and their blind spots
Why “I’m not religious but I’m spiritual” doesn’t describe anything
Why social justice narratives can become scientistic materialism
How do we accept the truth value of different spiritual pathways even though we can’t have access to them?
You should be working in the language of the community you’re working in
Why do philosophers and activists privilege language so much?
We experience the world in content, not language
When a snake is a place
Why you shouldn’t trust talking butterflies and coyotes, but squirrels that run away from you are cool
There are different scientific methods, and some are better than others
Why plants don’t come from seeds
The scientific method turns the world into objects, and capitalism likes objects
Objectification is not dehumanization
The spread of English objectifies the mental world (or “objectivate” it)
I get mildly cranky about Chapo Traphouse for a sec
Why is the Left obsessed with denigrating spirituality and worshipping science with very little power critique
How our medical concepts create new diseases
Dear indigenous people: “Sorry for everything we’ve ever done to you, now save us.”
So-called “alternative” medicine is often just allopathic medicine in disguise
How responsible are you for your pain
ESTHER HICKS, I AM ENVISIONING YOU ON MY SHOW
Health and healing is a language
How my Syrian grandmother survived cancer without knowing about it
Here’s David’s website, which has a link to all his articles, his book, and more. Lots of stuff, good stuff, there.
*NOTE: I’m ditching the time signatures, because only a few people use them and they take me literally 2X the episode length to make. So I could be at it four 4 hours just to make those fuckers. If you miss them and are willing to step up and make them for me, let me know!
Welcome to the second episode of AGAINST EVERYONE with CONNER HABIB!
I’m so excited to have Abby Martin on the show! Abby is a radical political journalist, and host of Empire Files. She’s also an artist and activist.
Together, we talk how to sift through media and find trustworthy voices, politics, imperialism, Palestinian rights, and how to live in the intensities of our world.
Here’s a breakdown of the episode:
How Abby & I are CLEARLY Russian agents: 1:45
The Jill Stein Problem: 7:10
The longing for a politician we can believe in, no matter what he or she says: 10:00
The moment the scales fell from Abby’s eyes: 11:30
How conspiracies form when world views are shattered: 14:00
The exploitation of Seth Rich’s death: 16:00
Why gathering the evidence for a conspiracy is not enough: 18:35
La La Land as the expression of US anxieties: 21:30
Israel as a concentration of world issues and moral compass: 25:15
Media misrepresentation: 38:00
The difference between Chris Hedges’s despicable views on porn
versus Noam Chomsky’s dumb but responsible ones: 40:30
Thinking original thoughts and Wittgenstein’s struggle: 46:00
Stumbling your way toward better politics: 53:25
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For SHOW NOTES with links there to some of the books, movies, and people I mention in this episode. CLICK HERE for all that.