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!
THE BEGINNING IS NEAR: An immersive discussion on apocalypse and renewal Dean Arts Studio, Dublin 2, Thursday March 28th, 7pm – 9.30pm + Streaming Online €15-€35 (pay what you can afford, ticket includes a complimentary refreshment) + ONLINE STREAMING TICKETS
Feel like everything is collapsing and decaying? What would it feel like to consider everything is about to begin and flourish?
Join me and a host of AEWCH guests – Croatian philosopher and organizerSrećko Horvat, journalist and activist Una Mullally, and Mark O’Connell, for a unique opportunity to dissect and create new pathways amidst both global turmoil and solidarity-building!
War, and the nihilism of over-consumption, are in a fever-pitch struggle with visions of peace, contentment, and connection. In THE BEGINNING IS NEAR, our four speakers will explore the polar opposites of disaster and renewal, inviting the audience into the discussion to create a broader vision for Dublin, Ireland, and the world at large.
THE BEGINNING IS NEAR marks Srećko Horvat’s first speaking engagement in Ireland. His knowledge in philosophy, school-building, and political organizing, conjures a spirit of resonance, which reveals what feels like ‘the end’, across so many fronts, can also mark a real beginning.
TICKETS are available on a sliding scale: pay what you can at €15, €25, or €35. Space is limited, buy your tickets early! Complimentary beverages provided.
LIVESTREAM TICKETS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE to watch the event remotely for a flat fee of €15 (about $16.50 USD), and comes with limited-time access to a recording of the event. When you buy a livestream ticket, you will receive the link 12-24 hours ahead of the event via the email you supply at point of purchase.
All ticket holders will receive access to a recording of the event for a limited time.
Join us at the edge of death and birth, truth and love.
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!
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.
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Friends, I’m so excited to share this episode about punk rock with you. Not only does it weave in and out of where the source of many of my ethics come from, it also features a reunion between myself and an old friend, the musician Ted Leo, who I haven’t spoken with for almost twenty years.
Ted is best known for his band Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, but also for his project with Aimee Mann, The Both, his solo albums, and his hugely influential mod-punk band, Chisel.
On this episode, Ted and I talk at length about how punk changed our lives, but – perhaps more importantly – why that punk rock network and community matters now.
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? One of my favorite AEWCH moments was when Fugazi/Minor Threat frontman and Dischord Records founder Ian MacKaye agreed to be on the show… and our conversation on AEWCH 119 was really incredible. A very different kind of conversation than this one with Ted, but still adjacent to everything.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? A great introduction to the ways art and politics and mutual aid interwove during our punk coming of age is We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews which features longform interviews with musicians, but also leftist political figures of the time.
MORE ON TED Ted’s website is here, and he also posts frequently on bandcamp, where you can support his music via donation. Here’s Ted’s Stereogum interview about his solo album The Hanged Man. And just for the fuck of it, here’s Ted singing a karaoke version of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” with comedian Paul F. Tomkins in tow.
Against Everyone With Conner Habib is funded exclusively by listeners like you. Do you find value in this show? If so, support the podcast. SUPPORT THIS PODCAST viaPatreon
Friends,
In the midst of 2022, so many of us are seeking peace and meaning. So here’s my series on one meaning-rich tradition and religious stream: Christianity.
But this will be a different sort of Christianity: occult and esoteric Christianity. Some of it might look familiar. Some might seem absolutely bizarre. All of it, I hope will stir a feeling of warmth and depth of meaning for you, whether you feel any affinity with Christianity or the occult. The first episode in the series is AEWCH 181, featuring Rev. Patrick Kennedy from the Christian Community – a religious tradition informed by occultism. The second, AEWCH 182, was on with writer and spiritual teacher Lisa Romero. The third is AEWCH 183 on Christ and technology with tech worker-turned-spiritual-philosopher Andrew Linnell. And the fourth, AEWCH 184, is an examination of esoteric christianity and friendship in the Holocaust and now with historian Anne Weise.
Now we turn to the very practical fruits of esoteric christianity: how it can flow into cultural, political, and economic life in lasting and powerful ways. The name for this is social threefolding, a process articulated by Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century based on principles in human life.
To discuss social threefolding I invited Seth Jordan onto the show; Seth is an educator and writer at The Whole Social. In the spirit of threefolding, I ask three times: Why do we have no idea of how to move forward?
SHOW NOTES
WHATBOOKYOUSHOULDREAD?A great introduction to social threefolding can be found in Nicanor Perlas’s book, Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power, and Threefolding. Nicanor was a presidential hopeful in the Philippines and has received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize), the Outstanding Filipino Award, and the UNEP Global 500 Award for his work. He was also Seth’s teacher and is a lucid writer.
WHATOTHERAEWCHEPISODEYOUSHOULDLISTENTO?Well, two of them:One of my favorite episodes of the show is AEWCH 76 with money historian Conor McCabe where we talk about the phenomenology of money. I had Conor back on the show a year or later to discuss how to reinvent money and economics with anthroposophical economist, John Bloom, on AEWCH 110.
WHATSHOULDYOULOOKINTOFURTHER?Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) is an initiative that came from biodynamic farming (an esoteric christian approach to agriculture) and social threefolding. It’s incorporated other traditions and thinkers along the way, as exemplified by this good article on CSAs. As Susan Witt, from the EF Schumacher Society says: “One of Steiner’s major concepts was the producer-consumer association, where consumer and producer are linked by their mutual interests,” she explained. “And oneofSchumacher’smajorconceptswas‘todevelopaneconomywhereyouproducelocallywhatisconsumedlocally.’ We began to see CSA as a way to bring these key ideas together.”
And one of the farmers at a community farm elaborates the principles:
Newformsofpropertyownership—The land is held in a common by a community through a legal trust. The trust then leases its property long-term to farmers who use the land to grow food for the community.
Newformsofcooperation—A network of human relations replaces old systems of employers and employees as well as replacing the practice of pledging material security (land, buildings, etc.) to banks.
Newformsofeconomy(associative economy)–The guiding question is not “how do we increase profits?” but rather “what are the actual needs of the land and of the people involved in this enterprise?
FRIENDS: Do you find this podcast meaningful? Support it! This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon! Thank you so, so much.Buy the books mentioned on/related to this episode via my booklist for AEWCH 163 on bookshop.org!
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Friends,
I’m so excited to share this episode (and its long intro about revolution and violence!) with journalist, author, and filmmaker Jon Ronson.
SHOW NOTES
• For more on Jon, read his books, of course. But also you can go to his website, and find his series The Butterfly Effectas well as The Last Days of Auguston Audible. You can also watch Jon’s collaboration with Parasite director Bong-Joon Ho, Okja. And here’s Jon’s semi-autobiographical movie (featuring Michael Fassbender), Frank.
Conner Habib 