Steppin' Off The Edge

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This episode picks up on the Burning State of Mind of the last podcast with 3 pieces of media recorded during the Burning Man Regional Leadership Summit. Together they give a strong sense of the commitment that the folks at BMHQ have towards the long-term success of the experience. They are always thinking of the community first and often working at a level far above what most of us can imagine that it will take to ensure that success. One potential title for this podcast episode I considered was “Burning Man grows up” for all the conversations had during the Summit around what we all can / need to do to share the transformative experience with the wider world. As Marian Goodell says during her speech you are about to hear, “We are unique, and of consequence in the world.”

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It is a short but sweet episode this month as at the end of this month I am heading to San Francisco to join other regional coordinators and like-minded artists for what is boldly titled a Burning Man Regional Summit. The event has been summarized by one person as “a golden opportunity to meet the people that are truly shaping this year-round global culture from the ground up. There will be extremely rich content, thought-provoking conversations, and many opportunities for you to see YOURSELF in the larger context of the Burning Man Project and the future of our global culture.”

If you are in the Bay area and/or know someone who is that you think would also make a great interview for this podcast, drop me a line. With the Burning Man summit top of mind for me of late I figured it was a good chance to bring in a few choice bits of media that relate to it into the podcast, all of which come from videos either recorded AT Black Rock City or featuring lots of visuals FROM Black Rock City.

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Neil Kramer is an English writer and philosopher specializing in the fields of consciousness, metaphysics, shamanism, and ancient mystical disciplines. He steps off the edge in a wonderful wide-ranging interview exploring such mindful topics as syncromysticism, consciousness as more than the reducible deterministic events of biochemistry, consensus reality tunnels, an electric chair of truth and what people can do to expand our capabilities to build a more harmonious environment where everyone prospers instead of the few.

The episode title comes from a riff off a Terrence McKenna quote that compares humans to fishes – only one of which is seemingly aware of the environment in which they exist. Our conversation generally stepped off the edge towards the phiosophic side of the spectrum. To offer somewhat of a counterpoint to those moments where we were ragging on science for its’ inability to map the various complexities of consciousness, I wrap up the episode with some consciousness-related concepts from the history of scientific study in Larry Lowe’s great article Apollo 14 plus 41: The unexpected benefit of Edgar Mitchell and the preface from a book that has something of a syncromystic connection for Neil and I: An Experiment with Time by J.W. Dunne.

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The interview I lined up this month won’t happen until next week, but that won’t stop the SotE monthly podcast production train for January! This episode features C-Realm #293 – Infinite Rehypothecation which KMO welcomed other podcasters to share as his iTunes enabled feed is acting wonky. It features an interview with Nicole Foss of The Automatic Earth blog discussing many topics related to decentralization before wrapping up with a great animal-based analogy about the need for more decentralization initiatives:

You really don’t want to be the first or the only zebra or wildebeest in the water. So once the herds are crossing all at once almost all of them get to the other side. We need to move together on this because if we do then we can create enough decentralization initiatives that most of them will get to the other side of the crocodile infested waters.

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“I may not know you. I may not agree with you. In fact, I probably don’t agree with you or many of the things that you believe in. But I will fight to my death that you have a life where you get to do what you want to do and in return you will do the same for me” According to Leifur Thor, member of the press team for Open Source Ecology (OSE), that is the mindset of someone living in a world of abundance and something sorely lacking in our society that holds scarcity as its’ most deeply held belief. OSE has an ambitious plans in the Global Village Construction Set to open-source the blueprints of 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch, and they aspire to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village for under $10,000. If you haven’t already, watch the fantastic TED.com video on the GVCS with OSE instigator Marcin Jakubowski. This open source hardware project is one of the first of a coming wave that wants to foster an abundant maker driven culture.

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The C-Realm podcast and Extraenvironmentalist are two of the preeminent podcasts available today. Their hosts, KMO and Justin Ritchie, step off the edge with me for a 3-way conversation about podcasting and the common narrative of collapse. Though it may not be a career path to most, podcasting can be a great way to build community and further the conversation about topics of interest. We move quickly into a wide-ranging conversation focused around the idea of collapse; an idea that KMO says he doesn’t believe any of, but takes very seriously. We explore what a hypothalamus reaction to Rush Limbaugh sounds like, kvetching inside Karl Rove’s big tent, voluntary peasantry, appropriately scaled living, de-growth and many more interesting items.

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AstroBarry Perlman steps off the edge with me to discuss his lifes’ passion: Astrology is “a craft, a mystical craft at the center of which is a beautiful mystery which nobody has yet been able to confidently say how it works despite thousands of years of history of people getting similar results and sharing each others experiences and research to build up a codified body of knowledge.”

We discuss the history of astrology, the interplay between science and astrology which some scientists have characterized as a pseudo-science despite having very similar origins to their profession, where the planets are now and what the coming alignments might mean for humanity as a group consciousness. There’s some surprising parallels to be drawn back to the revolutionary energies of the 1960′s and 1780′s that suggest we are living in interesting times indeed.

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When the sun’s up, Emlyn O’Regan is a senior developer for an e-learning company. In the evenings Emlyn quietly chips away at his little corner of the internet, inventing prolifically, writing furiously on his point7.wordpress.com blog and pondering what would happen if all humans had power over their own communication – to share with each other whatever, whenever and however they chose. He stepped off the edge to discuss crowdsourced credentialing, institutions delaminating and the evolution of adhocracy. Adhocracy is defined as, “The adhoc, leaderless, tech and network powered organisations / events / revolutions / actions which taken together form a nascent world system, one which is challenging the old institutional / corporatist world system”.

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Charles Eisenstein wrote Ascent of Humanity in 2007 about the history and future of civilization from the unique perspective of the evolution of the human sense of self. As we pass through what he describes as the convergence of crises that is birthing the societal transition into the Age of Reunion, his latest book Sacred Economics seeks to change the story of money and gift.

We don’t want to force people through a survival linked money system to abandon their gifts and do something else; that is what is happening today and the ecosystem and society are suffering greatly because of it. He believes that money is like a signaling molecule in the body that should direct resources or gifts towards needs in a positive direction. The philosophical tide of the times is indeed to understand nature as part of ourselves and the internalization of costs then is one dimension of this growing philosophical or spiritual reunion with nature.

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As the metaphorical waves of globalization crash hard upon the beachheads of peak oil, climate change and unsustainable economic growth we need to prepare to be able to thrive during challenging times. Cam Mather is an author and speaker who lives off-the-grid and enjoys “showing others that the best thing for the planet is now the best thing for your bank account”. During the interview with Cam you will learn about the cost and complexity of so-called “alternative” forms of home energy, the delusions and dangers of living a corporately structured lifestyle and why embracing change voluntarily or living locally is a step all of us should be taking to prepare for the challenging times ahead.