Hello everyone, and welcome to the Infinite Harmony Podcast. I’m your host, JDragon3000. Today we’re going on a magic carpet ride across the spiritual and philosophical landscape of the modern era and will continue our quest to unravel the strangeness of our current state of consciousness… and how its affecting our planet. Most of our discussion will involve the works Byung Chul Han. Han is a Korean Born philosopher who is alive and well today. He is the author of many essays that culminate into precise little books that explore topics of identity, ritual, material objects, love, and all are critical of the Neo-liberal views and policies that have overtaken our way of thinking… and spawned modern capitalism. And I just want to say. This dude is a gangster when it comes to modern philosophical thought. In some ways this episode is a continuation on our episode on Moloch… and what is driving humans towards any number of existential threats that could result in self termination. By the end we will have explored Han’s concepts of excess positivity and over productivity, Mark Fischer’s treatise on Capitalism, two more of the Church’s Harmonic Principles and the importance of rituals and rites of passage in our society, hopefully wrapping the golden threads into a weave that resembles an insight into our behavior and what we might do about it.
But before we get into all that…
I have a dirty little secret.
I don’t write most of the podcasts. I mean, my hands do the typing and my brain formulates the words, but I am just a tool for something far greater. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “ Oh great, here we go. Here comes the I am a channel for the light beings or Arcticus speech, or some other generic higher power invocation.
That’s not it.
You see, it’s coffee… Yes… Coffee writes most of these podcasts. If I don’t have a cup of coffee in front of me, then, well, not much comes out. I can hear your sigh of relief from this side of the mic…. As I know, that many of you also have that daily cup… according to the National Coffee Association 75% of you do… Everyday.
Now before I get into the first of our topics for today, which is societies obsession for productivity, let me say that there are two sides to this coin. From the Animist perspective, one must credit the power of the plant. It is no coincidence that the feeling we get from consuming the steaming cup of inspiration is one of sheer joy… That what begins as a small cherry growing in the misty mountains of Columbia or Ecuador and yields the subtle green coffee bean is now the reason we get up in the morning.
How did we come to roast this little bean with the precision once only attributed to rocket science. Liquid gold it is called by some. A perfect cup of coffee requires a perfect grind of a perfectly roasted bean with a precise degree of water temperature and a well timed extraction. (In Yoda voice) Such arcane knowledge, we have discovered. This plant has power, intrinsic to itself, and over us. Whether we exploit it, or have become worshippers of its god-like powers is a matter of perspective. Perhaps it is exploiting us? Or perhaps it’s all meant to be as it is. Humans and coffee are the perfect example of synergy, and all the great thoughts that have arisen exemplify the Harmonic Principle of co-emergence.
But alas, there is a dark-side to this relationship. If coffee is the force, it can be used for both good and evil. Darth Double shot has ulterior motives to rule the galaxy perhaps… and this how we will introduce Byung Chul Han and what he would call the Burnout Society, or a society where the individuals have become hell bent on being productive, so much so, that they have become products themselves, a world built on what he calls an “excess of positivity”. From here we’re diving into an ancient futurism conversation of sorts, starting with the insanity of the present day human, whom Han calls the “Achievement Subjects,” who are the victim of excess positivity.
Now there’s a strange thought. How can there possibly be too much positivity? Is that kind of like going out drinking with Ned Flanders. All you want is to commiserate in your sorrows and the guy just keeps telling you look on the sunny side of your god gifted life…
No. What Han means by positivity in this sense is likeness, sameness and the comforts of that similarity are more akin to the positive pole of a magnet. And in that sense, negativity is that which is different from us, that which could also be uncomfortable, that which is unlike. So an excess of positivity is a world where everything takes on a level of sameness. It also means a society that emphasizes over-production, over-achievement and success. You could say that the economic obsession with GDP, this idea that the economy has to keep growing forever, regardless of societal health or available resources or pollution, is a symptom of excess positivity.
I’m writing this podcast as we speak, in a coffee shop in San Diego, on a Sunday; the Lord’s day. I’m caffeinated and feeling quite productive. The words are flowing form my thought forms to my fingers. The barista’s have been here since 6 am, because cities rarely sleep. Its summertime. My niece in Chicago is working two jobs this summer and going to summer school, so that over her next school year she can work less, but only to make room for her theater performances that year. She’s 18. The hamster wheel has begun….
Now, we know that much of our society is built on production, on achievement, on attaining as much education and merit so you can to acquire a place in the machine. More and more in society artists are scorned as lazy and unwilling, or worse the creative arts have become, and require, academic tracts. We are taught methodically how to be creative in college. Every artist out there now teaches a masterclass on their creative technique, because, you know, creativity is work.
But Han is far more concerned with what this excess positivity is doing to us as a species, and how its breeding an increasingly narcissistic society. To Han, the increase in mental illness, depression and anxiety are all a symptom of the burnout we are experiencing from being confined as agents of this type of society.
Now before we go any further just take a moment to tune into your level of productivity. If you’re “self-employed” like I am… tune into how you have become your own economic product. Do you advertise yourself? Do your social media posts use some sort of visual or emotional image of you, so that people will pay you to do what you do? If you’re single, how much of your social media feed is about the image you are crafting for the world to see, in effort to find love? In other words, how much of what you do in the world is ensure that you are valued by society so that you can sustain yourself economically and socially?
If you work a 9-5 job, are you conjuring up a side hustle so that you can be doing something you’re more passionate about? Do you feel trapped in the system? Is your idea of liberation one where you are the boss of yourself? How would a society work exactly where we were all our own bosses? I mean, surely no one is satisfied being the line cook when they could be the head chef, or own the restaurant? Who would be satisfied as a customer service agent when they could be CEO? Or better yet, somehow amass enough wealth that they don’t even have to work! What does it mean to participate in society? To have value? To have self-worth? How does the society we’ve constructed cage us? How are we liberated?
We’ve talked a good deal about these sorts of things in previous episodes, about the pitfalls of capitalism, about how our rationalist minds keep us from connecting to the spirit of the earth, about how a healthy culture has healthy limitations. But we’ve never quite looked at it the way Byung Chul Han looks at it. Hidden in the core of these philosophical questions our Church asks, is a question of where on the spectrum of individualism and community we belong. A question of what freedom truly is, and what limitation truly is. At the Church of Infinite Harmony, we understand that it is not enough just to be handed a set of divine rules and follow them blindly, but that philosophy and conversation and science now have their place in understanding life and the divine. That our animist spirits must merge with technology and science, that we are on the precipice of a synergy of the indigenous animist and the technocrat. That we are changing. The question to ask, is are we changing for the better? Are we paying attention to how the society we are building is affecting us both physically and spiritually? Does society allow us the time and space to be human, to contemplate life and death, to develop gratitude and humility for that which is entirely out of our control? Or have we built a new religion on achievement and productivity, where anything we desire is possible and thus nothing is impossible, where we are expected to conquer even death itself, to live the perfect life? To somehow elevate us to a place where we are untouchable by the struggles of a human existence, both physically and psychologically. I mean, on some level, if you tune into the promise of the American dream, isn’t that what it promises? Enough money to overcome all the physical obstacles. First class flights where every comfort is offered as you travel, leather couches, fast and luxurious cars to get you where you want to go , food on demand. Nutropics for an optimal brain. Education in rationality where logic rules our emotions. All of this excess positivity, ease, sameness, likeness in our lives so that we may do away with struggle. Perhaps struggle is necessary, even vital to life. We’ve discussed that golden thread in many episode. Evolution requires a push-back, a struggle. It’s like that spaceship in Wall-E where humans no longer have to move or work at all, and everything is available at the touch of a button, and yet the Earth is lifeless.
What if the problems we are facing as a civilization are in fact what we call solutions to the strife and struggles of life? What if all that modernity has taught us to value is the very poison in the well of our water. That fundamentally, the quest for economic and mental liberation has weighted the scales toward positivity so much that it threatens to consume us all? And what do we do about it? How can we once again come into balance and harmony? How can we re-establish the rituals that thread our awareness to the greater truths and cosmic laws that guide the anima in all things. This time we don’t turn toward the Buddha. We turn toward a rather bad ass Korean Born German philosopher, as well as a few others and continue to unravel the perplexing story that is modernity.
Today on the Infinite Harmony Podcast…
Something changed a few decades ago. Perhaps the echos of the future were becoming apparent in the 1950’s as the birth of the rock star and movie star came to be. But it wasn’t until internet that we humans could mold ourselves into something beyond what people could see face to face on a daily basis.
Yes, we’ve always had humans who craved power and recognition, but at what point did power and recognition become a requisite to self-fulfillment? At what point do our lives become the product to be consumed?
As someone who has been a part of the yoga and self-help industry for decades, the rampant use of social media to promote and effectively exploit one’s own being for the sake of career has never been more prevalent. There’s always been something a little sticky to me about the advertising of one’s self as the product. It’s like the billboards you see or bus stop benches with the pictures of the lawyers and real-estate agents. It’s the birth of reality TV, where our very real lives get reduced to entertainment, to a product.
We’ve seen over the course of advent of television… that even something as personal and sacred as the courting ritual to find our one true love, has been turned into entertainment, a weekly binge for a mass audience, and according to Byung Chul Han, this has turned us into a culture of Narcissists. There’s a lot to say about this topic, and it has been explored at great lengths by many thinkers. The transition from artists and laborers to what we referred to earlier as the “achievement subject” has actually enslaved us to society in a far more subtle, but no less terrifying manner as a totalitarian government.
Han says, “as an entrepreneur of the self, the achievement subject is not subjugate to a commanding and exploiting other. However, the subject is not really free because they now engage in self exploitation. The achievement subject is now the perpetrator and the victim in one… this makes possible exploitation without domination.”
The subtle control mechanisms of capitalism and how we truly are not free, despite the imaginary economic ladder built for us a the topic for another time.
What I want to focus on is simply how we have gone from peasants to laborers and now products, and what that done to our culture. You see, peasants had a King or Queen to protect them and assure their safety, and theoretically a leader who failed to do so was removed, often by force for coming up short on their social contract. A laborer has unions and pensions, 401k plans and a path toward promotion. But what of the modern citizen?
Now more than ever, our reward for entrepreneurship and independence is self-reliance. The self-employed human is responsible for just about everything. They, in a sense, become their own company, sometimes figuratively and often literally. How many of you have met folks with corporations named after themselves?
“Hey, Welcome to Bob Corp where Bob gets to fill all the roles and do all the work, but hey, he gets all the rewards!”
Bob has to purchase his own health care, advertise on his behalf, drum up all his own business, assure he has good public relations, invest in his own retirement, advocate for his own rights, and well, frankly, this makes Bob a very important person, doesn’t it.
Bob, is his own product. No matter what service Bob is offering, what you’re really buying is Bob. And how isolated does Bob feel knowing that he is the only person in society who is responsible for his success or failure. No company health care, no matching 401k plan, no co-workers to relate to.
For those of you in the yoga self-help industry, you understand that there is very little in the way of a social safety net if you fail. And even worse, you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that even your own personal stories and vulnerabilities have become products.
“Here are the pains and struggles that I’ve been through, that qualify me to coach you on those very life struggles.”
Hmmm…
I’m pretty sure our pains and struggles were always meant to be held by our community, for our “coaching” to come from our elders, and perhaps if there was a price to be paid, it was the price of respect and recognition of someone who had lived many lives, their qualifications were in the wrinkles below the eyes and the scars on their hands, in the way they could hold a gaze steady for minutes without saying a word.
What a golden thread we’ve come upon.
The commodification of wisdom, of our elderhood, of our very myths and stories that make us. Instead of old wise friends to share our problems with, which they’ve surely been through, we pay a therapist to listen to our problems and offer solutions based on collected data on our demographic or similar socio-economic status or neuro-divergent pattern. Everything has become a one to one transaction.
On the other end of the spectrum, an elder’s investment in your well being is an investment on behalf of the village. In a world where we don’t need anyone until we do, and then we pay for their services, how is it that we practice true community? As someone who lives in a communal setting, so much of community is just doing things for others, and the health of the village is the reward. But if there is no reward for doing things for others, aside from feeling good about ourselves, if there is no incentive because there is no correlation with our own economic safety, then what becomes of the village? What becomes of human relationship?
The advent of the internet and social media has exponentially magnified the effect of this, as technology does. In a classical liberalist society we were limited by our ability to reach others and companies has a slightly slower process. But as tech does, it magnified this aspect of our culture. It’s the difference between a man with a fishing rod and a boat with a 50 foot net. Its an order of magnitude different. We are breaking through growth limitations, and suffering the consequences. What took a whole team of humans, or an entire marketing firm to accomplish, is now possible by the individual through technology. We don’t need anyone… and if we are all individually capable via technology of doing everything for ourselves, and we don’t ask anyone for anything, then the cult of the individual is complete. We are our own most important person. The very definition of narcissism… and the very opposite of community. The very opposite of nature, which is an interwoven interdependent system where each component, each species has its roll in the eco-system. Where conflict and competition are limited by the evolution of the biological species, where squirrels can only collect as may nuts as they can carry, where the bobcat can only catch as many animals as it is fast enough to catch. Humans have evolved to have abstract thoughts and the ability to consider past and future and thus plan for past or future at a scale that far outweighs the needs of the individual. When one hones this ability toward benefitting the self, we end up with billionaires, and nothing is more unnatural than the billionaire. Where one individual becomes something so beyond apex predator. So important that they can capture substantial amounts of the world's resources… community reliance is becoming a relic, and the cult of the individual, the narcissist, reigns supreme.
Now whether we end up being entrepreneurs or bank clerks, we are raised to believe that the pinnacle of success is personal freedom, which we’ve discussed at length in previous episodes. To be our own boss, or better yet, independently wealthy, where we have so much money that we no longer need to provide any kind of labor or service to society. We are taught from an early age that this is what matters most, that the function of education is to put us in the best optimal place for this achievement.
To Han, this is why we see such a massive increase in Depression, Autism, ADHD and anxiety. Han says, “Depression follows from over excited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive traits. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to speak. It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the self to hollow and empty out. It wears out in a rat race it runs against itself.”
Effectively a psychological race to the bottom with ourselves.
And not only have we commodified ourselves as individuals, but we’ve commodified our entire culture.
If there is a true horror in the world, it might be the commodification of culture. And I’m not just talking about finding Native American headdresses at burning man or wearing a sombrero on Cinco De Mayo at a white people party. I’m talking about the commodification of all of our cultures. I’m talking about finding ourselves without any culture other than consumerism. To someone who is born and raised in a culture, the culture is mostly unseen. It is woven in the blankets that dress the children at night, it is in the method of carved wood, the strength of the foundation of every home. Culture is the flavors of the food and the medicines and knowing when it is the right time to harvest those foods and medicines. Culture is the songs sung to the dead.
You know what it’s not, a the shit you can buy at an airport store, or the plastic replicas of the sacred sites sold in the gift shop. As Americans, consumerism is so engrained in us, that not only do we regularly have to pay for profound experiences, but we are also hoodwinked into paying to bring back some poorly made memento to place on our mantle as a trophy to show we’ve been there. We reduce impactful experiences down to photos and souvenirs.
We have not just turned ourselves into a commodity. We’ve turned our entire community and the land they walk on into a commodity. Tourism can generate substantial revenue for a developing country, but opens the door to the homogenization of its people by adopting the western capitalist values. Just the fact that we call them “developing” countries, as if they, despite often having ancient cultures are in some stage of cultural infancy. The truth is they are in economic infancy, and as the economy grows, all that which has meaning slowly dies.
And who is it traveling to these exotic places where the remnants of culture do their best to commodify themselves to the tourists? The globalized citizen, who seeks sameness everywhere outside there novel experience of culture. The globalized citizen wants the same standard of hotel room and Uber driver. The globalized citizen wants gluten free options at every restaurant. The globalized citizen will likely stop at a McDonalds in Japan and Russia alike. They will drink bottled water. They will do there best to find a latte wherever they go.
When I was traveling in China, my travel partner and I played a game where we would just point to something on the menu and pray it was edible and not so spicy that we’d go catatonic. It was true adventure. I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten parts of animals where I neither knew the part nor the animal. Sometimes it was delicious, sometimes it was unbearable. We did our best to extend ourselves, and… also… found deep familiar comfort in the modernity of the hostiles we stayed in, the fact we could order a beer we knew… and of course, find coffee. Put me in Lima, Paris or Shanghai, and I’m going to find the most hipster 3rd wave coffee shop in the city and write a blog about it. What can I say, I’m not a fan of anything other than good latte art and a perfectly pulled shot that transcends all cultural barriers.
Nowadays I have little desire to travel, because it doesn’t feel like I’m going anywhere. Despite how radically different China was from the US, it was even more remarkable how similar it was. Despite the communist nature of the government, they are consumers. They are free to buy all sorts of stuff they don’t need. They covet cars and clothes and jewelry like everyone else. Any cultural site with any level of mystery or sanctity was covered with tourists, mostly Chinese because, you know, its a really big country, with dozens of gift shops along the way tantalizing you to buy the plastic replica of the temple at the top of the mountain you were climbing or a little lucky statue of the deity you were visiting. Everything, everywhere is in excess. Build and organized for our comfort. Globalization is the excess positivity Han is talking about. The homogenization of culture that effectively destroys culture. It is the death of the mysterious, of wonder, of the little dangers that make us feel alive.
In his book “Non-Things,” Han speaks to how the things in our life, the physical objects, have also fallen prey to capitalism. He dissects the digital photo and its pitfalls, and he draws our attention to what is happening in the digital world, and how our values are changing. The analogue photograph, he says, is a thing. It captures light onto film, then paper, and like everything that is made of carbon, it degrades. The very light it is made of will also be its destruction. If you're fortunate to own old photographs, you know that their exposure to any kind of light will, over decades, lead the photo to a mortal death. Thus, these photos become precious things.
The digital photo however, is information, it is not a thing. It is a compulsion, and it is consumed, often in the digital landscape, as just a passing bit of information. It is forgotten, as can be understood by the thousands of photos we all have sitting on our phone that will never be seen again, or on a hard-drive somewhere, if they are anywhere at all. What do we lose by attempting to capture precious moments on a phone, only to treat them as digital information with little value. How does this eat away at the sacred moments of our life? At our culture? At our memory? How does it contribute to our excess narcissism? What is the true value of the selfie? How is it homogenizing our culture and thus destroying it?
I find myself wondering how at this point we could ever divorce economy from culture, or tourism from all that is real and sacred. Its important to understand that capitalism, and economics in general, has pervaded every other ideology and universal symbolic relationship we’ve ever had with the world. Just a funny thought here, but from the animist perspective, money is also alive, and so are ideas and ideologies, like capitalism. In capitalism, the only option is to achieve, to grow, to innovate. As automation assumes control over the monotonous jobs that have propped up the middle and lower class economy for generations, even more-so will humans be expected to somehow add to the ever expanding GDP through innovation, which almost always results in creating more for others to consume. This regime of positivity and production is not merely a matter of economic productivity, but an all consuming force that dictates our emotional and existential orientations. The unending demand to be perpetually active, to innovate, and to outperform others creates a state of chronic anxiety and burnout, eroding the very essence of human experience.
Everything is for sale. Including sacred experiences, sacred sites, even the participation of sacred rituals. Capitalism trivializes and commodifies culture. Cultural expressions are the backbone a healthy identity, and capitalism co-ops and repackages them as commodities to be consumed. This commodification strips cultural artifacts of their authenticity and transformative potential, reducing them to mere entertainment or status symbols. The sacred and the meaningful are subsumed under the logic of the market, where everything is evaluated in terms of its exchange value rather than its intrinsic worth.
According to British Philosopher Mark Fisher, who coined the term “Capitalist Realism” we are locked in a Capitalist ideology. Capitalist realism, at its core, is a hegemonic doctrine that has not only colonized our economic landscape but has also subsumed our cultural and psychological terrains. It operates under the guise of inevitability, presenting capitalism as the sole viable system for organizing human life. This pervasive ideology perpetuates itself through a myriad of cultural artifacts, from the omnipresent advertising that saturates our visual field to the ubiquitous narratives of success and individualism propagated by mainstream media.
Fisher's critique of capitalist realism emphasizes its psychological and cultural dimensions, arguing that it creates a kind of "reflexive impotence" where individuals recognize the problems within the system but feel incapable of challenging it. This leads to a pervasive sense of despair and apathy, making the prospect of radical change seem impossible. The concept has been influential in discussions about contemporary politics, culture, and mental health, highlighting the need to envision and strive for alternatives to the capitalist status quo.
In other words, to Fisher, Capitalism is the matrix. Instead of an economic model we subscribe to to guide our transactional relationships, it has become a reality we live in, with no sense that any other reality exists.
Think about it for a minute. I mean, really. Put your attention to the grindstone and feel the world around you.
Do you ever feel like there’s no way out of consumption and pollution and war? Like we’re on a speeding train heading for the mountain and no one can stop it?
Do you ever, despite your Facebook rants and Greenpeace donations and solidarity flags ever secretly think that its all for nothing? Like you’re just going to have to choose between two sides of the same coin for president for the rest of your life? Like the political system is so mired that it cannot be infiltrated? Do you feel like there is any solution to our oil consumption, or our plastic production? I mean… how on Earth do we stop a whole society from using plastic to go cups and bottles. Do you feel powerless?
Do ya?
Because I do.
And in moments like this, its’ a good time to employ the tactics of the rationalists and say to ourselves… “I notice I am confused.”
This is a good time to introduce one of my favorite Golden Threads… Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I’ve read it at least three time in its entirety. All two thousand pages. It’s a fan fiction, and strangely, happens to be one of the most entertaining fiction novels I’ve ever read.
If you’re confused right now, I recommend reading the book. Twice.
Its essentially a re-telling of the Harry Potter story, only Potter is the prodigal adopted son of Professor Michael Evans-Verres, a Bio-chemist and a Rationalist.
That’s all I’ll say about that, except that the book is just a really creative way for the author to explain the many fundamentals of rationality.
So… about that whole confusion thing… I’ll read a passage from the book where Harry is explaining one of his many rational superpowers to a character I will not disclose. Potter and his friend are analyzing a puzzling situation that they currently find themselves in:
"I have a feeling," Harry said finally, "that we're coming at this from the wrong angle. There's a tale I once heard about some students who came into a physics class, and the teacher showed them a large metal plate near a fire. She ordered them to feel the metal plate, and they felt that the metal nearer the fire was cooler, and the metal further away was warmer. And she said, write down your guess for why this happens. So some students wrote down 'because of how the metal conducts heat', and some students wrote down 'because of how the air moves', and no one said 'this just seems impossible', and the real answer was that before the students came into the room, the teacher turned the plate around."
"Interesting," says his teacher. "That does sound similar. Is there a moral?"
"That your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality," said Harry. "If you're equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge. The students thought they could use words like 'because of heat conduction' to explain anything, even a metal plate being cooler on the side nearer the fire. So they didn't notice how confused they were, and that meant they couldn't be more confused by falsehood than by truth.”
Now, if you’re expecting me to rationalize my way out of Capitalist Realism, then well, allow me to disappoint you. After all I’m like a level 3 rationalist, of which there are at least 97 known levels above me and well, they haven’t figured it out either.
But its important to take a moment here and notice that feeling, that feeling of inevitability you may experience around the meta narratives that encompass our lives. That feeling behind Mark Fisher’s famous quote, “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
Because it is. That is exactly how the system is designed to make us feel.
Because we have nothing sacred left, unless we make it sacred. The world feels bought up, extrapolated, commodified. Been to a national park lately? Doesn’t it feel like even a walk through a local main street in that small town off the beaten path has “sold out.”
And how about you? How about the things in your world? Are they sacred?
What do you possess that you would consider sacred? I use possess lightly, for those of us that have sacred objects are merely there keepers for a time.
What do you possess that once belong to a grandmother or grandfather?
What do you possess that can’t be bought on Amazon if it was lost or broken?
What do you possess, that when you touch it, you are filled with a sense of moving through time, through generations, as if touching the very essence of the great spirit itself.
Were any of your possessions blessed by someone of great recognition in your community? Consecrated by an elder? Breathed life into by a medicine person. Woven by a generation before yours?
If you are lucky to have such a things, ask yourself… was the meaning that you give to your possession shared with someone other than you at one time or another?
I don’t think a world exists for humans where we have discovered everything. In all possible worlds humans are searching for meaning, searching for truth, for the beginning. It is in the nature of the universe to be unknowable, and it is in the nature of the human to want to know it all. To find the theory of everything.
More importantly, it is in the nature of the human to weave myths, to exist within stories of our own making about the unknowable universe. This too, is part of what we are. We build worlds of dream, we interpret the signs, we make meaning out of the movements of the celestial heavens, literally connecting the dots in the sky where upon they become gods.
It is critical that you have meaning in your life, and today it mostly must be discovered by the individual. Rare it is in the modern world that meaning is passed down to you by your elders, which not only helps maintain continuity from generation to generation, but gives the elders purpose. Above all, do not let capitalism sell you meaning. If your meaning can be bought or sold, it does not have the depth required to sustain your soul.
In the beginning of this episode we talked about excess positivity and what it looks like. Having what Han calls negativity in our lives is what gives it meaning. This negativity is two-fold. First, it represents other, all that which is not us, different. The more different it is, the more it helps us to understand ourselves, to understand the universe. But negativity also means our struggles, our strife, our effort required to live the lives that we deeply want to live. The reason our lost rights of passage meant something was not because of their guaranteed success, but because of the possibility of failure.
I think now more than ever, there is a sense that the challenge we face as a species may be too much for us to bear, that the apathy or the reflexive impotence Fisher describes will overcome our ability to come out on the other end. In other words, as the first truly global generations, we’re facing the most daunting of tasks.
Every mental health expert out there has their reasons why young people are seemingly more mentally incapable of coping or neuro-divergent with each new generation. But perhaps the real reason we’re struggling is that the mental and emotional complexity of society has become so great that we simply just can’t cope. Coping skills take years. I feel like I’m just finally able to cope with the challenges that we are facing, and I’m in my 40’s. For the first 15 years of my childhood, there was no global warming, no cold war, no threat of immanent destruction of the entire planet to cope with. Imagine being born into a society where, as Fisher says, the end of the world seems more likely than the end of Capitalism.
And make no mistake, the complexities of our economy and the capitalistic nature of the west is damaging our biosphere at an increase rate and creating not just one, but half a dozen existential threats to our existence.
All of us alive today are tasked with making the world a better place. Hopefully this struggle of the 21st century is all a part of our meaning making, part of our story we are weaving together. Something our great grandchildren will talk about to their great grandchildren seven generations from now. We must once again grasp the meaning known to our ancestors for millennia. We must rekindle our animist spirit and awaken to the breath of life in all things. We must fill our lives with the sense of sacred.
We have a harmonic principle regarding the sacred. The fourth Harmonic Principle, the Principle of Sanctity, which reads as follows :
“The Church of Infinite Harmony recognizes the living body of the Universe as sacred, and the living body of Gaia as a Sanctuary. The Church of Infinite Harmony swears to protect the sanctity of Gaia through the preservation of all biodiversity, habitat and natural resources. The Stewards of Gaia practice this by establishing Sanctuaries and practicing the Principles within these Sanctuaries.”
This is part of our purpose, what gives us meaning here in the church. Our next principle, the 5th principle, The Principle of Stewardship says,
“The Church of Infinite Harmony recognizes the Stewardship of Gaia as a sacred practice. The ordination and education of Land Stewards is the primary method of worship, and the act of Stewardship is the practice and realization of the Harmonic Principles.”
So we are stewards of the sacred. Our purpose is to protect Gaia and all her inhabitants. The way we do so is by communing with the land.
By burning a sacred fire in her honor and walking lightly on her soil
By tending our gardens and respecting the rattlesnakes that eat the gophers.
By singing to the stars and dancing with the moon.
By nurturing the saplings with our compost.
By weaving art of stone and wood for the walking paths.
By prayers for healing and peace.
By allowing ourselves to do what brings us a deeper connection to the sacred. By filling our life with meaning.
By allowing ourselves, having lived a meaningful life, to embrace the next great adventure of the spirit beyond the body. To gracefully walk through the doorway of death… and long before we meet the guardians of the gates to the underworld, that we allow the scent of death to creep into our living meaning. That we face it as living breathing beings more than once, that we embrace resistance and danger as part of the sacred, and sluff off these excessively comfortable easy futures that seem to be sprouting before us.
There is no escaping death.
Every comfort we can conceive will not stop Charon from asking for his payment to ferry you across the river styx to the realms beyond. The coins placed upon your eyes may as well be every material possession you have at the time of death, because none of it will come with you. In death we carry nothing.
So why in life do we accumulate so much? And why do we try so hard to be comfortable, as if we can stave off suffering with plushier pillows and more air conditioning. To truly understand the sacred, we must understand the importance of Rites of Passage. The moments where we pit ourselves against the very real power of nature and the very real possibility of death. Rites of passage are a foundation for all of our myths and stories. They are fundamental to the hero’s journey, of our journey. The moments where we temper ourselves to strife and thus truly live.
Comfort is a problem. I’m saying it. An easy life is a meaningless one. Excess positivity. Excess achievement. I know someone out there is thinking, “sure buddy, writing from your MacBook sipping a latte that costs more than some people make in a week, driving to a fro, buying all your food from whole foods, and you want to talk about excess.
Well guess what, you’re right.
I have to actually find ways to suffer in the sense we’re talking about. In the ritual sense.
This is why does every rite of passage, every quest for meaning requires hazard, struggle. This is does every hero’s journey begin with disaster?
I’d like to read a passage by Rebecca Solnit from her book, A paradise built in Hell.
“The word disaster comes from the Latin compound of dis-, or away, without, and astro, star or planet; literally, without a star. It originally suggested misfortune due to astrologically generated trouble, as in the blues musician Albert King’s classic “Born Under a Bad Sign.”
In some of the disasters of the twentieth century—the big northeastern blackouts in 1965 and 2003, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast—the loss of electrical power meant that the light pollution blotting out the night sky vanished. In these disaster-struck cities, people suddenly found themselves under the canopy of stars still visible in small and remote places. On the warm night of August 15, 2003, the Milky Way could be seen in New York City, a heavenly realm long lost to view until the blackout that hit the Northeast late that afternoon. You can think of the current social order as something akin to this artificial light: another kind of power that fails in disaster. In its place appears a reversion to improvised, collaborative, cooperative, and local society. However beautiful the stars of a suddenly visible night sky, few nowadays could find their way by them. But the constellations of solidarity, altruism, and improvisation are within most of us and reappear at these times. People know what to do in a disaster. The loss of power, the disaster in the modern sense, is an affliction, but the reappearance of these old heavens is its opposite. This is the paradise entered through hell”
If ever there was a prayer that the challenges of the 21st century would bring us together, this is it. But what happens when we are raised in a culture where we are not given the opportunity to face death, to face our fears? What happens when we grow up in the warm plush prison of modernity and are not let loose into the wild to find our courage? After all, we know that it is environmental pressure that moves the evolutionary scales forward. Without the pressure of external forces upon an organism, there is no genetic evolution. In other words, the hazard of life is what causes life.
This is important.
This is what I consider the root of why the Buddha says “Life is suffering,” though many Buddhists might disagree…
Perhaps our states of mind can be liberated from suffering, but life very much requires it to exist. When an organism is biologically, and in the case of humans psychologically pushed to our limits, we evolve, we change, we grown… or we die.
So again, what happens when modernity attempts to eliminate suffering through comfort and convenience. Well. Look around. This is what happens. Specifically, the elimination of biological pressures in the environment has given way to psychological pressures, one’s we’re likely not yet equipped to handle.
Byung Chul Han writes in many of his books that our resistance to negativity is the cause of Depression, Anxiety, ADHD, and all the disorders we are experiencing. That in absence of real world struggles, in absence on having to provide for community and not just for the self, the narcissist reigns supreme, and its maladies are wrought with psychological pressures we are not coping with. He writes that the absence of rites of passage and ritual as a means of connecting to the very real continuity of culture and history embedded in past generations is literally driving us crazy. That they are essential. That negativity, that struggle, that mystery, is essential to our human existence. That ritual is framework that gives our mind a lane to follow. It is literally the structure that houses our concepts of self in a wholistic way, in a way that is embedded in culture and community, as opposed to separate from it. It is how we make meaning. Ritual is meaning making. It is how we perform an essential reciprocity to the greater forces of the cosmos, how we pay the debt of our existence.
Han writes about this in great detail, but before we get to his book “The disappearance of Rituals” consider this…
Reciprocity is a law. It is our greater obligation to the cosmos. In all that we do, there is a reciprocity, and in all that we take there must be something given… in living we must consume, and in death we return all we are to the soil.
Capitalism taught us how to live a transactional life, and have transactional relationships, This has broken the bonds of our deep social structures. How many of your sacred experiences are transactional these days… and yet there is a truth to the transactions of life. The law of reciprocity governs all things. The problem is that we have abstracted the deep somatic reciprocity of life. What does money represent truly? Reciprocity? Transaction? Perhaps. But nowadays money is mostly associated with power and freedom. Power to do as we please, power to buy ourselves freedom? To hoard reciprocity until we are free of the cosmic law itself. Liberated from giving back. Nothing in natural law is free of reciprocity. How do we humans manage to stray so far from the obvious?
There is a paradox in our culture, which in so many ways seems to value freedom above all, values individualism, and I keep having this nagging feeling that our struggle for freedom only imprisons us. Freedom is a solitary confinement of sorts. The nuclear family is the last vestige of community most of us have any allegiance to, any obligation. And even that seems to be on the verge of being swallowed by individualism. Western Civilization seems less interested in having children, less interested in matrimony in its truest sense, the obligation to the proliferation of culture not only through children, but the mothering of our village and the culture born from it.
Consider the natural progression of the individual. Once of age, we are taught to generate enough wealth to rent our own apartment, to buy a house, to sell that house and buy a bigger house, or sell the big house and buy land away from everyone else and live a quiet life. How many places have you lived in your lifetime? How many places have you called home? In the words of Stephen Jenkinson, to be of a place is to be indigenous. And I couldn’t agree with him more. Now, I know this is a contentious subject, but hear me out. Humans have been conquering each other for ten thousand years. We are still warring over the right to land and home. The Russian battle for Ukraine, the state of Israel and Palestine, these wars have been going on for a millennia in some form or another. What does it really mean to be indigenous.
From the latin indigenia and the archaic greek endo, it means to beget, to give birth, to come from the land… so for starters, indigenous is not a word of the ones we call indigenous these days, its a word of the conquerors. Nevertheless, to be born in a place makes us indigenous. But that’s not how most of us think, is it? The word in modern English seems to connotate something much deeper, something akin to “those that came before us” or “those who knew the ways of the land,” hence Jenkinson arriving at “of a place.”
But to be of a place requires generations. It requires a culture of continuity. It requires time and story and elders. It begs a connection to a natural law of the land, of the place itself. It asks something of us, an investment of our somatic being, not of our bank accounts. Indigenous is earned seven generations after us. If we are willing to grow roots.
Where are the roots of our culture?
Where are our roots?
Do you have roots?
Roots don’t move. They stay in one place, grow deeper, expand wider, so that the canopy of leaf and branch can expand toward the sky, toward the sun, toward the greater. Roots hold fast so that the plant can flower and spread seed.
Where are your roots?
When we live in a world where the goal is to constantly upgrade our lives, how can we every be anywhere? Again, how many places have you lived? It would take me the better part of 15 minutes of contemplation to consider every place I’ve ever lived, and I’m one of the more rooted people I know.
How much of our lives is impermanent? What do we possess that belonged to our grandfathers and grandmothers? How many stories do we know of what came before us that actually involve our bloodlines? When everything is impermanent, including our storytelling, how can we have continuity? Continuity is culture. Continuity is what it means to be of a place. I have no doubt that the psychological neurosis that plagues our culture is rooted in our lack of roots. It is because so many of us are no longer of a place. To be at home in the world we need continuity. We need ritual.
Which brings us back to Han. In is book “The Disappearance of Rituals,” Han begins with a preface that states that the book is written simply as an assessment of what is, not some nostalgia for returning to a way of life that existed prior to now. On that we only partially agree. I think that re-discovering ritual is paramount to the health of our culture. But I do agree that it will not look like what existed prior to now, it will be a symbiosis of what was and what is. It will follow the principle of co-emergence and will arise as something that does not yet exists. But it will, very likely have the qualities of ritual that Han speaks of in his book.
And… when you cut down the old growth forest, you never get that back. You get a new forest, eternally different than what once was.
Han defines ritual as symbolic techniques of making oneself home in the world. Symbols and symbolic perception are a perception of the permanent. Rituals are a symbolic practice that bring people, communities together in wholeness. According to Han, we are witnessing a revolt against formalism, even against the permanence of form itself. He says “In a narcissistic culture, objective forms are avoided in favor of subjective, interior states. Rituals evade narcissistic interiority.”
In most of his books he elucidates the rampant narcissism of our 21st century culture, which Han says is the preference of subjective over objective; of our own personal point of view over a shared and agreed upon point of view. This of course is at the heart of the culture war still playing itself out in most westernized countries.
A collective point of view is hard to come by these days. And yet, again, this so deeply speaks to our up-rootedness. Those of a place all observe the same passing of seasons, the same cosmic order of the place itself. The problems of the indigenous human is the problems of all of the humans of that place. A famine affects everyone. A blight or disease, a disagreement among the governance. There’s no abstraction of these ideas and no one is trying to build their identity around problems that aren’t somatically felt in their bodies. The problems of an indigenous human are experienced, not conceptualized. Rituals and ceremony exist to address the problems of a culture objectively.
Rituals are rooted in the objective experience and objective symbolism of the culture. They are familiar. There is a recognition. The are arrived at again and again. Han says “Recognition always implies that we have come to know something more authentically that we were able to do when caught up in our first encounter with it.” He goes on to say that rituals turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time, what a home is to space, they render time habitable. They stabilize life.
There’s a lot to unpack here. In all of Han’s work there is a juxtaposition of real things versus digital information. A juxtaposition of the stability and endurance of grandfather’s rocking chair slowly wearing away on the porch for fifty years versus an iPhone that is intended to last two or three years. Continuity and Endurance are a golden thread encapsulating the rebellion of the transient. The permanent is recognized again and again, the transient, elusive.
How transient are your friends that have moved away. The ones whom your relationship is primarily through social media. It’s hard to keep up with a world that is not engaged with in the permanent. In the face to face. As it is hard to know a place, to root, having lived there no less than a few decades.
To Han, objectivity is familiarity and continuity. He again proclaims the narcissism of our society when he says “The narcissistic process of internalization develops and aversion to form. Objective forms are avoided in favor of subjective states. Rituals evade narcissistic interiority. Rituals produce a distance from the self, a self-transcendence.”
He says that rituals provide closure… and that closure in our culture has been overrun by incompleteness, indecisiveness, excess of opportunity and unlimitedness… all a symptom of excess positivity.
Closure, you know… like, death.
Ever notice how death phobic our culture is? Or how afraid we are as a culture to let our youthful excesses die?
There will be a podcast on that topic, a golden thread to the realm of death and grief, but for now, just think about your life and how much closure is available to you. No car will last your lifetime, no phone will last you even a decade. The world is built to be upgraded, and everything is expected to grow indefinitely.
This is, again, an aspect of our depression as a culture. The inability to decide, to complete, to find closure. Like a broken heart that bleeds for eternity.
Think of ecology and the importance of closed loops, or of economics and closed loops. Village minded-ness. Globalism is one big open unending line in both directions, spanning out to the depths of deprivation, and to the height of accumulation and luxury.
Can you see it?
How important are endings? Death? All of life is built upon the decomposition of all that came before it. This is a case where the finite nature of life is important. Where the rules of the finite game must be respected, so that we can all continue to play the infinite game of existence.
Ritual, recognition of what has happened before and is happening again, has a beginning and and end. It allows for lingering contemplation of everything in between. Han says “Rituals give form to the essential transitions of life. Without them, we slip through. Thus, we age without growing old, or we remain infantile consumers who never become adults.” He goes on to say that Rites of Passage act like the seasons, marking the phases of our life. They give rhythm to our growth and change as humans and mark the passage of our lives into chapters we can look upon with recognition of those who came before us. They offer us thresholds of intense transition, delineated markers, as well as appropriate liminal space.
Rites of passage are an ancient tradition once woven into the very fabric of our lives. They begin with a separation, a stepping away from the comforting embrace of the known world. This departure is not just physical but spiritual, a shedding of old skins to prepare for the transformative journey ahead.
As the familiar fades into the distance, the traveler enters the liminal space, a realm of shadows and possibilities where the boundaries of reality blur. Here, amid uncertainty and chaos, the soul is tested and tempered. It is a space where identities are questioned, beliefs are challenged, and the seeds of potential are sown in fertile ground. In this crucible of transformation, one discovers what they are to become, forging a path through the wilderness of their own being.
At the heart of this journey lies the threshold, a sacred boundary between what was and what is to be. To cross it is to embrace the unknown and surrender to the process of becoming. To look upon what is other or foreign, as Han would say. It is a moment of profound courage and vulnerability, where the past is left behind, and the future awaits with uncertainty. Where pain and suffering are often a very real possibility, and more often a likelihood. With each step across the threshold, the traveler sheds the remnants of their former self, embracing the rebirth that lies beyond.
Upon crossing, there is a return, not as who one once was, but as someone reborn, infused with newfound wisdom and strength. The world, too, is changed, seen through eyes that have been opened to the mysteries of existence. This rebirth marks the beginning of a new month in the calendar of life, a fresh chapter filled with promise and potential.
Thus, the rite of passage completes its cycle, an eternal dance of separation, transformation, and return. It is a journey we all undertake, a timeless narrative etched into the human soul, guiding us through the ever-unfolding story of our lives.
It is how we find meaning that is relevant not only to us, but to everyone in our village.
That.
Culture is collective meaning making. The village is collective meaning making.
To embody a way of being, together.
To feel held in the by the same gods, by the same myths.
To feel as one.
So much of the modern aesthetic of success is so very personal. Relevant only to us.
So many of our accomplishments are celebrated by so few. Because they benefit only us.
All the acknowledgement we seek, all that we do to be seen by our friends and family and co-workers… how does what we do on a daily basis impact the lives of others?
When we engage in ceremony, we sacrifice ourselves to the alter of the other. When we pray, we acknowledge something far greater than us. We find humility, reverence, and recognition. We give our trust to our culture, to the traditions and ways that came before us.
And what a weight off our shoulders.
To trust the world. To trust the forces of the universe.
To trust our existence.
To trust that our lives are just lives. That we belong.
Below the threads of all this philosophy is a song yet to be sung, a return to village-mindedness, and it beckons us like a forgotten melody. It whispers of a time when communities were bound not just by proximity but by shared purpose, mutual care, and the recognition of a common destiny. Village-mindedness, as it once was, is not merely a nostalgia but a necessary counterbalance to the alienation wrought by the hyper-individual. It is a call to return to the essence of what it means to be human: to belong, to participate in a collective story, and to ensure that story’s continuation through time.
The village is more than a physical space; it is a living organism, a network of relationships that sustains and is sustained by its members. This is the antidote to Han’s “burnout society” in which we now find ourselves. The village does not ask for productivity for its own sake; it does not commodify the human experience into hours worked or goals achieved. Instead, it conspires with the slow rhythms of life, the seasons, the cycles of birth and death. It recognizes that continuity—both in life and in death—is the thread that weaves together the fabric of a meaningful existence. It is a return to meaning making, of which ritual is the most powerful too. Rituals acknowledge the presence of both the seen and unseen forces that shape our lives. Rituals demand meaning over efficiency. Rituals remind us that some things cannot be hurried, that there is a time for everything under heaven—a time to sow, a time to reap, a time to live, and a time to die.
They are a part of us, passed down through generations, are the bedrock of cultural life. They are the durable practices that carry the weight of history, meaning, and identity. Without them, we drift into the chaos of the unanchored self, disconnected from the lineage that binds us to the past and propels us into the future. In practice of remembrance, we understanding our place in the world, find stability in the midst of life’s inevitable uncertainties.
Moloch is relentless… the endless march of progress.
Modernity, with its emphasis on the new and the novel, erodes the structures that once provided us with a sense of belonging. The village, both as a physical and metaphysical space, has been replaced by the transient and the temporary. We have traded the enduring for the ephemeral, the rooted for the rootless. We sold grandfather’s oak rocker for a fold out Ikea couch.
But the need for continuity, for a sense of connection to something that outlasts us, remains as vital as ever.
In the village we are recognized. We are not nameless faces walking down the street. We are seen, acknowledged not just for what we do but for who we are—a unique thread in the larger tapestry of the community. There is a deep, abiding awareness of one another’s presence and contribution. We understand that every person, every role, is essential to the whole.
In the village, we also see beyond the living.
We honor our ancestors, who in turn, guide us and watch over us.
Through rituals of remembrance, of storytelling and song, we keep the past alive and ensure that the wisdom of the elders is not lost to the sands of time. This continuity of memory is what gives a village its strength, its resilience, and its ability to endure in the face of change.
In the village, there are those that also look forward, create the conditions for future generations to thrive. This requires a commitment to the continuity of values, of practices, and of the land itself. The village is a custodian of both culture and nature, and its survival depends on the careful stewardship of both. In a world increasingly disconnected from the earth, the village reminds us of our responsibility to care for the land that sustains us, to ensure that it remains fertile for those who will come after.
Without the land, the water and the air, there is nothing but fire. And we are burning…
The rituals we speak of, when practiced with intention, have the power to bind the worlds of past and the future. They are the rites of passage that mark the transitions of life, from birth to death and all the stages in between. They are the sense of structure and meaning, guiding individuals through the complexities of human existence. In a village, these rites are communal events, where one becomes many. Where we become “ka-tet”
The durability of these rituals ensures their continued relevance. They are not static or rigid, but evolve, adapting to the needs of the community while remaining rooted in the traditions that have sustained generations. This balance between tradition and adaptation allows a village to remain vibrant and resilient, capable of weathering the storms of change without losing its core identity, fragmenting into individual identities with no coherence.
In the end, we’re talking about survival, about flourishing: about the recognition that we are an interconnected web of life, not isolated beings adrift in a sea of chaos. A recognition of our place within the great web of existence, a recognition that our actions, our choices, and our rituals have a lasting impact on the world around us.
It is time my friends.
Challenge the modern world’s obsession with speed, efficiency, and individualism, offering instead a vision of life that is slow, deliberate, and communal. Return to the rhythms of the earth, to the wisdom of the elders, and to the sacredness of life in all its forms. Preserve the past; create the conditions for a future in which all beings can thrive. Find your way back to yourself, to each other, and to the enduring truths that have guided humanity since the beginning. The way of the animist. The breath of life in all things.
Reclaim that which endures. Scorn planned obsolescence, plastic, to go cups. Demand that what is made is made strong enough to find itself in the hands of your children’s children. Fix what is broken, including our emotional states and cultural rifts.
Slow down. Do not be the product to be sold. Allow yourself time among those who go nowhere, the trees, the plants… do nothing. It is perhaps the most radical political act in existence, doing nothing. And the most ancient of wisdoms.
Do it together. On the altar of community, sacrifice your political beliefs in exchange for the love of family and friendship. Allow our blood to become thick again, for our ancestors to remain with us instead of becoming long forgotten.
Let’s put Byung Chul Han out of a job. Let us bury his dystopian burnout society in favor of of the great harvest. Let us reclaim the bounty that is human joy and continuity. As always, it is not a return to something that once was, but the synergy of what once was with what is, to create the emergent way of life that has yet to come. The song yet to be sung.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed today’s contemplations and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks especially to the philosophical gong fu master Byung Chul Han, wherever you are. If you ever want to give us an interview just give me ring. I’m chillin. Special thanks to Alexa Sunshine Rose for her track “We are weaving our Lives.” You can find Alexa’s music on alexasunshinerose.bandcamp.com, all one word. Thanks to Kaiyote for our opening track and Azhia for our closing track. His five dimensional website is coming along at azhira.com, that’s a-z-h-i-r-a.com. This episode also featured music by Perry Ferall, we’ll see if that flies… a cover of Gil Scott Heron’s “The Revolution will not be Televised” by Reiner Damish, Canton Becker’s Benbiet, one of my favorites, Green Field’s by Brock Hewitt, tracks from Nine Inch Nails “Ghosts” album
As always, feel free to ask questions or offer feedback in our forum at infiniteharmony.org , which will include the transcripts of each episode for quotes and references.
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