Upward Spiral #8 – The Interpersonal.
In this very intimate episode Eric Duffy and Ken Vallario explore the interpersonal as a political space.
Upward Spiral #6 – The Pros/Cons of Full Economic Collapse
In this bonus episode (possibly our best yet)…we feature a recording of an unplanned discussion about the benefits and dangers of the possible economic collapses that we’ve all imagined are possible. This episode not only features one of our most engaging discussions but King’s Corner is back with an awesome picture of what it looks [...]
Upward Spiral #4 – The Sound of My Voice, Cults and Corruption
In our fourth episode we discuss the film The Sound of My Voice, and the issues therein, including cults, the nature of history and rationality. With your usual co-hosts Ken Vallario and Eric Duffy, expect wild tangents, but there will be no spoilers in this episode, but as always Byron King will deliver another excellent [...]
Upward Spiral #3 – Homeland and The Holy War
In our third episode we explore the oft neglected fact of the ongoing Holy War, and how our Western habit of neglecting the power of culture is an aspect of this Holy War that only becomes apparent after we’ve been engaged in it. We use the show Homeland (Season 1) as a starting point for [...]
Culture Is Your Reality.
Culture is a field of perception, a mind-state that pre-registers incoming information as belonging to conditioned categories. It is an inevitable totalitarian aspect of growing up as a social animal. It is innate to the experience of culture that many aspects of one’s own are not only imperceptible but that they are perceived by other [...]
Upward Spiral #2 – Sanity and Society
In our second episode we explore the themes Sanity and Society in response to our recent viewing of David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. Co-hosts Ken Vallario and Eric Duffy, with special guest star Byron King. Enjoy! As always, if you have any feedback we would love to hear from you.
The Dark Knight Rises – A Critical Analysis of Context
I went to a morning show of The Dark Knight Rises last Friday because it had not been 12 hours since the massacre in Colorado, and I was afraid if I went that evening there might be copycats. Having been the victim of random and senseless acts of violence I was well aware of how [...]
Eureka Moment #1 – Neurotic Blasphemy
I just realized that neuroses are a threat to the system because they protect our healthy childhood desires. They are, by definition, defense mechanisms. They are an emotional bulwark against a society that sees desire as dangerous and organizes itself toward its elimination.
Full Retard
The following clip is interesting for a lot of reasons, besides the absolute hilarity…but that’s my point, much of the hilarity arises from the collision of subtexts at such a high rate that it is impossible to keep a hold of just what taboos are being broken, and hence it becomes transcendental comedy. The actors [...]
Revolutionary Tools … puns for fundamentalists…
If I have a gift, in the realm of revolution, it is for creating linguistic frames that allow us to perceive the problem in a way that implies a next step. And one of these problems is found in our use of the word Solidarity. There are two forms of solidarity; negative and positive. Negative [...]
Time Stamp #1 – Rosy-colored glasses
Here are some things I’m doing or thinking about. 1. I have committed myself to provoking members of the Occupy Movement (I still consider myself a member) into asking what the movement means now that, you know…there is no occupation, and we have become what we said we were not, a protest movement. I believe [...]
Movie Review – A Dangerous Method
It is often the case when we think about Freud and Jung that we project backwards our ideas about what it means to be a doctor, what it means to provide treatment, as the world in which we live, at least in theory, has very rigid notions about how we are to relate to medicinal [...]
Movie Review – Melancholia
Last night I was feeling melancholic…this is rare these days…I am usually a happy ole chap…but I am familiar with the feeling…I have swum in its waters enough in my life to know when my feet are wet. After my family went to sleep I decided to put down my work and look for a [...]
Paragraphorism #2 – American Beauty 2.0
The artistry and elegance involved in the precise yanking of a toilet paper roll, the tearing and poetry of the folding that follows, the origamic diversity of heuristically derived forms, utilized to a foul but efficiency-driven endeavor, however pure it might be prior to its end, is hidden from the world of ideas, from the [...]
21st Century Dialogue
I posit that the following video is to our time what Plato’s dialogues were to his. The use of video allows for a kind of perfect reading that was impossible in earlier times, giving us a chance to meditate not just on the words spoken but the interpersonal dynamics, the subtext, that will make the [...]
Societal Diagnosis – Personality Disorder
I have long believed that all of society could be looked at through the psychological perspective. And I think, at some point, one is able to diagnose one’s immediate social environment as lacking all the signs of mental health. In response to the ongoing Travon Martin controversy, I’ve been horrified by the willingness of our [...]
Self Diagnosis
If I grew up in today’s world I would be diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder because of my daydreaming…I would be diagnosed with Asperger’s because of my fantasy life…and I would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder because of the intense despair I felt about the way people treated one another. When I was a [...]
Job Creationism
when people are talking about ‘job creation’ what they really want, whether they know it or not, is to live in a society with a vision, with a mission, with something to cooperate for…our crisis comes from a lack of this, and from an awareness of our planet and the cosmos, and the utter paralysis [...]
I was wrong – Russell Brand is very interesting.
My wife and I have both shared a disdain for Russell Brand…granted we’ve never really watched anything in its entirety that he’s been a part of…but his association with Katy Perry, and his seemingly corporate quality just turned us right off… but after watching this I am convinced that his mind is a fascinating thing [...]
The Horror – Suicide and Condiments
For the last 2 years suicides among U.S. Troops were greater than the number of troops killed in battle. I heard this on the Smiley and West show on NPR…as they reported the top under-reported stories of the year. Click Here to Listen (relevant story at 10:30) As I was sitting in a diner [...]
Framing the problem #1 – The Idiot
Hundreds of years after the Enlightenment we still suffer from the same issue – Assholes and Idiots in leadership positions. Because we all are products of a scientific society it is always tempting to get bogged down in the details, in the schemas, in the isms…but at root is the perennial problem of dealing with [...]
Akbar’s Poetry #1 – The Task Master
We are tasked to Gather up what is left After our identities are smashed After our idols are taken away Time after Time. We are tasked with this Because…I would like to say It is the only way to know That we are real But I fear the opposite is true Paranoia is the [...]
The Dark Heroes Journey…
In this preview of the upcoming final work in the impressive Christopher Nolan Batman series where moral ambiguity seems to be the real issue at hand, we see signs of an attempt to deal with the political struggle we are now engaged in, in the stead of more archetypal tensions. Nolan’s capacity for moral complexity [...]
Akbar’s weekly poem – Regret
From The Rage of Akbar Lightning Available Here #4 If you have no regrets Then you are not living artfully. If you have too many regrets Then you do not have a sound mind.