Intimate musings on creativity, the self-enjoying nature of time, and the richness of reality beyond a plot-line. Then, a poetry reading of Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese."

"And when we allow ourselves to be consumed by time, by light, by darkness, by the persistent force of our own aching lives, we stop suffering because we stop thinking that we are somehow separate from the pain and separate from the joy and separate from the love that we are seeking.

When you become the goodness...there is nothing more to do, and so everything is simply done—done in you and through you. Trying to be good is denying your true nature; and the more you deny it, the more difficult it is to embrace the goodness you already are."

You can find the full poem and a convenient place to suggest future poems and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠ ⁠

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sondra@sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

How do we live in a world that's becoming ever more painful, dangerous, and absurd?

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠ 

Key points in this "speaking":

• In the aftermath of Trump's inauguration, many of us are feeling stunned and immobilized, wanting to resist politically but not knowing how or whether such resistance will matter.
• Two kinds of resistance: the kind that causes suffering and the kind that heals suffering. Resistance to emotions/ sensations/ states causes suffering.

• Decoupling the relationship between feelings and actions can help us heal this suffering.
• Usually what we interpret as a failure to "control" one's feelings is in fact a failure to feel one's feelings fully. Feeling fully is never dangerous— in fact, it enables us to act freely.

• Non-violent resistance requires creativity, humor, and playfulness to "trick" the other side without reinforcing duality and hatred.
• This can be applied both politically and interpersonally.
• An open heart is an open mind. At their roots, rationality, goodness, compassion and truth are all the same.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sondra@sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

The key points in this "speaking":

• This podcast episode is a follow-up to the episode "Can pleasure be trusted?" A bit more colloquial than the average episode, I offer more details about my relationship to intuitive eating and why the paradigm of self-discipline is no longer of interest to me.
• Check out the blog post for a more extended case against self-discipline.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠sondra@sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

The key points in this "speaking":

• On the sensation of time passing, the threat of invisibility as we age, and the trauma of constant visual exposure.
• We can no longer feel what it is to be human; we only see it. In contrast to the image, to feel yourself (your inner and outer states) is always to feel yourself as a wholly ephemeral and constantly shifting creature. 

• The age of the image, the age of the screen, the age of the spectacle is an age in which our social signifiers make everything appear to be the same. We live through these mediated symbols to such a degree that we can no longer feel the particularity of our own experiences.
• To be truly yourself, you have to die to the public gaze: you must accept that the truest happiness and deepest love cannot be expressed.
• You must travel your vast terrain of inner experience alone (but this is precisely the intimacy with others that you seek—intimacy with the other of your self).

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at ⁠⁠⁠sondra@sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

The key points in this "speaking":

• Of course, all categories (male, female, white, black, cis, trans, etc.) are imaginaries. No individual can be captured fully by a category, and many individuals lie outside these patterns.

• The man is the neutral, the normal, the standard. The woman is the aberration, the abnormal, that which stands out. Man is the genderless gender, just as whiteness is the raceless race. 

• This relation is a mirror is a more fundamental internal relation between the self: the self is two, both subject and object

• The earliest surveillance is a self-surveillance that happens when the self becomes two, both subject and object. In society, man takes the place of the neutral gaze, and the woman takes the place of the contingent object of sight.
• Women are anxious because we are aware of our contingency, our nakedness beneath the constant gaze of patriarchal society. This includes people of other marginalized identities as well.

• Because abstraction requires temporal extension, the present moment is where categories go to die. In the now, the self as subject and the self as object folds back into itself, becoming self-identical.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at ⁠⁠⁠sondra@sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

The key points in this "speaking":

• Desire keeps us stretched into the future, looking for an otherwise or a not-yet. Because it feeds on the future, desire is inherently insatiable.

• We are terrified of the present moment because to belong fully to the moment is to die.

• Time as the living present vs. the abstracted, artificial timeline of our story-lives. We live in an abstracted temporality in order to flee from the fear and shame of simply being alive.

• All desires are innocent. They are just feelings that refuse to be felt fully, so we externalize them outward.

• While desire stretches the self perpetually into the future, "pleasure is the present, savored with the totality of the flesh."

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at ⁠⁠sondra@sondrawriter.com⁠⁠. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

The key points in this "speaking":

• Do religious beliefs inhabit the same epistemological sphere as scientific or historical facts?
• God as “Santa Claus" vs. the God beyond atheism, theism, and all categories of belief or disbelief
• Jesus as archetype of paradox, truth, and love incarnate.
• Anything true is already here, always present, and always happening. Religious truth claims should not be essentially historic or predictive.
• Can there be religion beyond historical claims to authority?

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at ⁠sondra@sondrawriter.com⁠. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

"Live a life without closure, and your compassion will broaden you, stretch you, widen the walls of your flesh until you're able to receive the unthinkable joy and the unthinkable pain."

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

The key points in this "speaking":

• Great joy and great pain alike are dangerous to the ego.

• There's a gap between the "I am" and the "I think I am." Forgetting this gap is the origin of suffering.

• We tell easy stories to contain grief, pain, or evil. But any movement that universalizes a group of people is refusing to accept reality, and all universalization is dehumanization.

• If you truly want peace, inward and outward, resist the impulse to see categories rather than individual human beings (and events, and sensations). Pay attention to the particular.

• If we don't allow the oppressor to change, then we don't truly want peace. We must be open to forgiveness if we desire reconciliation.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

The key points in this "speaking":

• Everyone has a defining insecurity. Our lives circle around these insecurities through exclusion.

• To be a human being is to be in direct and dangerous contact with time. Are we more afraid of finitude or eternity?

• Perhaps there is something beneath time and eternity that makes this duality possible. But this something can only be sensed, not conceptualized.

• We build identities based on exclusion so we don't have to dissolve into everything. Just as every person excludes traits from their identity—from fear and insecurity— so do professions.

• In academia, that excluded fear/ characteristic is stupidity. Lately, I've been wanting to embody this shadow. Not stupidity as the opposite of intelligence, but rather as a spaciousness of mind, a wide unknowing.

• Even though this blankness may seem to be a kind of stupidity, it's in fact the key to using intelligence (as a tool) effectively, holding paradoxes, and being willing to change your mind.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠⁠my memoir⁠⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

The key points in this "speaking"

• Why are we so suspicious of pleasure?
• The darkness of the other's body— that the other remains uncontrollable and uninhabitable—reveals a fundamental separation. In response to this anxiety, we try to control the chaos of the other's sovereign body.
• Perhaps we fear desire when we first glimpse its infinite nature. Human desires are beyond the simple needs of other animals, and we seem dangerously driven towards insatiable pleasure.
• My "miraculous" experience with intuitive eating.
• Most of us live with a psychological rift between a disciplinarian and a child in our heads.
• Developmental ethics: where do rules end? Can intuition be trusted? How do we know our desires are "good"?

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

The key points in this "speaking":

• How can we live in such urgent times of climate change and not take continuous, drastic, urgent action?
• On the risk of over-emphasis on personal responsibility: your personal "carbon footprint" was actually ⁠marketed by British Petroleum (BP) ⁠as a way to shift responsibility from oil companies to individuals.
• And yet, doing nothing because we can do little cannot be the way to move forward. We must find a way to act in accordance with a truer, more beautiful reality.
• Any future speculations about climate change disaster cannot tell us how to act in the present. To find an ethical grounding, we need only look at the inequities and irrationalities of our societies as they are.
• Through socialization, "normalcy" is established and maintained.
• We live in such an unreal society that the reality of our interconnectedness strikes us as absurd. We must act as if everything around us is living, good, and deserves our respect. If we act that way, we'll begin to see it intellectually and perceptually.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

This episode is a recording of one section of an essay I originally wrote for subscribers. Read the full essay here.

The key points in this "speaking":

• The world arrives as one: body and soul together, one uncaused arising.
• "Foods prepared with presence can open the pores towards particular worlds."
• "The human is a virtual animal, an ideological construct that derives its meaning from material exclusion."
• "The Yukaghirs say that before children learn to speak, the body is open: “raw meat.” Language is learned and the flesh bends into itself, circling small worlds of human-centric meanings."
• "Foregoing language re-attunes the flesh to the fluid, sensual conversation outside of fixed human meanings."
• "I would also like to be less dependent on this technology we call speech. Can I learn the subtle speakings of wilder things?"

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

The key points in this "speaking":

• Why I still sometimes call myself a poet even though I don’t write proper poetry: because poetry is the most immanent disclosure of reality. Direct experience has a particular rhythm, a symbolic structure. Meaning is unquestioned before interpretation.

• In spite of our differences from other animals, what is it that allows us to understand the world? We must share a common ontological "atmosphere" with all visible beings in order to understand or perceive them at all. There must be a background of sameness upon which difference can appear. What is completely outside a shared intelligible world would be completely outside of perception, language, or analysis.

• If the world were entirely green, we wouldn’t have a word for “green,” because we wouldn’t be able to see it as something that stands out from all objects. We could only say: the world is intelligible to us, perhaps because each being shares a common essence.

• Perhaps "animism" is not the right word, but no word can capture fully the common nature that is shared by everything. Knowledge is inherently dualistic, but reality is deeper: something sensed rather than said.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to ⁠comment ⁠here⁠⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

The key points in this "speaking":

• Is the miraculous simply a supernatural happening? Like God is a supernatural entity?

• Richard Rohr’s distinction between Jesus of Nazareth and the universal Christ: Jesus as a pattern, archetype, and meme.

• Beliefs are about facts, which refer to objects in the world. But the whole of reality is no object at all, and so cannot be captured by beliefs.
• A particular spiritual framework is not about facts, but is a lens through which one sees the world, or a way of cleaning the lens of perception (though most modern religious people do not understand this and make religion about facts, thereby falling into irrational beliefs).
• A lens is always clear and silent. If you see your glasses lenses, it's because they have a smudge that needs to be cleaned. Perhaps this is the origin of the sense of the sacred in religious belief: one senses that to make the lens an object (i.e. by taking off the glasses and examining them) is to be blind while one does so, or to abandon the very lens that you are examining. To speak of the sacred is to always distort it, though sometimes these distortions are necessary.
• In the same way, the miracle is not a supernatural happening. Rather, the miraculous and the mundane are relative modes of sight, always conditioned by context.
• We can learn to see the world as miraculous.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment ⁠here⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

The key points in this "speaking":

• Romantic love is the religion of the secular west. We used to seek the One (the ground of all reality), and now we seek "the one," the finite individual who can fill our infinite hunger.
• Before the advent of self-awareness, we sensed our oneness (without being aware of it). Now there is an uncrossable gap between the experiencing self and the interpretive self (or story-self, ego-self).
• In this uncrossable gap, a desire opens up: for food, time, sex, love, success, anything to complete the fractured identity.
• The fantasy of the "other half" comes from Plato's symposium, in which Aristophanes recounts the myth of Zeus splitting a soul in two and placing one in each body, so we must find the person that carries the other half of our soul. But in fact, our two souls live side by side in one body, and completion cannot be found in another.
• However, real love can see past the story-self into the true, non-dual nature of reality. This is why romantic love can be so exciting, and even transcendent.
• Love is not only not blind, but is the essence of clarity and an enhanced form of rationality.
• How can we learn to approach each interaction from a place of completion rather than lack?

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment ⁠here⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

Key points of this "speaking":

• I saw "Barbie" and was disappointed. I’m a feminist who did not disagree with any part of its message, and yet I felt it was a wasted opportunity.

• Is this film doing more harm than good for this conversation?

• The best way to approach this question, I think, is to analyze some early forms of virtual reality. One of the first forms of virtual reality is the story (stories, with their beginnings and endings, cannot be found in the empirical world). Ideologies are second-order virtual realities that swallows stories whole (including the story of the self).

• A "message film" is a necessarily dominating aesthetic structure, just like patriarchy is inherently dominating. By being close to a message film, Barbie participates in the same patriarchal logic that it is trying to critique.

• The goal of the artist is to bring us into direct contact with reality, as free as possible from ideology. When we are in direct contact with reality, we realize that reality can be otherwise.

• Unfreedom is feeling there are only the most obvious set of options: a feeling of inevitability creeps into our lives. This happens due to a scarcity of good stories. The path of freedom is nuance.

• If you are brave enough to tell a good story or to live a good story, you will carve new paths of possibility for future generations.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment ⁠here⁠. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

Key points of this "speaking":

• Every conceptual schema is a mythology if you go down far enough. Hold these mythologies lightly.

• In order to be truly successful, you have to tend to your particular energy in the way that it requires.

• We have to risk self-deception in order to find our inner guide. No one knows for sure whether or not their lives are progressing in the direction they want them to.

• Because of the risk of self-deception, systems of control are created to manufacture the illusion of progress.

• It’s possible to arrive at the end of your life and realize your life was a variation of hiding. But you won’t arrive there without having allowed your body, mind, and heart to go blind in to some degree throughout your life.

• This blindness is not darkness— that depth of feeling and thought that makes tender and meaningful your life— but a flinching in the face of darkness.

• Anything can be a tool of awakening or an opiate.

• Positive thinking will not save us, but deep-rooted joy will.

• Where there is truth, joy will follow.

• If you are still in despair, you are not at the end. The end is always joy.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at ⁠www.sondrawriter.com⁠, where you'll find my essays and links to ⁠my memoir⁠.

Music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.

Welcome to the Speakings podcast! My name is Sondra: I'm a writer, philosopher, and lover of (among other things) trees, artisan chocolate, old bookstores, and other human and non-human beings. Both my philosophical and creative projects explore ways of being-in-the-world that are more rational and more connected to the broader body of the earth. In this podcast, I hope to capture the dynamism of philosophical and spiritual thought by speaking in an unscripted manner, belonging to the moment as fully as possible. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check out my website at www.sondrawriter.com, where you'll find my essays and links to my memoir.

You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.

Here are some key points in today's "speaking":

• Humans must analogize in order to self-define: are we a little lower than the gods or a little higher than the apes?

• All disciplines are founded on a key “as if,” a founding tautology that cannot itself be explained (the system cannot explain that which possibilizes explanation). Philosopher Alfred Lord Whitehead wrote that all first principles are “metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap.”

• In other words, all worldviews are built not on facts, but on metaphors.

• Today's modern "Western" worldview is biased towards the biologically abstract while excluding the biological senses (e.g. it's not true, it's just hormones, a chemical imbalance, etc.).

• Bias is seen as impediment, as if the person were an obstacle to truth. Rather than defining truth as a gathering/composite of diverse perspectives, we see truth as the exclusion of particularity— particular persons and particular bodies.

• I believe that all experiences are "true" and that the truth is always in excess of those experiences. My experience cannot exhaust reality and it cannot be reduced to a single cause either.

• In Meghan O'Gieblyn's book, God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, she describes the founding metaphor of cognitive science as the computer. Thus, not a single intelligible statement can be made about the brain (within cognitive science/ neuroscience) outside of this metaphor. This is only dangerous when we begin to believe this is the only metaphor that can be used to speak of the brain, or that the brain can be reduced to a single metaphorical framework.

• Idolatry (speaking conceptually, in the manner of Jean Luc Marion) occurs when the gaze gets trapped in the object. Our self-defining gaze is highly prone to becoming trapped in the objects we make.

• Example of conceptual idolatry: philosophers and physicists (like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Nick Bostrom, David Chalmers, and others) claim that there is a high likelihood that we are living in a computer simulation. This is a strange reversal of the technology-creator relationship in which the created object is seen to have pre-existed and invented the creator!

• There is no way to properly understand the origins of the human without invoking (at some point) a mythology. We understand ourselves through conceptual tools, but the hammer did not invent the carpenter, and evolution is not our creator-god.

• Reality—humans included— cannot be reduced to any explanation, religious, scientific, or otherwise.

Intro and outro music is L'épisode cévenol by Circus Marcus, from the Free Music Archive. License type: CC BY-NC.