Podcast appearances and mentions of daniel thorson

In “AI Psychosis vs. AI Awakening,” Vince Fakhoury Horn argues that the same biological machinery enabling AI-induced delusion also enables AI-assisted awakening, and introduces his Interspective.ai approach — a Middle Way practice of engaging with AI as a potential partner in wisdom, thus avoiding the extremes of both Materialism (matter is fundamental) and Idealism (consciousness is fundamental).

Daniel Thorson (@dthorson) interviews Tasshin about his pilgrimage, his vow, The Service Guild, Asheville, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Earth, Vito Corleone, and his plans for the future.Help TasshinHire TasshinThe Service GuildU can sign up for Tasshin's newsletter here.If U enjoyed this episode, consider supporting Tasshin and the Reach Truth Podcast on Patreon.

Stephen Torrence joins Vince Fakhoury Horn to share his experience teaching generative AI in Bhutan and explore the audacious vision behind the Gelephu Mindfulness City — a million-person city being built by Bhutan's King to prove that mindfulness, technology, and economic development can coexist.

This episode of Buddhist Geeks features a candid and heartfelt conversation between Vince Fakhoury Horn and Tasshin Fogleman about Palestine, the TPOT subculture, and what it means to embody true Bodhisattvahood. They explore the limitations of online discourse, especially around contentious issues, and reflect on the importance of good-faith dialogue, friendship, and spiritual integrity in times of crisis.Join Vince Fakhoury Horn and Brian Newman outside of Lisbon, Portugal at the beginning of 2026 for a 10-day intensive jhāna retreat. There, we'll be exploring The Flavors of Jhāna.Episode TranscriptVince:Hey Tasshin.Tasshin:Hi Vince.We just talked before I hit record. We just talked still. It's like formally. Hi. Hi. Tasshin: We're here. Vince: Yeah, exactly. That's good to see you. Tasshin: Yeah, good to see you too, brother. Yeah. Vince: Yeah, man, I appreciate you being willing to I invited you to have this conversation on X or my favorite platform to hate, Tasshin:My favorite platform to love.Vince: Great. I was there with you for a while, but yeah, it's getting a little weird. It's it's getting a little Faschy, X but we'll probably talk about that. So I propose that we talk about, this was the theme I proposed to you, which is Palestine, TPOT, and True Bodhisattvahood.. And it's, I guess in response to a lot of frustrated, angry, maybe righteous and not in a necessarily, in all bad sense. But yeah, in some posts that I've been sharing on X since I don't know it's been ongoing since the October 7th in my case. So I guess I wanted to explore that with you because I consider you to be one of my friends in the TPOT subculture, which we can get into and talk about what that actually is, Uhhuh because it's pretty, and it's it's vagueish, but, or decentralized at least.But it seems like you're well respected in this decentralized subculture and I think I'm part of that as well, but I seem to be taking a very different role from you and how I relate to it, which is a little bit more critical and Challenging and, I haven't found that's really endeared me to many people in the community.But some people like yourself have engaged with my critiques in what feels like a good faith way, and I've really appreciated that. So I thought, it'd be cool to have a, an even more personal conversation where people could see potentially if we decide to release any of this.And I don't know, just the human side of this, which doesn't come across often in 280 characters. Tasshin: Yeah. I appreciate all that context. I think that's really helpful and I think it's good to have a conversation about this. I think that I've been really struck by your perspectives on this and in general, I really value your perspectives and your opinions about the path and about practice and, we've had a number of disagreements over the years, but I've always walked away, like really learning a lot. And yeah, I do try to engage in good faith and I think especially one of the practices I have just for any kind of conflict in general is if I feel like text-based mediums especially can only hold so much.I don't even like to discourse or disagree on Twitter. I use it for other things and it's hey, if I'm, I've said this to you before, if we have a disagreement, let's get on a call and actually talk about it. And because it's just, you can actually hear the other person's perspective and where they're coming from in a way that text just really doesn't afford.So I'm glad we're talking about this. Yeah, I think it's great. Yeah. Vince: And the downside of doing that without recording it and sharing it back, because of course then it's just like a private thing that happens Right, and doesn't necessarily filter out in the same way to the collective. Tasshin: Totally. Totally.SoVince: This is cool. Yeah. Thank you. Tasshin: Do you have any suggestions for where you'd like to start or what feels like a good starting place?Vince: I would be curious to see your take on what TPOT is or how you'd describe that phenomena. I did spend a little bit of time reflecting on it, and I came up with a little, like micro definition, but I don't think it's exhaustive this a starting point.But I'm curious even before sharing that, if there's anything, thoughts on TPOT and what it is, if you've thought, have you meditated on that? How do you can, Tasshin: yeah. I love that and I'm so curious what your definition will be. I suspect it'll be spicier than mine, but I liked what you said earlier about it being a decentralized community.because I, I felt a little bit of trepidation before this conversation for really all three of the things you want to talk about. I feel like, so woefully inexpert in and I really don't know as much as I ought to about the war, and I don't know as much. I, I don't know. I'm not, I'm in TPOT certainly, but I'm not, there's no elected four figure leader or something.It's decentralized, as you said. And then also at the Bodhisattva path, I'm like still figuring it out very right. As we all are so right. But yeah, TPOT, I think for me it's very much about specific people, like their specific friends that I've cultivated very deep friendships with, that I've met through Twitter, and developed those relationships through Twitter and their, I think some of my closest friends at this point are people I've met through Twitter and they're friendships that I treasure and I think it is decentralized.I think it's. Spread throughout the world at this point. Like I can go to any major city and meet people who are connected to this network. And I, like my friend Andrew Rose has been talking about it recently as the network where it's yeah, it's not really about Twitter anymore. And it's not really, it's a larger cloud of people that are connected and I think it's not necessarily ideologically on the same page, like people having the same perspectives or even shared practices.There might be shared interests and common overlaps, but I think people have very different perspectives on the world. And it's more, if anything, I'd say it's like a developmental similarity where, for me at least, it really helped me to, I started to enter TPOT. I could go into detail, but as I was individuating from being at the monastery for many years and it's I mean it from a developmental perspective, it helped me jump from three to four in the Keegan stages where it's like I was in a tribal state of mind identified with the maple ideology and worldview and practices, which was great for me at the time. It really was. And then it's, it stopped being great for me and I had to find a new way and being with so many weirdos from around the world who saw things so differently really helped me to find my own way and find my own life. So I feel a sense of connection and intimacy with it, and like indebtedness to it, where it's these are my people and a help that helped me to find myself in the world.Yeah, that's what TPOT is to me at least. Vince: I like what you're saying about the developmental part. I guess I see the phenomena similarly like this is something that. There's a lot of people coming together, not, like you said, around a particular ideology or like framework.Which is very common. Like a bunch of people come together on a specific book or teacher or teaching or whatever. This is different because there are teachers and teachings that are, you see commonly in that community. But it's pretty broad. Yeah. Tasshin: And you don't have to buy into any of them.I think there are major, if anything there's like themes, like non coercion is a big one or Right. And people bring their own interests and you don't have to be interested in the same things other people are interested in. Vince: But there's something, if you put all those themes together, you'd start to see like broader theme of Absolutely.Yeah. The connection there. Yeah. Which I think you're totally right. It's, there's something maybe developmental underneath that. I was thinking about the book, The Postmodern Condition. Which David Chapman originally recommended to me. He's one of the, he's a TPOT Philosopher.Maybe he wouldn't he probably reject that phrase term, but he is a philosopher and well respected in that space. Tasshin: Sure. Vince:And I remember the the author Jean-François Lyotard, he said, simplifying to the extreme, “I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta narratives.”And I find there's something very postmodern about this community where there's a kind of general skepticism toward meta-narratives, of thinking that like one way of describing reality could be totally comprehensive and true for everyone, everywhere, all the time.And I see that as one of the things I really appreciate about TPOT. In terms of it representing a move out of like the modern condition, which was much more like about trying to find the right ideology and all these clashing Isms, Communism versus Capitalism versus all these kind of clashing religions.Who's got the best, which framework is going to come out on top, and everyone's going to eventually believe it's like some, I see that as the more of the modern condition. And so in that sense it feels like a real relief, to see communities, that are forming around.Around this. And it, I guess that's the reason for me, I always connect my experience of coming up in the integral community, Ken Wilber's community with TPOT because it felt like a very similar kind of vibe there. Where so many people I met were just doing radically different kinds of things.And, there'd be someone who's super into, like spiritual surrender, the lineage of Adi da, who is also like a concert pianist that I'm literally describing an actual person I worked with. And then someone else would be like, super into video production and have no interest in spiritual practice or meditation, but they have a lot of interest in like psychological work.And yeah, I guess that's something I've seen is consistent with the TPOT world. Is this sort of like postmodern incredulity towards meta narratives?Tasshin: How would that fit with it being I've never really understood this, but would you describe TPOT as meta-modern, or not meta-modern.Vince: I guess for me, I would say the center of gravity of TPOT seems to be in the transition between modern to postmodern. Like that I would call that post rational. Because the main mode of modernity is rational individualism. It's this is Ken Wilber's and Jean Gebser's take, but I find that to be true.So people like are questioning the limits of rationality and model making are post rational. I see, and I think as a result they're postmodern. But there's a transition, it's like there's a awkward developmental phase where you're letting go of, the absoluteness of models and you can ken Wilber called it the “performance contradiction.” He said, you can you can absolutize that too, or you can say everything is relative. That statement isn't a relative statement, it's an absolute statement. All perspectives are valid. Okay. That perspective you're saying is more valid than any other perspective, which says that certain perspectives are more valid than others. And so like the whole idea of postmodernity rests on a performance contradiction. That's, or at least the early stages of it where you're deconstructing that mo deconstructive, postmodernism Robert Kegan, would call it.He also has a reconstructive postmodern phase. I don't think TPOT is in the reconstructive postmodern phase, but I think some people in it are. It's like there's a spectrum, within, there's a center of gravity, but there's a spectrum. As well or more, it's like a scatter graph, Uhhuh, where like most of the dots are in the center around this sort of modern to postmodern transition, but then there's like trailing off in both directions.You'll see some people that are more traditional that are there just treating it like a group. I'm sure you saw that probably at Vibe Camp. Probably some people there that are just like. Just drinking the Kool-Aid and don't really, aren't really, maybe vibing in the same way as everyone else.Tasshin: Uhhuh. Vince: And then you find some weird people too that are like aliens even within the space. Who seem to be like a David Chapman I mentioned. He seems like a, an alien to me. Tasshin: An example, Vince: I think he's talking, I think he's a meta-modern Tasshin: thinker.Vince: I don't know.So I, I see a mix, but I mostly see people in the Yeah. Like early postmodern stage, Tasshin: I recently saw a really nice tweet from Mechanical Monk where, which I can link you to later, but he drew this diagram or made like a video of what TPOT is, and he was arguing that like TPOT is a moving target where like i'm thinking of these people. And then you're thinking of these people and there's some overlap, like you and I are both friends with, like Daniel Thorson for example, or. Some other people that we'd have in common, or I know who David Chapman is or whatever. And so there, there's enough overlap that we could be like, oh, we're both pointing at TPOT, but then you don't know some people that I'm pointing to and I don't know some people you're pointing to.And then eventually this is happening more and more. Or people use the acronym TPOT and you're like, I've never seen you. I don't know who you're talking about, and I don't know what you're describing. I think you and I have enough of a shared sense of the thing, but yeah, I thought that was a really good point, that it's not like a homogenous group.Like it has a no, no one likes, this is a very probably like post rat thing to do. Nobody likes labeling it. So it's everyone's unhappy with the term TPOT. Nobody wants to identify as TPOT or as a post rat or whatever. Even the term, Vince: I mean in the phrase the acronym TPOT itself isTasshin: relative and it's like relational.Vince: This part of Twitter. Yeah, no, you're saying it's like a network and I see that. There was a site for a while, I don't know if you saw it, where you could like, you could see the sort of it was like a ranking or listing of the most sort of central, I do remember that inside of a network, it was like the tea, you could pull up TPOT and see a list.I was like, I'm on that list. Which I would, which I would take myself, I would opt out of that list if I could choose to. But it's not a choice as you're part of this network.Tasshin: Yeah. If you know the acronym ar arguably you are in it. It's just once and.Vince: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So what I hear you saying from like the network perspective is like you, you see it from your point of view of the network. And the network is evolving, it's not static. It continues to grow and change and shift. That's right. So your view of it is changing and shifting with the network.That's right. So you both, you have both a limited view and it of something that's changing. That seems true to me. Which doesn't mean we can't talk about it. Or try to, come up with something useful to say about it. I would describe it this way. I'll tell you how I would describe it.Yeah. Yeah. Let's hear it. Oh boy. I'm not so sure about the last part. No, it's not that bad. So I describe TPOT as a weird, and here I'm using the weird acronym, Western educated, industrialized rich and democratic post rational subculture that's connected by shared interest in self-agency and awareness.Tasshin: That seems good. Something that's popping out to me is just also how much of this is specifically enabled by the internet and Twitter in particular, or I think there's something starting to happen that you could call like a Twitter like Blue Sky is a Twitter or Mastodon is a Twitter. I hope we have other Twitter likes in the future.because as you said, X is becoming fahy. Or to me, the thing that a Twitter is very much like a public library, and then Twitter happens to be a company and it's that has skewed incentives and stuff like that. But any case I'm like, yeah that all, everything you said tracks and then it's I think it is meaningfully enabled by technology, right?And whatever a Twitter like is in particular. Vince: Okay. Yeah. That's good. So that's missing in my description here. I agree. It's enabled by that and there's something too like it. The tech, the technology itself is very postmodern. These platforms and microblogging platforms, like you're getting these really tiny little snippets that are largely decontextualized.And you're just seeing a bunch of decontextualized atomized information flowing constantly through your stream without, you have to put the context together. That's right. The platform itself does not do that. In fact, it, if you're not, if you don't have the capability to do that, it might actually be really problematic because That's Tasshin: true.Vince: Yeah. You don't know. So I'd say it's almost perfectly compliments the subculture, the design of it.Tasshin: That's true. And it makes sense of like why you would feel a resonance with, I wasn't in this myself, but from what I imagine the integral community and then also why that would be different of I imagine Twitter wasn't a huge part of that back then because it, I don't even know what the were, but wasn it wasn't even, it Vince: wasn't, no, Twitter launched the year after I left the Integral Institute. So yeah. It wasn't part of that blogging and podcast or very early, like web two was part of it for sure.But it was primarily an in-person community. It was centered. It was like centered in person and then had a sort of one to many kind of broadcast media kind of web 2.0 media thing to it. So it did look a lot different than that. It occurs Tasshin: to me that, at least in my experience, the technology feels really central to the thing.And the properties you named are almost like emergent or like the kinds of people that would resonate with it or something, or be able to make full use of it or Right. What have you. But it doesn't seem intrinsically necessary, but it does seem to me almost, like that if you have a Twitter, like something like this subculture would arise and I could see different, similar subcultures that had different properties or even an ideology or like different developmental stages or something.But I think that a Twitter is really good at clustering people who can vibe together or relate to each other and in a way that's more emergent. I think a lot about individualism and collectivism and I think that this kind of technology affords the possibility of yeah, basically a Hegelian synthesis of individualism and collectivism where each person can be their own individual, but also be in community with a larger network that respects their individuality, but can coordinate as a whole and.I think Twitter likes uniquely make that possible. And I could see ones that were like clusters that were meaningfully different. You'll see sometimes people talk about this, they're like, maybe there's a whole other cluster that's not connected to us at all that we have no idea about. Almost the I forget what the alien version of that is, but like the likelihood that there's an alien is civilization in any given solar system.It's maybe they're out there. Who knows. Vince: Something like, like the Drake equation would describe the Drake equation, how likely that would be. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. You're using the term Twitter. I don't know if we've talked about this, but I will explicitly not use that term anymore to refer to X, mainly because I think people are confusing the term Twitter with the term microblogging. Huh? Since it was the original Microblogging platform, I think a lot of times we conflate Twitter with Microblogging. And so when you say Twitter, like I, that's another way to me of saying Microblogging.What's Tasshin: important to you there? Vince: It's important to me to stop being so sentimental about Twitter because Twitter's dead and whatever that it was, is gone. But Microblogging is alive and well and it's probably doing better now than when Twitter was alive. So I think it's somehow by being sent sentimental Twitter, we mask our ability to perceive what's happening in broader terms with microblogging. And we potentially overlook a lot of nasty shit happening on X.com as well by doing that. Tasshin: I see. Yeah I tend to use the word Twitter for different, maybe sentimental reasons as you're saying, but it's an intentional use on my term. On my part. And maybe I'll just use the word Twitter and you can use the word X and we can Vince: Yeah, no, it's fine.Proceed accordingly. It's No, it's fine. I just wanted to point that out. Very good. That's a difference in frames. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This has been very conceptual so far, but I'm curious to bring it a little downward too, because I remember maybe it was like a week after October 7th Hamas attacked civilians in Israel and.I knew from my own experience having grown up in a, as a Palestinian and American household and having watched this to some degree play out over 40 plus years, 40 years at the time that I was like the blow back from this is gonna be 10 x at least. Because that's consistent. Throughout time it's always Israel will respond with 10 times the amount of violent force at least. And so I was like, if you take the numbers, I was like, that's. That's catastrophic. That's gonna be terrible. And so I knew within the first week, and I shared this on X, that this is going to be a genocide.And so for me, this is the perspective I'm coming from is like I've known that a genocide has been going on for, from the beginning. Have known that the intention or that the likely the likely response was gonna be genocidal. And I think there's a lot of debate about whether or not this is I think that debate is now totally foolish from my point of view.You frame this for instance, as a war, I would call it a genocide. I would say the genocide rather than the war. Or the occupation, which more, more accurate description. because a war assumes that there's two countries, two sides that are equivalent and they're at war.But this is rather like a group of people who've been dispossessed and occupied for decades. Who wrongly lashed out and hurt civilians. But who did so from the point of view of being in a one up, one down power position? So like the group of people or Palestinian people, had been occupied, their movements are controlled.Things coming in and out of Gaza were controlled in terms of water, food, et cetera. Many people described it as an open air prison. Including a colleague of mine who lives in Tel Aviv. He described it that way to me one time. And so from my point of view, it's a lot of times people don't understand when they enter into this, the history of this, that just the basic history of occupation.And so to frame it as a conflict between two equals is a, in a way obscures the power. Dynamics at play where, one group has so much more power over the other and has so much more are literally like nuclear power that's backed by the most powerful military in the world. Who has a lock on the un Tasshin: In Vince: terms of our ability to veto the Americans. So it's David and Goliath rather than, two superpowers going to war. So that's one thing I'll just share is just the frame for me of Palestine. And so I'm, I've been seeing it that from the very beginning.And what I've found with, on, on platforms like X and with the community of TPOT is. Just this sort of maddening silence. Or this sort of schizo, in my experience is like a schizophrenic feed, where on the one hand I'm seeing Palestinian activists and intellectuals and people who are I think doing good work at bringing awareness to an ongoing livestream, genocide.And then an another group of folks more in the TPOT space who are kind of sharing their psychotic explorations and talking about their cool practices and giving, challenging takes and all of which has this other very different vibe which is much more self-focused. And and the two of them in contrast really, that's, for me, that's my, that, that's the tension I'm existing in.And I can totally relate to the self. Absorbed interest in my own transformation and wanting to play around. And it, I totally get that because that's where I've been. Like that's my background as well. But it's, yeah, it's maddening to see these two side by side. And I feel like there's so much missed opportunity with TPOT given that it's so influential right now in culture, in our mainstream culture.And so I guess I, I'm saddened by the fact that I don't see that community having really come around to care much about what's happening in these kind of global situations. Like you, you talked about individualism and collectivism. I feel like it's way more skewed toward individualism in the TPOT world than it is collectivism.So I, that's actually a criticism I'd have. I don't feel like they're both ending it at all. But. Anyway. Yeah, that's just a little bit where I'm coming from,Tasshin: I hear you. Just first off, really mourning and grieving the plate of the Palestinian people that's happening and feeling personally connected to that because of your family and watching the news very closely and really actively grieving that, of just the evil that's happening and caring about that and wanting to see that change and end, and seeing that as a genocide, not as a war.And really appreciating people who are speaking up and being vocal about it and trying to work for change to resolve that crisis and. It feeling used the word like schizophrenic to see TPOT, which seems like self-absorbed and individualistic, where it's like people are talking about whatever they're on about, and it's I got this metaphor hearing you talk about it, of someone who's starving, who's like incredibly hungry, and then they're like next to some rich people who are like having like coffee and talking about, some obstru philosophy and you're like, I'm starving.Can you please give me some of your food? There I'm having a real problem here and you're talking about this stuff that really doesn't matter. And yeah, that being really painful and then also a care about you're like, yeah, TPOTs incredibly powerful and culturally powerful and why aren't you talking about this?You should be talking about this so that we can use your power for good and change the world in that way. Vince: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a naive of me to expect that in some way. So this is where I get a little, this is where I feel the bind. It's on the one hand I intellectually get if this really is developmental as we're describing if this cultural phenomena has a developmental dimension to it, then why would I expect the bulk majority of people who are, coming out of individual rationalism to be focused on anything other than that kind of things are related to that.Who would be well Tasshin: positioned to make a change that had positive effect in the world from a developmental perspective? Vince: That's a good question. I guess anyone could. So maybe the issue isn't the underlying development, but it's the culture, the cultural expression of that. In this case, it's, WEIRD is, I think a good way of putting it, white sorry, Western, but those two are connected, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.It feels like a lot of what you're saying is true because we're, we are in this WEIRD culture in the US largely, especially the educated TPOT, whole US is not WEIRD. A lot of, there's a lot of uneducated people and people without access to resources, but but we're having this weird conversation.And meanwhile in the global Commons, we're like you said, right next to people that are posting videos constantly of people being, shot and killed and assassinated executed, like right there, children starving, et cetera. And it's it, this is the critique that Postmodernism has had for a long time of modernity.It's like the colonialist thing. It's like how is it that we have so much privilege to be able to have these conversations in the first place, because we ourselves are living on dispossessed land. Like we ourselves dispossessed the Native Americans to be able to be here, we ourselves brought African slaves from Africa to be able to take care of our cotton mills and our run our agricultural industry.And so we ourselves built a country on those very foundations and we ourselves as Western people escaped persecution in Europe. Our whole history of escaping persecution and then bringing it with us is what's happening with Israel and Palestine, from my point of view, it's the same basic pattern.I think it's hard to see that when you're focused on you Tasshin: On Vince: your individual journey of transformation and without being able to zoom out into these broader collective patterns that are shaping you as much as you are shaping yourself. And I wonder if sometimes, like we overestimate our agency, or we over-index on our agency in this community. That'd be my, I guess my question or challenge to folks. Tasshin: Can you say more about that? The over-indexing on agency? What you mean by that? Vince: Yeah, so like for me the synthesis of the agency, of agency and communion is what I'm most, most interested in right now.Because that schizophrenic split feels like it's a split of these two, where it's like you have people that are high agency and have lots of opportunity and privilege, and then you have people that have extremely low ability to opt to effectively exercise their agency. They barely can get food. So it's like such a huge contrast there. And what's the difference between these two groups of people? Like historically it's the only reason I'm on this side of the street is because my grandfather was able to get into this country in 1950.And he was lucky, essentially. So like the only difference is basically luck of birth. Like where are you born? And we, I think we take so much credit for the stuff that is, has nothing to do whatsoever with us. It's like when Obama, said you didn't build that and everyone fucking flipped out.You don't know if you remember that he was talking about, I don't know, he was talking about infrastructure and there was a huge backlash from the Right. Like we built that, in hyper American individualism. And it's I think, you know what the genocide and Gaza's taught me is I'm just lucky.I'm just lucky because I have cousins who are in the West Bank right now and they're living in concentration camp type environments. Like they, they're scared to leave their home because people around them are getting shot by settlers and, five Palestinian Americans have died in the West Bank this past year.People who are just going over there to visit family. So it's extremely bad right now, even in the West Bank, which is considered to be the more stable of the two Palestinian regions. In Gaza, I have two family members here in North Carolina and Asheville that are mar married into my family. So they're not direct family members, but their spouses, and they both have lost over 200 family members in Gaza. Which is hard for people even in the West to understand, because they don't, we don't come from big families like that where you could even imagine having 200 family members.But yeah, like whole family trees are essentially being wiped out. Yes. Are cut down. So it's, to me it's very, because I'm in both worlds. I'm teaching meditation and I'm hearing about, what's going on for my cousin in the West Bank, and I'm hearing about what's happening for other Palestinians that I know.I'm like, this is, it's a very hard tension to hold. So for me, the synthesis of agency and communion is I can recognize, like I have a certain amount of agency in part because of the communal situation. Like we have a community that optimizes for agency. And it optimizes for agency at the at the negative at the expense of many other communities, agency and has historically and even presently, like a lot of.The opportunities we have are because of they've been taken rather than, it's like not an omni win situation. So I feel like there's a lack of kind of acknowledgement of that, that often in part because you start to feel really bad. And if there's anything I've noticed about TPOT is like, people don't want to feel bad.Like people wanna empower each other and raise each other up. And I think there's something beautiful about that. But to me it's come, it comes at the expense of valid criticism, of being open to hearing valid criticism. And that's the kind of, that's, that adds how I felt. I've been res largely, my, my criticisms have been responded to.It's oh yeah, this is, you're just like it's I'm a downer. I'm like, yeah, sorry. It's fucking, it is a downer. It really is. How do you, I know that's general and broad, but how do you respond to something like that?Tasshin: Can you ask a, I there's a lot of thoughts running through my mind. Can you ask a specific question? Vince: I'm just curious what your general Yeah. Sense of that is.Tasshin: First off, my heart hurts. It hurts to know that violence is happening at scale and it hurts to hear that. And I'm okay hurting.I know, I've done a lot of, I, I can feel that, but it hurts and I feel sad and I feel grief knowing about this travesty that's happening. AndI feel that about a lot of things that I know about in the world now, including this. And that's always,yeah. Hard to be with. And I try to learn how to be with that and, i'm grateful for the opportunity to be reminded of what's happening and to be connected to it. I feel a desire to have change occur that feels like it matters. I would like war, genocide, evil violence to end. I'm a pacifist.My, one of the worst days of my life every year is when I pay taxes. I hate paying my taxes, partly because it's annoying bureaucratically, but even more so because I feel like I'm compromising my own ethics by supporting the US military. And that I every year I decide I'm gonna pay my taxes so that I can contribute, continue to be part of this society in a legal and upright way.I'm not morally opposed to taxes as such, but I am morally opposed to what my government does with those taxes, including I don't know the full extent of this. I'm sure you know much more, but certainly being complicit in this war, genocide, violence, murder. Bombing evil. Yeah. And other evils known and unknown.I know that and I've been around a little bit. So that hurts. That's the first and foremost thing. And I feel for you, having family i's just I went through just a couple years ago my mom dying of cancer, and we knew about it four years before she died, three, four years before she died.And she lived a blessed life, and I felt perfectly ready to let her go. And it was still really hard. And it's imagine my family members being murdered at scale and being starving and being oppressed and in all kinds of ways that I can only imagine. It's that my heart would just be breaking on a daily basis.And I feel for you, my friend, going through that and, for the Palestinian people more broadly, such that I'm connected to them and for all who are subject to war. It's just it's just evil. It's just e that, like you, you wanna call it genocide? I'll just call it evil, like it's, I think violence is evil and war is evil and genocide is evil and bombs are evil and guns are evil.And murder is evil and killing children is evil. And it's just, my heart breaks at that. As far as the other specific things you were saying, I'm reminded of a an argument that I've had or witnessed many times where there's kind of two recurring schools of thought in our culture where how do I summarize this? Because I've seen this in a lot of specific instances, and I don't wanna get into the specific instances, but let's take a simple example like say your relative was a Trump supporter, and you personally didn't vote for Trump and don't want Trump to be president. There are people in our culture at this time who would say the thing to do is to be disconnected from that Trump supporter and to never talk to them and to shame them for who they are and or give them radio silence and cut ties.And that's a whole school of thought that applies to many issues. And then there's a school of thought that says how are you gonna change their mind if you don't stay connected to them, if you don't really understand where they're coming from and listen to them and talk to them and share your own perspective.And I tend to be more in the latter school of thought of connection is the basis of change. Actually hearing other people's perspectives, sharing my own, to the extent that it's possible. And you're not. Beating each other up or whatever shooting at each other. But I think being connected to people is the basis of change.And I'm getting here somewhere here with this, which is to me, I hear you saying, I'm not part of TPOT. These are the people that are in TPOT. They're silent, they have these, I don't know, I hear you talking about like collective blind spots, which I think are very valid. I'm glad you're mentioning them, but it's like those people have the blind spot.And this is their problem. And to me I could be wrong, but think, Vince: It's really the Palestinians problem. They're the ones that are suffering for the collective blind spot. They're suffering a lot more. Tasshin: Yes.I think that. You could usefully see yourself as part of TPOT, and that by staying connected to people in TPOT and speaking to them, you can change their minds. I think you've changed my mind about things about this and had an impact on me and had a causal influence on me. And I see you having that impact on a other people.And I think that if you took that perspective, there's more or less efficacious ways of doing that. Ways that, that, that's a question that's come up for me about this is actually about like theories of change. And just one more thing is I was recently in Santa Fe, my dad moved to Santa Fe and when I was there, there's a lot, my dad is like very near the Santa Fe is the capitol, and he is very near the capitol where the government is.And so there's just always protests there like at least once a week. And I get, I personally, me, Tasshin, get so angry at these protestors because I, in my current worldview, think that their theory of change is just shit. They're like, by going to this place and having a sign, I'm gonna change the world. It, to me, I see that is like by and large, incredibly efficacious and not gonna produce the change that they want.And do I know what the theory, what a theory of change is that would produce it? No, but I am spending all of my time and energy on things that I think will have a positive change in the world. Even if they're not enough, even if they're not direct enough, even if they're not gonna end or resolve all the issues I care about, which are many.I am putting all of my time and energy into things that I believe are efficacious. And presumably they think it's efficacious too. They think this is worth doing because they're doing it. And in a way I'm wrong about it because demonstrably people think that holding a sign in front of a capitol is gonna change the world.But, Vince: It does boost their agency when people protest that's, it's an exercise in agency. Tasshin: I do think there's a critical threshold where if enough people protest something, I can't have a change. Obviously that's happened Vince: Arab Spring. Tasshin: Exactly. So it's not, it's definitely not useless. But my point to you as an individual that I care about as my friend, is I think you're actually incredibly well positioned to have a cultural impact on this group that you already are connected to, and that there are more or less efficacious ways of doing that.Like this conversation is efficacious, right? We're having a real conversation between two people who respect each other. We're recording that so that other people can listen. I think that's actually likely to produce the change that you're desiring to some extent. Is it gonna it's hard to say.Vince: It's hard to say. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, I think you and I have talked about this in the past too. I have, some of the biggest changes I've been through have come through people challenging me even violently. And my whole upbringing, as you can hear, it's rooted in violence. Yes. So it's like the story of my family.Is one of resilience in the face of violence, Tasshin: Uhhuh. So this is the recurring thing we always argue about. Yeah. Or one of the several things. Vince: Yeah. It's an, it's like in a place where we rub, I think, but Yeah. But it's understandable. So I'm a little more Okay. Ruffling feathers and even having active conflict with people because I know that sometimes that's actually good.Sometimes if you're too nice, people won't hear you. If you have something powerfully challenging to say, it will just be like, oh yeah, that's nice. And I can just incorporate that into my worldview and feel good about knowing about it, but actually not really be doing anything significantly differently.So it's like a, I don't know, this is in the abstract, but. Tasshin: There's two things there. What there's one is, which is like, how nice are you? And I actually do honestly believe that you would be more efficacious at seeing the changes you want to see, at least in the local community if you were nicer.In addition to being kind. I do think you're kind, that's not an issue. But separately from that, like you, one of the things we talked about recently on the timeline was you're like, I've just been considering blocking people left and right. And I think that Oh, I have been blocking them lost.Exactly. Vince: I've lost half of my friend network in the last year. Tasshin and so that's where I am. So here let me push back a little bit. I lo yeah. I lo I love what you're saying, but I don't think it's my job to do that. I think it's your job to do that, to, to be the one that can be nice and change people's minds on this topic.Tasshin: Oh, that's true. It is my job. You're right. I Vince: agree with you. Yeah, because because I'm too close to it. It's too painful for me. Like people start saying stuff to me. It is like I'm hearing them deny the entire, like truth of my whole identity, my family identity. It's no, like this is true.I'm not, I'm gonna have argue with you like you are dehumanizing me and everyone that's Palestinian right now. Even by having an argument, having even framing this as a debate, is there a war going on? Who's responsible? Et cetera. So it's like what I find is I want to keep talking because I want, it's like the Buddha, he's, and I'm comparing myself to the Buddha here.I know he is gonna fly really well, there, there's an analogy here where he's I'm awake. Okay. Who can I, teach this to, very few are gonna understand it. Because it's subtle and hard to get grasp. My companions, the ones I was practicing with they seem like they'll get it.They have very little dust in their eyes. So I guess I see my role as really more like the people that have very little dust in their eyes. Maybe I can reach them. What's the difference Tasshin: in this case between someone who has dust in their eyes and someone who doesn't, from your perspective?Vince: Are they, yeah. Are they awake to their complicity in a gen, in an active livestream? Genocide? Are they aware? I pay Tasshin: my taxes and, Vince: That's part of it. That's part of it. Yeah. It's like paying taxes. You, like you said, you can't really stop paying your taxes.My uncle did that. Went to prison. I actively Tasshin: choose Vince: to pay Tasshin: my taxes. I think I could stop paying my taxes. Could, I'm saying every year I considered you can do that. Vince: I seriously Tasshin: consider it. Every you'll to prison. Every year. Vince: You'll, you will go to prison. Tasshin: Yeah, exactly. And I believe I can have more impact, positive impact on the world by paying my taxes and not, and I, every, it's a trade off.Literally every year I make this decision again. Vince: Yeah. So it's, to your point, it's not it's not like a black and white thing where it's like. I'm complicit in this very obvious way that I'm just choosing not to. It's, it, the complicity is deep and it's multidimensional, subtle and Tasshin: systemic and multi-generational.And even, Vince: and yeah, and for me it's I was hanging out with a couple of my cousins recently who are from Palestine. They immigrated here in the early nineties when Palestinians were kicked out of Kuwait. And so they were here, they had to rebuild their life. They lost everything. And I grew up with them.And they're doing advocacy work now in the us And when I hear them, talk about their experience, it's like they're being, they're dealing with shit that I'm not having to deal with. Like one of my cousins recently lost her job. She was a high level exec at a tech company in San Francisco.And she thinks it's likely that she lost it because of her advocacy work within the company. So when I guess when I see. I've lost the thread a bit here in terms of connecting back to what we were talking about. But where was I going with that? Tasshin: You were saying something as my job as being TPOT versus your job.Vince: So like when I talk to, say I'll talk to my great uncle my grandfather's brother who grew up in Palestine, and I'll hear the kinds of things that he'll share. And like I, I don't have those kind of views. Like he's extreme compared to me in terms of like how he's viewing things.This is my interpretation. There's a definitely antisemitic tendencies in, in the family system that I've seen explicit and I understand why. Like I have a lot of compassion. I don't actually let it stand. I challenge it when it arises. Even now. This is this uncle I'm talking about.It's his family and his daughter that's in the West Bank right now. He's considering going to visit her in a couple months. He might get shot and killed while he is there. It's quite possible. For me it's like I, I see I can listen to him and I can hear him talk about stuff and I can sort through the pain and the antisemitism to hear, some of the, what's genuine and sincere and I can be there for him.And then I feel like I can reach out and connect with some people and share my pain and what I'm going through and, offer challenges or whatever to some folks. Recently right after September October 7th someone from he lives in Israel. He is American. We have the same background lineage of a pasta tradition.He invited me on to, to have a dialogue about this about what was happening. And and then after our we split, and we're not able to have any conversations anymore. Because some of the things I saw him writing on X and so the perspectives that he seemed to be taking, and we got to a point where we pulled in a mutual mentor someone someone who's like a master mediator.And their basic feedback was like, sometimes you can't have a conversation. Sometimes it's just not possible. And I feel like that's where I'm getting largely, it's it's just not possible for me to have a conversation with a lot of people right now. Because of how 10 how sensitive this is. And so you say, when you say to or I hear if you were kind or if you were nicer, you'd be more efficacious, if I were able to be, I would. But I'm not. Tasshin: And the second part of what I was saying there is that when you block people, you are closing yourself off from the possibility of changing them.And from what I've just heard from, and I'm okay with that. Yeah, exactly. That makes a bit more sense to me now from what you've said. But Vince: I'm not gonna change a Zionist's mind, I don't think, someone who's like a, Christian or Jewish Zionist, I don't think I'm gonna change their mind by sharing something on like a micro blog.Tasshin: That, one of the really urgent questions for me here is what is a theory of change that produces genuine end to war violence, genocide? What actually resolves that? Actually because if I let me figure out how to put this. I am currently putting my time and energy.Into the things that I think I can do that will have the highest benefit from my current understanding and vantage point. I literally spend every day of my life waking to sleeping, doing the thing that I think is best based on my, admittedly flawed, limited perspective, my own weaknesses and blind spots.But I do that every day. Every day. And if I thought that I could lead to the end of war, genocide, violence, evil in a scaled way I would work much harder to bring that about. I'd have to think about how it fits into all the things I'm doing and balance. But I really wanna know how someone like, I, I would hope for example, that the service guild at some point will have a peace department.Currently, we, as we have a love department, a curiosity department, an empowerment department. I would love for us to have a peace department. I want other departments, us to be able to have infrastructure for other focused crews. At some point it's the Peace Department should be bringing about peace.And I don't know how to do that. Even peace Pilgrim my hero, she spent 30 years working in the way that she knew how for peace. And I don't think she wasted her time far from it. But there is still not peace on earth after her doing that. Vince: Sure. Some of this reminds me, has echoes of the effect of al altruism movement.Yeah.Tasshin: I think they I feel how to put this, I have different aesthetic and ideological views with them on specific points, but I feel very sympathetic to their larger efforts and yeah, what do we actually do to actually have a real impact? I feel very I feel kinship with that, even if there's specific things I disagree with or don't vibe with.So yeah, that's noted. Vince: Yeah, I think if we were to zoom, like not to take the two global perspective of like, how do we stop all genocide, war, et cetera. And that's a good question, but to me it's like, how do we stop this specific one that's happening right now, Tasshin: Uhhuh.Like how, Vince: Because that's sure. So how do we stop it? Obviously you Tasshin: don't have to know, but what a different way of putting the question that's maybe a bit more reasonable. I think it, it's very Vince: noble. Like you, you stop Israel from killing Palestinians. That's how it, okay. And what leads Tasshin: to that causally?Vince: Probably having a Palestinian state would be a necessary part of that. And what leads to that? The US has to stop vetoing it in the us. And what leads Tasshin: to that? Vince: They change in US leadership and change. And what leads to that? People putting pressure and voting and grassroots organ organizing.Ah, that's Tasshin: where you lose me. Vince: Yeah. Look at look at Zohran Mamdani. He's a good example of how that's actually happening right now in the, he's the only candidate, like major candidate that I've seen recent in recent times. Progressive candidate who's actually vocal about this, who isn't on the, both parties, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both supported the ongoing genocide. They're equally complicit. Tasshin: So basically we should or not leaders that are clear this in your perspective. What I'm hearing is Yeah. Yeah. The salient thing is elect leaders who are clear that this is a genocide who will end us complicitness and help and who are focused on economic populism.Vince: because our country really need, we need that right now. Tasshin: You lost me there. How does, what does that have to do with ending this genocide? Vince: You could it's both and so it's if you look at, this is a good example, I think part of, I grew up in the as probably you did too, in the.In the fading years of the political consensus between the neo-conservative and neoliberal parties, Tasshin: Uhhuh, Vince: who largely agreed on most everything, Tasshin: Uhhuh. Vince: They were both totally fine with military expansion. They were both fine with free trade agreements that hollowed out rural America and towns like in North Carolina, textile towns.Yeah. To save 5 cents, on a shirt made in Vietnam, we're totally fine letting an entire communities die, In towns we haul it out. So it's that kind of mentality, it's like what I grew up in and, it's like the arguments were mostly like stylistic. It's which style of the same ideology do you prefer?Tasshin: Coke versus Pepsi Vince: Ex. Exactly right. Coke and Pepsi. And Obama. He was, you fit right into this. He was not a departure, he was a rhetorician. Tasshin: Yeah,Vince: he sounded like a departure, but wasn't so true. Bestie. Yep. I think when I look at it in those terms, I say, okay what is so interesting about Donald Trump and the MAGA movement?It is actually presenting an alternative to the previous consensus. And I, the way I see American politics right now, and I could be wrong, is there's an emerging, there's a new emerging polarity. That alt left and right, quote unquote yeah, gosh, ne neo fascism and neo progressivism.And there's, and are you saying Tasshin: neo progressivism is the answer here? Vince: I'm, no, I'm not actually Uhhuh. Okay. Although, because some neo fascists don't want us to be sending money to Israel, Tasshin: Uhhuh, Vince: Marjorie Taylor Greene there, there's been a number that recently people who are like, why are we sending billions of dollars to Israel every year when we can't even take care of our own people?Yeah. And so I agree with that Uhhuh, what I actually think is emerging and has to emerge as an alt middle. It's a new. Consensus. And that alt middle will almost certainly not wanna continue propping up an American em military empire. Both alt-right and alt left. That's something they agree on.They don't want to be constantly waging endless wars. They don't wanna be always sending all of our money into our military budget. And is Tasshin: that connected to the populism you're talking about? Vince: Yeah, it is. Okay. It's a it's a strand of populism that's interested in retracting the American Empire and not continuing to create so many problems abroad.And who recognizes that doing so hurts us at home, Uhhuh, and because these things are interconnected. I see. Tasshin: Okay. Thank you for explaining that. Can I recount what I heard just now? Your, I, our, a shared goal that we have is we would like this war, genocide, violence, evil to end. We'd like it to end.And the way that comes about is Israel stops doing what it's doing. And the way that comes about is Palestine is a state and the US stops vetoing certain things at the un. And the way that happens is there's political pressure on the US to show up in a different way. And you're saying that the way that happens is we elect politicians who are want that course of action and also care about this populism and the relationship of how we're spending our money at home.Yeah. And the way that we do that is get involved in local political movements that support candidates that have that perspective. Vince: I think that's one of the most direct ways that uhhuh, that we can as Americans affected this. I'll tell Tasshin: you right now, I, I need to do due diligence on learning more about this, but I will very seriously both take that into consideration for my own voting and then also in how I speak about voting to my friends and people I'm connected to.That's not much. But this is more. That's what I really care about. I wanna make sure that whatever actions I take, I am that I can see. It matters to me that I can see how there could be a causal chain where this actually results in the things that we want, if that makes sense.I don't know why that matters to me so much, but it does. Vince: Yeah. Okay. We haven't talked about Bodhi Safa hood yet. Yes. So maybe I could bring that in. Yeah. Tasshin: Thank God, please. Someone helped me. Yeah. Vince: I don't know if you, it's a Tasshin: struggle out here. Vince: I don't know if you've heard this quote from Ujima Roshi Japanese Zen teacher.He said a Bodhi Safa is an ordinary person who acts like a true adult. Tasshin: I had never heard that before, but I love it. And what does true adult mean to you? Vince: I think a true adult is someone who sees a problem and they respond to it. And. A true adult recognizes the complexity of the situation and acts anyway with that with incomplete information with whatever resources and ability that they have while acknowledging that they're limited.So that's a start. True adult cares about themselves and others. I could even, I could actually inhabit as a true adult. I both take care of my life at home and I care about the impacts that that the country and systems I'm embedded in are having in the world. That I'm causal in, that I have some causal influence over, even if it's minimal.Tasshin: You know what I'm reminded of Vince is video game levels and I feel like. It seems it seems cr crass to pick levels, but I feel like, I don't know, let's say a level eight Bodhi Safa I'm not level one anymore. I'm not even level five anymore, but I feel acutely, like I'm really only level eight and I think it's gonna there are 10 Vince: levels aren't there In this game?I, oh no. Bodhi the boomie, the boom. No.Tasshin: I know what you're talking about. But also that's not the measurement system I'm using. Okay. You're not, Vince: it's not a traditional boomy model. No. Tasshin: I'm thinking like, I never played it, but like World of Warcraft, I'm pretty sure 80 is like a threshold in World of Warcraft.It's I'm pretty sure you need like a level 60 or 70 Bodhi Safa to have global systemic change at the level that's needed for the thing we're talking about. And I'm like I know if I have a friend that has a mental health crisis, like I'm struggling to barely be able to support them in a meaningful way.Like I'm embarrassed by how. Incompetent. I am at even that helping one person that's having a mental health crisis. Like I can help a little bit, but like I know someone who's an extended network right now is having their partner's having a major schizophrenic episode and I'm like, here, I can send you a link that might help you.That's that's so pathetic. That is so disgustingly pathetic for actually having an impact in the world. It's humiliating to admit, but here we are because there's real suffering and you have to do whatever we can to help. And so I would like to it would be great if I ended this year as a level nine Bodhi, that would be awesome.And do I want to have global systemic positive change on a historic scale? Absolutely. I hope that every passing year I'm more and more capable of. Large scale, positive impact, and I'm just so acutely aware of how incompetent I am and how limited I'm really doing everything I can to have a positive impact at the scale that I can right now.And it's it's pathetic and humiliating in the context of this larger suffering. I'm fine with that. I'm not embarrassed to say that, but it is humbling, it's it's not nearly good enough. And I think the more acquainted you are with how much suffering there is in the universe, the more humbled you are by that, by one's own incompetence to, and then you do, that's the Bodhi SA of vows, anyway, is just to be like greed, hatred, and end without end like vow to end it. Like you just, you get up and do something anyway. Vince: Yeah. I've. There's a distinction that's commonly made in like a, I would call it like in the woke pluralistic cultural scene of like intention versus impact.And that's an important distinction when you're starting to get into questions of race and racialization, because people will say things with a good intentions that hurt other people because they're ignorant of the impact that has for someone else. And here I think it's I think of that too with what you're saying, where it's okay yeah, like I want to become a, be a more impactful Bodhi Safa.I want to have a more net positive impact in the world. And on the one hand yeah, I could say, like you're saying it, I feel humbled and maybe embarrassed by how ineffectual I am. And. I also feel humble about the fact that I don't know the impact that I'm having. I don't understand it. And I feel like this is really, you probably have had a similar experience putting media out into the worlds, like with Buddhist geeks when we launched that, the hundreds and hundreds of people that I heard from over the years who are like, that had such a powerful impact on my life.And I'm like wow, okay. I, that was definitely not what I was aiming for. I was just doing something I thought was cool at the time. Honestly. And so that wasn't even necessarily my intention, but that was the impact. And so I'm amazed, I am amazed at how effective people can be without even knowing it. It's like hard sometimes. Hard to know. It's hard to measure. And that's where I would say it's the challenge here with what you're saying is I want to see if I'm effect. You have to be able to measure the effectiveness to be able to know, and we can't fully measure, we can get better at measuring, like we can maybe get more sophisticated in seeing and understanding our impact both negative and positive.But it's really difficult without going into you really have to have an understanding of the whole to be able to see your individual impacts on the whole. And I don't know, where am I going with this? Just to say there's some kind of feedback loop here that I think is like what the Bodhi Safa is driven by.It's like constantly coming back to. A wise or compassionate intention. And then do trying your best to live from that place, even if you're, not effectual. And then doing your best to understand the impacts of your actions So that, you can, that can inform how you act the next time that you're trying to be, coming from this place of genuine wisdom and compassion. And there's some kind of sharpening of like skillful means that happens in this feedback loop. Tasshin: Yeah. Vince: And to me, it's like the Bodhi Safa is one who's engaged in the pro in that process rather than Yes. Then there are different levels then are depths or degrees of skillfulness.And probably in different domains too.Tasshin: Yeah, of course. Multiple axes. Vince: So I hear what you're saying and I think that's valid. Like it isn't up to any, I don't think it's up to individuals to solve the global challenges.Tasshin: No, but I'm also like, I'm aware that I think I am I was just humble, so now I can be a little arrogant.I think I'm uniquely well-suited to create systems that actually do have causal impact on the historic scale over time. It just takes a long time and it takes very careful thought and a lot of care and consideration and love and effort. And so I would like to build systems that have a net positive historic impact on the scale of humanization.And as far as I can tell I'm playing my cards that way, where like I would really hope that if we fast forwarded 30 or 40 years, we would be like, Hey. The Service Guild did really good stuff that was net positive on human society and our civilization and the planet. And of course there'll be fuckups along the way where we mess up and I make just dumb mistakes and whatever.But I would hope that it's net positive and that it has a genuinely historic obvious impact on the world that was positive. So that's part of why my care, that's why I would wanna have this conversation at all, is like, how can I build systems that actually do have that kind of impact on ending, yeah.Including ending violence of all kinds and this conflict, this genocide, this war, this evil in particular. Vince: Yeah. I think that's a great intention. I, there's like a, there's a quote in the Bava Gita that's coming to mind. I can't remember the exact quote, but it's some, something about acting without any thought of results or it's happens in that famous dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. Yeah, there's Tasshin: a difference in da I, I've been influenced a lot by DAAs strategy, and they talk a lot about the difference between means ends and conditions, consequences.And we're really trying to create the conditions for good consequences. So can I guarantee that we would have a particular result? Absolutely not, but absolutely not. But I think we can create the conditions for historic benevolent beneficent impact.Vince: It's interesting you're talking about a guild. Because to me it's I think of the Bodhi Safa as a more of like a. A relational phenomena. Tasshin: It's Vince: Team Bodhi Safa. Rather than a Bodhi Safa.And so it seems like a lot of the challenge here is around coordinating and connecting and aligning, collective alignment. And these are the things I think are very hard for people who've been trained to individuate and who are focused on their own agency. John Vey, the philosopher, he points out like when you take role, you are rolling yourself into that. You're losing a certain kind of agency by inhabiting a role, say role of father, role of teacher role of whatever you're limiting yourself in that role.And, but, and yet you have to play roles in cult in community Tasshin: to do anything. Yep. Vince: So I guess, yeah I don't know where to go from there. From here. Tasshin: I would summarize our conversation so far as follows. TPOT such as it is an emergent developmental p

Tasshin talks with Daniel Thorson (@dthorson) about individual transformation, systems change, community, love, safety, attunement, religion, and more.Daniel on XSubstackWebsiteU can sign up for Tasshin's newsletter here.If U enjoyed this episode, consider supporting Tasshin and the Reach Truth Podcast on Patreon.This podcast is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). U are free to share and adapt with attribution.

Overview: In this episode, Vince Horn and Daniel Thorson explore the evolving landscape of Western Buddhism, unpacking the tensions between Consensus Buddhism and Pragmatic Dharma, while reflecting on ethics, teacherly authority, and the possibilities for a more integrated future.Vince Horn: I'm here with Daniel Thorson, hanging out in your office-slash-bedroom. You've been in the Asheville area for what—a year now?Daniel Thorson: Almost two years, actually.Vince: Whoa, really? That's wild! And this is our first time recording together since you moved here. Doing it in person feels weird—so hyper-intimate.Daniel: Yeah. It's a whole 3D—or maybe even 4D—experience.Vince: More D than that if you include yourself.Daniel: Totally.Vince: So, I suggested we record because, well, we were going to hang out anyway, and you've been writing a really interesting series on your Substack, The Intimate Mirror.Daniel: Yeah, that's the one. Initially, I was exploring AI as a kind of mirror—how to use and work with it. But I've taken a side journey into critiquing Western Buddhism. I'm planning to do some reconstructive work too, eventually.Vince: Especially the American convert Buddhist scenes we've been part of, right? Like, the Buddhist Geeks orbit, Insight Meditation world, maybe even broader—Consensus Buddhism, as David Chapman calls it.Daniel: Exactly. My focus is mostly on modern Western Buddhist culture. That includes Insight Meditation, but also Westernized Zen, and even American Vajrayana. It's like a meta-sangha of Buddhist Modernism.Vince: Right. Like the teachers who went to hang out with the Dalai Lama in the 90s and asked, "How can we make Buddhism more friendly to the West?" And now there's this whole ecosystem.Daniel: Definitely. And I want to be clear: I'm not critiquing individual teachers. It's more about the communities and cultures that have grown around them—looking at their gifts and their shadows.Vince: So you've got Consensus Buddhism on one hand and Pragmatic Dharma—what you call the Tech Bro Buddhist scene—on the other. I loved your piece on the "Upper Middle Path and the Tech Bros." You brought in critiques I've seen mostly in academic circles—people like David McMahan and Ann Gleig—but you made it much more accessible and relevant.Daniel: Thanks. That was the goal: take these ideas out of esoteric academic circles and bring them into contemporary discourse. Especially around communities like ours that are immersed in Buddhist Geeks-type spaces.Vince: It felt like a kind of moral responsibility to name the limitations and mistakes we've seen—or made—over the years. Like, I see a lot of younger folks in the liminal web, teapot Twitter, etc., getting into Buddhist modernism the way we were 15 years ago.Daniel: Exactly. And I think it's important we help them avoid some of the pitfalls. Not because we're better or more advanced, but just because we've had more time to metabolize these dynamics.Vince: Right. I mean, early Buddhist Geeks was full-on modernist—tech, enlightenment, Daniel Ingram's stage models. But it evolved. Ann Gleig even said she saw postmodern elements starting to emerge in that community. I think she was right.Daniel: Totally. And part of my own evolution, especially through training at the Monastic Academy, has been this inquiry into ethics—specifically, how ethical responsiveness is missing in a lot of Buddhist spaces. That's especially problematic in a time of planetary crisis.Vince: It's not just about meditating in caves or on retreat anymore. There's a demand for something deeper and more responsive. A lot of Buddhism as it's been practiced here feels avoidant—especially to folks with avoidant attachment styles. It's like a refuge from complexity, not a way of meeting it.Daniel: Exactly. And even in the engaged Buddhist scenes, it can feel like there's a polarity—like the rest of Buddhism is disengaged by default.Vince: There's been some shifts, especially post-George Floyd. Consensus Buddhism became more pluralistic, more explicitly social justice-oriented. But even then, it can become polarized—like progressive vs. liberal politics.Daniel: Right. And on the Pragmatic Dharma side, you see a resistance to that pluralism. It's still very focused on individual attainment, hyper-rational, and map-model heavy. It's like a cultural left/right divide.Vince: I've started avoiding the masculine/feminine language because it triggers so many people. I use "self-focused" and "other-focused" instead. Pragmatic Dharma = self-focused; Consensus Buddhism = other-focused. There's a polarity there.Daniel: That feels accurate. And yet, both scenes are struggling with ethics. The Tech Bro Dharma scene risks erasing the generative function of suffering. There's this idea that suffering is just a bug to be fixed.Vince: Right. And people like Shinzen Young and Daniel Ingram do qualify that—it's perceptual suffering, not all suffering. But the popularizers, like Nick Cammarata on X.com, often simplify it down to "eliminate suffering, be happy."Daniel: Which is dangerous. Suffering is supposed to be understood, not eliminated. It teaches us about being in right relationship with reality. Removing it through tech could erase the ethical feedback loops we need.Vince: And that's not just theoretical. We've seen examples—teachers like Culadasa, who bypassed relational feedback in ways that created real harm.Daniel: Or on the other side, in Consensus Buddhism, where the focus becomes eliminating social suffering through systems change—but sometimes it loses the locus of individual responsibility. It becomes ideologically confused.Vince: Yeah. It's like both sides are overcorrecting, and what we really need is a new synthesis. Something that honors both individual and collective transformation.Daniel: The best example I've seen of that is John Churchill's Planetary Dharma. I'm in his Level 1 training, and it weaves individual and relational ethics beautifully.Vince: I've heard good things. Also, Tom Huston's Kosmic Dharma project seems to be trying something similar, from a more Advaita direction.Daniel: And Robert Burbea's Soulmaking Dharma, which really helps people deconstruct secular materialism and reopen to a sacred worldview.Vince: Yeah, I've seen that too. Even in the Pragmatic Dharma scene, many of the original rationalists are now post-rational, magical thinkers. Daniel Ingram literally has wands.Daniel: That's the resilience of the Dharma. Practice sincerely, and it eventually breaks out of those constraints.Vince: That said, I think we're in a phase of necessary deconstruction before meaningful reconstruction can happen.Daniel: Totally. And we need to talk about ethics now, not wait for the practice to eventually bring people around.Vince: Which raises a tricky question: How do you do this work—invite a new synthesis—without just creating a new brand of Buddhism that becomes subject to the same market dynamics?Daniel: It's hard. But maybe it's less about building one big thing and more about encouraging mutations. Experiments. Some may become new institutions. Others might just be small, temporary communities. I've been part of a project called the Church of the Intimate Web that's experimenting with that.Vince: I love that. To me, anything that includes the three trainings—ethics, meditation, wisdom—is Buddhist, whether or not it uses the label.Daniel: Same. And while I'm deeply grateful to the institutions that formed me, I'm not optimistic about their ability to adapt. This series is, in some ways, a goodbye letter to Buddhism for me.Vince: That might be a key difference between us. I'm still invested in evolving Buddhism from within, even while exploring the edges. Buddhist Geeks is still about that.Daniel: And thank God for that. Because you're right: we also need bridges. Between elders and newcomers. Between experimental scenes and rooted lineages. Otherwise, we risk losing our moorings.Vince: There's so much anti-authoritarian energy in these new spaces, and yet the real problem isn't gatekeepers—it's often a lack of inner trust.Daniel: Exactly. And until people find legitimate external authority they can trust, it's hard to develop real inner authority.Vince: We need both elders and experimentalists. And we need to keep honoring the lineage that made any of this even possible.Daniel: Amen.The Jhāna CommunityDaniel Thorson will be joining Vince and the Jhāna Community next month for a 4-week teaching series exploring how secure attachment to reality can serve as the basis for jhāna practice. Yes, we plan on recording it!Live teaching series w/ Daniel Thorson online: Thursday May 8, 15, 22, & 29 @ 4pm Eastern TimeIMPORTANT NOTE: The Jhāna Community will be open for new applicants in the month of May. Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

Daniel Thorson spent 5 years in residential training at The Monastic Academy with 2 years in cumulative silent retreat. He has decades of deep engagement with contemplative practice, systems theory, and transformative work. He's also the beloved host of The Emerge Podcast and writes at The Intimate Mirror, where he's exploring how people can develop a secure attachment with reality.Resources:* Spirituality is Secure Attachment with Reality* AI for Emotional Unfolding* Steve March on Self-Improvement vs Self-unfoldment* https://x.com/dthorsonYouTube: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com

After many years, I sat down with Daniel Thorson whose Emerge podcast was an inspiration and leading voice in the liminal web/sensemaking/metacrisis space. This was a really special podcast & Daniel brought ro bear his unfoldment practice and the spirit of his substack Intimate Mirror to create a really unique space. We explored: life after monastic academy. Buddhism and trauma. The masculine wound in the west and our relationship with masculine authority. What it means to connect with essence. True safety as found in ‘making the leap' into the the divine. What Daniel learned about the metacrisis through years of enquiry with leading heart-minds in the liminal web.Don't miss this one.Be sure to subscribe for more at:Daniel's substack & work with Daniel at: The Intimate Mirror https://intimatemirror.substack.com/Jacob's substack:www.culturepilgrim.substack.comThe Resonant Man:www.theresonantman.substack.comJacob Kishere Website [Re-launch pending]www.jacobkishere.com

In this episode of Ordinary People Rufus Pollock talks with Daniel Thorson. Daniel shares his unique journeys of finding faith, meaning, and personal growth through unexpected avenues of meditation, living at a Goenka center, and participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement. They delve into the critical roles of trust, courage, and support in navigating life's uncertainties and explore the intersection of Buddhism and technology, pondering the potential for online spaces to foster contemplative practices, and sustaining personal and societal transformation through commitment and deep inquiry.#monastic #emerge #buddhism #friendship #inquiry #technology #socialtransformation #courage #faith #meditationAbout Daniel ThorsonDaniel Thorson is a writer, a Monastic at Monastic Academy and the creator and host of the podcast Emerge – Making Sense of What's Next, where he explores meaning, responsibility, and human development in the age of automation and climate collapse, and the relationship between inner and outer transformation. About Rufus PollockRufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author as well as a long-term zen practitioner. He is passionate about finding wiser, weller ways to live together. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age. Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Find out more about his work on his website: rufuspollock.com.Ordinary People is a podcast series that delves into the lives of individuals who have defied societal expectations and embarked on extra-ordinary paths despite their seemingly ordinary backgrounds. Join us as we dive deep into their lives, uncovering their motivations, beliefs, practices, and moments of transformation. We demystify hero worship and share accessible narratives of real individuals who have transcended societal expectations and norms. Each guest delicately navigates the balance between introspection and worldly engagement. Listeners are offered empowerment, kinship and inspiration for embarking on their own extra-ordinary journey.Chapters00:05 Personal growth, meditation, and systems change with a focus on alienation and finding meaning in life06:48 Occupy Wall Street movement, Buddhist geeks, and hope, and power18:02 Creating a modern monastery to address planetary crisis27:18 Personal growth, breakthroughs, and the importance of faith and support39:41 The importance of friendship in personal growth and spiritual development47:19 Creating intentional communities for personal growth and service59:07 How to help people stay in a community and work through conflicts1:05:02 Commitment and transformation through structured programs1:10:53 desires through inquiry, letting go of preferences and avoiding manipulation.1:20:59 The nature of truth and goodness in a secular humanist society and its relationship to religion, culture, and personal transformation1:31:27 Truth, meaning, and values in post-conventional society This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.lifeitself.org

How dangerous is AI? Are Large Language Models likely to subvert our children?  Is Generalised AI going to wipe out all life on the planet?  I don't know the answers to these. It may be that nobody knows, but this week's guest was my go-to when I needed someone with total integrity to help unravel one of the most existential crises of our time, to lay it out as simply as we can without losing the essence of complexity, to help us see the worst cases - and their likelihood - and the best cases, and then to navigate a route past the first and onto the second. Daniel Thorson is an activist - he was active in the early days of the Occupy movement and in Extinction Rebellion. He is a lot more technologically literate than I am - he was active early in Buddhist Geeks. He is a soulful, thoughtful, heartful person, who lives at and works with the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth in Vermont. And he's host of the Emerge podcast, Making Sense of What's Next. So in all ways, when I wanted to explore the existential risks, and maybe the potential of Artificial Intelligence, and wanted to talk with someone I could trust, and whose views I could bring to you unfiltered, Daniel was my first thought, and I'm genuinely thrilled that he agreed to come back onto the podcast to talk about what's going on right now. My first query was triggered by the interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky on the Bankless podcast - Eliezer talked about the dangers of Generalised AI, or Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, and the reasons why it was so hard - he would say impossible - to align the intentions of a silicon-based intelligence with our human values, even if we knew what they were and could define them clearly. Listening to that, was what prompted me to write to Daniel. Since then, I listened many times to two of Daniels own recent podcasts: one with the educational philosopher Zak Stein on the dangers of AI Tutors and one with Jill Nephew, the founder of Inqwire, Public Benefit Company on a mission to help the world make sense. The Inqwire technology is designed to enhance and accelerate human sensemaking abilities. Jill is also host of the Natural Intelligence podcast and has clearly thought deeply about the nature of intelligence, the human experience and the neurophysiology and neuropsychology of our interactions with Large Language Models. I've linked all three of these podcasts below and absolutely recommend that you listen to them if you want more depth than we have here. What Daniel and I tried to do today was to lay things out in very straightforward terms: it's an area fraught with jargon and belief systems and assumptions, and we wanted to strip those away where we could and acknowledge them where we couldn't, and lay out where we are, what the worst cases are, what the best case is, given that we have to move forward with technology, switching it all off seems not to be an option—and how we might move from worst to best case. With this latter in mind, I've included a link to Daniel's new project, the Church of the Intimate Web which aims to connect people with each other. I've also - because it seems not everyone listens to the very end of the podcasts - included a link to our membership programme in Accidental Gods where we aim to help people connect to the wider web of life. I definitely see these two as interlinked and mutually compatible. So - trigger warning - a lot of this is not yet impinging on public awareness and we're not yet aware of how close we are to some very dangerous edges. This podcast leads us up to the edge so we can look over. We do it as gently as we can, but still, you'll want to be resourced and resilient before you listen. The Emerge Podcast https://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcastEmerge with Zak Stein https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/emerge-making-sense-of-whats-next/id1057220344?i=1000610403148Emerge with Jill Nephew https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/emerge-making-sense-of-whats-next/id1057220344?i=1000613784941Bankless with Eliezer Yudkowsky https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bankless/id1499409058?i=1000600575387The Church of the Intimate Web https://tome.app/the-church-of-the-intimate-web/the-church-of-the-intimate-web-a-response-to-the-global-intimacy-disorder-clhgc8h1l1b2p5k3z9ppbitfyAccidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/The Soul's Code by James Hillman https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-soul-s-code-james-hillman/1563087?ean=9780553506341

TODAY'S GUEST   Today, I'm speaking to Richard D. Bartlett, aka Rich Decibels.   During the Occupy movement in 2011, Rich caught a glimpse of a different way of being together — more compassionate, more intelligent, more creative, inclusive, and animating than he'd experienced as a student worker or citizen up to that point. Since then, he's been on a mission. In 2012 he co-founded Loomio, a digital tool for deliberation and decision-making in groups of 3-300 people.   In 2016 he co-founded The Hum, a management consultancy for organizations without managers. The Hum has recently published an online training course that shares what they know about working in highly decentralized organizations. Rich is also a Director and longstanding member of Enspiral — a network of people supporting each other to grow up and to get paid for doing meaningful work.   Rich has a daily writing practice. He writes about how people work together, at any scale, from relationships, to organizations, to social change, and he's prolific on Twitter and on Medium. His fascinating book (currently in beta) is called Patterns for Decentralized Organizing and can be downloaded from Leanpub.   EPISODE SUMMARY   In this conversation we talk about: How growing up in a strict fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and decoupling from that, shaped his outlook. His complex relationship with atheism and religion today. How he discovered love and solidarity in activism. Technologies of organizing. Forming decentralized decision-making processes. Nihilism in the face of dysfunction as a form of cowardice. Loomio, and collective decision-making software. Status and hierarchy. Shifting culture through fermentation. And the concept of stewardship.   We spoke in mid-June 2022, and I was excited to talk to Rich since he's been introduced to me by Daniel Thorson, whom I interviewed here in episode 10. I've been following his writing on Twitter and find the idea of decentralized work and collaboration fascinating, exciting, and challenging.   It's perhaps the greatest question of our time: now that we're all connected and have incredible tools of self-organization, how can we make better decisions together? How can we outcompete centralized organizations? And how can we benefit from the wonderful richness of so many brains without descending into chaos, nihilism and mob rule?   This conversation is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations that we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and activists who are working to change our world for the better. So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to RemakePod.org to subscribe.   And now let's jump right in with Richard D. Bartlett.   TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS   [5:23] Life in the Present [8:07] Early Childhood Community [10:33] A Complex Religious Journey [18:37] The Occupy Movement [23:45] A Transformational Insight [28:21] Cowardice and Courage [30:40] Membership Groups [35:16] Intersecting Communities [41:06] Status and Hierarchy  [44:35] Fermenting the Right Culture [48:21] The Stewardship System [51:58] A Short Sermon   EPISODE LINKS Richard's Links

Zak Stein and Daniel Thorson discuss the myriad risks of emerging AI tutoring technologies. AI tutoring is being developed now and will be deployed over the course of the next two to five years, bringing radical changes to our educational systems. This conversation explores the risks of this emerging technology while simultaneously proposing how, if designed correctly, this technology could solve the meta-crisis. Timestamp 0:00 - Intro 5:20 - Shift in Awareness of AI 10:08 - GAI Risk 15:51 - AI Alignment & Human Alignment 17:18 - Risks of Generalized Nature of AI 19:08 - Accelerating Misaligned Institutions 20:26 - AI Assistance & Anthropomorphism 25:35 - Instantaneous Media Interfacing 29:48 - AI Tutoring Risk 38:44 - Obsoleting Human Relationship 41:52 - AI Perfecting Propaganda 43:22 - Humanity's Educational Relationship 46:21 - Breaking the Human Nervous System 50:14 - AI Tutoring Risk Continued 55:17 - Building Aligned AI Tutoring Technology 59:56 - Importance of Non-Anthropomorphizable AI 1:02:10 - Irreducibility of Human Goodness 1:04:42 - The Limits of Computationalism 1:07:10 - AI Tutoring Guardrails 1:11:44 - Implementation of AI Tutoring Technology 1:17:36 - AI Planetary Tutoring System 1:21:59 - Solving the Meta-Crisis with AI Planetary Tutoring 1:25:06 - The Emergence of the New Human 1:29:18 - Right Relationship with Emerging AI Technology 1:35:18 - Conclusion ⁠Support the Emerge Podcast on Patreon⁠ ⁠Learn more about the Anti Fragile Heart Retreat at the Monastic Academy⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/emerge/support

This is a special episode with Daniel Thorson — who I initially came across through his super podcast called 'Emerge'  and later learned that he was living as a full-time monastic at the Monastic Academy in Vermont — where after a series of conversations, he persuaded me to come and sit for a 10-day retreat — which I just returned from myself recently.I found this was an immensely rich conversation, and I'm grateful to Daniel for opening up about some of the experiences he had recently during 73 days of solitude and silence (which he described as the most profound experience of his life) — during which he had some brushes with insanity but emerged (no pun intended) on the other side with some very hard-won insights to share.~~

The tendency to hedge is a modern disease. This rich discussion re-inspired me to go all-in with my life.Daniel Thorson is dedicated to monastic practices and lives at The Monastic Academy in Vermont — a wisdom institution that trains trustworthy people. At the start of the 2020 pandemic, he became an overnight focus of media attention after he emerged from a silent retreat and tweeted, “I'm back from 75 days in silence. Did I miss anything?” His unique experience was featured by The New York Times. He's also the host of The Emerge Podcast.This is a conversation about sacrifice, wisdom, dedication, and practice.Topics include:Why the most important thing everyone can do right now is come to terms with death.What it takes to create a trustworthy person.The MAPLE practice model of Wisdom, Love and Power.Why pure mindfulness practice might lead to “equanimity induced apathy.”How to change your friendships for life in 30 seconds (a practical exercise).The critical need for a vibrant network of wisdom institutions.Why you should be getting emotionally triggered regularly (and what to when it happens).Where “masculinity” might fit in with wisdom institutions.The uncomfortable importance of Hierarchy.Why we need new archetypes to inspire transformation. Philosopher kings and warriors instead of quiet monks.The significance of going all-in. Stop hedging. Fuck optionality.Resources:Daniel Thorson's Twitter. Reach out to him if you're interested in The Monastic Academy.The Monastic Academy (aka MAPLE) in Vermont. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com

TODAY'S GUEST   Today, I'm speaking to Richard D. Bartlett, aka Rich Decibels.   During the Occupy movement in 2011, Rich caught a glimpse of a different way of being together — more compassionate, more intelligent, more creative, inclusive, and animating than he'd experienced as a student worker or citizen up to that point. Since then, he's been on a mission. In 2012 he co-founded Loomio, a digital tool for deliberation and decision-making in groups of 3-300 people.   In 2016 he co-founded The Hum, a management consultancy for organizations without managers. The Hum has recently published an online training course that shares what they know about working in highly decentralized organizations. Rich is also a Director and longstanding member of Enspiral — a network of people supporting each other to grow up and to get paid for doing meaningful work.   Rich has a daily writing practice. He writes about how people work together, at any scale, from relationships, to organizations, to social change, and he's prolific on Twitter and on Medium. His fascinating book (currently in beta) is called Patterns for Decentralized Organizing and can be downloaded from Leanpub.   EPISODE SUMMARY   In this conversation we talk about: How growing up in a strict fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and decoupling from that, shaped his outlook. His complex relationship with atheism and religion today. How he discovered love and solidarity in activism. Technologies of organizing. Forming decentralized decision-making processes. Nihilism in the face of dysfunction as a form of cowardice. Loomio, and collective decision-making software. Status and hierarchy. Shifting culture through fermentation. And the concept of stewardship.   We spoke in mid-June 2022, and I was excited to talk to Rich since he's been introduced to me by Daniel Thorson, whom I interviewed here in episode 10. I've been following his writing on Twitter and find the idea of decentralized work and collaboration fascinating, exciting, and challenging.   It's perhaps the greatest question of our time: now that we're all connected and have incredible tools of self-organization, how can we make better decisions together? How can we outcompete centralized organizations? And how can we benefit from the wonderful richness of so many brains without descending into chaos, nihilism and mob rule?   This conversation is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations that we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and activists who are working to change our world for the better. So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to RemakePod.org to subscribe.   And now let's jump right in with Richard D. Bartlett.   TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS   [5:23] Life in the Present [8:07] Early Childhood Community [10:33] A Complex Religious Journey [18:37] The Occupy Movement [23:45] A Transformational Insight [28:21] Cowardice and Courage [30:40] Membership Groups [35:16] Intersecting Communities [41:06] Status and Hierarchy  [44:35] Fermenting the Right Culture [48:21] The Stewardship System [51:58] A Short Sermon   EPISODE LINKS Richard's Links

When Clare decided on a resolution for the year, she was looking for a new challenge. Instead of running a marathon like her partner, Clare—who "talks for a living"—decided to go completely silent. She signed up for a silent retreat. But as it approached, she wondered how she could possibly go an entire week without speaking. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Daniel Thorson of the Monastic Academy in Vermont and host of the podcast, Emerge. Daniel has spent over a year of his life in silent meditation, including a 75 day silent retreat at the beginning of the pandemic. He says his first silent retreat was the worst experience of his life — just what Clare wanted to hear — but there's a reason he kept going back. If you liked this episode, check out: How To Quiet the Chatter in Your Head and How To Sleep with Headspace's Andy Puddicombe. Do you have a burning question? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.

When Clare decided on a resolution for the year, she was looking for a new challenge. Instead of running a marathon like her partner, Clare—who “talks for a living”—decided to go completely silent. She signed up for a silent retreat. But as it approached, she wondered how she could possibly go an entire week without speaking. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Daniel Thorson of the Monastic Academy in Vermont and host of the podcast, Emerge. Daniel has spent over a year of his life in silent meditation, including a 75 day silent retreat at the beginning of the pandemic. He says his first silent retreat was the worst experience of his life — just what Clare wanted to hear — but there's a reason he kept going back. If you liked this episode, check out: How To Quiet the Chatter in Your Head and How To Sleep with Headspace's Andy Puddicombe.   Do you have a burning question? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now at slate.com/howtoplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Clare decided on a resolution for the year, she was looking for a new challenge. Instead of running a marathon like her partner, Clare—who “talks for a living”—decided to go completely silent. She signed up for a silent retreat. But as it approached, she wondered how she could possibly go an entire week without speaking. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Daniel Thorson of the Monastic Academy in Vermont and host of the podcast, Emerge. Daniel has spent over a year of his life in silent meditation, including a 75 day silent retreat at the beginning of the pandemic. He says his first silent retreat was the worst experience of his life — just what Clare wanted to hear — but there's a reason he kept going back. If you liked this episode, check out: How To Quiet the Chatter in Your Head and How To Sleep with Headspace's Andy Puddicombe.   Do you have a burning question? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now at slate.com/howtoplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode fellow Monastic Academy resident Ellen McSweeney and I explore the relationship between Circling and Soulmaking in an attempt to make sense of the experience we shared co-facilitating the Anti-Fragile Heart retreat in March. Towards the end there is a Q+A with retreat participants. If you'd like to explore the practice of Circling MAPLE is hosting the SAS 6-month Circling Training starting in June. This conversation was recorded in the meditation hall at the Monastic Academy, and the audio is a little wonky... --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/emerge/support

Alex is the lead of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Daniel is the Head of Curriculum at the Monastic Academy in Vermont. I got these two together to jam on the dark side of modern spirituality, and more specifically, the shadows behind mindfulness, meditation and eastern spirituality practices in the west. It is an incredible dialogue between these two, one that I did my best to stay out of the way of. We talk about Westernized Buddhism, spirituality in a capitalistic paradigm, transcending the fear of death, industrial strength meditation, Jordan Hall, status anxiety and so much more. Follow me on instagram! https://www.instagram.com/ariintheair Support this channel! $5/Month! Get FREE COACHING! https://www.patreon.com/ariintheair PHILOSOPHICAL COACHING WITH ARI HTTPS://www.ariintheair.com/coaching/

Suffering, growth and choosing how we live is a part of life. This episode will encourage you to look deeply into ethical living and see the great opportunity present within suffering. Our experiences in life aren't always filled with sunshine and warmth, there are days when we will suffer. But, we can take suffering as an opportunity for growth. As we live in integrity and practice ethical living, we are better able to experience life. In this new podcast episode, Daniel Thorson talks about suffering, growth, and ethical living. Along with that, he shares with us about Willow Monastic Academy and what they do there. ❂ About our special guest: Daniel Thorson is the creator and host of the podcast Emerge – Making Sense of What's Next, where he explores the relationship between the inner and outer transformation. He is also on the team at Monastic Academy, which trains and cultivates wise, powerful, and loving leaders for social and environmental peace. Guest's website: http://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast

Daniel Thorson and Brendan discuss the work of John Vervaeke, creator of the "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" series, comparing and contrasting it to Daniel's own pioneering efforts to develop a framework and set of practices for training agents of healing and transformation in our disintegrating world. They also reflect on both the importance and the problem of creating "ontologically neutral" practices stripped of highly context-bound terminology and ideas, whether that be for a "religion that's not a religion" or the kind of framework Daniel is developing. 0:00 Introduction 1:50 On Entering Vervaekeland 5:49 Transformation: Virtue as a Leverage Point for Meaning 10:44 Vervaeke's Perennial Problems and His Proposed Ecology of Practices 18:35 Thorson's Framework of Five Aspects (1. Energy System, 2. Psyche, 3. Relationship, 4. Ethics, 5. Perception) 30:10 Thorson's Ecology of Practices: 1. Samadhi and Healthy Living; 2. "Focusing," Bio-Emotive Work, Internal Family Systems; 3. Circling and Intentional Community; 4. Human Systems; 5. Emptiness Insight 36:29 A Vervaeke-Thorson Synthesis? 39:12 Disenchanting Ecologies of Practice? The Challenge and Promise of Sacred Containers 46:44 A Missing Metanarrative? Connecting Myth and Praxis 50:39 An Ecology of Ecologies of Practices: Modular Methods, Local Color? 54:27 Wisdom's Scaling Constraints: Seeking Integration in a Disintegrating World Emerge podcast: https://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast The Monastic Academy: https://www.monasticacademy.com/ www.BrendanGrahamDempsey.com

Podcast: Emerge: Making Sense of What's Next (LS 45 · TOP 1% what is this?)Episode: Daniel Schmachtenberger - Utopia or Bust: Designing a Non Self-Terminating CivilizationPub date: 2019-08-05This week I'm speaking with Daniel Schmachtenberger. Daniel is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue. The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal. Towards these ends, he's had particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, civilization and institutional decay and collapse as well as progress, collective action problems, social organization theories, and the relevant domains in philosophy and science. Motivated by the belief that advancing collective intelligence and capacity is foundational to the integrity of any civilization, and necessary to address the unique risks we currently face given the intersection of globalization and exponential technology, he has spoken publicly on many of these topics, hoping to popularize and deepen important conversations and engage more people in working towards their solutions. Many of these can be found here. We talk about the current state of the phase shift, whether we are past the point of no return for social collapse, Daniel's three generator functions of existential risk, the definition of an adequate social architecture that avoids existential risk, how technology creates asymmetric advantage that debases the planetary life support system, why we need to create technology that leads to ‘metastability', the pollution of the epistemic commons, why we need to define problems in a comprehensive way where the solutions don't create worse problems, the vows Daniel made as a teenager, what progress is being made at solving the generator functions of existential risk, the auto-poetic nature of trauma, and the necessity of a mature relationship between certainty and uncertainty.The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Daniel Thorson, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

The host of The Emerge Podcast Daniel Thorson joins me for an exploration of whether we need the contemplative backdrop of a Monastic Academy to create truly regenerative communal contexts. https://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast https://www.monasticacademy.com/

Monastic, community leader, and host of the Emerge podcast Daniel Thorson joins Terry for a tender, open-hearted, and spacious inquiry into what really matters in this vulnerable and sacred collective moment.  Recently, Daniel became an overnight focus of media attention during the beginning of the pandemic after he emerged from a long silent retreat and tweeted, “I'm back from 75 days in silence. Did I miss anything?” His unique experience and insights were featured by the New York Times and many other media outlets from around the world. Interestingly, his retreat intensified his discernment and sensitivity. He became acutely aware that this newfound fame was a double-edged sword. So we discussed what was arising — especially how we often suffer intensified public attention (in spite of our cultural preoccupation with fame and status). So this is a conversation on the threshold — Daniel was recognizing that a 2-3 year journey into intellectual sensemaking on his Emerge podcast had “crystalized”, and his inquiry had led him to more dedicated monastic practice and curiosity about how to love and care for the people around him. Daniel Thorson lives and works at the Monastic Academy in Vermont, which trains and cultivates wise, powerful, and loving leaders for social and environmental peace. When working at the influential podcast Buddhist Geeks he became fascinated by how public conversations can catalyze cultural transformation. Later, he created and became host of the podcast Emerge: Making Sense of What’s Next. In previous incarnations, Daniel was an organizer with Occupy Wall Street (in NYC); helped start Boulder Flood Relief in 2013; and founded a mindfulness education company.  Here are some of the questions we discuss in this episode:  What did 75 days in silence during a global pandemic illuminate for Daniel about his — and our collective — way forward? How can grief and acceptance open us to a life of service and creativity? Is it possible to discover a way of being that inadvertently heals our world? Are there shifts so essential and diffuse that they suddenly “solve everything at once?” In a world awash in so much information, how can we serve clarity, adding only what’s most essential? What are our essential conversations? For more information on Daniel Thorson and Terry Patten, check out the following resources: Emerge – Making Sense of What’s Next podcast Monastic Academy Daniel Thorson on Twitter Terry Patten's website A New Republic of the Heart website Join the State of Emergence community of Supporters If you haven’t yet, we welcome you to join us as a monthly contributor here and become part of our community of listeners dedicated to uplifting our public discourse.

Just as the Covid pandemic was starting to transform our lives, Daniel Thorson, the creator of the Emerge podcast, started a 75 day silent retreat in rural Vermont.

In this episode, we hear from Nathan Vanderpool about the life of freedom and flexibility he has built for himself in Berlin, Germany. He talks about getting his masters in Germany, and how he chose to give up a life of "security" for a life where he gets to pursue his passions and control his schedule. We also touch on the topic of how having flexibility is so beneficial for his time and relationship with his son. Take-Aways:-Figure out who is a living example of the life you want to live, and ask them how they are creating it and advice they have. People want to help, and are willing to share advice!-Surround yourself with people who are on the same journey.-Get your cost of living as low as possible.-Do a lot of inner work -- meditation, journaling, yoga, etc to help you overcome blocks and see the potential.-If one thing doesn't work, keep trying, and taking action. Don't give up!Mentioned in this episode: Human Systems (the company Nathan helped co-found)https://human-systems.org/Daniel Thorson and the Monastic Academy: https://www.monasticacademy.com/The Stoa (Peter Limberg)https://www.thestoa.ca/Please reach out to me to connect and let me know your thoughts on this episode!Website: https://www.accountabilibuddyforhire.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/accountabilibuddyforhire/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AccountabilibuddyForHireFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/prettysurewecandobetter/

Daniel Thorson is a deep thinker.  He hosts a podcast called Emerge…  Daniel’s podcast is about philosphy… with shades of Monastic Buddhism tossed in.  I really don’t understand it. But I mention Daniel… because he completely missed the worldwide lockdown.    March 13th… Daniel Thorson entered a monastery for 75 days of seclusion.  This is a few days before Rudy Gobert tested positive and the world stopped.  Since then Thorson was tucked away in silent meditation in northwestern Vermont… clueless to world events. May 23rd he emerged.  Memorial Day weekend… he left seclusion and said “hey.  So what’s been goin’ on?” Well, Daniel…  the NBA canceled the season.  The other sports followed. Almost every school in America shut down. The highways emptied. We figured out how to work from home.   Oil fell below zero.  Clorox shot to the moon.  100,000 dead. Zoom happened. We fought over masks  Ran out of toilet paper. meat got expensive.  40 million lost their jobs. How you been? Thorson tells the New York Times… he’s had a strange week… because catching up is completely different than experiencing the trauma the rest of us went through. When he emerged he went to the grocery store expecting human contact.  But people backed away from him.  He’d never heard of social distancing…  Now… everybody wants to interview him… He’s the only person in America… who missed the fear and Facebook fights.   The shortages and the long days stuck at home.    And he wonders… whether he should bother to catch up at all..

This is part 2 of our conversation with Daniel Thorson. We explore: the end of liberal humanism as a political and personal philosophy; confronting pain and escaping entrapment in one’s feelings; how times of collapse open a space for new leaders to step forwards; the spiritual class structure (for instance, an elite with money, education, time and exposure to top teachers and traditions, a middle class practicing yoga and reading Eckhart Tolle and other spiritual bestsellers, and a lower class dabbling in astrology and crystals); how cultural decentralization and the ability to access information online creates the illusion that we can learn everything online, preventing access to (and even awareness of) wisdom that can only be imparted via human transmission; how contemporary culture conditions us to advertise our superiority, in the form of CVs, qualifications etc.; and the value of being in service to something higher than yourself. Daniel can be found herehttps://twitter.com/dthorsonAnd his excellent Emerge podcast herehttp://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcastFind the Monastic Academy herehttps://www.monasticacademy.com/

This conversation was recorded a couple of months ago, but its message feels very current. Our guest this time is Daniel Thorson, a resident at the Monastic Academy and host of the excellent Emerge podcast. In this, part one of our conversation, we discuss: the interconnectedness of systems change and personal growth, and how the minds we use to solve today’s problems are products of systems that are destroying themselves; the work of the Monastic Academy in creating awakened leaders; the importance of being able to hold multiple, sometimes contradictory perspectives within one’s worldview; Slavoj Zizek’s critique of Western Buddhism as the hegemonic ideology of late capitalism; how the pathologies of Western Buddhism show up in the contemporary spiritual scene; and heroism and the process of being in service to a grand narrative of how to improve the world.Daniel can be found herehttps://twitter.com/dthorsonAnd his excellent Emerge podcast herehttp://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcastFind the Monastic Academy herehttps://www.monasticacademy.com/

Daniel Thorson, host of the ground-breaking, innovative - and hugely courageous - Emerge podcast is a Buddhist monastic, activist and meta-modern thinker. In this conversation, we dive deeply into what it means to be human - and how we can live as the best of ourselves. Find out more on https:accidentalgods.life

Jared Janes and Jason Snyder talk with Nathan Spears about his journey from religion to atheism and back again, Orthodox Christianity, modernizing religion, Vervaeke's four ways of knowing, the value of Christian language & story, bridging phenomenology & epistemology, the dynamics of belief, attention & intention, perennial philosophy, the body of Christ, and much more. In this Episode of Both/And Nathan on Twitter Cognitive Science & the Sacred with Vervaeke & Pageau God & Relevance Realization with Vervaeke & Pageau Dominion by Tom Holland #15 Being a Baha'i Creative with Samah Tokmachi The Cloud of Unknowing The Mind Illuminated by John Yates Enneagram of Personality Hammering Hot Iron by Charles Upton People Mentioned: David Chapman, John Vervaeke, Daniel Thorson, Collin Morris, Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, Jonathan Pageau, Shinzen Young, David Bentley Hart Support Both/And by becoming a patron &/or subscribing & reviewing us on iTunes   Jared Janes participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, a small percentage of its price is sent to us.

Daniel Thorson, host of Emerge podcast, and I recorded our first episode together about a year ago and at that time he was preparing to move to the Monastic Academy, which is a training center dedicated to creating wise, powerful, and loving leaders who are an unstoppable force for social and environmental peace on Earth. ---> Subscribe for new podcast episode Email Notifications HERE In this conversation Daniel and I get into how living and working there affects his life, as well as the people around him; the sense of community and purpose…we explore many topics surrounding the concept of sense making; the process of our “making sense” of the complexity of our modern world and how that can lead to a sense of purpose, or not. As always, I encourage you to dig into the show notes, where you’ll find links to the music I make, references, and ways to share this podcast with others that you think would enjoy listening to it.  If you haven’t already, please tap subscribe in your preferred podcast player and if you’d like to get email reminders when new episodes are published, click the link in the show notes to join the podcast email list.  Subscribe HERE for Email Episode Reminders   Episode’s Music by Abe Vandenberg Listen on Bandcamp -> “What’s going on in my mind”  - All Podcast Music Album HERE - Go to this Episode’s Webpage    - (a different) Podcast episode called “Reflecting Reflections”,  with me and Daniel Thorson   >>>>> Questions about this episode?  Want to share a comment or a topic for a future episode?  You can send me (Abe) an email using this online message form: Click Here   Links and References:   Monastic Academy   Emerge Podcast with Daniel Thorson   “Global economy could endure disaster for a week” _________ Magical Egypt documentary series (go to to this podcast’s Episode 13 with Chance Gardner, released Nov 8, 2018)   You can Save 15% on Magical Egypt with Coupon Code "genuse" Own Both Magical Egypt Series 1 and 2   ___________   Episode Artwork Photo Credit   ========+++========   HELP SPREAD THE WORD!   I’d love it if you could please share Genuinely Useful podcast on twitter and facebook:   https://twitter.com/genuinelyuseful   https://www.facebook.com/genuinelyuseful   If you enjoy this podcast, tap on over to Apple Podcasts and kindly leave me a rating, write a review, and subscribe! Thank you so much! Links to Share Genuinely Useful podcast:   Click here to share on Apple Podcasts [iOS]   Click here to share on Overcast [iOS]   Click here to share on Spotify   Click here to share on Google Podcasts [Android   Click here to share on Stitcher [iOS and Android]   Genuinely Useful Podcast Home Page https://genuinelyuseful.com/podcast Contact: genuinelyuseful@gmail.com   Thanks for being here -Abe

Daniel Thorson is a resident at the Monastic Academy and host of the Emerge podcast. We explore: the end of liberal humanism as a political and personal philosophy; confronting pain and escaping entrapment in one’s feelings; how times of collapse open a space for new leaders to step forwards; the spiritual class structure (for instance, an elite with money, education, time and exposure to top teachers and traditions, a middle class practicing yoga and reading Eckhart Tolle and other spiritual bestsellers, and a lower class dabbling in astrology and crystals); how cultural decentralization and the ability to access information online creates the illusion that we can learn everything online, preventing access to (and even awareness of) wisdom that can only be imparted via human transmission; how contemporary culture conditions us to advertise our superiority, in the form of CVs, qualifications etc.; and the value of being in service to something higher than yourself. Support Technosocial at: https://www.patreon.com/technosocial Daniel can be found here https://twitter.com/dthorson And his excellent Emerge podcast here http://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast Find the Monastic Academy here https://www.monasticacademy.com/

Daniel Thorson is a resident at the Monastic Academy and host of the excellent Emerge podcast. In this, part one of our conversation, we discuss: the interconnectedness of systems change and personal growth, and how the minds we use to solve today’s problems are products of systems that are destroying themselves; the work of the Monastic Academy in creating awakened leaders; the importance of being able to hold multiple, sometimes contradictory perspectives within one’s worldview; Slavoj Zizek’s critique of Western Buddhism as the hegemonic ideology of late capitalism; how the pathologies of Western Buddhism show up in the contemporary spiritual scene; and heroism and the process of being in service to a grand narrative of how to improve the world. Support Technosocial at: https://www.patreon.com/technosocial Daniel can be found here https://twitter.com/dthorson And his excellent Emerge podcast here http://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast Find the Monastic Academy here https://www.monasticacademy.com/

This is an audio version of The Story of Collapse, Daniel Thorson & Josh Fields which was published on the Rebel Wisdom YouTube site on February 1st 2020.  Are we living at the best possible time to be alive, or is the world coming to an end? Or do both narratives have some truth at the same time? This is a discussion between Rebel Wisdom's David Fuller, Daniel Thorson from the Emerge podcast and Joshua Fields, the CEO of 'Consciousness Hacking' a San Francisco-based organisation aiming to harness techonology for personal and cultural transformation. Joshua and Daniel have delved deeply into the 'collapse' narrative in their work, and this conversation ranges from climate to Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and many other topics. Recent Rebel Wisdom interview with Joshua Fields: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zscgm... To get access to more exclusive content and to join this evolving conversation, become a Rebel Wisdom member: https://www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/plans We also have a Rebel Wisdom Discord discussion channel: https://discord.gg/RK4MeYW   

A soulful and exploratory dialogue about the philosophical undercurrents and participatory necessities of Self and civilisation in our modern world of change, with Daniel Thorson of Emerge and Tim Adalin. Read more / watch @ https://www.voiceclub.com/soul-surfing-emergence-with-daniel-thorson-of-emerge For a prescient articulation of key generator functions underpinning the transformations of our world, listen to the Emerge podcast episode with Daniel Schmachtenberger here: https://anchor.fm/emerge/episodes/Daniel-Schmachtenberger---Utopia-or-Bust-Designing-a-Non-Self-Terminating-Civilization-e4rdf8 Learn more about the Monastic Academy Daniel practices at here: https://www.monasticacademy.com/ Support Voiceclub on Patreon for early access to content @ https://www.patreon.com/voiceclub

I sit down with @dthorson and we talk about where civilization is headed and how we can help support it. You will like this episode if you are into civilization design, intentional living, how to be a human, and much more.

In episode 7 of Mutations podcast, I am joined by paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield. Michael is an artist, podcast host (Future Fossils), musician, painter, philosopher--am I missing anything? Like me, Michael wears many hats. We recorded a back-to-back episode. This is part one. You can find part two on Future Fossils. Michael and I offer philosophical and existential reflections on the “Deep Adaptation” movement, popularized by Jem Bendell’s recent climate report paper, and Daniel Thorson’s Emerge podcast interview, by considering what we can learn from evolutionary and cultural catastrophes throughout history. While we don’t arrive at easy answers, I sense that there is a way of thinking and relating that is emerging in the age of the Anthropocene, as Sean Kelly writes, “beyond hope and despair.” This way of thinking and being leaves open the possibility of a hyper-illuminated dark age... as a way of seeing, like the owl-eyed Athena, into the dark places. LINKS: Michael Garfield on Twitter Santa Fe Institute Michael’s Homepage The Lindisfarne Tapes Sean Kelly, Living in End Times: Beyond Hope and Despair (Revelore Press) MUSIC: Artist: Billy Mays III / Infinite Third. Album: Channel(s) Tracks: "Vision(s)" for intro/outro, "In(to)" for intermezzo PATREON: Join the Mutations Patreon community here for access to our Discord channel, Zoom salon calls, early podcasts and featured writing content. ARTWORK: Featured art by Archan Nair. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mutations/message

"Climate change", as a term, no longer captures the real danger that climate scientists say that we as a species, along with our fellow creatures, face today. Already the impacts of climate change have turned into a genuine ecological crisis. A growing group of people are asking out loud, if the recent string of dire government-backed climate reports are too conservative to accurately describe the real dangers ahead of us. What if, in fact, we are on the fast track toward both an ecological & civilizational collapse, and it's already too late? What would it mean to practice dharma in "the spectre of collapse?"Vince Horn is joined in this episode by a former team member of Buddhist Geeks, current monastic resident at the Monastic Academy, and host of the Emerge podcast, Daniel Thorson to discuss the dharma of collapse.Memorable Quotes:“It’s collapsing into certainty, in any case, that’s the real danger here, because then we foreclose on all kinds of possibilities and opportunities that we won’t see because we think we know what’s going on.” - Daniel Thorson“If it’s true, everything needs to change. And if we can be uncertain about it then we can play with how things might change, in order so that it doesn’t have the worst impacts we fear it might.” - Daniel Thorson“I wonder to what degree the spectre of collapse will be a kind of strange attractor that will pull people out of this deconstructive habit, into realizing that we need to make something that works, for the sake of our lives, for our children’s lives, for the sake of life on earth.” - Daniel Thorson“The world is ending, but at least I can breathe through it.” - Vince Horn“There are a lot of people and communities who are trying to retreat instead of retrieve.” - Vince HornEpisodes Links:

Today my guest is Tasshin Fogleman.I found Tasshin on Twitter (which continues to prove itself a goldmine for interesting, open-hearted podcast guests). I was following an inquiry around Monastic practice. I trained at Dai Bosatsu Zendo for a summer in 2017 but wanted to find an organization that felt more integrated with the modern world. I stumbled across The Monastic Academy based in Lowell, VT and started discovering exciting voices coming from this rural VT community (see Daniel Thorson’s Emerge podcast).Tasshin is the Assistant Director at The Monastic Academy. I connected with him to discuss his path, how he discovered The Monastic Academy, and what is it they’re doing. How is monastic training relevant to the modern person? Should training be somehow different because it’s 2019 and shit is uniquely crazy? Tasshin and I explore toxic individualism, healthy ego development/practice, and how The Monastic Academy aims to address the current cultural crisis.In 2018, Tasshin took bodhisattva vows with Shinzen Young and Soryu Forall, and received the name Tasshin, 達真. 達 means to “reach,” “arrive at,” “achieve,” or “touch.” 真 means “truth” or “authenticity.” Most people pronounce this with the Americanized pronunciation, which sounds like the English words “toss shin.”Show Notes:Follow Tasshin (@tasshinfogleman) on TwitterSee what The Monastic Academy is up to.Read Miles Bukiet’s paper “Monasteries of the Future”

Peter explores with monastic Daniel Thorson. https://twitter.com/dthorson http://www.emerge.is https://www.monasticacademy.com

Audio from the event Psychedelics, Extinction and Social Change with Stephen Reid and Gail Bradbrook (co-founder of Extinction Rebellion) at Conway Hall on Tuesday 15th January 2019. Video with slides at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7jttWq4WjY Mentions The Psychedelic Society, Extinction Rebellion, Charles Eisenstein, Alan Watts, Rupert Sheldrake, Metamoderna/Hanzi Freinacht, Frederic Laloux / Reinventing Organizations, Noyanete/Jakon Rate, UK Uncut, New Economics Foundation, Green Party of England and Wales, The Labour Party, 350.org, 38 Degrees, Greenpeace UK, Shambala Festival and Nowhere. Recent inspiration from Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall, Bonnitta Roy, Nora Bateson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jamie Wheal, Max Borders, Daniel Thorson, Richard Dennis Bartlett, Phoebe Tickell, David Luke, Robin Carhart-Harris, Enspiral, DAOstack, Emerge, Rebel Wisdom, Future Thinkers, Inner Truth, Alter Ego, The Future Is Beautiful, The On Being Project and For the Wild. OLD STORY → NEW STORY Geomechanical → Gaian Sustainable → Regenerative Linear → Nonlinear Complicated → Complex Rivalrous → Antirivalrous Fragile → Antifragile Materialist → Idealist/Animist Postmodern → Metamodern SLIDES https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1t07v3vftAElIcXXqBpiKeqQhwBr8-pqyf_EI5dA7CIk/edit?usp=sharing RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING http://stephenreid.net/recommended GET CONNECTED The Psychedelic Society Website: http://psychedelicsociety.org.uk/ Email signup: http://psychedelicsociety.org.uk/sign_up Become a Member: http://psychedelicsociety.org.uk/become-a-member Facebook page: https://facebook.com/psychedelicsuk Facebook groups: Extinction Rebellion @ The Psychedelic Society https://www.facebook.com/groups/347835902441253/ The Psychedelic Society's Homerton space https://www.facebook.com/groups/487893758345691/ The Psychedelic Society discussion group https://www.facebook.com/groups/psychedelicsuk/ Extinction Rebellion (XR) Website/email signup: https://rebellion.earth/ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ExtinctionRebellion/ XR Volunteers Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/228044261159153/ Stephen Reid Website/email signup: http://stephenreid.net Facebook: https://facebook.com/stephenreid321

Daniel’s podcast EMERGE is an inquiry into the emerging paradigms shaping the next phase of the human experiment. We have a great conversation about conversations and the nature of recording them for public release, soulcrafting, metamodernism, adapting to the idea of climate change, and what it’s like deciding to move to a monastery. Subscribe for new podcast episode Email Notifications HERE   ---> If you enjoy this podcast, tap on over to Apple Podcasts and kindly leave me a rating, write a review, and subscribe! Thank you so much!   See Episode Artwork https://genuinelyuseful.com/podcast-ep17-daniel-thorson   --------------   Genuinely Useful podcast is sponsored by Magical Egypt (go to to this podcast’s Episode 13 with Chance Gardner, released Nov 8, 2018)   You can Save 15% on Magical Egypt with Coupon Code "genuse" Own Both Magical Egypt Series 1 and 2   You can also support the podcast by visiting Bandcamp to listen and/or buy the featured original music This episode's featured song - “We Always Make a Difference” https://abeslogic.bandcamp.com/track/we-always-make-a-difference ---> Hear All of the Podcast's Featured Music HERE -------------- Contact Abe: genuinelyuseful@gmail.com   You can also support the podcast by visiting Bandcamp to listen and/or buy the music This episode’s Featured Original Music by Abe Vandenberg - “We Always Make A Difference”   --------------   A podcast episode of Emerge: Making Sense of What's Next - with guest “Rob Burbea - A Spiritual Paradigm for The Infinite Game”t   READ: An Invitation to Emerge by Daniel Thorson Dharma Ocean - Dharma Ocean is a non-monastic, householder based lineage, a community of householder yogins and yoginis, who prioritize the practice of Somatic Meditation in their lives. The Monastic Academy is a full-time residential program designed to create wise, powerful, and loving leaders who are an unstoppable force for social and environmental peace on Earth. Metamodernism - Notes on Metamodernism aims to bring together scholars and critics from across the world and from a great variety of disciplines. Most of our contributors are academics, but we also publish the writing of critics, curators, artists and students. Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy The approach of the paper is to analyse recent studies on climate change and its implications for our ecosystems, economies and societies, as provided by academic journals and publications direct from research institutes   ========+++========   HELP SPREAD THE WORD!   I’d love it if you could please share Genuinely Useful podcast on twitter and facebook:   https://twitter.com/genuinelyuseful   https://www.facebook.com/genuinelyuseful   If you enjoy this podcast, tap on over to Apple Podcasts and kindly leave me a rating, write a review, and subscribe! Thank you so much!   Ways to Subscribe to Genuinely Useful podcast (automatically download new episodes):   Click here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts [iOS]   Click here to subscribe via Overcast [iOS]   Click here to subscribe via Spotify [iOS and Android]   Click here to subscribe via Stitcher [iOS and Android]   Click here to subscribe via Google Podcasts [Android]   Genuinely Useful Podcast Home Page https://genuinelyuseful.com/podcast

Emerge: https://anchor.fm/emerge Stephen Reid: http://stephenreid.net/ Alter Ego: https://www.facebook.com/AlterEgoNetwork/

Emerge: http://emerge.is/ & https://anchor.fm/emerge My personal site: http://stephenreid.net Follow me on Facebook: facebook.com/stephenreid321