Because it couldn't possibly be more clear that existing political systems are committed to behaviors that will cause our extinction, one has to ask: can we just sabotage the fossil fuel economy out of existence? In this episode, we assess three answers to that question, and the underlying psychologies that produce them. One, the fossil fuel industry's, or in any case their proxies in the field of security studies. Two, the mainstream climate movement's, albeit a unique faction of it, represente...
Dec 27, 2021•1 hr 29 min
In this episode, we conclude our broad sweep of human history, venturing fearlessly into the truly tangled wilderness of variables mediating the relationship between technology and hierarchy. We critique Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything as a frame for our journey, examining the relationship between civilization, domestication, and human evolution; the cross-species relationship between social form and costly infrastructure; the trend toward technological mass society in early human e...
Dec 20, 2021•3 hr 6 min
Just for fun and for absolutely no other reason whatsoever, a very high, very post-surgical Arnold relates a youthful tale of desert, night and madness: A tale which will do nothing whatsoever to describe how acorn woodpeckers provide insights into the relationship between hierarchy and technology, or how population density affects strategies of evasion, or anything else he thought his next episode was going to be about.
Nov 30, 2021•42 min
Assuming a continuous legacy of political struggle from the earliest stages of human evolution to conflicts over power today, we speculate about the politics of societies in the distant past. We discuss the relationship between risky human migrations and political perception, ancient cities without states and states without cities, confrontation and evasion as two strategies against hierarchy, the monumental architecture of hunter-gatherers, the relationship between abundance and hierarchy from ...
Nov 10, 2021•2 hr 18 min
In this episode, we examine not how biology pervades politics, but how politics pervades biology: how the course of evolution has been shaped by millions of years of what can only be described as political struggle. We examine two types of ethnogenesis in human ancestors and other primates, fissioning events and internal changes in social structure, and how the formation of new cultures is sometimes equivalent to what we call in the modern world political revolution. Along the way, we see the ev...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr 54 min
When we speak of revolution, aren't we are ultimately speaking of the creation of a different culture? And if so, how plausible or meaningful is it to imagine deliberately crafting a culture? In this episode, we begin to examine the long history of cultures on the margins of civilization as political projects, which are often misconstrued by states (and their ethnographers) as archaic remnants rather than deliberate efforts at state evasion. While this history will ultimately take us through mil...
Aug 07, 2021•56 min
But seriously: is there any point to doing anything at all? Or is the world truly just going to end so soon we really might as well just kind of reach for whatever or whoever kills the pain and stop paying attention? In this episode, we examine what it means to come to terms with the crossing of climate tipping points, the dreamlike nature of the way the news babbles about collapse, the landscape of variation in ecological perceptions, and taking control of the world's infrastructure to begin th...
Jul 30, 2021•1 hr 7 min
We examine the hopelessly subjective and highly contentious (one could perhaps say psychotic ) process by which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , the so-called bible of psychiatric disorders, has been constructed. Relying heavily on Gary Greenberg's The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry, we also discuss the consequences the DSM has both for individuals who accept its narratives about the nature of their suffering and for the prospects for social transf...
Jul 16, 2021•1 hr 57 min
As we emerge from quarantine and reveal to one another our many wounds, Arnold describes a recent, months-long period of psychological rupture as a narrative frame for an inquiry into the relationship between addiction, madness, despair and revolutionary social possibility. In this episode we examine the dubious origins of 12-steps programs like Alcoholics Anonymous in hallucinatory christianity, the neuroscience of addiction, and the relationship between addiction and pain. We also explore the ...
Jul 07, 2021•1 hr 4 min
In this episode, Arnold asks Joshua a series of truly fundamental questions to which no one has decisive answers: questions about whether large-scale shifts in how we conceptualize our suffering are possible, and whether and to what extent this would inform possibilities for a less destructive society. We discuss the role of narcissism in creating coercive political systems, trauma and psychological distress in traditional societies, the mythical dimensions of both individual and collective heal...
Jun 27, 2021•1 hr 22 min
We continue our examination of the revolutionary period of 2032-3, relying heavily on the psychographic researcher Sarah Kessler's book The Internet Is a Map of the Human Mind: On Technology and Psychological Diversity to examine the internet subculture of simulants, who believe (or claim to believe) that the universe is a simulation. We see how in a politics of undifferentiated appeals, simulants would be unreachable, but how the revolutionary coalition targeted messages to subcultures with rad...
Apr 21, 2021•3 min
We continue the examination of the post-materialist shift, and the emergence of increasingly niche subcultures, that we began in The World Is a Lot Like the Internet . In this episode, we examine its implications for projects of political transformation. Relying heavily on Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community , we examine how traditional organizing strategies assume a level of social cohesion that has largely vanished, based as they are on mobilizing peop...
Apr 07, 2021•2 hr 2 min
In this episode, a 72-year-old Arnold reflects on how our species and the global ecosystem managed to survive to 2050. We discuss the Interstate 5 Security and Commerce Zone, and the revolutionary events of 2032-3 that brought down the I-5 wall. We examine the Scientific Militant's efforts to take control of industrial infrastructure to sequester CO2, and the distinctly psychographic approach they took to revolution. And we examine the formation of Green Spear Security Services, which militarily...
Mar 24, 2021•4 min
In this episode, we take a rollicking journey through the minds of narcissists, the emergence of states, and the seemingly intrinsic relationship between authoritarianism and insane belief systems. We explore how individual personality variation affects group dynamics, and in particular, how a certain type of person is to be found in all times and places who wants to be in charge. Relying heavily on Boem's Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior , we examine the notion tha...
Mar 06, 2021•2 hr 51 min
In this episode, we examine the way the internet is changing us through the lens of evolved group psychology. We follow the trajectory of increasing social differentiation that technology facilitates, and see how Ronald Inglehart's The Silent Revolution predicted events like the Jan. 6 capitol riots in the 1970s. We explore the tendency toward niche self-expression that emerges from post-WWII material abundance, and how the right-wing is finally having its 1960s.
Feb 12, 2021•1 hr 18 min
In our last discussion, Joshua described cross-species uniformities in responses to traumatic experiences, and how he works to help people access their evolved capacities for recovery. In this episode, we discuss why our society sees such escalating levels of psychological distress and the utter discontinuity between innate human needs and the structure of the modern world. We discuss our species-typical developmental trajectory (as characterized by the hunter-gatherer childhood model), the psyc...
Feb 06, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Unlock the entire episode at https://www.patreon.com/biologicalsingularity The year is 2050, and I have been making this podcast for 30 years. In this episode, I continue with the themes first developed in the Biology of the Right-Left Divide, using the revolutions of the mid-2030s to illustrate how social conditions amplify innate differences. We focus on two ways the social-technological trajectory is changing us: specialization (i.e. the development of hyper-competence in some domains at the ...
Jan 31, 2021•4 min
We use religious cults as an example of extreme group psychology to make generalizations about the group dynamics that determine sociopolitical possibility. We investigate the relationship between ingroup cohesion and outgroup animosity, the oxytocin-laden war rituals of chimpanzees, the unique human developmental biology associated with social cognition, and the general neurobiology of the repetitive group dynamics we encounter.
Jan 20, 2021•1 hr 28 min
Joshua Sylvae practices and teaches Somatic Experiencing, an approach to trauma recovery based on a cross-species understanding of behavior and its evolutionary foundations. Proceeding from the observation that many species routinely encounter mortal peril without long-term traumatization, SE facilitates the innate recovery processes that our culture of restraint impedes, placing an emphasis on the embodied aspects of the trauma response. In this episode, Joshua describes the SE paradigm and hel...
Jan 07, 2021•1 hr 5 min
We continue to describe extreme aspects of group psychology, delving into phenomena like death from social exclusion. We examine cross-species similarities in the drive for sociality for its own sake, discuss how certain varieties of evolutionary theory cannot account for the behaviors we observe, and how they also contribute to a culture war regarding evolutionary explanations. We look at results from experiments in group psychology, describe the notion of supernormal stimulus, and propose an e...
Dec 27, 2020•1 hr 30 min
How scientific is science? In this episode, we further the argument that "science communication" about the ecological crisis is based on an unscientific understanding of what motivates people. Having described some of the innate components of an ecological worldview in the last episode, in this one we look at the raw empirical reality of public perceptions of climate change, the incessant liberal freakout about declining rationality, and more. On the fictional front, we imagine a scientific uphe...
Dec 06, 2020•1 hr 17 min
Here, we try out a somewhat dreamlike new format. We will describe a problem in terms of the present day, but we will also describe the resolution of that problem from the perspective of this same podcast 30 years in the future. For the present day portion, Arnold tells his friend Evan about the failure of science communication as a strategy for saving the world, and the rich psychometric landscape that relates to ecological perspectives. In the future portion, we begin the story of Ghada Sabbag...
Nov 29, 2020•1 hr 3 min
We begin a series on evolved psychological mechanisms for group participation, evaluating the wild variation in behavior and belief that groups exhibit. We'll start with dancing epidemics, divine madness, possession states, culture bound syndromes, and a host of other particularly idiosyncratic forms of social contagion. We'll discuss the (unnecessary) tension between 'cultural' and 'psychological' explanations in academia, and how a more useful frame is simply the ability of groups to cohere ar...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 26 min
In these difficult times, it is important to remember that no matter what we do, it should be entirely based on what the Very Powerful Magi wrote on the Ancient Scroll that they entrusted to the Nine Elders.
Nov 03, 2020•11 min
Movements for climate and ecological survival have largely eschewed talk of taking CO2 out of the sky. For good reason. We don't know if it will work and it shifts the focus away from ceasing the damage. However, if we have already crossed climate tipping points, it's probably a good idea to begin looking at our options: the uncertain, the dubious, and the overtly evil. Here, we examine emerging GHG removal potentials, the underlying worldviews that allow and prohibit different sectors of societ...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr 57 min
Start by reading climate plans, then write your own. Get a zoning map, change it in Photoshop, and release it to the media. Blockade something. Establish parallel institutions. In this episode, we will use an oil train blockade in Portland, OR to illustrate some principles of fighting for ecological survival which can be applied in diverse contexts.
Oct 21, 2020•42 min
Elephants are changing. The various traumas of extermination—witnessing the deaths of their companions, developing in atypical social structures—are making elephants more aggressive. In this episode, we discuss the relationship between resilience and adverse experience, the developmental plasticity of thresholds for aggression, and the notion of an envelope of stress tolerance. Faced with a panoply of intensifying, existential threats, we ask where and when people will find the rage that elephan...
Oct 05, 2020•1 hr 53 min
"Climate denial" has the specific connotation of outright denial such a thing exists, but what about all the other forms of denial? The human mind has a general tendency not to come to terms with overwhelming input. The institutional and grassroots political responses to climate change, in most cases, are also forms of climate denial. Here, we examine the psychology of confronting unbearable truths, searching for cultural systems that can allow us to face our fears and thus affect outcomes. This...
Sep 27, 2020•34 min
Academic constructs, valid or otherwise, tend to diffuse into our culture at large. How has this impacted social and political conflict? Quite a lot, and mostly badly. In this episode, we look at climate activism, movements against police violence, and the book White Fragility to illustrate the huge range of contentious issues which are still burdened by the legacy of 20th century social sciences and the opposition to human nature. We see how even though scientific debates about human nature hav...
Sep 18, 2020•1 hr 50 min
In this episode, we trace the journey of 20th century social sciences through innumerable versions of the nature vs. nurture debate, talk about how the denial of human nature led scientists to torture baby monkeys, and do a blow-by-blow analysis of Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault's famous 1971 dialogue on human nature, describing how the reasoning Foucault employs is the precursor to many of the frustrating and ineffective aspects of contemporary political movements.
Aug 27, 2020•1 hr 45 min
