The perks of post-modernity

What this episode covers

Green Halloween is for adults, too I start the podcast by observing that in post-modern (green altitude) subcultures like Boulder, Halloween is as much a holiday for adults as it is for kids. I tell of walking downtown where I saw a woman in an oversized witch’s hat walking a black pug that was wearing a set of shiny black bat wings. At first glance there was no sense that this was a dog in a costume; he looked like a little fat flying creature. People on the sidewalk were laughing, pointing and joking with the woman and each other. It was great street life. This experience is indicative of what happens as we move into green, postmodern consciousness: as adults we want to express ourselves and be seen in our own mature uniqueness. We want to be able to be a little bit bad. We want to turn towards our shadow material (the parts of ourselves we can’t see and don’t know) and explore it in a way that is safe and fruitful. Halloween is a great excuse to do all of this publicly. As evolutionaries it’s also interesting to remember that in humanity’s earlier stages of development (all stages prior to modernity) evil spirits are real. This is true for individuals as well as for cultures at large. I have a friend who grew up in Thailand and lived as an adult for many years in the U.S. She tells me that when she goes back to Thailand she always closes the curtains at night because she was raised to believe that evil spirits look in at you from outside. She’s surprised at how real this feeling is when she is in Thailand, but when she’s in the West she’s a perfectly modern woman and it doesn’t make any difference. One of the projects of modernity is to wring magic (seen as superstition) out of the system. One of the projects of integral consciousness is to re-enchant our lives by consciously reintegrating the magical stages of our own development. We get back in touch with our own magical childhood. We feel into the spirit-filled world of our early ancestors. As we begin to perceive that Spirit — even spirits — by whatever name are still here, we can relate to them in a way that does not poo-poo or deny them just because they are invisible to science (much of reality is), but we also relate to them in a way that is not limited or gripped by them. So, yes…in the sacred world to come adults dress up for Halloween! Ebola Jumps the shark The second leading story is about one of the nurses who was infected with Ebola in the Dallas hospital by the man who arrived there from Liberia. On Monday she was certified as cured and released from the hospital. In other words, people, it’s been a slow news week. Both of these stories have been dutifully hyped by the media. In fact, Fox News ran the second story with the headline: Dallas Nurse Infected with Ebola Discharged from Hospital, which misrepresents the actual point of the story — she is no longer infected! — by 180 degrees. Of course, the headline serves both Fox’s modernist corporate agenda, which is to keep viewers emotionally hooked and tuned in for advertisers, and also its traditionalist conservative agenda, which is to create a general sense of national chaos and incompetence that benefits the out-of-power party. But the hysteria is not just the right side of the political spectrum; Bill Maher is also wailing from the left, though at a different target. Visibly upset on his show Real Time, he said, “I’m not panicked. I’m pissed at the morons at the hospital in Dallas. In Texas, they hate regulation. They love their freedom, so they couldn’t be bothered to notice that this guy had Ebola.” Even Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, normally a pretty centrist, occasionally integral guy, was all worked up. He delivered a lengthy screed about how Americans are scared and disappointed, how they’ve been let down by the Center for Disease Control and all the experts in charge,

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