cultural studies

AMA with Adrian Grenier. Wednesday 2/4 at 7:00 PM CT

Entourage star who at the top of the Hollywood game pivoted to an integral spiritual path and farmstead

Incorruptible Organizations AMA with Eric Ries. Wednesday 2/4 at 3:00 PM CT

Lean Startup author who now focuses on legal structures to protect mission-driven organizations from corruption. incorruptible.co

Free book giveaway! Register here.

AMA with Ali Beiner. Wednesday 2/4 at 11:00 AM CT

Kainos host Alexander Beiner exploring cultural sensemaking around psychedelics, popular culture, philosophy, psychology, alternative economics, and spirituality.

Community Builder . I am a community builder, I have 20k followers across social media - which is small but my community is highly engaged, I follow back any other creators making meaningful content as well as marginalized folks who need my support!

I think the best way to build community is to be authentic and vulnerable, it's what drew me to this app. 

What do you all think? 

Looking for DIY ppl. I am disabled. I have a million hobbies. I love to learn. especially food and culture. I distract myself with useless knowledge. I graduated nursing school. overly obsessed germaphobe. Want to talk let's talk. Be kind be blessed.

Hey Gang. Hey there! I am a children's book author, part time travel agent and sports nut. Hope everybody's hanging in there. 

is "The Body Keeps the Score" misleading, or even flat out disproven? I think this is an extremely important topic. So many people's ideas about trauma rest on the writings of Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score author)—but what if they just don't hold up to scrutiny, and the "science" they reference doesn't exist or is misinterpretted? This substack article is provacative, but I like it because it's someone who might be coded "left" or "hippie" by a bunch of other beliefs.. Admittedly, I skimmed, and I got recommended it because i have my own views about the trauma mindset's shadows, but would be super curious people's thoughts.

here are some juicy tidbits:

 much of this science is uncertain at best, and in some cases was discredited decades ago. 

polyvagal theory, which van der Kolk heavily references, has been disproven. Paul Grossman, from Universitätsspital Basel in Switzerland, writes in this paper that the basic premises of polyvagal theory “have been shown to be either untenable or highly implausible based on the available scientific literature.”

I wish we talked more about the legions of people walking around who have trauma histories who have managed to lead healthy, happy lives. In my first few years as a therapist, I noticed that contrary to the trauma narratives we see reflected in pop culture, people who have traumatic experiences are often not irrevocably damaged by it, but instead use internal and external resources to overcome it. They form healthy relationships, have meaningful careers, and raise loving families. These trauma survivors are not unicorns.

and

 Part two debunked Peter Levine’s claims that trauma is stored in your body and needs to be released. 

"Levine makes claims that are not supported by research and makes promises he cannot keep. He has contributed to fears that everyone has the residue of trauma lurking in their bodies by broadening the definition of trauma until it applies to any stressful experience. By exaggerating the degree to which traumatic memories are repressed, Levine (along with van der Kolk) has promoted the widespread fear that hidden trauma is causing somatic symptoms, even for those who have no memories of unpleasant experiences.

Ancestral trauma/patterns is real? bullshit? I've been working with a healer the past year that holds a more ancestral trauma frame being transmitted down the line. To believe such a thing, you kinda have to believe there's either (A) a non-material way of transmitting such trauma across generations or (B) we simply don't have the physical causation yet.

We do have the epigenetics research that shows descendants of people from poverty or famine have an effect even if their own upbringing didn't feature it at all.

On another hand, whatever is true subjectively is well true subjectively. 

Is it simply an interpretation of our inner experience or could there be explanatory power?

Economic Class is the biggest discrimination factor today? Back in my 20s, I used to read Paul Graham and bought into the whole entrepreneur is a magical wizard that takes disproportionate risks and deserves all the wealth and equity they receive.  But, that assumed a good social safety net and level playing field. That's obviously not what's happening today, and trending more in the negative direction.

Been listening to Scott Galloway in the past year and appreciate he's mainstreaming some ideas that aren't very popular. He had a viral video on how we're robbing the young (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E)

Two of his main ideas:
1) Older generations are stealing the wealth of younger generations
2) Young men are struggling heavily 

But, his proposed solution is uplifting all young people economically and socially. 

Tax income lower than capital gains. Sweat work ought to be incentivized over wealth generating more wealth. Make education affordable/free. Establish mandatory service projects for young people similar to Israel.

We fought a cold war between capitalism and communism for decades and we entered a blind faith that all things capitalist are morally good. And we create in-fighting by focusing on identity politics or waging foreign wars or scapegoating immigrants. But, the real problem is economic.

There's more racial diversity on campus but the disparity in economic class is even higher.

We just added more categories of people who are allowed to join the wealthy without actually fixing the system.

I should note that Scott himself is a huge capitalist. He just wants a more level playing field so that everyone has the chance to become wealthy as he did. He enjoyed highly subsidized public education. He is not a communist by any means.

What is Relateful - it's not JUST being vulnerable> right? . What is Relateful? 

This is something i think about almost all day long. Ok that's extreme over stating, but it's a big part of my life.  It's not what is it, but more like, HOW DO I EXPLAIN IT?

What is it though.  So for me, it's been a life changing practice.  For me, after trying what felt like every healing modality in the universe (obviously impossible task), circling 2018 on circle anywhere was the tool that truly created the - changes.  

What's most alive for me at the moment, is the memories of the people who tried circling/relateful and did not like it.  WHAT no, some people don't like it? That can't be (wish i could change font color for my sarcasm). 

These imprinted memories of witnessing sessions where a person seemed to have a need and that need wasn't met.  For instance, someone (person A) reaches out to another participant (person B) with some love and care - the receiver (B) - goes into their system truth at the moment - and communicates - they cannot receive and or reciprocate this love and care.  The person A offering their care becomes upset obviously trigger.  The "giver" person A, is not able to see that they weren't actually giving love/care, but asking for love care.  Maybe this is a big assumption on my part - but if we give someone a compliment or reach out for connection and we are not received the way we wanted to be received... then it's not giving - it's almost demanding, or cloaked need. 

This person A was (probably still is) a therapist in the real world.  We connected outside of the platform and listened to their side and how upsetting this experience was for them. That person then made claims that this practice isn't safe.  Person A did not continue.  Person B  is someone i trust and wasn't at the time, but is now a Relateful facilitator.  Stating this, i want to side with participant B doing this practice, being themselves, expressing in a way, their inability to allow love in, who was not available for a connection, but was available for being with that inability to connect. That is how i witnessed it.  It felt to me like a beautiful experience, but it's hard for person A to be with how it feels to reach out and not be received. 

I'm guessing (assuming) you have all witnessed this in a session in some way.  Then there are rumors from these types that Relateful is - not just an unsafe practice, but they seem to claim it's harmful or damaging. 

The example given was the most obvious in my witnessing. The therapist unaware of what this practice and the seasoned practitioner doing the practice - with their most truth in the moment, can't receive their love and care.  There was not an attack of any kind, the receiver was in my opinion doing a beautiful practice with attunement and didn't speak until prodded to respond and when doing, did their best to be kind in their moment of not wanting to love bomb out of a social norm. 

Not saying we can't get better at attuning. Not saying it was a perfect example.  

What i'm wondering is if there is a way to explain this practice in advance- where they are prepared???   Like how powerful and life changing this could have been for the therapist and my actress friend and many others.

This sweet well mannered soft actress friend of mine practiced for a few months and felt similar in times... she said "i was being my most vulnerable and it's harmful for me to continue this practice".  This friend of mine - 5 years ago - i felt responsible, that i some how oversold the practice as a place to be your most authentic self.  She internalized it - "a safe place to be vulnerable".    But i never said that, even back then, i would describe this practice as a "safe place to practice being with unsafe".   

Now very recently with a human who will remain nameless... heard similar things:
paraphrasing:

"i was being my most vulnerable self..." 

This invisible rule, if someone is being vulnerable, then the whole group has to be gentle and say "awe" or something like that.  

Or that if one is being vulnerable, the group needs to navigate as to not cause any harm to that person.  It's so sublte and submersive comes to mind, but they participant is UNAWARE that there vulnerability is cloaked in need and manipulation.  

How to communicate what this practice is???!!!

On the plethora of Therapeutic modalities.

There's a genre of book that's the therapy modality book. They're all the same. They go

I was a therapist and what I was doing wasn't working, and then I discovered <specific technique the book is advocating> and then it cured me and all my clients and now things are great and we just need to teach everybody this technique.

So many therapy books are like this. Focussing, the IFS book, the EFT book, to name a few. The various ACT books. Waking the Tiger.

And the specific technique is different from book to book. Radically different. And even contradictory.

So what's going on here? Apart from probably there's some book somewhere about how to write a therapy book, or some ghostwriter that's cranking these out?

If we take these stories as more or less true, how do we make sense of these seeming contradictions?

This is not a rhetorical question! I'm going to give you my best guess below, but please take a moment to think of your answer, and ideally post it in the comments for everyone to see. I am very much interested in other answers here.

Ok, my best guess (at least, the guess that I find most interesting):

What works is having a therapist who believes they are helping. It's like the placebo effect. If the doctor handing you a sugar pill is like "Yeah, idk, people told me this is helpful. lmk what you think", my guess is, you're not going to get much placebo effect out of that pill (actually they've done research and you do still get some but not as much iirc).

So when the therapist is out of school, they're doing what they were told works, but for a certain kind of mind, that doesn't give them confidence. So then they have to go on a big heroes journey, and come back with some technique, some approach, that for whatever reason they believe in.

Now they're back, and they believe it works, and low and behold, it does!

It's like Dumbo's magic feather.

"some technique, some approach, that for whatever reason they believe in."

So why do they believe in the technique they chose? Because they love to do it. Because, when they're doing it, they feel most like themselves, and they feel most connected with the person they're working with. Or they feel most connected with what they consider important, about a mind, about a heart, about a life.

And maybe this gives it some extra sauce too. Maybe this love of themselves, this intrinsic interest, radiates out, and reminds their clients that they too can love themselves, love life, be enthusiastic, and intrinsically interested.

Or maybe that last part is just what I have come to believe works ;)

Grief work is essential to the adult psyche. I just finished a three day weekend grief ceremony and been practicing grief as a thing this past year.

Obviously there's the failure case where you can get stuck in a loop around your trauma and grief. But, the opposite failure case also exists that most people are repressing their feelings and thereby getting stuck in their head. I'd argue a lot of the transhumanist folks are in this camp.

But an actual ceremony where everyone is supported, witnessed, and held in their grief and rage is a beautiful thing. In my experience, there's a certain half-life to each wave of grief and coming out of it, I'm more capable of taking in joy and being resourced. To the extent, a person can actually inhabit great grief seems to be correlated strongly to how much they can inhabit great joy and power with integrity. There isn't so much of a shadow of the psyche being terrified of meeting pains it cannot deal with and subtly using power to avoid them or fill them.

Seems like a huge missing piece in culture between all the yoga, fitness, authentic relating, and what not. To actually turn towards the broken places and let the body grieve. Many of the times, the grief isn't even about a lost loved one but just grieving the Earth, grieving old disappointments, grieving the suffering of loved ones, grieving ancient wounds that might not even be mine.

when are masculine / feminine frames useful, and when not?  Language can bring us into more intimacy with reality, or separate us. It can help guide us, or obfuscate. How do we use "masculine" and "feminine" to be more intimate with the real (present), more honest, and more loving?

The 'masculine' and 'feminine' meaning-making about relationships annoys me often. Not so much when either is used by itself. These archetypes are powerful frames, better navigated in the light of consciousness. Both exist in me, along with a lot of other things.

I get the importance of biology too—"male and female" is what, like 2 billion years old? That's a lot of accumulated lineage karma in our DNA.

When it bugs me, it's not because its wrong or particularly fake—almost every parent that's not ideologically committed to a preconceived notion of gender notices some standard differences amongst young boys and young girls. Jack is so sensitive, but he also loves to pick up sticks and hit things. Ciça is so tough, but she also loves dolls and stuffed animals and her baby cousin Sanne. Jack doesn't really care about any of that stuff—Sanne is boring. Ciça lights up.

But I wonder if the heart of it is that I'm just scared of reifying black and white thinking. This kind of thinking seems to make people celebratory of killing or subjecting whoever the other tribe is. I can see that this frame—

• is often used to oversimplify
• often presents a false sense of control over a wildly chaotic world
• the categories are usually not clear, and often insulting, usually to the incredible women I know (like women are somehow less "rational" bc they're more "emotional"? This does not reflect the brilliant women and men I know, and literally all of the trans people I know are geniuses. Similar with intellectual/embodied, independence/connection, competition/harmony, etc)
• often pluralizes values instead of evaluating better and worse versions of any given polarity, or being willing to claim one side as being overall better. There is healthier and more toxic versions of chaos and order, for example.

I'm noticing the frame annoys me often as "masculine and feminine" in relationship, not so much when either is used by itself. That's interesting.

I realized after writing this another thing that bugs me is when they're taken too seriously. This isn't physics, and even then construct-awareness reveals reality entangled with the choice of how you look—I dont even mean quantum physics, I mean as literal as "what are you seeing right now from your eyes?" Whether it's light, or a screen, or atoms, or quarks, all depend on scale. Whether it's society, or the information age, or whatever, are all honest, accurate interpretations based on time, or purpose, or some other choice the subjective meaning-maker made in how to answer the question and engage/relate.

I guess I don't mind the frame so much as the assumption that it's somehow pre-existing rather than made and re-made. It is a well-worn groove, but ironically the self-help understanding of it is fairly new.

#masculinity 

Seeing ourselves and our culture in Charlie Kirk. When I first heard about the murder I didn't know how big of a lightning rod it was going to be. Then my friend Kageni challenged me to write about the Charlie Kirk event “from an integral perspective,”* and I’ve learned to listen to her challenges, even when I'm feeling scared or inadequate (like this one). (For those who don't have the context, I apologize).

Also, in writing about this human being as an object of our cultural fascination, I've necessarily moved past the well of human grief and empathy. Forgive my insensitivities, oversimplifications (mapping rather than territory-ing), many omissions, forgive if I strayed from my lane, and may we continuously reclaim our shadows to create a more loving world.

I. We are projecting so much onto Charlie Kirk that says more about us than the real tragedies. This is normal—to quote Valerie Daniel “You can't breathe without getting projected on.” But it keeps us from confronting the raw realities of grief, powerlessness, the horror and unpredictability of life, the darkness and violence in humanity. And the irony—cruel or helpful, depending on your view—is that whatever we’re unwilling to face in ourselves is destined to repeat itself.

So let’s reclaim these projections, for our personal peace, and to prevent future tragedies. All the negative and positive stuff we project onto Kirk, onto culture, onto whoever we deem the other. Eg: If I can’t stand the celebrations, I’m probably hiding from my own schadenfreude, likely hiding how deeply I’m ashamed of my desire for power and holding others accountable. Or I’m unwilling to be tender with myself when I think I'm a victim, leading to over-responsibility: exhausting for me and enabling to others.

Loving like this is fierce. I call it forgiveness. It demands the courage to challenge deep rooted beliefs we use to orient to the world, and stay present in the resistance.

II. There are at least three distinct conversations happening at once:

1. Murder is always a tragedy, including Kirk’s.

2. Kirk's complicated character. His views are taken out of context but even so were offensive and scary to many people.
   
   How do we stay present with that fear and offense? But also the way he inspired so many good things in people, including the kind of integrity and service in young men this his murderer lacked? How do we wrestle with views that appear to span the gamut from traditional christian conservative (amber) to modern defenses of free speech (orange) to post-conventional institutional critiques (green)?

3. Celebrations of his murder are vastly overrepresented online, but are part of a feedback loop that leads to more fracturing, which leads to individuals like Kirk’s killer making specific horrific unethical choices, which keeps the loop going.
   
   (Eg: his success was somewhat a reaction to the increasing cultural power of the radical left (operating from amber/ethnocentric structure despite progressive (Green) language), which is now getting amplified, which will amplify another conservative voice, which will lead to more assassinations).
   
   How can we re-align the system if we don't see we are it? Reclaiming our projections is a necessary first step if we’re highly triggered, because (a) systematically reconstructing our intersubjective meaning-making capacity demands intertribal coordination, and (b) it shows us where our actual power lies.

III. Reclaiming our projections through collective dream analysis (sociosomnia).

What if we see America’s reaction to him like a dream that we can interpret? Here’s one view: our culture is in a tizzy around free speech. We seem to both love it and be so terrified of it that we want to cancel and “kill” it. We’re trying to find orientation and values in the chaos of a post-truth world but we don’t yet know how to say “yes, all these points of view are valid (green) but some are more valuable, relevant, and true in this context than others (teal)."

#TTT
---
*The spirit of "from an integral perspective" in this context is making sense of competing claims to truth without demonizing anyone, but being willing to take a stand for goodness and values. To paraphrase integral grandpappa Ken Wilber, if we assume no one is smart enough to be 100% wrong, then how to we stitch together a coherent sense of what’s happening from all the partial truths and fragmented perspectives? In this particular post I’m relying a lot on adult developmental psychology, but the overall theory has a variety of other helpful meta-frames for understanding how seemingly totally different values relate.

Creative thinking vs winning an argument. Creative thinking needs to be taught and valued as highly as smart thinking, right thinking, and ethical thinking.  

I wonder if we've been trained - consciously and unconsciously - to converse in formats that can be intimidating and arguable ... inviting responses that are judging, which can then be judged back and forth:  smart or stupid, right or wrong, ethical or corrupt ... that binary thing we do.  I propose that this creates anxiety and intimidates creative brainstorming, mutually respectful musing, generous listening, genuine questioning, seeking connection and curious questions?  

I can be as guilty as the next person - fishing for affirmation by winning a point in conversation ...   

#DeepTakes

How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine

I just finished reading this blog post by Amanda Williams, a travel blogger of 15 years, on the impact of Google's "helpful content" algo changes and AI on her ability to financial sustain herself.

And man- I might sound dumb here, but I totally had not connected the dots re: how AI will absolutely destroy ad revenue for creators-- specifically creators that produce written content. 

Ad placement is driven by site visitors, and AI totally bypasses the need for a site visit. Instead, it harvests the information from blogs like Amanda's and puts it in a neat list along with the content of 10 other bloggers so a person trying to find the top sites to visit in Paris never needs to even visit the site. 

This is a problem in that, bloggers like Amanda have to switch strategies-- she now needs a new means of making money to continue producing trustworthy travel content. That might be creating a substack with individual subscribers, creating courses, etc. But her content likely won't be publicly available in the future, non-harvestable by AI... and that's a problem too in that AI's knowledge sources are going to get worse and worse. 

Also, I just can't imagine that the 1:1 subscriber model won't be a losing game for soooo many great writers/creators. It's very different to be a person creating content that people are willing to pay for month over month, especially in niche fields like travel, instead of being paid by relevant brands through ads. 

What do y'all think?

"You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”. Dennis Hightower, who at the time was head of Disney International.

He asked me why I wasn’t doing something, and I responded by explaining the pros and cons of two different ways of doing it. Thoughtfully, he replied “You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”

The best Founders avoid over-analyzing. At a startup, you don’t have time — and the result will most likely be marginal. Pick a way and do it. Be consistently decisive.

Seeing ourselves and our culture in Charlie Kirk. When I first heard about the murder I didn't know how big of a lightning rod it was going to be. Then my friend Kageni challenged me to write about the Charlie Kirk event “from an integral perspective,”* and I’ve learned to listen to her challenges, even when I'm feeling scared or inadequate (like this one). (For those who don't have the context, I apologize).

Also, in writing about this human being as an object of our cultural fascination, I've necessarily moved past the well of human grief and empathy. Forgive my insensitivities, oversimplifications (mapping rather than territory-ing), many omissions, forgive if I strayed from my lane, and may we continuously reclaim our shadows to create a more loving world.

I. We are projecting so much onto Charlie Kirk that says more about us than the real tragedies. This is normal—to quote Valerie Daniel “You can't breathe without getting projected on.” But it keeps us from confronting the raw realities of grief, powerlessness, the horror and unpredictability of life, the darkness and violence in humanity. And the irony—cruel or helpful, depending on your view—is that whatever we’re unwilling to face in ourselves is destined to repeat itself.

So let’s reclaim these projections, for our personal peace, and to prevent future tragedies. All the negative and positive stuff we project onto Kirk, onto culture, onto whoever we deem the other. Eg: If I can’t stand the celebrations, I’m probably hiding from my own schadenfreude, likely hiding how deeply I’m ashamed of my desire for power and holding others accountable. Or I’m unwilling to be tender with myself when I think I'm a victim, leading to over-responsibility: exhausting for me and enabling to others.

Loving like this is fierce. I call it forgiveness. It demands the courage to challenge deep rooted beliefs we use to orient to the world, and stay present in the resistance.

II. There are at least three distinct conversations happening at once:

1. Murder is always a tragedy, including Kirk’s.

2. Kirk's complicated character. His views are taken out of context but even so were offensive and scary to many people.
   
   How do we stay present with that fear and offense? But also the way he inspired so many good things in people, including the kind of integrity and service in young men this his murderer lacked? How do we wrestle with views that appear to span the gamut from traditional christian conservative (amber) to modern defenses of free speech (orange) to post-conventional institutional critiques (green)?

3. Celebrations of his murder are vastly overrepresented online, but are part of a feedback loop that leads to more fracturing, which leads to individuals like Kirk’s killer making specific horrific unethical choices, which keeps the loop going.
   
   (Eg: his success was somewhat a reaction to the increasing cultural power of the radical left (operating from amber/ethnocentric structure despite progressive (Green) language), which is now getting amplified, which will amplify another conservative voice, which will lead to more assassinations).
   
   How can we re-align the system if we don't see we are it? Reclaiming our projections is a necessary first step if we’re highly triggered, because (a) systematically reconstructing our intersubjective meaning-making capacity demands intertribal coordination, and (b) it shows us where our actual power lies.

III. Reclaiming our projections through collective dream analysis (sociosomnia).

What if we see America’s reaction to him like a dream that we can interpret? Here’s one view: our culture is in a tizzy around free speech. We seem to both love it and be so terrified of it that we want to cancel and “kill” it. We’re trying to find orientation and values in the chaos of a post-truth world but we don’t yet know how to say “yes, all these points of view are valid (green) but some are more valuable, relevant, and true in this context than others (teal)."

#TTT
---
*The spirit of "from an integral perspective" in this context is making sense of competing claims to truth without demonizing anyone, but being willing to take a stand for goodness and values. To paraphrase integral grandpappa Ken Wilber, if we assume no one is smart enough to be 100% wrong, then how to we stitch together a coherent sense of what’s happening from all the partial truths and fragmented perspectives? In this particular post I’m relying a lot on adult developmental psychology, but the overall theory has a variety of other helpful meta-frames for understanding how seemingly totally different values relate.