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Podcast 02: Ah, To Be A Caveman Again…
Welcome to my latest podcast installment. In this episode, I experiment slightly with format, and go on a strange mystical journey with some cavemen in order to get at the heart of a new and maybe more useful understanding of reality. In a nutshell, I offer the hypothesis that maybe there’s no such thing as the “unreal,” which will become a building block of thought for future installments.
You can also grab a podcast-only feed from my site for your podcasting apps right here.
[Music in this episode by Aditi Tahiti.]
Articles With Similar Themes:
- Podcast 05: Beyond Belief, Pt 2 - The Power of Questions
- Podcast 11: Express Yourself
- Podcast 06: Self-Destructing Ideology
- Breakfast served until potatoes are gone
- It’s All Happening!
- Prev: Stand By
- Next: Judging A Book By Its Cover
October 13th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Just started listening to the podblast and haven’t heard it all BUT I started your mp3 playing and then opened Aditi Tahiti’s site (i like) and got a sound superimposition playing of Aditi’s music and Tim’s voice at the beginning. Trippy…comms are an amazing thing.
October 13th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
That was……magical. Truly though, I enjoyed.
October 13th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
I’m so scared. I feel like I can’t move without killing a thousand people, so I stop caring about people in order to move. Everything I ever think is exactly what some small group of rich people somewhere want me to think. Every path I choose will lead me to sin. The Christian God is ready to throw me in hell forever because I don’t see the logic in throwing anyone in hell forever (let alone the idea that punishment can be transferred to another vicariously). I feel the stirrings of hatred and desparation. Somebody please help me. Somebody please tell me it’ll be okay. But don’t tell me what I should do, because I won’t believe you even if you are telling the truth. I’ve believed all sorts of different things throughout my life — in fairies and aliens and Mother Nature and the blood of Jesus — and they’ve all turned out to be false. I still believe certain things out of habit, and I’m afraid those things will turn out false also. Perhaps worse, I’m afraid the few things I still believe in — still “cling to” despite Buddhist admonitions — will turn out to be not merely false, but evil in result. Like my support of labor unions leading to the continuation of the industrial civilization that primitivism (unbeknownst to me) should do away with, or my support of keeping factory jobs in the U.S. — in the name of blue-collar populism — leading to the continuing starvation of Third World people who need the jobs more. Ah, shit, I feel like dying except that I don’t. I like living in my upper-middle-class life too much and I am afraid of the tortures God has in store for me after I die — I can’t kill myself if I’m afraid of going to hell.
October 13th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
Sorry about that. It’s not really that bad –I just want attention. Nobody reply to any of that because I didn’t really mean it, any of it. Deep down I’m confident I’ll find the answer by the time I get old enough.
October 14th, 2006 at 8:29 am
JH - yer right. U do just want attention. Not to tell u what to do, but - go get laid and have a good time.
October 14th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
That was another good podcast. You know, I don’t think there can be gradations of reality. A thing is real or it isn’t. My thoughts about moonbeam sandwiches are as real as a ball-peen hammer, it’s just that they’re thoughts which can’t be held in the hand or laid safely in a toolbox. That’s likely to be a counterintuitive thought to most, because people generally don’t use the word “real” that way. But if you say that “everything is real” (thoughts, feelings, ideas in addition to dirt and trees and cars) then you’ve created an uncommon context for the word “real”. Within that context, the concept of reality is now somewhat synomymous with the concept of existence. The word “reality” also at that point becomes binary. A thing either is or isn’t real. Therefore, no gradations.
For those who disagree: How ‘real’ is the internet? Where on the spectrum of real/not real does it lie? The same question for “television” or “radio”.
October 15th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
[…] A recent podcast by Tim Boucher of Pop Occulture reminded me of this, one of my favorite pieces of writing of all time… […]
October 15th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Reminds me of a sort of zen koan thing my friend used to say (in a Japanese accent, for whatever reason): “FIND THE INTERNET!”
October 16th, 2006 at 8:33 am
Just downloaded it, so I’ll probably listen to it in a few hours, but regardless, you should check out Odeo. Then you could allow people to record messages for you, which you could include in your podcast and respond.
October 16th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Normally, I hate thought experiments. People still cite Leviathan to me as if Hobbes’ baseless speculation is a valid counter-argument to anthropological data. Yet I’m amazed when thought experiments end up in the same place I am. I’ve long been awed at Rosseau’s ability to stumble blindly, and from premises that are usually complete and utter bullshit, into the general direction of what actually happened.
You may have just been going with your intuitive understanding of a cartoon cut-out, but I think you nailed it, nonetheless. It was Rousseau-esque. I can certainly confirm that much of the attitude you talk about with regards to magic and reality is very much evident among real hunter-gatherer groups today. It’s a way of thinking I try to keep to, but it’s extremely difficult. I find it more difficult when dealing with writing, and I can’t help but think of David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous here, that we’re so trapped in the magic of writing that we’ve forgotten that there’s any other kind of magic in the world.
October 16th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Precious - good job man. Keep it up!
October 18th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
[…] Animists accept their experience in a fullness that seems radical to us.10, 11 Dreams are often expressed as reality—no qualifiers are needed. A hunter-gatherer is far more like to say, “I became a deer last night,” than “I dreamt I became a deer last night.” This latter phraseology denigrates the dream with its insistence that it was not real. The dream has its own internal reality, and is experienced in precisely the same way that waking reality is experienced—making it just as real. […]
October 20th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
[…] [Listen to this piece as a podcast here] […]