Power manifests in a regularly recurring historical pattern: when there is a successful critique of the dominant power and its institutions and accompanying mythology, the critique in turn becomes institutionalized as the new center of power and new mythologizing and in that process falls into a corrupted form of the original. This pattern emerges with civilization, disrupting the community basis that is normative for the human ego: as collective power structures scale up, the ego scales up its identification. Thus the origins of this recurring historical pattern are evolutionary and psychological: dating back to the emergence of homo sapiens sapiens around 200, 000 years ago, the individual ego identifies with collective power structures greater than itself in order to counter its weakness and anxiety over survival. Today collective power – modern highly industrialized technology supporting an economy of infinite growth – has attained a global scale of destructiveness, and we must divest from our identifications with it.
13. Power in History
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12. Opposing Scale: Spiritual Practices and Small Communities
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
In this episode, our deep dive into the Axial Age meets the podcast theme of the importance of scale....
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Trailer
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
Meet your hosts for Afterthought podcast! Dawson Strand, Chris Peet, and Karambir Singh.
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4. State of Emergency: World War II as Precedent for Today
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
In this episode we look at what we’re calling “expansionism”, how the natural tendency of a species to expand...
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2. Thinking the Present Moment Part 2: Coronavirus and the Impossible
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
In this episode we take a closer look at the COVID-19 global pandemic and corresponding lockdown, discussing what possibilities...
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14. The Ego and its Discontents
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
The identification of the ego with power structures greater than itself, raises a whole host of questions around ego...
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3. Thinking at Different Scales: The Great Acceleration
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
In this episode we will explore the notion of thinking at different timescales. We will look at four different...
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6. The Scientific Revolution and the Modern West
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
The scientific, as well as political, and industrial revolutions that are key to the development of the “modern West”...
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9. Globalization: One Globe, Many Worlds
Christopher Peet, , Podcast, 0
Globalization means that economically, industrially, technologically, all humans have become interconnected. In this episode we argue the other side...