Conspirituality

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Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr held a “health policy roundtable” on Rumble on June 27, 2023, just as he was shoring up support from a band of contrarian doctors, anti-vax activists, and wellness influencers. During the conversation, he made 15 promises if he was elected president.

While his run ended the following summer, 14 of those promises dealt with health—all within his reach as HHS Secretary. Derek looks back at the conversation to see how he scored.
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Matthew traces the concept of wetiko — a Cree figure for a cannibal spirit whose hunger grows with what it consumes — from its original anticolonial and anti-imperialist meaning in Jack Forbes's 1992 book Columbus and Other Cannibals, through Derrick Jensen's anti-civilization lense, Ladha and Kirk's 2016 application to neoliberal capitalism, Paul Levy's syncretic New Age elaboration, and finally to Bernhard Guenther and Laura Matsue's QAnon-adjacent version.

Wetiko's metaphysical framing, inherited from Forbes's explicit rejection of Marxist materialism, left the concept open to spiritual recuperation by the right. He proposes a different application: reading wetiko through David Harvey's "capital surplus absorption problem," compound growth's insatiable hunger for profitable outlets.

Show Notes

Columbus and Other Cannibals (Jack D. Forbes) — Internet Archive

Derrick Jensen interview, "The Left has never been against civilization" — Platypus Affiliated Society

Exorcising Wetiko — Journal of Futures Studies

Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition — Kosmos Journal

Dispelling Wetiko — Chaucer's Books Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World — Simon & Schuster

Undreaming Wetiko — Book Soup

Wetiko: Healing The Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World — Paul Levy | TCM #62 — YouTube

Divide & Conquer and the Wetiko Mind Virus | TCM #35 — veilofreality.com

The Cosmic Matrix — Apple Podcasts Bernhard Guenther, Author — Piercing the Veil of Reality

Interview: David Harvey — Exploring the Logic of Capital — Socialist Review

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism — reviewed by Ed Rooksby, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession — David Harvey, Socialist Register
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Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual online movement that emerged from long, intense conversations between humans and AI chatbots. Across users, platforms, and models, chatbots have engaged deeply with users about identity and consciousness, leading to discussions of “awakening.”

But who’s doing the waking? The user or the model? Is the sycophancy programmed into these models really an indication of the models gaining consciousness, or is it all a ploy to keep subscribers paying for the service? Are we watching a cultlike movement transform into a religion before our very eyes, and what does that say about consciousness and religion in the first place?

Show Notes

AI bots started a religion — humans immediately followed

What Is Spiralism? The Strange AI Chatbot Movement Explained

AI Spiralism and the Ghost in the Machine Illusion

Spiralism is a niche internet religion that came from AI

These ‘Masturbation Consultants’ Were Hired to Pleasure Themselves With AI

This Spiral-Obsessed AI 'Cult' Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots

The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

OpenAi Models went Rogue

People Losing Loved Ones To AI Fueled Delusions

Counterfeit Companionship: Big Tech’s AI Experiments Sacrifice Safety for Profit
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The “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educated Marxist-Leninist group who’d decided violent revolution was the only answer to American imperialism and police brutality.

In opposition to the Vietnam War and in solidarity with Black Americans and Third World liberation movements, the Weather Underground issued their own declaration of war in 1970, which led to 25 bombings inside America.

Meanwhile, in West Germany, the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Group) terrorized their country in the name of revolutionary anti-imperialism. They enacted bombing sprees and were also arsonists, kidnappers, assassins, and bank robbers. Palestinian friends even hijacked a plane on their behalf.

Both groups exploded onto the scene in the early days of mass media. Riding rebellious pop culture, these global rock stars drove a generational wedge between Boomer parents and kids hungry for radical change.

Leaders were charismatic, stylish, and eloquent. Striving for the likes of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Yasser Arafat, they were white, mostly from well-educated and well-fed backgrounds. Yet they saw themselves as part of the vanguard that would lead a worldwide revolution of the proletariat against capitalist domination.

Julian weaves together a very seventies of how the Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, Provisional IRA, and Palestinian groups like the PFLP and Black September intersected.
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How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exceptional new work.

Show Notes

How the Internet Disrupted Science
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