My first audio interview discussing Meaningness: “Pattern and Nebulosity.”
It’s on the very interesting Deconstructing Yourself podcast, with Michael Taft. More on that below.
But first, the contents of the episode, with links to books and web pages giving more detail on some topics:
- What is metarationality?
- What happens when you run off the edge of the map?
- Pattern and nebulosity, emptiness and form
- Story of scientist Barbara McClintock, epicycles, etc. – Donald Schön & design creativity
- Ways to deal with system failure; nihilism
- Timothy Leary & Robert Anton Wilson, switching between reality tunnels
- Is metarationality just a larger rationality?
- David’s vampire romance novel, Ken Wilber’s novel “Boomeritis”
- What does metarationality have to do with meditation and Buddhism?
- Seeing the relationship between thought and reality
- Metarationality as a signpost of deep awakening
- Dzogchen and Advaita – are practices of view simply indoctrination?
- Metarationality as a path beyond postmodernism
- Fundamentalism as a huge LARP, eternalism vs. nihilism
- Spiral dynamics & Robert Kegan’s stages of adult development
- What a Kegan stage three group looks like
- Moving to Stage 4 – Getting into the system – no Stage 5 Buddhism – Kegan Stage 4.5
- The importance of intersubjectivity
- Future echoes of David’s teaching of metarationality
- Bongard problems and the word “intuition”
- Vipassana techniques for generating intuition
- Do we need gurus/lamas to transmit deep understanding?
- Students covering up their teacher’s crimes
- The dangers of self-diagnosing your Kegan stage
- David’s background in artificial intelligence and philosophy
- Is AI dangerous?
As you can see, we covered a wide range of topics. From reading this list it might just seem like an incoherent jumble. Michael’s skillful steering of the conversation brought out the ways all these points unfold naturally from a handful of basic insights.
I’m really happy with the result; I hope it can provide an intriguing introduction to some main themes of Meaningness, in a format different from the book. If there’s sufficient interest, we can go into greater depth on particular topics in future recordings.
Michael has a strong science background, and specializes in teaching meditation to “geeks.” In fact, he wrote the book on it! You can get a free copy of his The Mindful Geek at his web site. It’s “nerdy and science-fiction friendly,” and cites lots of empirical research on meditation. Or, if you prefer listening over reading, here he is lecturing at Google.
His podcast episodes have been quite unlike typical meditation or Buddhist discussions. If you like his work, consider rating and reviewing Deconstructing Yourself on iTunes—that makes it more likely iTunes will suggest it to potential listeners.