Wallflower at a Sex Party #2 -- w/ Alyssa Allegretti

Chapter #5 - Bad Etiquette

LIFE ITSELF, THE SECOND RENAISSANCE, AND HUMAN TRANSFORMATION IN A TIME OF META-CRISISFor episode 14, Layman sits down with Rufus Pollock and Sylvie Barbier to talk about the Life Itself and Second Renaissance communities and organizations, the importance of mapping the meta-communities, the role of art in cultural transformation, and the upcoming Harvard conference on the meta-crisis.Rufus Pollock is a Founder of Open Knowledge, an award-winning international digital non-profit. Formerly a Shuttleworth Fellow, the Mead Fellow in Economics at Cambridge University.Sylvie Barbier is a French-Taiwanese performance artist, entrepreneur and educator. She co-founded Life Itself to build a wiser future through culture, space and community.Life Itselfhttps://lifeitself.org/Second Renaissancehttps://secondrenaissance.net/intro

We continue our exploration of the backstory and intellectual journey to "Cosmo-erotic Humanism" with a further exploration of the relentless Rabbi's book on Tears. This time we focus on questions related to God's Voice, Laughter in Hell, Bondage & the Abraham/Isaac tale.

Chapter #4. The Sulking Werewolf.

In our third minisode we explore the Christmas Morning installment of Alyssa's substack series on disenchantment, re-enchantment, sexual fatalism, intimacy FOMO, Christmas parties, kinds of kissing, the deep entanglement of forgetting & remember yourself -- and what does she listen to when she writes this stuff?

For the 50th (?) episode of the Integral Stage's Author Series, Layman meets with novelist and linguistic philosopher, Lisa Maroski, to explore her ideas around the enactive power of language and speech, and her experiments in finding new forms of language to more deeply embody liminal and nondual sensibilities.From the book's description:In Embracing Paradox, Evolving Language: Expressing the Unity and Complexity of Integral Consciousness, L.E. Maroski proposes that humanity is poised on the cusp of a transformation of consciousness that requires not only a shift in values and perspectives, but also a shift in a basic technology we take for granted-language. Because we use language to create social structures and institutions, including education, governance, and our most intimate relationships, the structure of our language contributes to the way we structure those creations. Maroski questions the cultural assumptions that are built into the structure of language-primarily English-and invites the reader to imagine and ultimately to help develop novel structures of language that arise from different assumptions. To do so, she shows how we can draw inspiration from paradoxical topological forms, such as the Möbius strip and Klein bottle, as they embody both unity and duality/multiplicity. By seeing our reality not simply in terms of either/or but also in terms of both (many)/and, perhaps our feelings of fragmentation and the stultifying oppositions that have polarized society can transform into appreciation for the wholeness of all existence.L.E. Maroski blends philosophy, psychology, and science with the spiritual to describe her vision for a new type of language and to provide stepping stones for possible ways to express the paradoxical wholeness of Life. In Embracing Paradox, Evolving Language, her words ring out as a clarion call to visionaries who seek to bring into existence a world of many worlds that works for everybody.Embracing Paradox, Evolving Languagehttps://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Paradox-Evolving-Language-Consciousness/dp/1961334100

A MONK, A SHAMAN, AND A SCIENTIST WALK INTO A BAR AT THE EDGE OF THE APOCALYPSE...Layman sits down with meditation and planetary dharma teacher, John Churchill, to enjoy a Double Venti Alchemist's Elixir and a rich, wide-ranging conversation exploring the shape of emergent integrative spiritualities at the edge of the Apocalypse.Born in London, Dr. Churchill's interest in psycho-spiritual development, Integral theory, Contemplative studies, Western Esotericism, and Mahayana Buddhism began in his adolescence, eventually leading him to spend several years as a Buddhist monk at Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland. During this time, John received the esoteric Planetary Dharma transmissions that would in time unfold as his contribution to a planetary fourth turning teaching. Dr. Churchill spent 15 years training and teaching “Great Seal” meditation in an Indo-Tibetan Mahayana lineage under the mentorship of the late senior Western teacher, translator, respected author, and clinical psychologist Dr. Daniel P. Brown. He is also a founding member of the Integral Institute led by esteemed Transpersonal/Integral philosopher, Ken Wilber.Planetary Dharma websitehttps://www.planetarydharma.com/

This is a special series of mini-episodes only on the Integral Stage audiopodcast. Each discussion -- with "metamodern housewife" and avant-garde anthropologist Alyssa Allegretti --will reflect on the installments, themes and context of her recent (and explicit) Substack series entitled Wallflower at a Sex Party. Alyssa's⁠⁠ second installment⁠⁠ is from her substack ⁠⁠Adaptive Daydream⁠⁠. And the philosophical questions raised in these conversations with then inform the next upcoming article on ⁠my own Substack⁠.

My upcoming Parallax course Integral Theory for Idiots starts July 6th. I thought it would be intriguing to compare the audio of a course description that I wrote and the alternative descriptions put together by three different free online AIs -- Claude, Deepseek & Perplexity. The tone they favor and the particular elements they "chose" to emphasize are very interesting...

This is a special series of mini-episodes only on the Integral Stage audiopodcast. Each discussion -- with "metamodern housewife" and avant-garde anthropologist Alyssa Allegretti --will reflect on the installments, themes and context of her recent (and explicit) Substack series entitled Wallflower at a Sex Party. Alyssa's⁠ first installment⁠ is from her substack ⁠Adaptive Daydream⁠. And the philosophical questions raised in these conversations with then inform the next upcoming article on my own Substack.