What does it say about a society if it venerates the image of someone being executed by the state for sedition? In this episode, we trace the improbable evolution of Jesus of Nazareth from fervent revolutionary to apolitical, transcendental being. We situate his trajectory in the cross-cultural tradition of prophetic liberation movements, from southeast Asian hill tribes to North American pan-indigenous movements, and alongside other Jewish messiahs, such as the bandit chief Hezekiah and the mysterious sorcerer known only as “the Egyptian.” What all of these eclectic figures—some with a military orientation, some who primarily relied on miracles—had in common was a singular devotion to national liberation. That these politics came to be repurposed for an ostensibly apolitical mythology—a story of sacred victimhood, in which dying is winning—helps us to understand one of the many feedback loops between culture and biology that characterizes contemporary life. It helps us understand how we have become confined to an increasingly narrow range of our evolved potentials, bereft of any sense of real agency—how we come, in other words, to inhabit the biology of defeat.
Sub-Self, Meet Meta-Self: Notes on The Emerging World Mind
The Biological Singularity Is Near pt. 1
Social Complexity after the Machines: Interview with Dr. Shane Simonsen
Metanoia: How Worldviews Change
Vivimancer pt. 1: The Water Carrier (excerpt)
Seeds of the World Tree: Programs of Revolutionary Biology and Evolutionary Politics
Social Cohesion vs. the Internet vs. the Establishment vs. the Earth
#66: A Saboteur's Moon Sheds No Light (excerpt)
The Ashes of the World Tree: On Grieving and Fighting
Metamorphosis pt. 3.3: Your Body Is a Map of the Sky
Metamorphosis pt. 3.2: Integration across Landscapes and Brain Regions
Metamorphosis pt. 3.1: The Rupture in the Fabric of Reality Model of Human Cognition
Metamorphosis pt. 2: The Cognitive Evolutionary Avant-Garde
Metamorphosis pt. 1: The Age of Mutual Incomprehension
The Incompetent Authoritarianism of Vladimir Lenin
Revolutionary Biology pt. 2: The Development and Evolution of Sasquatch
Revolutionary Biology pt. 1: Nature vs. Nurture vs. Synthesis
The Raven Politics of Terra Incognita
Narcissists, Strongmen, and Technocrats pt. 2
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