Quick Takes on the Week's Reading

American Mussolini, Repetition Compulsion, and the NY Times Goes Occult

Basquait’s version of the High Priestess from the Tarot, according to Midjourney.

I  thought I would review some recent media I have been reading and contemplating.

I appreciate futurist Alec Steffans’ work A long time ago, he edited the excellent web project and book, World Changing. In ‘Little Glimpses of the Future’, from his Substack, he reviews new journalism on various facets of the ecological emergency. The articles are are bracing and powerful. There is one on the drying up of the Colorado River, one on the coming California megastorm, one on a suburb of Brisbane, Australia, which has become uninhabitable due to climate change. Also a more optimistic piece from Forbes on how the price of renewables has dropped to the point that coal plants no longer make economic sense. Plus a few more.

I am also a fan of progressive radio host Thom Hartmann, who wrote The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, among many books. Hartmann is now writing a Substack newsletter also. In the latest edition, he looks at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ intentional cruelty, and reflects on what it may mean for America’s future: “With Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die to advance his political career, all while being smart and educated enough to avoid the easily satirized buffoonishness of Trump.”

Dali’s version of “The Tower,” from the Tarot, via MidJourney

Generally I am not inspired by NY Times editorialist Ross Douthat, a conservative Christian with an incel streak. But I found his piece in today’s Times, ‘Be Open to Spiritual Experience, Also, Be Very Careful’ quite surprising — remarkable, considering the relentless materialist stance of the grey lady. Douthat acknowledges the currently “broad youthful impulse toward what you might call magical thinking,” found in interest in astrology, meditation, and psychedelics. He has caught on to

the increasing fascination with psychedelics and hallucinogenic drugs, which takes secular and scientific forms but also has a strong spiritual dimension, with many participants who believe the drugs don’t just cause an experience within the mind but also open the “doors of perception,” in Aldous Huxley’s phrase, to realities that exist above and around us all the while.

This is clearly true of the emergent spiritual culture around DMT, an ingredient in the psychedelic brew known as ayahuasca that’s become a trip of choice for so-called psychonauts — explorers of the spiritual territory that its ingestion seems to open up.