Tag: andrew levine

Tendencies of a chaotic universe: Andrarchy – Episode 152

by Kurt Robinson on February 14, 2017 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: Is the universe becoming more complex or chaotic?

In our short lifetimes, it’s difficult to see what the long-term trends of the universe are. Physicists guess that the universe is slowly dying, as energy gets used up or is transmuted into more and more stable forms. If that’s the case, where do we fit into the mix? Are our lives just a part of this move towards an equilibrium state, or is the growing complexity of the human race and its machines just a freak occurrence, an anomaly?

Kurt’s conversation with Andrew Levine (a.k.a. Andrarchy) continues as we discuss the concepts of his crowdsourced book, the general trends of the universe, artificial intelligence and whether the Big Bang theory is a reality, a fairy story cooked up by bored scientists, or just an awful TV show.

Join us on the next complexity-driven episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Eps:

Everything is information: Andrarchy – Episode 145

Mental illness outsiders – The Andrarchy Show Episode 5

Talking to horses, ghosts and demons – The Andrarchy Show Episode 4

A psychotic break or shamanic awakening – The Andrarchy Show Episode 2

Mental Illness and shamanic experiences – The Andrarchy Show Episode 1

The Links:

The morality of artificial intelligence by Luke Stokes

Why information grows – Cesar Hidalgo

The Cash:

If you enjoy our posts, please have a look at The Paradise Paradox’s page on Steemit where you can join, earn money, and upvote our posts to help support the show! You can also find a lot of additional content which is not posted on this site, with Kurt’s posts on Steemit and Aaron’s posts on Steemit.

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

Depression and cultural alienation with Andrarchy

by Kurt Robinson on January 4, 2017 in Best Bits • 0 Comments

Andrarchy explains why his experience with depression was less about mental illness and more about alienation

Transcript:

I don’t think I had a disease called “depression”; I think that my mind was conflicting with what is socially acceptable for a mind. I was having difficulty integrating with society. And because I was having beliefs and ideas that were different than everybody else’s, that created discomfort and sadness in me that was difficult to resolve because there was nobody there to guide me through the experience.

I do believe that there is a place for therapists – whether they’re psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, whatever – I do believe there’s a place, because if somebody had been there to say “this is normal” – not just “this is normal”, because they do say that – but if they were to explain to me, basically, “hey, society is a construct; it’s a set of delusions we all kind of agree on so we can function, so we can go to the store and make sure there’s shit there – we share these beliefs, not necessarily because they’re true, but because they enable us to form stable societies. Just because you don’t see them as true, doesn’t mean you’re broken.”

Follow @andrarchy on Steemit!

Watch and listen to the full interview here.

A Psychotic Break or Shamanic Awakening?: The Andrarchy Show Episode 2

by Kurt Robinson on October 29, 2016 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: Is it mental illness or a spiritual experience?

If we take the psychiatric industry’s model of mental illness, we might be inclined to believe that these experiences are purely negative. But if we go too far the other way, speaking of neurodiversity, spiritual awakenings or shamanic experiences, we might be tempted into thinking that these experiences are wholly positive. It’s true that these experiences may involve a lot of suffering for the people whom they affect directly, and the people around them – however, it’s also true that people can learn a lot from these experiences, about themselves and the nature of the world they live in.

This is part 2 of Andrew “andrarchy” Levine’s interview with Kurt about having a psychotic break, or spiritual awakening. We discuss the terms used to describe these experiences, the change from linear to conceptual thinking that went on in Kurt’s brain, and possible explanations of what caused this spontaneous change from psychiatric and yogic perspectives.

The Eps:

Mental illness and hamanic experiences: The Andrarchy Show episode 1

The Links:

Andrarchy on Steemit

The Cash:

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

Mental Illness & Shamanic Experiences: The Andrarchy Show Episode 1

by Kurt Robinson on October 20, 2016 in Best Bits, Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story – How to deal with a psychotic break

Psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis as schools of thought are less than 150 years old, and we shouldn’t be surprised if such young sciences have gaps of knowledge, questions that are still left open, or even questions that are outright ignored. It’s possible, even likely, that the modern psychiatric model of mental illness is incomplete, and could learn things from other schools of thought.

Many people have the conception that being diagnosed with a mental illness means that you have a chemical imbalance. However, such “illnesses” are normally diagnosed by looking at behaviour, rather than blood tests or other chemical tests to determine amounts of chemicals in one’s brain. So, at least in the majority of cases, the “chemical imbalance” idea is just an assumption.

In contrast, there are shamanistic traditions which stretch back hundreds or even thousands of years. Shamans have been helping people through the strange times in their lives even before recorded history. Is it possible that psychiatry and psychology still have a lot to learn from shamanistic methods?

This is a clip from an interview that Andrarchy (Andrew Levine) did with Kurt, and more clips will be coming over the next couple of weeks.

The Episode

To download this episode in audio, right click here and press ‘Save as’.

The links

“Mental Illness” – how and what to learn from your mind breaking

Andrarchy’s post on Steemit introducing his show

What a shaman sees in a mental hospital

A traditional approach to mental illness – Phil Borges TED talk

Healing with communication, conversation and love by Sterlin Luxan

What is a shaman by Terence McKenna

A game you have to invent, to win – a clip from Episode 121

by Kurt Robinson on August 17, 2016 in Best Bits • 0 Comments

For those of you who are too busy to watch an hour long interview, we decided to take out some of the best bits for you to enjoy.

In this clip, Andrew Levine (a.k.a. @andrarchy) describes some important concepts relating to his idea of a massively multiplayer OFFline game. It’s a kind of roleplaying game, with a limited set of rules, which the participants may change as they go along. The players decide what the prize is, and what one must do to achieve it. Andrew also explains how roleplaying games like this enable us to indulge in impulses, such as dishonest, which we couldn’t necessarily get away with in our regular lives, and finally he mentions how cryptocurrency and Steemit make these kinds of ambitious projects possible.

Watch the full episode here.