Show Notes
In this episode of The Sacred Speaks, Dr. John W. Price sits down with Timothy Morton, philosopher, writer, and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, for a wide-ranging conversation about hell, ontology, and what it means to live without an "outside." Morton is the author of Hell, along with numerous works on ecology, object-oriented ontology, and the entanglement of human and nonhuman worlds. Together, John and Morton explore hell not as an afterlife destination but as a lived condition of felt distance from the divine and deep entanglement with the biosphere. This conversation moves through ontology and how things exist, the critique of holism and mastery as tied to fascism and colonial habits of thought, the distinction between panic and grief as pathways to change, and why mystery, irony, and hesitation may be the most honest responses to reality. Morton frames social media as a continuation of 18th-century politics of sensibility, critiques metaphysics of presence and gnostic hierarchies, and suggests that paradise is not elsewhere but something we build inside hell. Rather than offering resolution, this episode invites listeners into an uncomfortable and generative encounter with the structures we inhabit without seeing. Key Takeaways: Timothy Morton defines ontology as how things exist and argues that our deepest assumptions about reality shape everything from ecology to politics. The conversation frames holism and mastery as colonial and fascist habits of thought, suggesting that ecology requires giving up the fantasy of total comprehension. Morton distinguishes panic from grief, proposing that panic is an ontological shock when our worldview cracks, while grief is the doorway through. The interview explores hell as an embodied, cultural structure rather than a metaphysical location, and suggests irony, hesitation, and mystery as reality signals. Morton reads William Blake as a poet of infinite narrators and weaponized gentleness, connecting the Lamb and the Tiger to questions of presence and paradox. Timestamps (00:00) Welcome and Guest Intro (01:26) Workshops and Community Updates (03:38) Substack and Upcoming Book (04:26) Jumping Straight Into the Recording (05:34) Writing Without Forcing (07:54) Why Hell and Ontology (13:22) Ontology Explained Simply (14:41) Holism and Fascism Critique (18:53) Ecology Against Mastery (23:02) Building Heaven in Hell (25:22) Trauma and Meaning Saturation (26:48) Mystery and Opacity of Truth (33:01) Colonizer Mind and Worldviews (39:00) Panic as Ontological Shock (41:19) Panic Before Grief (42:28) Mockery and Woke (43:26) Grief Breaks Control (44:24) Worldviews as Weapons (45:52) Frog Versus Soldier (49:02) Initiation and Identity Loss (52:37) Phenomenology Explained (56:46) Glitches and Consciousness (58:44) Gods of Decay (01:01:45) Evolution Without a Plan (01:06:34) Trust Made of Mistrust (01:08:29) Art as Emotional Poison (01:12:27) Social Media Sensibility (01:15:46) Irony Hesitation Reality (01:18:47) Online Irony Lacks Democracy (01:19:29) Blake Tiger Infinite Narrators (01:23:02) Lamb Poem Weaponized Gentleness (01:24:34) Hell as Flipped God Presence (01:27:04) Buddhism Fixation and Bypass (01:31:33) VIP Paranormal Double Speak (01:36:37) Hell Not Just State of Mind (01:39:35) Metaphysics Presence and Hierarchy (01:50:32) Embodied Paradox as Divine (01:52:28) Closing Reflections and Thanks Connect with Timothy Morton Rice University Faculty Page: Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University Book: Hell by Timothy Morton Website for John http://www.drjohnwprice.com WATCH: YouTube for The Sacred Speaks https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ @thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/ Brought to you by: https://www.thecenterforhas.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com
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In this In this episode of The Sacred Speaks, Dr. John W. Price sits down with Dr. Susan Schwartz, Jungian analyst and author, for a searching conversation about one of the most underaddressed wounds in contemporary psychology: the absent father. Susan is the author of The Absent Father Effect on Daughters and the forthcoming Absent Fathers, Yearning Sons. Her clinical work draws on decades of practice and deep immersion in Jungian theory, and what she brings to this conversation is not just scholarly precision but the kind of knowledge that only comes from sitting with this material in the consulting room across a lifetime. Father absence, she argues, is routinely minimized in both psychoanalytic literature and popular culture. John and Susan move through the specific ways absence shapes identity, relatedness, sexuality, and the gaze. They explore what it means when a father's eyes are never there to confirm a daughter's body, her mind, her worth, and how fathers model partnering, love, and respect for soul. Susan brings two clinical dreams into the conversation: one involving Vladimir Putin as a figure for the negative father complex, and one about cleaning a closet that opens into something unexpected and alive. These are not illustrations. They are the unconscious at work, showing what the personal father could not provide and what the psyche has done with that absence in the meantime. The conversation moves into territory that will matter to men as much as women: the relationship between absent fathers and male brutality, the failure of initiation when the father is not present to initiate, the ancestral and communal dimensions of the wound, and whether fathers can actually change. Susan's answer to that last question is honest and worth hearing slowly. The episode closes with the questions she believes everyone should be asking, and almost no one does.