Show Notes
How has colonialism shaped our western psychology? How can we reimagine our post-colonial psychology, before we wipe ourselves out? What is the role of the trickster archetype in the disruption of such a well-established and dominant world view?
In this episode we have the tricky topic of trying to re-orientate our post-colonial psychology. So we’re going to be looking into the reasons why we might need to do that, following the influence of the west’s military-industrial rise to power over the last 250 years, and the post scientific revolution’s predominantly reductionist, philosophy of science; we’re going to be considering the consequences of such a view of humanity and the natural world; and crucially what elements we might invite back into our psychology, to perhaps set humanity back onto a path of harmony with its own species and its habitat, before it destroys itself. To do this we’re going to be exploring the possibility that the dualistic, black and white separation of ideas into binary truth or falsehood; and right or wrong, is a big part of the problem; exploring how the complexity of systems, and the nuance of their relations goes far beyond the simplified duality of human thought; and we’ll get into how when seen in that simplified binary way, the debate often degenerates into a mud slinging distraction from the underlying issues that continue to thrive un-checked and often grow worse.
Fortunately, our guest today is a master of this topic: professor of psychology, philosopher, writer, post-activist and executive director of the Emergence Network, Bayo Akomolafe. He is the author of the books, “These wilds beyond our fences”, “We will tell our own story”, and many beautiful essays which you can find on his website. A new book on his work, “Selah: A Bayo Akomolafe Reader” is out now.
What we discussed: 00:00 Intro. 07:10 The importance of mythopoetry. 08:15 The story of Goddess Freya obsessively protecting her son Baldur. 11:15 The imperviousness of modernity: Artificial control, order and optimisation. 13:00 The trickster as chaos in the order, the inevitable impossibility within possibility. 12:45 Accomodation theory - counter logic is baked in to logic. 15:15 Our safety delusion and the impossibility of control. 16:15 Antiseptism - our sterilising divorce from the world. 17:20 Noticing the ‘disability’ of western psychology. 18:20 Psychology is colonial policeman, but it’s breaking down. 21:30 Therapy is not the only way to face dysfunctionality. 21:55 Trauma is a good example of unity within opposites: Old shame tag swings to become an accolade of status. 23:30 In pushing against the wall you become the wall. 26:40 A third way bursting out of the opposites: The Gods of the fault-lines. 31:00 Post activism: moving beyond the action/reaction duality. 35:00 Move from speaking truth to power, to opening up to “power with”. 40:15 White guilt will not make up for whiteness. 43:50 Whiteness is a practice we do, not a biological trait: Fred Moten. 44:10 Privilege is not a thing you have, it has you. 50:20 How post enlightenment reductionism combined with leveraging fear of the unknown forms neo-colonial psychology. 50:30 The coddling of the western mind: control, optimise and complete. 54:15 Fear of death, disconnection from ancestry, and the west’s “sickness of the soul”. 01:00:00 We need new sacralities and rituals. 01:01:45 A warning not to oversubscribe too much to our conceptual constructs and images. 01:04:40 If we can language things too easily we might be missing the point. 01:08:00 A mass disabling event: the handles of white modernity are collapsing. 01:08:45 The myth of Erysicthon, and the hunger curse.
References: Bayo’s website of writings “Selah: A Báyò Akómoláfé Reader” Bayo Akomolafe, “These Wilds Beyond Our Fences”, Wendy Holloway quote: “Psychology is the policeman of capitalism”. Fred Moten idea, “Whiteness is a practice”. Malidoma Patrice Somé, “Of Water and the Spirit”.
More from Chasing Consciousness
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How can we explain vivid, life changing experiences and true perceptions occurring in patients between brain death and resuscitation? What are the implications of true information being anomalously communicated during these experiences? What are the implications of some children being able to access the memories of deceased people? Why do such a high portion of these kids remember a traumatic death?
How have metrics surreptitiously replaced our internal value guidance system? How much nuance is lost when we scale collective counting across contexts? How dangerous is data that at first appears independent, whist in fact having heavy value assumptions baked in from that start? Today we have the worrying topic of value capture to discuss; that is the phenomena of how the majority of our personal values have been outsourced to external generic data sets and measurable scoring systems, often without us realising it. We discuss how, whilst useful in getting the wider picture, these measurables replace our internal lived sense of why things are important, motivating and worthy of goal directed behaviours. We also get into the root of this phenomena in the artificial demotion of the subjective to a lower level of value than the objective; how subjectivity is in fact supertangible and salient rather than intangible; and we get into how data is not neutral and has interests that in turn influence how we collect that data - risking a kind of objectivity laundering. On the other hand we also look at what measurables are good for, and how awareness of the tension between our external and internal value guidance, offers a middle road that gets the best of both worlds. Fortunately to unpack this slippery topic we have the philosopher of games and art at the University of Utah, C. Thi Nguyen. He’s the author of over 70 academic papers and 2 books for the general public. “Games: Agency as Art”, and his brand new book “The Score: How to stop playing somebody else’s game”, that we’ll be focussing on today.
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