Episode 99

The seventh episode in a series with Gyrus which sprawls across a variety of topics in anthropology, cosmology, cognitive science and recent political developments. We continue to discuss the psycho-cultural effects of the Copernican Revolution and Western humanity's losing its sense of being at the centre of the Universe. This leads into a discussion of traditionalism, which Gyrus contrasts with his own view (where there are two major historical "pivots" - the agricultural and Copernican/Scientific Revolution - rather than just the latter which the traditionalists dwell on). We consider the argument that human/women's/animal rights, the abolition of slavery, etc. were only able to be developed via a "scaffolding of oppression" and that modernity is far too complex to be reduced to simple narratives. Before the end of the episode we get onto the phenomenon of sudden ideological flips (e.g., revolutionary communists becoming right-wing libertarians) before touching on the radical thinker Nick Land and "accelerationism".

---

• axis mundi
• Copernican Revolution
• Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)
• René Guénon (1886-1951)
• John Michell (1993-2009)
• traditionalism
• R. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (1945)
• I Ching
• M. Watkins, The Mystery of the Prime Numbers (Secrets of Creation vol. 1)
• "quantocentrism"
• Terence McKenna
• T. McKenna, The Archaic Revival (1992)
• neo-tribalism
• history of human rights
• history of animal rights
• Steven Pinker
• Claire Colebrook's Aeon article about apocalypticism (June 2017)
• Agricultural Revolution
• Scientific Revolution
• egalitarianism
• Italian futurism
• Revolutionary Communisty Party (UK)
• Spiked (online magazine)
• Nick Land
• accelerationism
• Georges Battaile
• N. Land, Fanged Noumena (Urbanomic, 2011)
• lyrebird (genus Menura)