New Year, Strange Realities: What's coming up in 2023

Regenerative Stewardship, a new piece with John Vervaeke and metaphysics eating culture

Some thoughts on the zeitgeist at the start of the year, announcing my Regenerative Stewardship psychedelic retreat, new pieces with John Vervaeke and Brandon Boyd, and an upcoming feature on why metaphysics eats culture for breakfast.

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Happy New Year!

In Germany, we wish people ‘Guten Rutsch’, or a ‘good slide’ into the new year. In Ireland, my other ethnicity, people have been known to toast ‘May we all be alive this time next year!’ So, some confrontational forward-thinking from the Germans, and passive-aggressive positivity from the Irish. Somewhere betwixt the two lurks my own weird cultural psychology.

I haven’t so much slid into 2023 as slowly ambled, trying to gradually discern what’s happening in the zeitgeist. I’m fascinated by the Kevin McCarthy fiasco in the US, who at the time of writing has gone through 11 unsuccessful votes to be House Speaker. It’s partly related to another phenomenon I’m interested in, the so-called ‘decline of populism’ around the world which perhaps contributed to so many Trumpist candidates performing badly in the mid-terms, and might explain at least some of McCarthy’s situation. The foul Jair Bolsonaro is no longer president of Brazil and sulking in a Florida KFC, Duterte’s no longer leading the Philippines, and according to the Tony Blair Institute, the number of ‘populist world leaders’ is at a 20 year low.  

These are likely healthy developments, but I don’t think we’ve fixed any of the cultural and economic rifts that put those people in power, and while I’m not a fan of their politics, there is something telling about democracies (and Tony Blair) using the word ‘populist’ as a pejorative. And as centrists take the stage and we face looming climate change and energy crises we seem impotent in solving, to me 2023 feels like a time of stagnant fragmentation in the face of crisis. The air feels thick with a disassociation and stuckness, and very different to the rebellion and rage that marked the middle of the last decades cultural shifts. As if we’re desperate to find a more sensible way forward, but haven’t got the faintest clue of what forward even looks like.

What I’m most interested by, and what’s coming up on ‘The Bigger Picture’ and my other projects this year, is how we can collectively explore new ways of being and seeing that can help us find not just a new cultural meaning and direction, but a new aliveness and energy. And on that note, here’s what’s coming up this year. 

I was worried this image would be too subtle. Basically the idea I want to convey is ‘looking ahead’ to 2023 (the year that it is right now). I hope that the image, in combination with this explanation, does that job. For any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

January 

Next week I’m releasing a conversation with the inimitable John Vervaeke, ahead of the launch of his new series ‘After Socrates’. If you enjoyed Awakening from the Meaning Crisis you might be as giddy with anticipation as I am to find out what he has in store in the new series, which launches on January 9th on his YouTube channel.

We’re speaking early next week and I’ll publish it a few days later. One thing I’d like to ask John about is what came before Socrates - philosophers like Democritus and Parmenides - how the philosophers after Socrates viewed them, and what all these wisdom traditions can teach us about the world we live in.

I’ll also be publishing a conversation with Brandon Boyd: poet, writer and the lead singer of the band Incubus. I’m looking forward to seeing where the conversation takes us; Brandon writes beautifully about art, belief, aesthetics and more on his Substack A Wink and a Nod which I highly recommend.

Regenerative Stewardship 

Looking ahead to March, we’re running the second iteration of a beautifully unique psychedelic retreat I’ve co-designed with Natasja Pelgrom. We started working together because we share a conviction that psychedelic journeys shouldn’t just be about working on ourselves, but that these experiences can orient us toward something much bigger than us. While inner development is essential, alone it will never be enough to meet the kind of challenges we face today.

What does it look like if instead we orient ourselves outward? Focusing as well on what we can contribute to the world with our our innate gifts. Becoming leaders in our own lives, as well as expanding our frame on reality to include the world and people and natural world we exist in relation with. What formed out of those conversations was Regenerative Stewardship, a five day retreat that we launched in December with what was a truly magical first retreat of 11 people. Check out our intro film below.

Our next retreat is on March 8-12 in the Netherlands, and you can read about it in detail on our website. Below are a couple of testimonials from December, and if you’re interested in joining us in March or July, Substack readers get 10% off, just use the code ‘Bigger Picture’ when you sign up for your screening call. 

The retreat exceeded my expectations in so many ways and I have a new found appreciation for the power of the 'container' to hold deep and powerful work. I so appreciate the time and care that was taken to set this up, to ensure that we felt safe, supported and able to learn and grow together. There was never a sense of a 'guru' but rather a shared understanding of the wisdom that lives within and beyond the group. The facilitators were brilliant at holding space in a way that was 'at service.' This enabled me to trust the process and also trust myself, with ease and openness. - Katie C.

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It’s hard put into words… this whole experience which was both professional and rational yet also deeply heartfelt and spiritual. Natasja, Ali, Henk, Karen and the team were so supportive and caring. I felt very safe and therefore able to work through some difficult and challenging issues in a truly deep, meaningful and it feels like, long-lasting way.

A month later I’m still feeling very peaceful inside, all my relationships have improved, I’ve made some wonderful new friends and connections. And my work, which was already successful, seems to have gone up a gear and I’m getting even better feedback than usual. - Darren M.

Spring 2023

I’m also developing a new online course (more on that soon) and have a few longer features in the pipeline I’m aiming to put out in the spring or late winter, including a piece around the concept that ‘metaphysics eats culture for breakfast’.

It explores why I think most of the organisations and groups focused on 'systems change’ have limited impact because they’re working from the wrong ontological foundations, i.e their view of what reality is is out of date, can’t account for consciousness, and therefore any solutions generated are based on faulty foundations.

At the moment I’m doing a lot of research into consciousness studies, particularly on quantum physics and panpsychism, trying my best to ‘sort shit from Shinola’ in a very complex and contradictory field which spans physics, philosophy, sociology and, well, pretty much all of human existence. The piece includes a mind-blowing conversation with Bernardo Kastrup that was one of the highlights of my book research, along with a number of philosophers focused on panpsychism, physicalism and consciousness.

I also have a feature in the works about how the culture wars are changing how we train our dogs, which I think will be easier to research and will involve far more photos of our cocker spaniel, River, who isn’t remotely interested in metaphysics.  

This was her best attempt at explaining how black holes work.

Breaking Convention 

I’m one of the executive directors of Breaking Convention, Europe’s largest conference on psychedelic science and culture, and we’re back for our full three day conference on April 20th-22nd (80 years to the day since Albert Hoffman discovered LSD). To say I’m excited is an understatement… we haven’t done our full three day conference since 2019, and this conference will mark 12 years since the first Breaking Convention. It’s astonishing how social perceptions of psychedelics have changed since then. 

Speakers at the first Breaking Convention. We couldn’t even afford walls.

This year we’re in the beautiful University of Exeter, and once again hosting the biggest names in psychedelic science, the best afterparties, the most vibrant art and performance, and the most scintillating conversations at the cutting edge of one of the most important and interesting fields of human inquiry. Read more and get your ticket on breakingconvenention.co.uk

Breaking Convention 2019. Walls, but no ceiling.

‘The Bigger Picture’ book

No, not a picture book which is larger than one you already own (though that would also be exciting). On June 13, my book ‘The Bigger Picture: How psychedelics can help us make sense of the world’ will be released globally. It’s been an intense and profound process for me so far; I wrote it in six months between March and September, followed by two months of editing (including getting a couple hundred references into the right format), and now it’s finished and being typeset. In the next few months I’ll be recording the audiobook and working with my publisher Hay House to get the gears turning on the launch.

I’m proud of how it’s turned out. If Michael Pollan’s ‘How to Change Your Mind’ changed the conversation about how psychedelics can change us individually, my hope is that this changes the conversation about how psychedelic experiences could change society, or rather how we can if we use the insights they can give us to that effect. It brings together psychedelic science with a lot of the topics I’ve been covering over the last five years: the culture wars, Moloch, sensemaking, Gnosticism, internet sociology, AI, integral thinking… the list goes on. A lot of my recent (and upcoming) pieces have been inspired by what I’ve learned in the process.

Looking Beyond

Looking beyond the haze of the summer, I’m also considering putting out a serialised novel of a story I’ve wanted to tell for years inspired by an article I read as a teenager (which I haven’t been able to find since) about two parents who publicly forgave their child’s killer. My version has a political twist and I’ve wanted to write it for years - a story of forgiveness, culture wars, hatred and grace. If that does happen it’ll likely be in the autumn.

Beyond that, my intention with this Substack is to keep inquiring into the question I began with: what are we not seeing or experiencing that we need to in order to find direction, meaning, purpose and aliveness in the times we live in? What are we missing from the bigger picture? I don’t think those questions have answers, but as Rilke put it, they’re questions we live into being.

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