Truth, Lies and Dancing
Reflections on our first month, and new sessions with Liv Boeree and Jordan Hall
Wonderful Australian readers - I’m headed your way in March! On March 22nd I’ll be doing a ‘Crossroads’ screening and Q&A at the Byron Bay Theatre, hosted by Berry Liberman of Small Giants - get your tickets here, and we’ll be announcing more Australian events soon.
Kainos launched a month ago, and has reminded me to be careful what I wish for. Kainos was created with the intention of gathering people to imagine new futures, uncover new ideas and inspire unapologetic hope in times of upheaval. As it turns out, big lofty intentions like that are hard to chew once you’ve bitten them off, even if they taste good.
In our launch series, we’ve been asking the question ‘where do we go from here?’ and had some fascinating answers from our guests. We’ve come at the question culturally, politically, spiritually, economically. We’ve been quiet, loud, exasperated and curious. We’ve done it knowing none of us actually has an answer that can fit in our own hearts, let alone on a page.
It’s been fun, challenging and at times touching. Our last two conversations in this series are this week, with
As in all our conversations in this series, I’m going to ask Liv and Jordan how we can move toward hope, imagination and collaboration in a time of upheaval. As the Trump presidency gathers pace and Europe questions its role in the world, there is a growing consensus that the world order we all grew up with is ending, and nobody knows what comes next.
On a deeper level, the crisis of trust and meaning in Western culture seems to be intensifying, and we can no longer escape the question ‘what are we doing, and why?’ I’ve asked all our guests to comment on this in some way, and a few times I’ve touched on the main argument of my book The Bigger Picture, namely that we can draw on the same cognitive and emotional skills that help us navigate a psychedelic experience to inspire cultural change.
Truthy Trips
One of the most important lessons psychedelics teach is that we have to lean into discomfort if we want to grow. As psychedelic researcher Max Wolff has theorised, a cognitive behavioural model of psychedelics can shed light on how this works.
In day to day life, the truth hurts more than the lie. We are able to avoid painful realities by ignoring them, deluding ourselves, or resisting the pain. This doesn’t fix our problems, but kicks the can down the road.
During a psychedelic experience, the lie hurts more than the truth. The lies we tell ourselves become so painful, so glaringly obvious, that it feels better to accept the truth than to delude ourselves for another moment. As soon as we do, we open up new possibilities and free ourselves from ourselves.
My sense of what’s going on culturally right now is that we’re somewhere between those two positions. The question on my mind is how we can find creative, subversive ways to make the lie that consumer culture is based on more painful than the truth. The lie is that we are isolated and separate from nature and one another. The truth is that we aren’t.
I’ll be exploring these ideas in more detail in my talk at Breaking Convention, Europe’s largest conference on psychedelic science and research, which I co-organise. This year we’re at the University of Exeter on April 17-19.
Dancing at the Crossroads
As well as the conversations we’ve shared here and on YouTube, I’ve also been interviewing guests for our upcoming documentary Crossroads. In the last couple of weeks I’ve interviewed
All of these interviews and conversations have left me with a lot to chew over, and sometimes more questions than I went in with.
We had a founding member sensemaking session last week to reflect on the last month, and someone hit the nail on the head by saying that while all of our live sessions have been invigorating and far-reaching, there’s a deeper something nobody is quite touching on yet. It’s a something we know is there, but can’t yet name.
I share that feeling. It’s as if we’re all reaching for clarity at a time when our only certainty is a lack of clarity. But that reaching is a movement forward, and every conversation has left me hungry for more. It’s also been a real test of my complexity tolerance, as I keep finding myself overwhelmed by overlapping ideas, and grasping for solutions instead of flowing with the complexity.
Maybe this is a time that demands we make both moves at once. To sit, pay attention and let the crashing waves of the zeitgeist wash over us. In the same moment, to reach out to one another, wrestle with ideas, and imagine wild possibilities. With that in mind, below are some links to recent conversations and brief reflections on common themes we’ve seen emerging in the first month of Kainos.
Post-Liberal Realities
I’ve already shared my thoughts on our sessions with Jamie Wheal and Nora Bateson, and since then we’ve hosted many more, the first with
.We covered a lot of ground, and as always Daniel drew on wide-ranging and eclectic insights. One thing we dove into is why exactly so many people feel like we’re at the end of one era but not yet in what comes next. A big part of this is the end of the ‘liberal world order’ that has defined global politics since after WWII, which I covered in our most recent subscriber-only piece Searching for the Grail.
Trump, JD Vance and the thinkers in their orbit like Curtis Yarvin can all be classified as post-liberal, and it’s an essential frame for understanding what’s happening politically across the US and Europe. I’d highly recommend N.S. Lyons’ new piece ‘Return of the Strong Gods’ for a deep dive.
When I interviewed Yanis Varoufakis he gave an interesting take on post-liberalism, as he was in the belly of the beast as the finance minister of Greece during the sovereign debt crisis, and up against the full might of the EU and global banking establishment. I won’t give too much of the interview away, but it hammered home just how much we’re now in uncharted waters politically and economically. If you haven’t come across him, Varoufakis is one of the most heterodox economists in the world and his newest book Technofeudalism is excellent, and referenced in my piece on Luigi Mangione Best Served Cold if you want a summary.
Returning to New Territory
I left that interview feeling that there’s no going back to the golden age of social and political stability I grew up in. Schuyler Brown spoke to this in our session with her, when she said we have to stop pretending we can go back to normal, because normal is gone. Her line stuck with me for days, because it felt both true and uncomfortable. As Ram Das said, “The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off’ You can check out our full conversation below, and subscribe on YouTube to be notified as soon as these films come out.
Another question that’s come up is what skills we need to be in new territory in our lives and collectively, which to me feels like a next step after accepting that we can’t go back to normal. Trish Blain spoke to this beautifully in our session, and we also had fun talking about why so many conscious communities fail. From Trish’s perspective it’s because they often lack the deeper intuitive and interpersonal skills that help us deal with our triggers as they arise, work together when we want different things, and imagine exciting new futures.
In our next update, I’ll share what came up in our sessions with Minna Salami whose new book Can Feminism Be African? just came out, and Michael Phillip who runs Third Eye Drops.
Paid subscribers will get access to those this week, and as always, founding members can join in our conversations with Liv Boeree and Jordan Hall live to participate in the Q&A. Moving forward, we’ll be hosting two sessions a month, one focused on knowledge and one on wisdom. In March and April we have Knowledge Sessions with Brett Scott, author of Cloud Money, and the wonderful Iain McGilchrist who recently joined Substack (
).
I’m so glad you’re doing what you’re doing Ali! Thank you for taking it on. I am looking forward to participating more actively.
Wonderful - you are hitting a newly exposed nerve in the culture. Be courageous and carry on!