Just when you thought we were ‘pod-fading’ (whatever the hell that means), we return with a BANG! Back in the early 1990’s a strange thing occurred: fringe-culture exploded. Not only did we see shows like The X-Files take centre stage; but also the apparent rise of a new fringe-community online. But, like all really cool things, it seemed to evaporate at the begining of the new Millennium.
In this weeks bumper episode, we talk to three ‘fringe-savants’, all of whom were major contributors to this scene (and continue to innovate to this day):Douglas Rushkoff,Richard MetzgerandR.U.Sirius, to find out what happened to the Counterculture. Discussed: Pre-millennium tension, Countercultural-personalities, Made culture, defining counterculture and loads more.
Joining me in the ever expanding co-host chair is Kim ‘Daddytank’ Monaghan, who draws some rather profound inspiration from, of all places, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, no episode of SittingNow would be complete without some fine musical selections from the Interwebs, this week taking the form of:
Gypsum– Bonaissance
Daemien Frost– Slut Style
Cabbage– Industrial Tourism
Adventure Fiddler Daevid Bragger– My Four Reasons
We’ll be back next week with the Rev. Ivan Stang (praise “Bob”)!
enjoy!
Douglas Rushkoff has a fantastic new book imminent, check it outhere
R.U.Sirius also has a great new book outhere, and check out his amazingH+ magazine
Richard Metzger is about to launch a great new site, until then check out his new web-show‘Dangerous Minds’
WOW! worth the wait! 4 of the coolest fringe critics in one show!
*downloads…distributes*
Just a word on the eschatonic tension you all discussed in this (very good) episode:
I was doing research a while back for a paper, and was reading up on Romanian comparative religion and mythology scholar, Mircea Eliade. One thing he found was that damn near every culture around the world, at any given time, had some sort of end-times drive in effect. He worked to relate it to commonalities in their myth structures, and questioned if it wasn’t something related to how our minds are structured as humans, and how a mass mind manifests within a culture as myth.
It was a while back that I was working through this stuff, but I think the take-away was that fear and fascination of the unknown was an evolutionarily useful trait; those who weren’t afraid to just walk into the cave were the first to get eaten by the cave bears, so a little fear of what’s around the corner kept people alive (and the ones who lacked that fear didn’t become our ancestors). Likewise, those who got over their fear and carefully tested new waters and grounds were the pathfinders who discovered shelter and food, keeping the species alive. Another useful trait, and one others could sponge off of.
One could see how that kind of behavior gets selected for survival over hundreds of thousands of years (and is still present in some of our primate cousins). The behavior is eventually allegorized and mythologized as a way for people to reflect their own behavior and states of consciousness back to themselves in narrative form, even becoming religion (fearing the unseen god yet always exploring the nature of that unseen god).
But on a more epochal level, it seems every generation has its own hidden bugaboo that is generated out of the same kind of existential space — pre-millennium tension, 2012, The Late Great Planet Earth, the Age of Aquarius, the Rapture, it’s all over. Bart Ehrman’s done some good work on this; go back a couple thousand years to Palestine, and apocalyptic thinking was rife in the face of the loss of an empire and Roman rule. John the Baptist was one of those apocalyptic preachers who believed the world would end in the next decade or two, at least in their lifetimes. Ehrman finds a lot in both the canonical and apochryphal works that suggests that the Jesus of those texts believed the same.
That’s led to some stunning apologetic acrobatics by true church believers who have to answer why the world didn’t end like the texts said it would. Good fun if you’re into mind-bending leaps of logic. By the same token, though, such thinking can also easily lead people to caring less about this moment here and now and focusing too much on how it all ends. In the most extreme cases, they eventually prove themselves right; for the individual, what’s being nailed to a cross, being beheaded, being in a shoot-out in Waco, being a suicide bomber, or being in a mass suicide in Guyana, IF NOT the apocalypse for those dancing with Thanatos?
Surely the most well researched comment on the internets…and not a lol to be read.
In all seriousness though… do we need an episode about this ? 2012 covered the 2012 issue but didn’t touch on too much of the historical aspects.
Possibly, I bet there’s some good research into this. Just need an authority/author on the matter
I’ll research researchers.