Legalise Freedom Dot Com

LF266 Darius Nikbin – Rise of the Machines: Our Techno Future?

Darius Nikbin discusses his book The Universal Subject of Our Time (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Machine).
In the dialectic of man versus machine, can machines ever become more than glorified number crunchers? How would we know if a machine was actually beginning to think? If it did, might it eventually develop self-awareness and if so, might it also develop self-interest? What if its interests conflicted with ours? In the context of scientific optimism versus post-modern pessimism, we ponder whether artificial intelligence can deliver on its promise of tackling social and economic problems and enhancing our lives, or whether its ultimate threat of a subjugated or even annihilated humanity could one day come to pass. Machines are doing more and more of what used to be the work of the human mind, reducing us to shallower thinking and understanding. In the drive to develop the ever more complex and autonomous technological matrix within which we are increasingly subsumed, is the human race being lost?
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’John Foxx And The Maths ‘The Machine’
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LF265 Kingsley Dennis – Fragmented Reality and Fear of the Future

Kingsley Dennis discusses his book Bardo Times.
As with so many civilizations of the past, we live in a time of crisis. Contemporary culture is caught in a cul-de-sac, a battle zone of competing ideologies and dogmas. Although the human race has a long history of generating millenarian hype and apocalyptic panics, for many people the state we’re in right now really does have an air of gathering gloom and a palpable sense of ‘something’s got to give’ unlike any in the past. Leaving aside religious rapture fantasies and the techno-utopian view which posits a future of immortal human-machine hybrids populating the galaxy, there are two basic schools of thought concerning what lies ahead. The first essentially predicts the extinction of most if not all life on Earth due to environmental collapse. Lights out, game over. The second envisions a sort of slow-motion apocalypse as the natural and man-made systems upon which modern society depends gradually disintegrate making life as we know it, with its endless expansion and perpetual growth, simply impossible. With obstacles lying in every direction, where do we go from here?
Previous interviews with Kingsley Dennis:Dawn of the Akashic AgeThe Phoenix Generation
Bumper music:Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Havdis ‘The Strange Sighting at Søftan’
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LF264 Jasun Horsley – Sex, Occultism and Social Engineering: Part Three

Jasun Horsley discusses his book The Vice of Kings: How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution Engineered a Culture of Abuse.
This is a three part interview. Part one is here. Part two is here.
In today’s post-truth world, we are becoming inundated with fantasy fiction, alternate truth, fake news, and grossly-oversimplified, wildly-exaggerated conspiracy theories in which cryptocratic power structures and shadowy elites rule our fates. But suppose the truth is both stranger than any fiction and more nuanced and disturbing than any theory? Suppose it is not conspiracy but complicity that creates our world?
Beginning as an investigation into the author’s childhood inside a closet aristocracy of so-called ‘progressive’ British entrepreneurs, The Vice of Kings uncovers a shocking and deeply-disturbing history with links to powerful, high-profile individuals and organisations within the media, entertainment, government, law enforcement, the intelligence services, and more. By juxtaposing disc jockey Jimmy Savile’s secret cultural, criminal, and political affiliations in the second half of the 20th century with the life and teachings of Aleister Crowley in the first, it uncovers an alarming body of evidence suggesting that organized child abuse is not only the dark side of occultism, but the shadowy secret at the heart of culture, both ancient and modern.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Amber Asylum ‘Still Point’
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LF263 Brian Keating – Cosmos and Controversy: Science and the Big Questions

Brian Keating, author of Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor, discusses the origin of the Universe and how science is performed, presented, and perceived.
Modern science portrays itself as dispassionate and detached, with objective observers simply registering facts. But scientists are people too, with prejudices and emotions, rivalries and ambitions, hopes and fears. Pop science today is all over the media, making stars out of scientists unaccustomed to such acclaim. In an age of chaos and confusion where anti-scientific attitudes are also on the rise, can more be done to make science relevant and meaningful to the masses?
We also take a tour of cosmological theories from the Big Bang to the Steady State and ask, could our Universe really have arisen from nothing? And, in attempting to trace its origin back in time, is there a point beyond which we simply cannot see?
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Tangerine Dream ‘Love On a Real Train’
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LF262 Jim Elvidge – Digital Consciousness: The True Nature of Reality? Part Two

Jim Elvidge discusses his book Digital Consciousness: A Transformative Vision.
This is a two part interview. Part one is here.
Our reality is not what it appears to be. The latest physics experiments demonstrate that an objective reality simply does not exist. Despite its immense value to humanity, modern science’s claim that it can account for the depth and diversity of experience, and in the foreseeable future explain the fundamental nature of reality, goes too far. Modern mainstream science maintains that matter is all that matters, and that the seemingly-solid three-dimensional world of our five senses is all there really is. But the list of phenomena adequately accounted for by the physical sciences is outstripped by those it cannot explain and instead simply chooses to ignore.
The most profound of these is the riddle of consciousness itself. The best hypothesis proffered by mainstream science is that consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of the brain, a by-product which arises when organisms reach a certain degree of complexity. But what if the opposite were true? What if that which we call matter actually arises within mind, a universal sea of consciousness forming the fundamental ground of reality? Not only does this model reflect ancient spiritual and wisdom traditions spanning the globe and reaching back into pre-history, when unified with cutting edge quantum physics, it forms the basis for an all-encompassing cosmology offering answers to the eternal questions of existence and the deepest mysteries of life.
Previous interview with Jim Elvidge:The Universe… Solved!
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Ian Boddy ‘The Uncertainty Principle’
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LF261 Jasun Horsley – Sex, Occultism and Social Engineering: Part Two

Jasun Horsley discusses his book The Vice of Kings: How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution Engineered a Culture of Abuse.
Part one of this interview is here.
In today’s post-truth world, we are becoming inundated with fantasy fiction, alternate truth, fake news, and grossly-oversimplified, wildly-exaggerated conspiracy theories in which cryptocratic power structures and shadowy elites rule our fates. But suppose the truth is both stranger than any fiction and more nuanced and disturbing than any theory? Suppose it is not conspiracy but complicity that creates our world?
Beginning as an investigation into the author’s childhood inside a closet aristocracy of so-called ‘progressive’ British entrepreneurs, The Vice of Kings uncovers a shocking and deeply-disturbing history with links to powerful, high-profile individuals and organisations within the media, entertainment, government, law enforcement, the intelligence services, and more. By juxtaposing disc jockey Jimmy Savile’s secret cultural, criminal, and political affiliations in the second half of the 20th century with the life and teachings of Aleister Crowley in the first, it uncovers an alarming body of evidence suggesting that organized child abuse is not only the dark side of occultism, but the shadowy secret at the heart of culture, both ancient and modern.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Cyberchump ‘The Long Goodbye’
Listen to more shows on Legalise Freedom Dot Com.

LF260 Jim Elvidge – Digital Consciousness: The True Nature of Reality? Part One

Jim Elvidge discusses his book Digital Consciousness: A Transformative Vision.
Our reality is not what it appears to be. The latest physics experiments demonstrate that an objective reality simply does not exist. Despite its immense value to humanity, modern science’s claim that it can account for the depth and diversity of experience, and in the foreseeable future explain the fundamental nature of reality, goes too far. Modern mainstream science maintains that matter is all that matters, and that the seemingly-solid three-dimensional world of our five senses is all there really is. But the list of phenomena adequately accounted for by the physical sciences is outstripped by those it cannot explain and instead simply chooses to ignore.
The most profound of these is the riddle of consciousness itself. The best hypothesis proffered by mainstream science is that consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of the brain, a by-product which arises when organisms reach a certain degree of complexity. But what if the opposite were true? What if that which we call matter actually arises within mind, a universal sea of consciousness forming the fundamental ground of reality? Not only does this model reflect ancient spiritual and wisdom traditions spanning the globe and reaching back into pre-history, when unified with cutting edge quantum physics, it forms the basis for an all-encompassing cosmology offering answers to the eternal questions of existence and the deepest mysteries of life.
Previous interview with Jim Elvidge:The Universe… Solved!
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Christina Vantzou ‘Entanglements’
Listen to more shows on Legalise Freedom Dot Com.

LF259 Jasun Horsley – Sex, Occultism and Social Engineering: Part One

Jasun Horsley discusses his book The Vice of Kings: How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution Engineered a Culture of Abuse.
In today’s post-truth world, we are becoming inundated with fantasy fiction, alternate truth, fake news, and grossly-oversimplified, wildly-exaggerated conspiracy theories in which cryptocratic power structures and shadowy elites rule our fates. But suppose the truth is both stranger than any fiction and more nuanced and disturbing than any theory? Suppose it is not conspiracy but complicity that creates our world?
Beginning as an investigation into the author’s childhood inside a closet aristocracy of so-called ‘progressive’ British entrepreneurs, The Vice of Kings uncovers a shocking and deeply-disturbing history with links to powerful, high-profile individuals and organisations within the media, entertainment, government, law enforcement, the intelligence services, and more. By juxtaposing disc jockey Jimmy Savile’s secret cultural, criminal, and political affiliations in the second half of the 20th century with the life and teachings of Aleister Crowley in the first, it uncovers an alarming body of evidence suggesting that organized child abuse is not only the dark side of occultism, but the shadowy secret at the heart of culture, both ancient and modern.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Altus ‘Dormant Skeletons’
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LF258 Steve Taylor – Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World

Steve Taylor discusses his book Spiritual Science – Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World.
Is it possible that the most profound mysteries of existence can be solved not through science or spirituality alone, but through an approach that combines them both? In this groundbreaking book, Steve Taylor offers a new vision of the world that is compatible with both modern science and ancient spiritual teachings. Spiritual Science reveals Taylor’s ‘panspiritist’ view of reality, one that transcends both conventional science and religion, and answers many of the riddles that neither can fully explain.
The standard model of science has had limited success in explaining many phenomena, including consciousness, the connection between mind and body, altruism, and anomalies such as near-death experiences, psychic phenomena and spiritual awakenings, to name just a few. But from a panspiritist perspective – which sees spirit or consciousness as a fundamental essence of reality – it is possible to make sense of all these things. Drawing on the insights of philosophers, physicists, and mystics, as well as spiritual traditions and indigenous cultures, Taylor makes a compelling case for a spiritual vision of reality; a vision of a sacred and interconnected world, and of a meaningful and purposeful human life. The purely materialist model of reality is taking us to the brink of disaster. It is time to take a wider view before it’s too late.
Previous interviews with Steve Taylor:Not I, Not Other Than IBack to Sanity Healing the Madness of Our Minds
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez Traffic OSTMichael Stearns Planetary Unfolding
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LF257 David J. Moore – UFOs, Reality and Human Evolution Part Two

David J. Moore discusses his book Evolutionary Metaphors: UFOs, New Existentialism and the Future Paradigm.
This is a two part interview. Part one is here.
People have been witnessing strange lights and objects in the sky for all of recorded history. Their modern guise as UFOs began in earnest during the 20th century, particularly in the wake of the Roswell incident in 1947. Despite thousands of reported UFO sightings, close encounters, abductions, and even crash landings, physical evidence for the existence of alien spacecraft and their inhabitants is practically non-existent. Shadow government cover-ups are claimed but official disclosure seems as far off as ever.
Other theories propose that UFOs may be inter-dimensional entities, or even individual or collective psychic projections. Whatever their true nature, the question remains – what lies behind them and what do they want? Do they present an existential threat to the Earth or are they merely messengers from some higher intelligence? In urging us to rethink the nature of time and space, and break down the dualistic barriers between mind and matter, are anomalous phenomena such as UFOs forcing us to wake up to a wider reality and if so, what might this mean for the future of humanity?
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Dionysiac ‘Iota Ceti Contact’
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