Legalise Freedom Dot Com

LF268 Bernardo Kastrup – Reality? It’s All in Your Mind

Bernardo Kastrup discusses his book The Idea of the World: A Multi-disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality.
In his most cogent and compelling work to date, Kastrup’s theory of reality offers a grounded alternative to the frenzy of unrestrained abstractions and unexamined assumptions in philosophy and science today. The Idea of the World makes a rigorous case for the primacy of mind in nature, examining what can be learned about the nature of reality based on conceptual parsimony, straightforward logic, and empirical evidence from fields as diverse as physics and neuroscience. It compiles an overarching case for idealism – the notion that reality is essentially mental.
The author begins by exposing the logical fallacies and internal contradictions of the reigning physicalist paradigm and popular alternatives such as panpsychism. The main objections to idealism are also systematically refuted. The book closes with an analysis of the hidden psychological motivations behind mainstream physicalism and the implications of idealism for the way we relate to each other and the world. The view of reality presented here makes sense of the many mysteries which mainstream materialist science simply cannot fathom. It reconciles the classical and quantum worlds and disposes of the so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. It may even hold the secret to the origin and meaning of life.
Previous interviews with Bernardo Kastrup:Why Materialism Is BaloneyBrief Peeks BeyondReligion, Reality and The Meaning of Life
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Stanislav Shevchenko ‘Conscientia’Listen to more shows on Legalise Freedom Dot Com.

LF267 Thomas Lombardo – Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future

Thomas Lombardo discusses his book Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future.
Science fiction is the most visible and influential contemporary form of futurist thinking and imagination in the modern world. Similar in many ways to the great myths of the past, science fiction is so popular because, in dramatic narrative form, it speaks to the whole person – intellect, imagination, emotion, human values, and the senses – providing fantastical and visionary stories that engage and enlighten us, expanding our consciousness and inspiring our ongoing future evolution.
Beginning with this first volume in a four-volume series, Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future describes the historical development of science fiction from its ancient mythological origins up through contemporary times, explaining how science fiction has emerged as our modern mythology, and how science fiction has both reflected and guided the evolution of human consciousness, society, and scientific-technological imagination and creation.
Previous interview with Thomas Lombardo:Future Consciousness
Bumper music:Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Stellardrone ‘Billions and Billions’
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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’
Listen to more shows on Legalise Freedom Dot Com.

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’
Listen to more shows on Legalise Freedom Dot Com.