Michael Garfield's blog

Transformational Festivals Are a Symptom of Dissociation

I have dedicated years of my life to the aims and values of transformational festival culture. But I cannot feel the conversation is complete without acknowledging that the very existence of transformational festivals poses as much of a problem as a solution. (more)

5-31-13
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Visionary Soundscapes: A Talk with Mystical Sun

Michael Garfield

Mystical Sun has been making verdant listening-room electronica for almost two decades. The recently-released 26000 is his first album in four years, a testament to the time-intensive work and, poetically, also a concept album about deep time and epochal cycles. (more)

11-14-12
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And Now, Faster-Than-Light Culture

Michael Garfield

The recent discovery at CERN of neutrinos traveling faster than light has physics forums buzzing about the possibility that this is "solid" evidence of long-hypothesized additional dimensions. And we seem to be on the verge of confronting this new reality, this encounter with the transcendent unknown, on a mass cultural level. (more)

11-28-11
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The Symmetry of Cause & Effect

Michael Garfield

The more I look, the more I find a growing body of evidence that time – both as it is experienced and as it is disclosed by science – is best understood as more of a loom than a river. Gathered here are a few programs that suggest that our ideas of cause and effect need to be drastically reworked. (more)

4-6-11
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Self As City, City As Self

Michael Garfield

This year at Burning Man's Entheon Village, I gave a talk on how evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, philosophy, architecture, and art challenge our constructed categories of "individual" and "collective," pointing us toward a new understanding of the self as a multitude and our communities as living, sentient beings. (more)

10-6-10
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The Psychedelic Transhumanists

Michael Garfield

Visionaries like Tim Leary and Terence McKenna remind us of the stubborn persistence of the unconscious, the body, and the other. In their own words, presented as a “virtual conversation,” here are the core messages of a transhumanist vision informed by the psychedelic experience.

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1-15-10
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Let A Hundred Futures Bloom: A "Both/And" Survey Of Transhumanist Speculation

Michael Garfield

When I am in the mood for some armchair futurism, I like to remember the old Chinese adage: “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” Why do we think it will be one way or the other? The future arrives by many roads. Courtesy of some of science fiction’s finest speculative minds, here are a few of my favorites. (more)

11-25-09
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Giving in to Astonishment: Scenes from Burning Man's American Dream

Michael Garfield

Wandering the streets of Burning Man this summer, my contemplation of sacred geography and comparative mythology lead me to explore the relationship between the outer and inner worlds, death and rebirth, synchronicity, symbolism, and ritual. (more)