Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff The Lobotomy of History: Reclaiming Our Extraordinary States (w/ Jeffrey Kripal)
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Mar 25, 2026 Jeffrey Kripal, Rice University professor who studies religion, mysticism, and extraordinary experience. He argues the humanities have cut out visions and altered states and explores the vertical dimension as a real way of knowing. He discusses how literature and art amplify consciousness, the marketing problem of making the humanities appealing, and why reclaiming the weird could transform scholarship.
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Transhumanism Versus Superhuman Interiority
- Technology-driven transhumanism differs from Kripal's superhuman: one amplifies materially, the other invokes altered interior states.
- Psychedelics and media are non-specific amplifiers; set and setting shape whether experience is healing or harmful.
Turn Deconstruction Onto The Critic
- Apply humanities' critical tools to the critics themselves by deconstructing the form of consciousness producing the critique.
- Kripal urges scholars to examine their own subjectivity rather than only external constructs.
Parapsychic Language Tracks Technological Metaphors
- Parapsychology's language mirrors contemporary communication tech (telegraph → radio → internet), shaping how anomalous experiences are imagined.
- Media and metaphors create tracks that both reveal and limit what people notice.
