Scientific Animism

Title Earth Clouds are the Best Clouds: How Cosmic Daydreams Increase Empathy Description Seriously, other planets don’t have it so good. As we anticipate a near future in which human civilization is dispersed among multiple planets, let’s reflect on how great we on Team Earth have it. The biggest thing those suckers on other worlds are missing out on? The mthrfckn WATER CYCLE, yo! We have, like,...

Scientific Animism is happening . It’s out there. Let’s build a reference library together. → check it out → are.na/scientific-animism This is a living resource that we can all create together, to document the large and growing mycelium network growing between all these things that seem maybe separate but once you have the label you see they’re all one organism, we’re all growing together we’re gr...

it’s deliciously analog; deliciously ai-resistent; deliciously connection-forming. a folded piece of paper! the mass-broadcast mechanism of yester-century! so cute, so retro! i wanted one specifically of Animist Gratitude Prayers, so that i could hold my zine in my folded thumbs like a prayer book while i sit cross legged in some cemetery, watching the sunrise , recounting my blessings. do you wan...

you are on the edge vertiginous prospecting rooftops Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

Maybe we’re never going to fully tear down the master’s house . Maybe we’re never going to fully out the old. Maybe the new gets layered over the old by degrees and half-measures and one beautiful, laborious story at a time. Share the vision widely enough, get enough others to buy into the new fiction, so that you can cover over the old, cover over part of the old, fill in gaps in the old, create...

This Communal New Year’s Poem has become a bit of a tradition in the sense that I’ve tried to do it for the past two years. When does something become a tradition? Either way—it has felt especially important lately to begin a brand-new year with a reminder that we are all making our way through it together, whether we feel it all the time or not. The process is simple enough—I post a little prompt...

The world is alive, and we are its witnesses! Meaning, myth, & spiritual community based in reality, no supernatural convictions required or forbidden. Push me to boil down the movement to one ethos, one raison d’être , one catchphrase, and it’s this: More life. More abundant life. More kinds of life. More diversity of life. More ways to understand life. More perspectives, more minds, more kinds o...

I still can’t believe Sophie Strand saw—and responded to!—my DM. Me! With my 150 subscribers. Her! With her 37 thousand. I’m humbled. Thanks for reading, listening, being here with me. Let’s co-imagine, co-enact, a more animate, entangled world together. Out of well-founded humility/fear—“Who am I to request an interview from her? Why on earth would she bother responding, let alone honoring, that...

Hello friend! It’s been a busy summer and I haven’t shared anything for a while. Here’s a short post just to say: I like this time of year, and I like you. I hope you’re safe and well-fed and spending your time with people you love on something meaningful to y’all. Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

I’ve been thinking about this episode of The Great Simplification about living off-grid and about how all my medicine causes more illness (the “high efficiency” gas boiler in the first house, the mini-splits full of strip-mined copper in this one, the ongoing search for a better way) and then a funny thing happened Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

I imagine the emergent philosophy that is Scientific Animism growing into a collective movement where we create shared spaces, shared containers, to hold all our awe for the world and our grief at its senseless destruction. I’m feeling the grief right now. Thanks for being here with me. Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

Hey friend, thanks for being here with me, learning to ask better questions. This is one of my favorites. When my four-year-old says it slow, you can hear the misplaced consonant, the "K" at the beginning of the second word: Majih-Kwand. These kids have been captured by the idea. "I wish I had a magic wand that gave me all the powers in the whole world," says my six-year-old. Wow, I say, me too. W...

For me, right now, at my life stage, I want to embrace slow hedonism. Do things for pleasure! Pleasure is good! But I don’t need the easiest, fastest return on investment. Some of life’s most rewarding experiences require time; commitment; persistent exploration. Like a small child, follow fascination. Like the Buddha, practice soft vigilance. Will you be a hedonist with me? Get full access to Sci...

one day this feedback loop will end. one day these neurons will stop whispering to themselves a story of their own existence. the dance, the process, the performance will end, and nothing resembling a coherent Agent— a Self assembled from all these smaller entities— will be anywhere to be found. and yet the smaller entities will go on. the microbiome that sustained my brain will consume my nutrien...

The sunrise happens . You can’t control it. You can’t make it come quicker or make it come later, you can’t speed it up or slow it down. It happens. The question is: are you gonna be there to be a part of it? Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

About nine years ago, I heard a news story about the surprising number of people identifying as both pro-choice AND pro-life. Being in a fairly soft, in-between place myself at the time, I loved it. If I recall correctly, the reporters weren’t sure how to tell the story. Like, sure, they gave statistics: Japan had an even larger number of these people than the US. But what exactly was the viewpoin...

When I started this Substack I also had the goal of sort of LARPing, with friends, what we thought Scientific Animism might look like if it were some sort of organized / organizing religion / movement / whatever . Can LARPing summon a better world? Can it bring comfort while the current world crashes roars breaks upon our exhausted ears? I want community practice to help us embody; enact; summon a...

I have been practicing a Daoist meditation called the Microcosmic Orbit. As part of this practice, I visualize a pearl forming and growing in my sacrum—the Pearl of Consciousness. Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

a whole winter, this constant companion— every morning out delivering papers, every exit from school— breath made visible, maybe a little, maybe a lot, but almost always there, still warm but cooling, bits of was-just-me dispersing. Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

The tree makes 10,000 seeds. Sometimes, the yard is filled with seedlings. Sometimes none take. It’s not that God / The Universe wanted you to have this one new opportunity, and you just needed to trust and step out; give up the old thing. It’s not that you and that one old friend happened to be in the same city at the same time, and God / The Universe brought you together. What an impoverished vi...

When a whale dies, it sinks. And sinks. A slow motion fall, through the water column, down and down and down, until it comes to rest in a whole different ecosystem than the one in which it lived. Some organisms that make use of this food source are unique to whale falls! Things evolved just for this niche ecosystem. As you prepare for a hard year, when you look around at the s**t piling up, ask yo...

I argue that the faith/doubt spectrum is meaningless. Is there a better one we can come up with? Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

This poem was written for me this past summer, in California, with black-topped, blue-bellied Stellars Jays flitting about. Get full access to Scientific Animism at newsletter.scientificanimism.org/subscribe

* I’m actually teaching Sunday School to middle schoolers (6th-8th grades; 11-13 year olds) at a Christian church. * I’m actually doing a lesson on nihilism. * This is the last in a three-part series:1. Why am I teaching Sunday School? 2. Nihilism via comics 3. Pray like no one’s listening (this post!) This post contains the second half my actual lesson plan. We end by talking about prayer Get ful...

* I’m actually teaching Sunday School to middle schoolers (6th-8th grades; 11-13 year olds) at a Christian church. * I’m actually doing a lesson on nihilism. * This is the second in a three-part series:1. Why am I teaching Sunday School? 2. Nihilism via comics (this post!)3. Pray like no one’s listening This post contains the first half of my lesson plan, where I actually introduce nihilism. I’m s...