In the first half, renowned thinker Douglas Rushkoff argues that in a world of increasing automation and alienation, humanity's best path forward is to restore the social bonds that define our existence. There is an anti-human agenda embedded in our markets and technologies, which has turned them from means of human connection into ones of isolation, he says, and further, corporations and the culture they create, glorify individualism at the expense of cooperation. "Every time you swipe your smartphone, your smartphone is getting smarter about you, and you're getting dumber about it," he remarked, adding that the phone's technology remains hidden as a "proprietary" secret.
The algorithms in phones and social media platforms are "demonic" in the sense that as they learn more about us, they exploit our human nature, he cited. Slot machine algorithms are ported to Snapchat and our newsfeeds to make them more addictive, he added. Rushkoff revealed that the TikTok app (popular among youth culture for uploading short-form video) is actually owned in part by the Chinese military. Why would they want kids' faces in their database? "That's because China" he noted, "even worse than Facebook or Google...is looking for total information supremacy." He also talked about his graphic novel, Aleister & Adolf, a fictional retelling of the very real occult war between Crowley and Hitler at the end of World War II.
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Author and teacher HeatherAsh Amara has trained extensively in the Toltec tradition, as well as European shamanism, Buddhism, and Native American ceremony. In the third hour, she shared details of her Warrior Heart Practice, a revolutionary system based on the four-chambered structure of the human heart. Walking through each of the four chambers ―Feeling, Story, Truth, and Intent― she explained how to take stock of emotional and mental states to re-frame situations in a new healing light. The process helps people to get past the story or narrative they create about themselves, as well as the cycling or repressing of emotions. The goal, she stated, is to move into clarity and openness.
Such a transformation can be hard work-- hence the name Warrior Heart, she explained. "To really find peace," she said, you have to "face the parts of yourself that you're afraid of." Many of us carry around a metaphorical "backpack" that is filled with all our unprocessed emotions of the past, and "being a Warrior of the Heart," she added, "means you have the courage to take that backpack off and start to empty it out."
The last hour featured Sound-Off Open Lines.
News segment guests: John M. Curtis, Steve Kates