Shows
SpeakingsShould I Give Up On Self-Discipline?You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here.
The key points in this "speaking":
This podcast episode is a follow-up to the episode "Can pleasure be trusted?" A bit more colloquial than the average episode, I offer more details about my relationship to intuitive eating and why the paradigm of self-discipline is no longer of interest to me.
Check out the blog post for a more extended case against self-discipline.
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter.com. You can also check o...2024-06-2825 minSpeakingsThe Trauma of the Image & The Aloneness of AuthenticityYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here.
The key points in this "speaking":
On the sensation of time passing, the threat of invisibility as we age, and the trauma of constant visual exposure.
We can no longer feel what it is to be human; we only see it. In contrast to the image, to feel yourself (your inner and outer states) is always to feel yourself as a wholly ephemeral and constantly shifting creature.
The age of the image, the age of the screen, the age of the spectacle is an age in wh...2024-06-0916 minSpeakingsWhy Women are Anxious Overachievers & Men are Confidently IncompetentYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here.
The key points in this "speaking":
Of course, all categories (male, female, white, black, cis, trans, etc.) are imaginaries. No individual can be captured fully by a category, and many individuals lie outside these patterns.
The man is the neutral, the normal, the standard. The woman is the aberration, the abnormal, that which stands out. Man is the genderless gender, just as whiteness is the raceless race.
This relation is a mirror is a more fundamental internal relation between the self: the self is two, both...2024-04-1023 minSpeakingsDesire as Refusal of TimeYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here.
The key points in this "speaking":
Desire keeps us stretched into the future, looking for an otherwise or a not-yet. Because it feeds on the future, desire is inherently insatiable.
We are terrified of the present moment because to belong fully to the moment is to die.
Time as the living present vs. the abstracted, artificial timeline of our story-lives. We live in an abstracted temporality in order to flee from the fear and shame of simply being aliv...2024-01-1815 minSpeakingsJesus, Santa Clause, & Religious BeliefYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here.
The key points in this "speaking":
Do religious beliefs inhabit the same epistemological sphere as scientific or historical facts?
God as “Santa Claus" vs. the God beyond atheism, theism, and all categories of belief or disbelief
Jesus as archetype of paradox, truth, and love incarnate.
Anything true is already here, always present, and always happening. Religious truth claims should not be essentially historic or predictive.
Can there be religion beyond historical claims to authority?
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions...2023-12-3127 minSpeakingsThe Price of Peace"Live a life without closure, and your compassion will broaden you, stretch you, widen the walls of your flesh until you're able to receive the unthinkable joy and the unthinkable pain."
You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here.
The key points in this "speaking":
Great joy and great pain alike are dangerous to the ego.
There's a gap between the "I am" and the "I think I am." Forgetting this gap is the origin of suffering.
We tell easy stories to contain grief, pain, or evil. But a...2023-11-2623 minSpeakingsIn Praise of StupidityYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
The key points in this "speaking":
Everyone has a defining insecurity. Our lives circle around these insecurities through exclusion.
To be a human being is to be in direct and dangerous contact with time. Are we more afraid of finitude or eternity?
Perhaps there is something beneath time and eternity that makes this duality possible. But this something can only be sensed...2023-11-1511 minSpeakingsA Lament for Israel and GazaRecorded while sick and overwhelmed with grief.
In this episode, I make no attempt to offer a political analysis of the situation—not in order to avoid hard questions or "side-taking," but because these analyses are everywhere, and many are very good (I will link some articles in the blog post associated with this episode).
Key points in this "speaking":
Nationalities, races, religions are human imaginaries. I don’t want to support an imaginary, but rather the suffering human being.
There is never a justification for violence. Justification is only a relative reality, referring to a...2023-10-3012 minSpeakingsCan Pleasure Be Trusted?You can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
The key points in this "speaking"
Why are we so suspicious of pleasure?
The darkness of the other's body— that the other remains uncontrollable and uninhabitable—reveals a fundamental separation. In response to this anxiety, we try to control the chaos of the other's sovereign body.
Perhaps we fear desire when we first glimpse its infinite nature. Human desires are beyond the simple needs of other anima...2023-10-0818 minSpeakingsStaying Human While the World is EndingYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
The key points in this "speaking":
How can we live in such urgent times of climate change and not take continuous, drastic, urgent action?
On the risk of over-emphasis on personal responsibility: your personal "carbon footprint" was actually marketed by British Petroleum (BP) as a way to shift responsibility from oil companies to individuals.
And yet, doing nothing because we can do little cannot be the way to...2023-09-1719 minSpeakingsThe Sound of the Body: An Essay ExcerptThis episode is a recording of one section of an essay I originally wrote for subscribers. Read the full essay here.
The key points in this "speaking":
The world arrives as one: body and soul together, one uncaused arising.
"Foods prepared with presence can open the pores towards particular worlds."
"The human is a virtual animal, an ideological construct that derives its meaning from material exclusion."
"The Yukaghirs say that before children learn to speak, the body is open: “raw meat.” Language is learned and the flesh bends into itself, circling small worlds of human-centric meanings."
"Fore...2023-09-1009 minSpeakingsA Living Landscape, an Animate WorldYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
The key points in this "speaking":
Why I still sometimes call myself a poet even though I don’t write proper poetry: because poetry is the most immanent disclosure of reality. Direct experience has a particular rhythm, a symbolic structure. Meaning is unquestioned before interpretation.
In spite of our differences from other animals, what is it that allows us to understand the world? W...2023-08-2423 minSpeakingsThe Miraculous is a Mode of ThoughtYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
The key points in this "speaking":
Is the miraculous simply a supernatural happening? Like God is a supernatural entity?
Richard Rohr’s distinction between Jesus of Nazareth and the universal Christ: Jesus as a pattern, archetype, and meme.
Beliefs are about facts, which refer to objects in the world. But the whole of reality is no object at all, and so cannot be captured by beliefs...2023-08-1616 minSpeakingsWhy Your Partner Can't Complete YouYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
The key points in this "speaking":
Romantic love is the religion of the secular west. We used to seek the One (the ground of all reality), and now we seek "the one," the finite individual who can fill our infinite hunger.
Before the advent of self-awareness, we sensed our oneness (without being aware of it). Now there is an uncrossable gap between the experiencing self...2023-08-1119 minSpeakingsOn "Barbie" & the Allure of IdeologyYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
Key points of this "speaking":
I saw "Barbie" and was disappointed. I’m a feminist who did not disagree with any part of its message, and yet I felt it was a wasted opportunity.
Is this film doing more harm than good for this conversation?
The best way to approach this question, I think, is to analyze some early forms of virtual...2023-08-0327 minSpeakingsThe End is Always JoyYou can find the synopsis of this episode, further notes, and a convenient place to comment here. I will also periodically update my thoughts on this episode's content at that same link.
Key points of this "speaking":
Every conceptual schema is a mythology if you go down far enough. Hold these mythologies lightly.
In order to be truly successful, you have to tend to your particular energy in the way that it requires.
We have to risk self-deception in order to find our inner guide. No one knows for sure whether or not thei...2023-08-0115 minSpeakingsAnalogizing Ourselves Into BeingWelcome to the Speakings podcast! My name is Sondra: I'm a writer, philosopher, and lover of (among other things) trees, artisan chocolate, old bookstores, and other human and non-human beings. Both my philosophical and creative projects explore ways of being-in-the-world that are more rational and more connected to the broader body of the earth. In this podcast, I hope to capture the dynamism of philosophical and spiritual thought by speaking in an unscripted manner, belonging to the moment as fully as possible. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, you can email me at sondra@sondrawriter...2023-07-3027 min