Summary: In this episode, KMO talks with novelist Brian Trent about ideologically reflexive behavior that the echo chamber corporate media has instilled in us. Later, KMO revisits the clashing belief systems of 2012 prophets Whitley Strieber and Daniel Pinchbeck. Brian Trent is an acclaimed columnist, journalist, and the author of the historical novels Remembering Hypatia: A Novel of Ancient Egypt and the recently released Never Grow Old: The Novel of Gilgamesh. His articles have appeared on Populist America, American Chronicle, The Humanist, and numerous other venues including being featured in last year's National Debate on civil liberties. Trent writes from a nonpartisan, freethinking perspective and tackles a variety of subjects on culture, religion, technology, and politics. Website: http://www.briantrent.com/ Here's the email I sent to Brian Trent to invite him to the C-Realm Podcast: Hi Brian, My name is K@#$% M. O'*@*##*$ (podcasting as KMO), and I'm the host and creator of a weekly interview-based podcast called the C-Realm Podcast. C stands for "consciousness." I heard you recently on Mike Hagan's RadiOrbit show and enjoyed the conversation quite a bit. While the interview left me wanting to read your books, I have not yet done so. I have, however, been reading your on-line articles and essays, and I'm now listening to your appearance on the Infidel Guy podcast. I'd very much like to get you on the phone (or Skype) to record a conversation for the C-Realm Podcast. What I'm most interested in talking about is the topic of political cults and the shallow, combative, reflexive ideological postures that the echo-chamber media has trained people to adopt in our culture. I scrupulously keep the C-Realm podcast free of anything that smacks of partisan political talking points, and while it would be fair to describe me as an atheist libertarian, I find that atheists and libertarians can come across as some of the most ideologically hide-bound, strident, push-button meme-bots out there, every bit as knee-jerk in their "catagorize-and-dismiss" reactions to anything that smacks of mysticism or sentimentality as your coffee shop Political Correctness enforcer was in her reaction to your talk of native Americans and their failure to produce a technologically advanced empire along the lines of the Egyptians or Chinese. I'd be interested in getting your take on that topic. On the topic of apocalyptic thinking, the two varieties that I encounter most (not including the Christian fundamentalist variety which, living in Arkansas, I simply filter out for the sake of my own sanity) are the psychedelic community's scheduled 21 December 2012 eschaton (a la Terence McKenna) and the notion of a technological singularity (a la Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge). When the topic of conversation on Mike Hagan's show turned to the emerging technologies of longevity, I got the impression that you had something to say along Singularitarian lines but chose not to voice it. I would invite you to explore that topic on the C-Realm Podcast. Finally, I've had a number of guests on the show talking about peak oil, resource depletion, and the possibility of a massive human die-back (what I've been calling a "malthusian correction"). There seems to be an apocalyptic mania at work there as well, and I must admit, it's siren song pulls at the vulnerable places of my own psychology. I started the previous paragraph with "finally," but there's one other topic I wanted to discuss with you: Zombies! Douglas Rushkoff wrote an essay recently about the sociological significance of the zombie genre which sparked a few ideas that I'd like to bounce off a thoughtful interlocutor. There was also a zombie piece in Reason magazine earlier this year. I feel a strong revulsion for contemporary horror films and avoid them all except for the zombie flicks. I generally see fewer than five
