Justin McSweeny

As a host of an interview series myself, I've always been curious about an 'interview the interviewer' format. I am fairly confident that I can bring forth a dialogue with you that expands horizons and goes beyond repetitive and exhausted ideas around self-help and transformative processes. Let's introduce novelty into that arena together!

I can speak to some ideas found in philosophy, psychology, social systems, complexity systems and cognitive science. The novel ideas mined from these disciplines are great for creating fresh exploration of personal development and comprehensive individuation. This can include:

Exploring how we sense make and how sense making gives rise to meaning making which then opens virtual space for realizing purpose relative to the context of the sense meaning loop and their continuous updating given new insight.

Understanding meaning from self-oriented meaning to broader collective meaning.

Moving from noun, object to verb, transject sense making.

Exploring self and identity generation or construction. Capturing the process of selving and the tentative nature of identity. Re-cognizing the pre-personal, personal and interpersonal stages of individuation as it relates back with identity awareness.

Using apophatic reasoning to enact a more fluid apprehension of belief structures. Using apophasis to be in healthy relation with cataphasis. Understanding this relationship as being a mirror to propositional knowing in appropriate tension with perspectival knowing.

Understanding the role of dialogic onboarding of propositional knowing. Allowing that move to open up to participatory knowing as well as a greater perspectival understanding.

Exploring naturalistic spirituality. Letting go of the supernatural mythopoesis.

Using the second order cybernetic metaphor in bridging the divide between practical experience and the spiritual pursuit of being mode, way making.

Exploring the emergence of the second order observer and the curation of the profilic self in the media ecosystem. Exploring the diagrammatic abstracted, machinic self as profilic self.

Examining belief, identity and desire and the Molochian dilemmas that tend to arise from the exercising of these sense making modes.

Looking into Fisher's hauntology and extracting the nostalgia; Albrecht's solastalgia and how this relates to allostatic adaptation through the lens of a Yerkes Dodson law model.

Looking at the construct of authenticity and the curation of a profilic self that seems to be authentic. Sincerity awareness is the counterfactual option that may exist just outside of the abstruse, authentic self. Self is fluid and nebulous and cannot be forced, lest you endure the misfit of being.

I am also interested in what I call the 'will to spirit'. It is humanity's drive to seek the transcendent as a means to relate to the ordinary by way of ritual, disruption and dialectic.

Although I am nontheistic, ignostic I do love to talk about mysticism, especially late medieval Sufic and low country Christian mysticism. The related blossoming of 13th century Neoplatonism informed wisdom practices is a matter of interest as well. I also much appreciate the reciprocity of so-called eastern traditions in relation with the canon of so-called western classical, axial age wisdom traditions.

What I am drawn to above all is dialoguing about human wellbeing and thriving in an otherwise chaotic, natural and contrived world.

To summarize, I would love to discuss:

Sense making, meaning making, purpose discovery. Using the tools and psycho-technologies of cog sci, Psych and Phil of mind to explore the self/world, transjective relationship. All inquiries therein aim towards a cultivation of wellbeing though an ecology of practices.

Your audience can examine my work in continuation on my web site, illuminelife.org. This is a free, virtual workshop for people to pursue personal inquiry and development.

I advocate for Zoom based pre-meets, so people can figure out if I am a fit for their show.

Thanks!