Month: March 2023

“Passing Electrical Storms”: New Extended Reality Art Experience Simulates the End of Life

In this new exhibit by artist Shaun Gladwell, participants can experience a simulation of death via VR and medical technologies: Passing Electrical Storms is a participatory XR experience with a deeply affecting, ‘out-of-body’ nature. Gladwell simulates the experience of dying through XR and medical technologies. At once meditative and unsettling, this interactive work guides participants through … Read more“Passing Electrical Storms”: New Extended Reality Art Experience Simulates the End of Life

“Are coincidences real?”

English neuropsychologist-turned-freelance writer Paul Broksis writes for Aeon on the history, theory and perception of coincidence: I don’t believe the Universe contains supernatural forces, but I feel it might. This is because the human mind has fundamentally irrational elements. I’d go as far as to say that magical thinking forms the basis of selfhood. Our … Read more“Are coincidences real?”

“Inside the Spiritual Jacuzzi”

I’m reading Carole Cusack’s excellent Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith and am delighted to have discovered the Hot Tub Mystery Religion, intriguingly described in this 2003 Reason.com article by Jesse Walker: Atheists have long regarded religion as, at best, a collective work of art, but in the last century that view has grown popular … Read more“Inside the Spiritual Jacuzzi”

An Online Symposium Celebrating 50 Years of “The Denial of Death”, With Caitlin Doughty & Sheldon Solomon

I’m looking forward to attending this upcoming online symposium, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death. Published in 1973, the book helped spark the Happy Death Movement, a clear precursor to the current Death Positivity Movement. The event will be moderated by D.S. Moss and will feature speakers … Read moreAn Online Symposium Celebrating 50 Years of “The Denial of Death”, With Caitlin Doughty & Sheldon Solomon