In more depth…

I am a philosopher with a focus on the relation between participation and transformation. This focus has found form in relation to questions of metaphysics (what is, what knowing is, and what is the nature of, and our involvement with, the process of valuation). Across evolving interests in the realms of consciousness and the nature of meaning and identity, from perspectives philosophical, psychological, biological, anthropological, sociological, theological etc., this focus has graduated the recognition that the process of communication, or the capacity to receive, and transmute perception into expression as a generative-relational process of crafting voice, is pivotal to the realisation of desired existential realities.

Thus there is also the recognition that we may come to realise the nature of desire and valuation as such by participating in various processes of communication, wherein art and science emerge of common spirit.

I recognise deep commonalities of viewpoint throughout a great diversity of life. But I seem to be most drawn and capable of relating to tensions of difference among peers in discourses influenced by process philosophy, depth psychology and psychoanalysis, integral theory, metamodernism, varieties of complex systems science, those who take seriously the relation between mysticism and analysis, those who have loved, lost, and loved again, and anyone who otherwise exhibits virtues of courage, care, humility, and curiousity.

Among the dead I narrativistically count among my nameable influences Alfred North Whitehead, C.G. Jung, Henri Bergson, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the distributed compilers of spiritual texts across East and West, of which I have read and heard a thousand and one fragments. I am not however a philosopher-scholar, despite holding aspiration to engage the vital currents of perspective and understanding which comprise our processual lifeworld. In recent chapters of my life I have been something closer to a philosopher on the ground, embodying the presence of a more vital philosophy in our time. This is not in any shape or form to denigrate the necessary virtues of scholarly knowledge. It is just to say that the way I know better finds the call and response of philosophy in the here and now.

Among the living my nameable influences number far greater. So much so that it feels inappropriate to name singular persons. Fortunately, I have spoken with many of these influences on the Voicecraft podcast, and have endeavoured to build and participate in relational contexts in which influence (in terms of expansion and clarification of perspective) is made increasingly possible by virtue of mutual learning in dialogic process.

In 2017 I founded Voicecraft (then named Voiceclub.) The Voicecraft project is an endeavour toward creating and sustaining contexts where communication is capable of addressing the heart of what matters in the real of modern life, in touch with the depths as well as the times. Voicecraft as an entity can be engaged with through podcasts or films, at live events, in its academy, or through participation in its pioneering online network. It seeks to meet the desire for communication to be enjoyable, engaging and playful, without compromising the rigour and intensity of real navigation of complexity, uncertainty, and the demands of transdisciplinary, embodied, historically nuanced thinking.

While the vast majority of my adult learning and interests have been pursued beyond academic grounds, I have received a Masters in Philosophy from the University of Bristol, and a BA in Philosophy and International Relations from the Australian National University. In this context, some of the questions I pursued circled on mysticism and its relation to analysis; phenomenology and its relation to ontology; psychedelics and profound experiences and their relation to questions of identity, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics; mind and its relation to matter; and the relation of humanity to death, power, violence, and the sacred.

I believe that revitalised and reimagined forms of participation are crucial to the loving transformation of relationship between psyche, culture, and nature.

You can sign up to my Substack, or read it first, using this link. (It’s the same as the Voicecraft one, but on it I do publish or re-publish writing, as well as project updates and invitations.)