Author: The Side View

November 8, 2018

Mushroom foraging is an art of active perception that deserves to be studied with patience, taught with rigor, and passed onto future generations with contagious enthusiasm. Read Roope Kaaronen’s latest essay here.

November 1, 2018

Roope Kaaronen is a Doctoral Candidate at the Environmental Policy Research Group at the University of Helsinki. His research interests include pro-environmental behavior and cognition, the socio-cognitive aspects of environmental crisis, and the organization of science in society. His research draws on embodied cognitive science, ecological and environmental psychology, affordance theory, philosophy of science and mind, sociology, and systems theory. Listen to the whole episode here.

October 23, 2018


In episode 4 of the TSV podcast, we sat down with Erik Davis and Aaron Weiss to talk about the legalization and mainstreaming of psychedelics, changing cultures in San Francisco, spiritual and contemplative practice, the risks of technology, and much more. Full episode here

October 15, 2018

When we practice contemplative unknowing, we let go of all of our conceited conceptualizations, and we come to rest in a more fundamental experience of being alive. Read the full essay by David L. Collins here.

October 15, 2018

The self is surely more than the sum of its parts, but summing the parts is a way of beginning to think about who or what a self is. Read the full essay by Claire Fanger here.

October 12, 2018

Dear readers,

With our first week behind us, I wanted to take a moment to share with you all some news, updates, and developments here at The Side View:

* I’m happy to report that our first week was a great success. We hit over 4,000 page views in the first seven days after launching the site (4,081 hits as of this post!). (more…)

October 9, 2018

There are certain historical moments when the right social and material conditions conspire to raise the temperature of philosophical inquiry so high that consciousness combusts, melting our collective mental habits to transform our sense of what is possible. The German idealist movement was such a moment. Read Matthew T. Segall’s full essay here.