277: Joy Is Activism – The Power of Ritual and Intention Greater Than Code

00:44 - Pandemic Life



Politics
Healthcare
Society
Work


13:58 - Jay, Happiness, and Fulfillment



Personal Development and Self-Discovery


Brené Brown
Glennon Doyle
Elizabeth Gilbert

Nihilism
Manifestation
Gratitude & Daily Journaling


Morning Pages
EarlyWords



29:09 - Witchcraft & Magic



Intention and Ritual
Terry Pratchett
Franz Anton Mesmer
The Placebo Effect


Zenify Stress Relief Drink

Effort and Intention


Reflections:


Mandy: Everyone should journal. Reflect on the past and bring it to the present.


Damien: Bringing magic into non-magical environments.


Aaron: Ritual, intention, reflection, alignment.


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Transcript:


DAMIEN: Welcome to Episode 277 of Greater Than Code. I am Damien Burke and I'm joined with Aaron Aldrich.


AARON: Hi, I am Aaron and I am here with Mandy.


MANDY: Hello, everybody. I'm Mandy Moore and today, it's just the three of us!


So if you came expecting more than that, I'm sorry.


[laughter]


We’re what you get today, but hopefully, we can have a great conversation and we were thinking that we would talk about all the things. I'm doing big hand gestures right now because there's been so many things happening since 2020 that are still happening and how our perspectives have changed.


For one, I, myself, can tell you I have grown so much as a person in 2 years. And I'm curious to hear how the two of you have been living your lives since the pandemic.


DAMIEN: [chuckles] Where to begin.


AARON: I know. It's such a good topic because I feel like everyone's had so much to change, but at the same time, it's like, okay, so 2 million years ago at the beginning of this pandemic.


I'm now my third place, third job since the beginning of the pandemic as well and wow, I came out as non-binary in the middle of the pandemic [laughs]. So that was a whole thing, too.


I think the question I asked earlier is how much have you radicalized your politics over the course of the past 2 years? [laughs]


DAMIEN: Yeah, yeah. That's been bouncing around in my head since you said it off mic.


Every time I hear the word pandemic now, I think about, “Oh man,” I hesitate on how far to go into this. [laughs] Because I look at the techno-anarchist crypto bros and I can I say that disparagingly and I will say that disparagingly because I was like them. [laughs] I filled out a survey today and they asked like, “How do you rate yourself as on a conservative and liberal scale?” I'm like, “Well, I think I'm super conservative.” And I still do and every time I align with any political policy, it's always an alignment with people who call themselves socialists and leftists and why is that? [laughs] Hmm.


[laughter]


But anyway, that was the part I was trying not to go back into. [laughs]


One of the big realizations in living in a pandemic is that healthcare is not an exclusive good.


MANDY: What?


[laughter]


DAMIEN: That is to say that I cannot, as an individual, take care of my own health outside of the health of the community and society I live in. Didn't know that. In my defense, I hadn't thought about it, [laughs] but that was an amazing realization.


AARON: No, I think that was a big thing. I think so much of the pandemic exposed the way our systems are all interconnected. Exposed the societal things. Like so much we rely on is part of the society that we've built and when things don't work, it's like, well, now what? I don't have any mechanism to do anything on my own. What do we do?


DAMIEN: Yeah. It's so fundamental in humanity that we are in society. We are in community. We only survive as a group