Episode 99: Curing the Human Condition: On 'Wild Wild Country'

In this never-before-released episode recorded in 2019, Phil and JF travel to rural Oregon through the Netflix docu-series, Wild Wild Country. The series, which details the establishment of a spiritual community founded by Bhagwan Rajneesh (later called Osho) and its religious and political conflicts with its Christian neighbors, provides a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation on the nature of spirituality and religion. What emerges are surprising ties between the “spiritual, not religious” attitude and class, cultural commodification, and the culture of control that pervades modern society. But they also uncover the true “wild” card at the heart of existence that spiritual movements like that of Rajneesh can never fully control, no matter how hard they try. REFERENCES Chapman and Maclain Way (dirs), Wild Wild Country Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste Carl Wilson, Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste Peter Sloterdijk, German cultural theorist Weird Studies, Episode 47, Machines of Loving Grace Slavoj Žižek, On Western appropriation of Eastern religions William Burroughs, American writer Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” Bhagwan Rajneesh/Osho, Speech on friendship Daniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith James Carse, The Finite and Infinite Games