Hello, I’m Oshan Jarow.
This newsletter is a wayfinding project, scavenging ideas from two ill-defined domains, emancipatory social science & consciousness studies, & seeing how they fit together.
Emancipatory social science basically means economic sociology, but instead of using GDP growth as a good-enough proxy for well-being, we aim directly to maximize human flourishing and minimize oppression, in the spirit of Erik Olin Wright’s project of how to envision real utopias. I’ve written about this under the heading of ‘vitality theory.’
Consciousness studies is a quasi-academic bundle containing things like: cognitive science, meditation, psychedelics, ritual, neurotechnology, philosophy of mind, and the science of consciousness. The point is that being alive is absolutely flummoxing, consciousness is a mystery, a gift, a curse, & a sprawling frontier of enchanting unknowns & possibilities into which I suspect we’ve hardly even begun to inch forwards. If we play our cards right — that’s a dauntingly massive if — this could be one heck of a century.
I should add that I take writing not just as a transfer of information, but its own practice and craft that generates unknown energies — and ideas, of course — in the writer, and if done well, transfers some to the reader. Sasha Chapin calls it a “subjectivity merging” technology, and I think that’s got the right ring to it. Annie Dillard was unparalleled in this regard, and much of my literary strategy is to wonder how she would’ve written about tax policy, capitalism, and phenomenology.
However it all turns out, each of us miraculous creatures are here only briefly, as startling blinks of wakefulness, bundles of flesh & possibility in a vast, rich, & strange cosmic neighborhood. So firstly, let’s navigate with kindness, zest, & curiosity.
Biographically, I’ve recently joined Future Perfect at Vox, where I’m a staff writer focusing on consciousness studies and political economy. I’ve covered things ranging from the resurgence of post-scarcity economics and anti-poverty policy, to psychedelics and the nascent scientific study of advanced meditation. In former lives, I hosted a podcast interviewing experts across these fields, and co-founded an economic policy research platform called the Library of Economic Possibility.
Welcome aboard. Please never hesitate to reach out with comments, incomplete revelations, or diabolical schemes to collaborate.
