Daniel Pinchbeck

Pink Oasis, Death Valley, California, photogram

philosopher

interview by XERXES COOK on revolutions
artwork by DAVID SHERRY
portrait by ARI MARCOPOULOS

 

Is it mere coincidence that we’ve witnessed our global economic system collapse, an increasing number of environmental catastrophes, and more and more conflicts over the Earth’s dwindling natural resources at a time considered by an ancient calendar to mark a moment of dramatic transformation for our planet and its inhabitants? Is this the end of the world? Is there something we can do about it? And if all of these events aren’t random happenings, is there an unseen order governing the symmetry? Purple discusses these issues with Daniel Pinchbeck, America’s most curious public intellectual.

The rebellion that once characterised youth culture may have been commoditized to a point that the self-knowingness of ‘hipsters’ renders them nothing more than pure pastiches of themselves — yet…