Hi, I’m Oshan Jarow.
I’m a writer with particular interests in consciousness and economics, and previous work in Vox and Asterisk Magazine. I tend to write essays at the crossroads of the social and contemplative sciences. I may also write about Annie Dillard.
I’m currently working on a narrative podcast series about transformative meditation experiences.
A few representative pieces:
— Are minds made of wonder? | An essay about my mother’s recovery from brain surgery, an 11th century philosopher’s idea that mind is the base of matter, and my own suspicion that awareness is perhaps literally something like wonder incarnate.
— Abundance is up for grabs | An essay about the political vision of “abundance,” and how it can embrace a more progressive vision of free time and worker power.
— Pouring milk on my father’s scalding bones | An essay about the death of my father and his unfinished business of rethinking spiritual practice in the West.
— Tripping Alone | An essay on my trip to a legal ayahuasca church in Oregon and the history of the ‘Wester Model’ of psychedelic use, which has us all tripping in culturally specific, psychologically consequential ways.
In my days as a staff writer at Vox’s Future Perfect, I covered stuff like jhana meditation, the return of post-scarcity economics, the very weird psychedelic called DMT, and the question that will decide the debate of whether AI can ever gain consciousness. But that’s all paywalled now (email me for PDFs if you’re interested).
In previous lives, I hosted a podcast of long-form interviews with philosophers, scientists, and economists on the crossovers between consciousness and capitalism; built an online database of economic research to make insights on policies like basic income, land value tax, and codetermination more accessible to the public; and opened a restaurant in upstate New York (I did no cooking, which was in everyone’s best interest).
Welcome aboard my newsletter. I consider the internet a tool for finding people, so please never hesitate to reach out with comments, incomplete revelations, or diabolical schemes to collaborate.
