Magazine Feature (Three)
I had a third feature in The Relatable Voice magazine. (First feature was July, 2024; second was December, 2024.) The write-up is below, and I’ll include links at the bottom.
Title: “Intellectual Vibes: A Journey”
Publication Date: August, 2025 - Issue #36
Read Time: 3 mins
….
I’m into vibes. Like, I’m r-e-a-l-l-y into vibes. A lot.
By vibes, I mean the exchange of energy between you and other people. Good vibes, bad vibes, buddy vibes, sexy vibes, Euro vibes, classy vibes, chill vibes. I vibe, you vibe, we all vibe. It’s a feeling, an embodied experience, a form of communication, and a way of knowing. Everyone from poets and gurus to athletes and musicians talk about vibes. As the Beach Boys famously sang, “I’m picking up good vibrations.”
Like most vibes-people, I appreciate many New Age and Wellness ideas and practices—meditation, sound bowls, massage therapy, acupuncture, Reiki, eastern philosophies, spiritual conversations, the tranquility of nature, and so on. But I’m an intellectual, first and foremost. Like an artist of the mind, I work with words and ideas, books and computer screens, theories and debates. Having earned a doctorate in 2002, I’ve made a stable living via academia. But I am not of academia. I find most if not all institutions cold and impersonal and a strain on my inner life. Too many people adopt a scarcity mindset, squabbling over things like office size and trying to one-up each other over accolades. Not my vibe, I guess.
I thus identify as a thinker. A free thinker. A deep thinker. A passionate thinker. A thinker of and about vibes.
I wrote my first paper about vibes as a young college student. I went on to use my master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation to develop my own philosophy of the vibe, referred to as “bodily emanation.” The body radiates or emanates a tangible feeling or energy that can be felt and experienced by other bodies. That energy can be detected on multiple levels: one-on-one conversations, small and large groups settings, regional and cultural vibes. It can even be used as an existential guide for moving through the world. My more recent work has focused on a form of public education, helping people understand their own experience of vibes. And I’m currently working on a book tentatively entitled Vibe-Talk: How and Why People Talk about Vibes.
I often mark my late teens as the beginning of my journey. As a ruffian counterculturalist, I traveled through raves, underground clubs, after-hour parties, carnivalesque hippie concerts, and various subcultures. Vibes were common and abundant in these scenes. Deejays, bands, dance floors, pulsating speakers, spaced-out jams, bodies in rhythm and hearts in sync. Everyone talked about vibes in one way or another, and I took an intellectual interest in the topic. What the hell are we all experiencing, and what is everyone talking about?
But my story really begins much earlier.
Born in 1974, my parents were part of the hippie outlaw culture. I was going to psychedelic concerts and bona fide biker bars before I could walk. As one might imagine, my early years were unstable and chaotic. I even spent brief time in a boys’ home where social services and counseling opportunities were absent. My little boy body shook with fear and uncertainty. But I held it all in, making sure no one could see or sense my inner state.
I filtered those experiences through my intellect rather than my emotions. I can’t explain how or why. It just happened. Of course, every human wants to make sense of their experience. But imagine the mind of a barely verbal five-year-old. Where am I? Why am I here? Where’s mommy and daddy? When am I leaving?
The language wasn’t there, but the feelings were. Those feelings helped me interpret, navigate, communicate, and survive. Those feelings became vibes. And those vibes became my way of existing in the world.
I am always cautious about congratulating people on “surviving” or “growing from” their trials and tribulations. I don’t think pain and trauma are necessary for personal growth and development. But I agree that difficult experiences can be transformed into something meaningful, even helpful. As philosopher and holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl says in Man’s Search for Meaning, “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”
My early experiences—mixed with thousands of other experiences—helped me become a lover of vibes. I like to sit in nature and vibe on birds and bees and trees and rivers. I like to stroll through busy city streets and vibe on the collective buzz of the people. I like to sit around with friends and vibe on our sarcasm and immaturity. And I like to sit behind a computer and think, write, and daydream about vibes.
What is a vibe, exactly? How do we explain it? How do we feel it? Do we all feel it in the same way? Do other cultures talk about vibes? If so, how? What philosophical paradigms are helpful for understanding vibes? And why do I vibe on vibes so deeply, passionately, and intellectually?
Click here for a link to The Relatable Voice magazine (you’ll have to click around to find correct Issue as it’s always being updated).