Then & Now: Philosophy, History & Politics

Dreams Beyond the Algorithm

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

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Burnout: The Hustle Century

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

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The End of the End of History

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Is it the end of the end of history? Or is it really still just the end? Wait until the end to find out if this is the end of the end. We look at why history matters more than ever and how we can wield it like a weapon.

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How the Deep State really works

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 13:39:23 GMT

We explore progressively deeper levels of the deep state, asking - how does the system always seem to get what it wants? Who is really pulling the stings?

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Populism: A Complete Guide

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 07:00:00 GMT

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10 Steps to Becoming AI Proof

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 11:24:05 GMT

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Monopoly World: Oligarchy & Authoritarianism

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 12:56:31 GMT

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Capitalism: In-Depth

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

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Marx: A Complete Guide to Capitalism

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

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The Rise and Fall of the Mainstream Media

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 13:42:27 GMT

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How AI was Stolen

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 13:46:13 GMT

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The Real Harm of Social Media

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 12:44:26 GMT

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The Origins of the Israel/Palestine Conflict

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 12:44:03 GMT

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Does History Progress?

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 11:15:27 GMT

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Can History Decline?

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 16:42:50 GMT

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Hegel: A Complete Guide to History

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:12:45 GMT

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How Socrates Beat Addictions

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 15:10:09 GMT

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The Roots of Modern Democracy

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:08:34 GMT

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Why Culture Wars Matter

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 06:07:08 GMT

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What Red Pill Philosophy Gets Wrong

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 15:05:32 GMT

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Being Outside Changes How You Think

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 13:35:14 GMT

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Stoicism's Major Flaw

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 13:33:33 GMT

I look at the current trend of Stoicism through the lens of Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic, and more broadly through the Ancient Stoic philosophers, and ask, is it really a useful guide to life today?

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How New Addictions Are Destroying Us

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 13:31:53 GMT

Selected Bibliography:

Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation

Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology

David Courtwright, Age of Addiction

Morse, S. (2012). Legal Regulation of Addictive Substances and Addiction. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/neuroeth...

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Mark Andrejevic, Automated Media

Brian McCullough, How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

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How Big Tech is Ruining Your Attention

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:30:26 GMT

Some Sources:

Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Mark Andrejevic, Automated Media

Brian McCullough, How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

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How the Internet Was Stolen

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 13:28:43 GMT

I look at the history of the internet, from ARPANET & NSFNET, through privatization, to Tim-Berners Lee, Yahoo, Netscape, Google, eBay, and Facebook, examining Microsoft's antitrust court case and their battle against Open Source and Free Software, Bill Gate's Open Letter to Hobbyists and the leaked Halloween Documents. Then we take a look at the emergence of Surveillance Capitalism, and how platforms like AirBnb & Uber coopt the idea of the community and lobby politicians. Finally, we take a look at some alternatives.

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Why Our Idea of History is a Poison

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 13:26:35 GMT

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The First Critics of Modern Life

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 13:25:20 GMT

A look at the first critics of modern life during the 18th and 19th centuries; those who worried about factories, pollution, capitalism, and modernity.

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Why German History is Different

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 13:22:33 GMT

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Kant: A Complete Guide to Reason

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 14:02:18 GMT

A look at the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, exploring why his ideas matter, and the context they arose from. It looks at the Critique of Pure Reason and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of morals, explaining concepts like transcendental idealism and the Categorical Imperative. Born in 1724, he wanted to make us a truly scientific species – he wanted to bring together reason – how we think - and experience – what we see, hear, touch through our senses - on a sure foundation – one that scientific knowledge could be built on.

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What the Evidence on Immigration Says

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:52:08 GMT

What the Evidence on Immigration Says by Then & Now

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Tucker Carlson's Paranoid Mind

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 15:00:36 GMT

I look at Tucker Carlson's conspiracy theory-riddled mind, where it comes from, and why he does it. I draw from Richard Hofstadter's 1964 The Paranoid Style in American Politics, review Carlson's book, Ship of Fools, and look at his Fox News show, the Fedsurrection, Patriot Purge, and the Great Replacement.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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How Fox News Changed The World

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:00:36 GMT

A dive into the long history of television news in America to understand what the conditions were that made Fox News’s emergence possible. We look at what Fox’s underlying social, cultural, and philosophical toolkit and formula looks like. What it’s predecessors were (TVN, Roger Ailes’ consultancy, Nixon’s adverts), Reagan’s rolling back of FCC regulation and the fairness doctrine, the stories that made Fox (Lewinsky Scandal, 9/11, Obama, The Tea Party, Trump), and their post-rational, postmodern methods. Finally, how we counter the O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson playbook.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Our Consumer Society

Sat, 15 Oct 2022 14:30:06 GMT

I explore our consumer society, looking at the history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology of what consumerism really means. Is it a useful concept? Where did it appear from? Are there alternatives? How is the desire that drives consumption manufactured? Are we shallow? Is there any possibility of ethical consumption? To help answer some of these questions I draw from thinkers including Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and David Harvey.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Free Will Is Political

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 14:55:15 GMT

Free Will – Our Freedom to choose for ourselves – is at the heart of our sense of being human. How we think about free will effects everything from responsibility and criminal justice to laziness and poverty to seemingly ordinary choices like what I’ll have for dinner. Free Will is of course the power to select from options, for ourselves, unencumbered, unrestrained, uncaused – to be the author of our own thoughts and actions. But what does this really mean? Does Free Will really exist? And is it a wider social, cultural, and political concept? Is it really about responsibility? I look at a few philosophers - P.F. Strawson, Spinoza, Plato, Socrates, and more - to explore the conceptThen & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Putin's Sense Of Russian History

Thu, 19 May 2022 18:30:09 GMT

A long view on the sense of Russian history that Vladimir Putin has inherited and draws from culturally. Looking at the roots of Russian anti-westernism, its response to Europe during the Enlightenment and Peter and Catherine the Great's modernizing projects. From Rousseau and the influence of the Romanitics through to Dostoevsky, Carl Schmitt's influence, and Ivan Illyin today.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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How The Atom Bomb Changed How We Think

Thu, 12 May 2022 18:56:36 GMT

Nuclear Weapons changed us. One author said we have a ‘nuclear consciousness’ If so, how specifically did it develop? What shapes did it take? I’ll look at some surprising consequences of the discovery of Nuclear power, how it changed our ideas about fear and irrationalism, about world government and philosophy, how it changed literature and cinema and comics, religion, science, and our idea of progress.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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MrBeast: Capitalism & Philanthropy

Thu, 12 May 2022 18:37:20 GMT

A look at the darker side of MrBeast’s philanthropy and the wider philanthrocapitalist model it's a part of. Looking specifically at #teamseas and a partnership with Jennie-O, I attempt to untangle how corporations and conglomerates like Coca-Cola, chemical and oil companies, and big meat monopolies all have a vested interest in financing certain ‘philanthropic’ projects while side-lining others. This is a story that takes some surprising twists and turns, from whitewashing, greenwashing & ‘funwashing’ sponsorships, to illegal price-fixing, an endemic of farmer suicides, and leaked corporate emails to influence charities. Examining the roots and consequences of ‘philanthrocapitalism’ tells us a lot about how lobbying works under modern capitalism. This is a long video, but it’ll be worth it to tell this story properly.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Thinking About Changing The World

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 13:00:38 GMT

Let's think difference.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Our 'Age Of Anger'

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:00:48 GMT

Anger, rage, fury: it seems like everywhere we look right now, we see rising temperatures, smoldering resentment, blood boiling, floods of emotion. From Trump to Brexit, Hindu Nationalism to Black Lives Matter, from Hollywood me too to Pandemic Protestors, ISIS to white nationalists, Ukraine to Fox News, to my ongoing conflict with my unreasonably slow computer, it seems, as the historian Pankaj Mishra has argued, like we’re living in an age of anger.I look at the history and philosophy of anger. What is it? What triggers it? Is it ever good? I look at the Stoics – including Epictetus and Seneca – Aristotle, Christianity, Enlightenment figures like Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith, through to modern day anger management psychology. I make some surprising findings about the usefulness of a misunderstood emotion.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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How Robotics Will Control You

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 11:43:34 GMT

Robotics, automation, and the information age are going in a strange direction. We look at extended selves, farming drones, Tesla sensors, Facebook and Twitter feeds, Amazon, Tinder, and Deleuze and Guattari's bodies without organs.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Spinoza A Complete Guide To Life

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 13:21:39 GMT

If you’ve ever wanted a complete scientific roadmap for how to live, a modern philosophy to go by, a lens through which to understand a complex world, a foundation, the 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza is as good as you'll find. He asked questions like: why are we so dogmatic? What makes us irrational? Why do we live as slaves to our emotions and others opinions.He was one of the first Enlightenment advocates for real democracy, and was the first to really criticise the bible as just a text. He was vilified for his perceived atheism and excommunicated from the Jewish community where he lived.I look at Spinoza’s most influential text, The Ethics, look at what his ideas about god were and why he was a Pantheist, ask what substances, modes, and attributes are, and why he argues that the ‘many is one’. We look at the affects, the idea of conatus, the ‘free person’, rationalism, his stocism, and ideas of morality and benevolence.

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Why The Internet Hasn't Fixed Democracy

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 12:51:38 GMT

Why Hasn't the Internet Fixed Democracy? How can we fix it? I use the latest 'drama' with Ethan Klein, Joe Rogan, Tom Pool, Vaush etc to see if we can find out...Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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How The Nature Nurture Debate Is Changing

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 13:00:48 GMT

The nature-nurture debates inform almost every area of human life – from biology and botany to economics, literature, and history.To simplify, thinkers on the nature side have, in varying ways, argued that at least parts of your body and mind are behind an impenetrable skin, cannot be gotten to by upbringing, education, politics, or culture. Imagine a one-way street. For example, you have an innate eye color or a creativity that comes out of your DNA – nothing gets to it, its just in you. On the other hand we have empiricists. They believe in a two way street instead of a one way street.This video looks at some complicated sounding things: DNA, genetics, epigenetics, methylation, phenotypes, stress, twin studies, Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, and early intervention programs. But I want to avoid being technical, as much as possible, because most fundamentally, most simply, this box is about a fundamentally philosophical idea: freedom.The idea that we have a nature has been approached in countless ways – philosophically, psychologically, theologically – but the most persuasive, through the 19th and 20th centuries, the best place to start, is biology: the study of DNA and our genes.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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The BIG Problem With The Metaverse

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 18:00:26 GMT

What does 'meta' really mean? What can we make of Facebook's change to 'Meta'? Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote about the decline of metanarratives in 1979's 'The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'. Can we learn anything about Zuckerberg's aspirations from this classic postmodern text?Lyotard was prescient. He noticed in the 70s that quote ‘the miniaturization and commercialization of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited.’ He also that ‘Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.’

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The Surprising Philosophy Of Dirt

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 14:00:56 GMT

Mary Douglas wrote that:‘There is no such thing as absolute dirt; it exists in the eye of the beholder. Dirt offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organize the environment. In chasing dirt, in papering, decorating, tidying, we are not governed by anxiety to escape disease, but are positively re-ordering our environment, making it conform to an idea.’Dirt is a human concept. There is no such thing as dirt in nature. The natural world is neither pure nor dirty. It just is. Everything is simply where it happens to be. Until litter is dropped and houses are built to exclude and chemicals are spilled and smog rises the idea that anything could be in the wrong place is absurd. And being human, dirt is a moral concept. Something that is right or wrong. Organized correctly or not. What can it tell us about ourselves? About order-making, about right and wrong, about 'dirty' people, about racism, and creativity?Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Would You Have Been A Nazi?

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 14:00:50 GMT

There were several reasons lynch mobs in Jim Crow America and soldiers and police officers in Nazi Germany were motivated to kill African-Americans and Jews. Historical forces like a sense of victimhood – both having lost wars – cultural forces and propaganda that depicted the victims stereotypically as inferior, greedy, or a threat, and economic forces – ‘the frustration of basic needs’ as social psychologist Ervin Staub puts it.They were motivated, in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America, by a moral culture made up of stereotypes, adverts, scientific literature, societal standards, norms, and sensibilities that all pushed the perpetrators towards killing.In both cases, the perpetrators had rationales, justifications, reasons for what they were doing, even if, with historical hindsight, we can see these to be incorrect.This begs an important question: how is resistance possible? How does one know when they’re being pushed by historical forces to do something that in retrospect we see as wholly immoral? How does one escape from under the hand of history – if culture, society, and the economy are all moving you towards acting in a particular way. Do we retain a moral sense?The philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, for example, has asked whether there can be a ‘moral responsibility for resisting socialization.’Often, what makes people like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther notable, is not that they are shaped by historical forces, but that that the very same forces are felt by them as coercion and that they stand up to them, counter them, resist them.Can we find morality and ethics in history? I look at empathy and moral sentimentalism to find out.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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The Psychology Of Racism In Jim Crow America

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 14:00:30 GMT

Between 1889 and 1930 there were around 3,700 known lynchings in the US. The perpetrators ranged from single people to small mobs to huge crowds of 15,000. The reasons given were broad. While most were accused of murder of rape, many were lynched for simply being rude, for arguing, for taking the wrong job or having the wrong beliefs.Like during Holocaust, as I explored in a previous video, these were ‘ordinary men’ and women, and often even children. And as in my exploration of the psychology of the perpetrators' Holocaust, I want to try and understand the factors that led both to the violence of lynchings, but also ask how ordinary Americans justified their racism more broadly. I want to use lynchings to try and examine racism more broadly, taking an action, an event, and slowly zooming outwards, looking at the psychological, sociological, and historical conditions that led to it.We’ll look at a number of what I’ll describe in as ‘justifications, rationalizations, or causes’ – to try to understand what led to violence, and how the beliefs, attitudes, and psychologies of perpetrators were produced more broadly. We’ll look at propaganda, sexuality, scientific racism, nostalgia, economics, stereotypes, and first, the power of a feeling of defeat and victimhood, on the part of whites.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Scientific Racism and Immigration: A History

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT

Liberalism – the assumptions of which many of us live under – prioritises individual freedom – of thought, of expression, of movement. But at the same time we think of migration – which is free movement – as abnormal. We even mythologise a sedentary past – of villages, farmers, peasants, ‘tied to the land’, living and dying in the place where they’re from.Yet in the 17th century, around 65% left their home parish at some point in the their lives. We have, what philosopher Alex Sager calls a ‘sedentary bias’. The migrant is presented as a problem, alien, outsider, yet we move around our own countries – commuting, deciding to live elsewhere, holidaying, visiting relatives, making work trips – without thinking its in any way strange.We are, as a species, mobile, nomadic, built to move. IN 2020, you could count 280 million migrants and each year around a billion tourists. And the numbers are increasing. But so are the objects, ideas, and phenomenon – borders, passports, guards, barbed wired, nationalist rhetoric – that attempt to pin us in our place. Can we find a genealogy of our attitudes? A history of our present problem? To do so, we might start with the 18th century biologist Carl Linnaeus.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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What The Sea Can Teach Us About Ourselves

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 14:03:37 GMT

Why We're Drawn to the Sea: A philosophical enquiry that looks at the sea as a cultural, literary, biological, evolutionary, and philosophical concept. The sea has long been a source of inspiration for some of our greatest thinkers – a great unknown to be explored, a passage to be used to transport goods, a place of relaxation, a dwelling place of monsters, a provider of sustenance. But could the nature of the sea – what it is, how it moves, what it represents – tell us something surprising about ourselves?Maybe Moby Dick, The Ancient Greeks, and the psychoanalysis of Sandor Farenzi can help us find out.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Is Wokeism a Civil Religion?

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 14:07:06 GMT

Is Wokeism Civil Religion? A response to Carefree Wandering's take of Wokeism as civil religion + German-style guilt-pride. I look at Robert Bellah's article 'Civil Religion in America' and take a look at free-speech, dogmatism, cancel culture, and more.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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What Makes Us Postmodern?

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 16:01:14 GMT

What makes us postmodern? Do we live in a psychological condition of postmodernity? Is postmodernism everywhere? The sociologist Anthony Giddens described living in the modern world as being ‘more like being aboard a careering juggernaut rather than being in a carefully controlled and well-driven motor car.’ Through the work of Zygmunt Bauman and his 'Postmodernity and its Discontents' I look at concepts like control, planning, metanarratives, values, pessimism, schizophrenia, and consumerism.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Wokeism

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 14:30:34 GMT

Wokeism? What is it? Is it a force for good, for bad? Is it political correctness gone mad? Is it really everywhere? Or is it a red-herring? A New MccArthyism? Puritanical? Cancel Culture? Dogmatic?This idea of being woke – of wokeism – appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Does it have a history? What’s going on under the surface? When you strip away the noise.We’ll look at the history of the term, how its related to political correctness, ask whether it goes back further, before thinking about what I’ll describe as the broadening of the public sphere, and the cancel culture debate.

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The Invention Of Individual Responsibility

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 15:30:12 GMT

Humans love to fix things, to find the cause of a problem, to probe, tinker, and mend. We ask, in many different ways, Why does this happen? What’s the root cause? What’s the origin? What or who is at fault? What or who is responsible? But there are three subjects that have intertwined with the topic of responsibly more than others.The idea of responsibility has many forms both historically and culturally. Philosophers have debated whether we can be truly responsible for our actions in the context of discussions about free-will; theologians have wrestled with the idea of taking responsibility for our sins; scientists have joined the discussion by searching for causation and exploring the psychology and neurology of our brains.But today, the idea of individual responsibility is often invoked in discussions about welfare, poverty, and enterprise. Increasingly, throughout the liberal and neoliberal periods, we’ve – in politics and the media, at least - emphasised ‘responsibility for ourselves’ at the expense of other types of responsibilities, moral obligations, or duties.Is poverty a personal inadequacy? A problem of persons? A problem of character? A problem of culture? Or is it a problem of place? Of systems? Of society?The particular form ‘individual responsibility’ has taken today – atomised, asocietal, ideally self-dependent, culturally ‘backward’, genetically limited – is a relatively new historical and political concept which is used to justify the dismantling of welfare, the rejection of altruism, and the unravelling of community.Any cultural interpretation of responsibility is bound-up with politics, language, culture and society, and, has a history that’s not simply progressive and linear. Instead of being responsible for ourselves, the concept of 'mutual obligations' or duties includes the responsibility to work hard and improve ourselves, but can also better accommodate contributing to the world, aiding others, remembering no man is an island and turning our gaze not inwards but outwards. I look at how this idea of individual responsibility developed in parallel with the history of poverty, looking at Edward Banfield's The Moral Basis of a Backward Soceity, Oscar Lewis' Culture of Poverty, Daniel Moynihan's The Negro Family, Charles Murray's Losing Ground and the Bell Curve, and George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty. We look at poverty and responsibility from the Middle Ages, through to the Poor Laws, to Kennedy, LBJ, The Great Society, The War on Poverty, to the Reagan and Thatcher era and to Obama and Fox News today. Of course, Jordan Peterson also makes an appearance. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Is Equality Natural?

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:30:22 GMT

Is Equality Natural? Do We Have a Natural Impulse Towards Equality? This is a philosophical tour of how philosophers have answered the equality question, and how hunter-gatherers, tribesman, and homo sapiens for 95% of their history, have been egalitarian. Based on Christopher Boehm's book, Heirarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behaviour, I look at the !Kung, The Semai, The Utku, Native North Americans and others to explore why they treated each other as equals. I also take a look at Hobbes, Locke, and Proudhon and the idea of natural rights.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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What Makes Us Modern

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 10:31:19 GMT

What makes you modern? We know that modernity means technology, industry, cities. But is there a modern attitude? A modern psychology?What sets apart from pre-moderns? Can we even imagine what a traditional attitude might feel like?Traditional life was circular. We were tied to the land day after day, month after month – the idea of improvement, or of relationships with a wider world, were largely non-existent.The philosophers of the Enlightenment – Kant, Marx, Mill, Francis Bacon, and - were motivated by a powerful idea. That we could rationally understand the world, and use the world to shape history. They were all, in varying ways, about ordering the world, putting things in their place, making it predictable, usable. So what makes up this modern attitude? I try to answer this question through Anthony Giddens' 'The Consequences of Modernity'.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Why Jordan Peterson is Wrong About Ideology

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 16:56:42 GMT

Jordan Peterson is famously critical of ideology. He has a particular distain for Marxism, Stalinism, Nazism, Postmodernism, Feminism, in fact, any ism. Instead, he argues, that the individual is sovereign, ideology should be renounced, and that, quote, ‘If we each live properly, we will collectively flourish.’Rule VI of Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life is 'Abandon Ideology'.Drawing on the Russian novelist Dostoevsky, Peterson interprets ideology as ‘rigid, comprehensive, utopian’ and predicated on a few ‘apparently self-evident axioms’. An ism theorist, he argues, ‘generates a small number of explanatory principles of forces’ that can supposedly ‘explain everything: all the past, all the present, and all the future.’ An ideologue, he continues, ‘grants these small number of forces primary causal power, while ignoring others of equal or greater importance.’The result of this is that ‘an ideologue can consider him or herself in possession of the complete truth.’ I take a look at what philosophers say ideology is, what Jordan Peterson’s ideology – a type of Juedo-Christian Mythic Conservatism – look at its limits, and finally, ask why we need ideology.#jordanpeterson #peterson #ideology #politics #philosophyThen & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Jordan Peterson Critique: Philosophy & Responsibility

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:17:09 GMT

Through 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order, I examine Jordan Peterson’s philosophy of responsibility. First, I try to understand what Peterson says about individual responsibility. Second, I take a look at the philosophy of free will and responsibility. I look at determinism, psychology, and history to begin to draw a between what we’re responsible for and what we’re not. Ultimately, I argue that Peterson holds us individually responsible for too much, and that when we look to the history of social movements, we see that social and collective action is just as necessary. Peterson emphasizes individual responsibility to an unreasonable degree, while discounting the necessity and power of social or collective responsibility.We also take a few detours down some familiar routes: feminism, postmodern neo-Marxism, and identity politics.#jordanpeterson #critique #identitypolitics #responsibilityThen & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Baby Boomers VS Millennials: A History of the Coming Revolution

Sat, 29 May 2021 12:30:13 GMT

This is a tale of three revolutions. Revolutions past – twin revolutions that served as lessons. The second was a counter-revolution, a result of not learning those lessons. And the third, well it begins in 2030, but stirrings of it are already being felt.I look at the causes of revolutions and state crises in the past, looking specifically at the English Civil War and the French Revolution, to argue as historian Jack Goldstone does, that we're following a dangerous path to potential revolution. The Baby Boomers were the most heavily invested in generation in history but as the population boomed, debt has grown with it. Millennials, on the other hand, are underinvested in, under-housed, and are experiencing wage stagnation.This is a tour of generational debt, neoliberal revolution, tax cuts, plague, stagnant incomes, Kings, the guillotine, and more.There’s a growing consensus on both sides of the aisle: neoliberalism has failed. And history teaches us that if peaceful social solutions designed to mitigate against excess and injustice aren’t implemented, then more chaotic, violent, and revolutionary solutions will inevitably follow.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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5 Useful Things I’ve Learned from the Existentialists

Thu, 13 May 2021 11:17:37 GMT

Philosophy is often too abstract, but the Existentialists are known for being (a bit) more practical occasionally. Here are 5 useful things we can learn from the Existentialists and existentialism, specifically Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.They are:Laugh at yourself (looking at Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus) Stop Thinking (looking at Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’, ‘passionate action’, and ‘subjective truth’)Be Creative (looking at Nietzsche and Heidegger, authenticity, the ‘They’)All of our Projects are Connected: Treat them like Rocks (looking at Sartre)Turn off Autopilot (Looking at Kierkegaard and ‘double reflection’)Full article: http://lewwaller.com/5-useful-things-... Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Being Us: Communities, Organisations, & Politics of Authenticity

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 11:00:52 GMT

The pursuit of an authentic self is often compared with the desire for uniqueness, of individuality, of creative freedom. But does this mean, as some have argued, that ‘authenticity’ itself is an individualistic, egotistical, narcissistic, and self-absorbed concept? After all, ‘be yourself', to thine own self be true, and ‘follow your heart’ all conjure up the idea of stepping away from the crowd, not towards it, of living a life for yourself, not for others.If we are an authenticity-seeking species, if we crave our own independence, have a desire to be the master of our own choices, need creative freedom, what does this mean for our politics? What does it mean for social life, for businesses and organizations?Does ‘being you’ – rather than pursuing ‘duty’, for example – result in a narrowing of focus just to yourself as an individual? A loss of a broader social vision?The philosopher Charles Taylor describes this as a horizon.Does the horizon shrink to focus just on yourself? Do we each have a separate horizon? Are our values relativistic? Or do certain things transcend this horizon? Are certain horizons shared? Does the shared pursuit of timber in the town disappear once the residents go their separate ways?How do we think about societies that still share horizons, that consist of individuals pursuing both their own authentic interests and dutifully respond to the needs of the wider community? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Being You: The History and Philosophy of Authenticity

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 11:13:57 GMT

Who are we? How do we find out? What is it to find our authentic selves? What can we learn from the history and philosophy of authenticity?Today, supposedly, we’re free. Free, to do what makes us happy, to be anything we strive to be, to choose our own paths. We even feel free from parts of ourselves – that our emotions are something separate from us, that there’s a real us beneath them, a supra-inner rational core that transcends everything outside of it, that is somehow higher than fleeting emotions that make us do things that aren’t really us.The history of the search for authenticity has sought to understand this true core of human experience. It has been approached in many ways. Sometimes as a revolt against the outer layer, against standards given to us by society. Other times as taking off a mask. Or rejecting reading a script someone else has written for us, whether god or the bible or society and its rulesPhilosopher Jacob Golomb writes that ‘the concept of authenticity is a protest against the blind, mechanical acceptance of an externally imposed code of values.’ The history of authenticity tells us much about the modern world. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, discovering our authentic self meant removing the masks society encourages us to wear, about confessing why we really say or do certain things. Kierkegaard encouraged us to take passionate leaps of faith, to find subjective truths that were meaningful for us, to take action, to make difficult either/or choices.Nietzsche knew that the death of god meant that humans were free to create their own values, to pursue the will to power creatively, to break free from the chains others imposed on us. We should love our fates - amor fati - but give style to our characters.Heidegger thought authenticity meant facing our own deaths, as beings-towards-death, overcoming our own anxiety, and stepping away from the 'They' to create something unique and lasting in the worldAnd finally, Jean-Paul Sartre argued that we are, above all us, free to choose who we are, what we do, and what meaning we attach to the world and its objects. We have a piercing, lucid, and powerful consciousness that can explore the world and our own characters, and not using that reflective power, not interogating our own traits, beliefs, and actions meant we'd be living in 'bad faith', inauthentically ignoring our true human potential.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Kierkegaard: An Introduction

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:18:36 GMT

The 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is best known for giving us the concept of a leap of faith. He was a deeply religious thinker, but his ideas have as much relevance for secular lives as Christian ones. He was the grandfather of existentialism, a purveyor of authenticity, and of discovering, amid conflicting beliefs and the demand to conform to the rules of society, who you really are. Although he was born in 1813, his works were not widely read in English until the middle of the twentieth century.He published Either/Or, his most famous work in 1843, and in it, through an array of pseudonyms and fictional characters, he discusses competing and contradictory ways one might live life. Should you live for the moment? Seeking pleasure? Or should you live for the interesting? Should you live dutifully? Ethically? Should you conform to the rules? He suggests there are three stages of life, three spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Some of the key concepts are reflective aestheticism, the rotation of crops, subjective truth, passion, and, of course, Christianity.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Steven Pinker & Human Nature: Nasty or Nice?

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 16:00:32 GMT

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker argues that human violence has declined across history. One part of this argument is that life in a state of nature – before civilization – was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Amongst other things, Pinker argues that hunter-gatherers, tribal societies, were – and are - much more violent than later more civilized societies. Both Pinker and Thomas Hobbes argue that the state and its monopolisation on force and authority have pacified our darker human nature.This is a common trope:In the 1996 book War Before Civilization, for example, archaeologist Lawrence Keeley argues that prehistoric violent deaths probably ranged from around 7-40% of all deaths. He says: ‘there is nothing inherently peaceful about hunting-gathering or band society’.In 2003, Steve LeBlanc and Katherine Register claimed in their book Constant Battles that ‘everyone had warfare in all time periods’Biologist Edward Wilson ‘Are human beings innately aggressive?’ Yes. Coalitional warfare is ‘pervasive across cultures worldwide’John Tooby and Leda Cosmides declare that ‘Wherever in the archaeological record there is sufficient evidence to make a judgment, there traces of war are to be found. It is found across all forms of social organization—in bands, chiefdoms, and states.’The book Demonic Males argues that ‘"neither in history nor around the globe today is there evidence of a truly peaceful society’.Pinker has written that ‘Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong.’Are – and were – hunter-gatherers really that violent? Brian Ferguson and Douglas Fry argue no. Looking at chimpanzees, bonobos, Otzi – the iceman – and a range of much more insightful ethnographical and archaeological evidence is the best way to find out.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 16:27:23 GMT

An introduction to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes looms over all of us as the preeminent defender of the modern state and sovereign authority. Nuanced and original, he is probably the most influential figure in modern political philosophy who, and could be described as the father of both modern liberalism and modern conservatism.Hobbes’ originality was his belief that political theory could be deduced from scientific principles about psychology, the senses, language, morality, knowledge, and power. To understand politics, he argued, you had to understand people. Hobbes grounds Leviathan in a state of nature – a theoretical situation in which humans have no institutions, no government, no coercive power – a pre-societal condition.Human existence in a state of nature is, according to Hobbes, pretty undesirable. In the most famous passage of Leviathan he says that in a state of nature there are ‘no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’In a state of nature, we have a right to all things, but because we seek our own self-preservation, there are ‘laws of nature.’ Hobbes says that the first law of nature is ‘that every man seek peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.’Because some ignore or misunderstand the laws of nature we require a sovereign power to keep us in awe; a leviathan.Hobbes has been reinterpreted in the 20th century in game theory terms as a prisoner’s dilemma.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Zygmunt Bauman: Moral Relativism & The Holocaust

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 21:33:27 GMT

What can the Holocaust teach us about morality and ethics? Does the Holocaust pose a challenge for moral relativism? Zygmunt Bauman argues yes. In Modernity and the Holocaust, Bauman argues that the Holocaust proves that societal rules, norms and standards cannot be the only source of morality. Perpetrators often argued in court that they were only following the law of their country. How can we judge them if morals are the product of a relative social context? Instead, Bauman argues, the source of morality is in a fundamental responsibility to another in proximity. And there’s plenty of evidence for this. A biological repulsion to killing, for example. Or the distancing and division of labor that was required to scale the genocide. If proximity and responsibility are at the heart of a kind of moral objectivity, what might the consequences of this be?Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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How We Become Genocidal: The Holocaust

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 17:26:32 GMT

What drives ordinary everyday people to become mass killers? What are the psychological mechanisms and cultural factors that lead to genocide? What were the causes of the Holocaust? Can we theorize a psychology of genocide? A theory of genocide?The Holocaust was not perpetrated solely by a few sadistic psychopaths but by tens of thousands of everyday Germans, Poles, Frenchmen, Austrians, Slovakians, in fact, much of Europe took part. If any of us could be motivated under the right conditions to become mass serial killers, how can we protect ourselves against the threat? How might we innoculate our societies and cutlures from decending into genocide?There are a number of factors that lead to the Holocaust. Compartmentalization, euphemism, conformity, authority, rationalization, propaganda, anti-Semitism, victimhood, and association, in particular. Gustav Le Bon, for example, argued that individuals are more likely to conform in a crowd because of anonymity and mimesis. Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments looked at conformity to authority. This combined with rationalisations like ‘its either us or them’ or ‘they won’t survive through the winter anyway.’There was still a system of belief – an ideology – and almost a decade of propaganda disseminated by the Nazi Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP). Years of anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe led to conspiracy theories about Jewish world domination. While Britain, the USSR, and America were all consistently associated with ‘Jewish aggressors’.When a person perceives themselves as a victim and a prisoner as an aggressor in a war of survival and we combine this with the pressure to conform and submit to authority the probability for murder increases. In Nazi Germany, everything was made to fit this formula.Ervin Staub proposes a model of genocide that has three initial stages:First, there’s the frustration of basic needs.Second, An out-group is identified that’s the cause.Next, The in-group is motivated by a ‘utopian vision’ that excludes a certain group.And Herbert Kelman has also argued that the requirements are threefold: authorization, routinization, and dehumanization.How does all of this fit together?Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Inviting the Tigers to Tea: Demagogues in America

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 17:30:09 GMT

Winston Churchill once said that ‘Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.’ In the wake of what happened in Washington last week, I think this metaphor illustrates something deeper about the relationship between demagogues and their followers. Who are the tigers and why are they hungry? Riots - the voice of the unheard - clearly signify some issues within a society that if not resolved inevitably lead to the baring of teeth. Tigers only emerge from tears in the social fabric. The more the economic, social, or cultural chasm rips open, the more untamed emotions spill out of the void, and the more likely it becomes that a demagogue can saddle-up and offer a solution. Steve Bannon said that ‘we got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall….This was pure anger. Anger and fear is what gets people to the polls.”Many ancient philosophers were skeptical of democracy because it was vulnerable to the threat of demagogues. Plato argued in the Republic that because democracy must allow freedom of speech it was defenseless against strongmen who could make to the demos based on their fears and emotions. Joseph Goebbels said that ‘This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.’ So why is it that democracy is vulnerable to demagogues? What do demagogues offer and how might we protect against it? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Foucault: Criticisms & Method

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 17:30:26 GMT

How can we untangle Madness & Civilization and think clearly about what Foucault is saying, both in the book, and by extension in later works?Looking at some criticisms of him are a good way to try to pin down exactly what’s going on with his method and view of the world, so let’s start there.In 1987 Lawrence Stone, for example, criticized Foucault as being ‘unconcerned with historical detail of time or place or with rigorous documentation.’ He said that Foucault ignored ‘enormous differences in the degree and organization of incarceration from country to country’ in Europe.How might Foucault respond to some of his critics? To understand it's important to look closely at his method, too.In short, his method is ‘to write the history of madness will therefore mean making a structural study of the historical ensemble – notions, institutions, judicial and police measures, scientific concepts.’A Foucauldian method searches for the consistent and compatible conceptual frameworks that set the criteria for what a normal human nature is at any given time, and broadly suggest the attitudes, perceptions, and sensibilities any given society holds. These phenomena form epistemes that historically have changed over time.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Foucault: Madness & Civilization (History of Madness)

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:51:25 GMT

Michel Foucault’s History of Madness (abridged in English as Madness and Civilization) was a revolutionary exploration of how our interpretations and experience of madness have changed over time, and how they’re not quite as ‘rational’ – or even more ‘rational – than they first appear. Everyone who was worked on the history of psychiatry since has worked in Foucault’s shadow. He looked at history not as a history of administration, of records or politics, or what the psychiatrists said happened, but as a question of something was experienced and how what we think of as timeless actually changes over time. He introduced difficult and exciting questions in both history and philosophy. Where might the voice of the excluded and silenced be heard? To what extent is madness a product of society’s attitudes towards it. ‘How,’ he writes ‘can a distinction be made between a wise act carried out by a madman, and a senseless act of folly carried out by a man usually in full possession of his wits? ‘Wisdom and folly are surprisingly close. It’s but a half turn from the one to the other.’What does it mean to transgress? And how is it possible to reach something out of reach, something beyond reason. What does it mean to be mad? Insane? Crazy?Do these things exist outside the realms of reason?If they’re unreasonable how can they be understood by reasonable means?Foucault looks at leprosy and the leper colonies, ships of fools, renaissance madness as a type of wisdom, the great confinement during the Enlightenment, different aspects of madness and how they were made sense of, and finally, William and Tuke and the birth of the asylum.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Heidegger & Descartes: Being-in-the-world, Care, Anxiety & Existentialism

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:00:54 GMT

What did Descartes know for certain? That he is a thinking thing, a cogito. But what does it mean to think? Descartes lists a few modes of thinking: Doubting, affirming, denying, understanding.Heidegger embarks upon a similar project to Descartes. What, he asks, is the fundamental nature of our experience? Of our existence? Heidegger agrees with Descartes. If we want to live life well we need to be clear about its most fundamental components. Descartes answer is summarised by his phrase cogito ergo sum, which translates as thinking, therefore, being. For Heidegger, Descartes has it the wrong way around. He thinks that Descartes has neglected the sum, the being. What is it to be something? Heidegger’s answer comes in a number of forms: he says as well as being thinking things we have care for things, we have an anxiety about the world, we are existential, but most importantly, we are beings-in-the-world.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Descartes' Error: Antonio Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 15:00:48 GMT

Descartes’ Error is a 1994 book by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio which outlines the somatic marker hypothesis, a theory about how the mind and body not only interact, but are indissociable. Damasio argues that those feelings provide what he calls ‘somatic markers’ for the mind that aid decision making. They point us in the right (or wrong) direction.The rationalist or Cartesian view – what Damasio calls the ‘high-reason’ view – suggests that our mind is like a computer. We’re running through all of this incomplete knowledge about the job – the commute, the career prospects, the people, the location, while weighing up the advantages and disadvantages as if its a ledger. But Damasio writes ‘you will lose track. Attention and working memory have a limited capacity.’This is where somatic markers come in. He writes:‘before you apply any kind of cost/benefit analysis to the premises, and before you reason toward the solution of the problem, something quite important happens: When the bad outcome connected with a given response option comes into mind, however fleetingly, you experience an unpleasant gut feeling. Because the feeling is about the body, I gave the phenomenon the technical term somatic state.’He continues:The somatic marker ‘forces attention on the negative outcome to which a given action may lead, and functions as an automated alarm signal which says: Beware the danger ahead if you choose the option which leads to this outcome. The signal may reject, immediately, the negative course of action and thus make you choose among other alternatives.’Somatic markers – the collection of feelings we get from bodily and mental impulses – highlight certain options for us to deliberate while eliminating others. They’re a kind of screening process.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Descartes Introduction: Meditations

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 15:27:00 GMT

This is an introduction to Rene Descartes' Meditations. Descartes - born in 1596 - is often considered the father of modern philosophy. He was a radical innovator, completely sweeping away the old and inaugurating a new method – simple, pure, clear, individual thought. He claimed he read very little, and most of his work was in the sciences. When a man asked to see his library he pointed to a half dissected calf. He was primarily a mathematician. He invented the Cartesian coordinates, but today he's mostly remembered for his philosophy.There are two key philosophical works – the Discourse on Method and the Meditations – the latter is a more complete statement of his philosophy.It’s short, it’s reasonably simple, its’ groundbreaking, it’s entertaining. Descartes wants to doubt everything he knows so as to put thought and philosophy on a firm footing; he wants to discover what is certain, indubitable. He is, then focusing exclusively on reason, he’s a rationalist.So, how do we go about discovering what we know to be certain?Cogito Ergo Sum. I think, therefore I am.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Francis Bacon: Introduction to Induction & the Scientific Method

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 19:30:42 GMT

An introduction to the philosophy of Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism. Bacon was born in London in 1561. He was an establishment figure born into one of the most powerful families in Britain. He as a member of the house of commons and the house of lords for 37 years, a lawyer, Attorney General, and a member of the Privy Council, the group who advises the monarch. He died of pneumonia after carrying out experiments with ice in 1626.He’s interested in the question of what is useful, practical, the pursuit of improving our place in the world. He thought that the scholastic philosophy taught at the time was dry, closed off, esoteric, at a dead end.First, to know the truth we have to be able to distinguish it from falsehood and for Bacon, the mind does a good job at distorting the truth.He said that the mind was a ‘crooked mirror’, distorted by what he called idols. He wrote: There are four idols: idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the marketplace, and idols of the theatre.To remedy the effect the idols have on the pursuit of knowledge, Bacon advocates for induction: the scientific method.The Baconian Method starts with simple observations. He said ‘a new beginning has to be made from the lowest foundations.’ Instead of starting at the top, from general ideas, we start from the bottom, from particular observations, and work upwards to ‘general truths’ or axioms.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Francis Bacon: A Critique

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 13:30:43 GMT

What did Bacon give us? Induction, the scientific method, experimentation, his was a theory of epistemology – a theory about knowledge.He said that knowledge about the world comes from the senses and should be carefully and systematically collected to make use of instrumentally.Ok, so there are two lines of criticism I’d like to discuss today. First, the idols – the idea that knowledge is distorted by human cognition. Second, the idea of discovery, specifically the difference between discovery and creation. My main argument will be that Bacon neglected the subjective element in epistemology.

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Empires of Modernity: The East India Company and the Anarchy

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 19:30:41 GMT

Modernity is many things. Urbanization, industrialization, technologization. At its simplest, it’s a project of supposed improvement, science, and progress. As a project, then, modernity seeks to expand itself. If improvements can be made, they should be made.Exploration was at the heart of the modern expansionist drive that began in earnest in the 17th century. But why then? Why not before? What shifts in psychology led to this new attitude in Europe about an unexplored world?We can sometimes see shifts in the most unexpected places.In the early modern period, philosophers like Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Adam Smith, began to reinterpret morality as the pursuit of pleasure, power, and profit. In 1747 Jean-Jacques Burlham wrote that ‘Now let man reflect but ever so little on himself, he will soon perceive that everything he does is with a view of happiness’. By 1776, Adam Smith could write that “It is not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."Since, the scientific revolution it was beginning to be assumed that human nature was calculable, scientific, had simple principles, that people act in rational and predictable ways.Happiness, pleasure, utility, whatever it was, was pursued, stored up, or, to use a word that the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham invented in 1817, maximized. How did this have an effect on world history? On the mentalities and psychology of people in the West.We explore the links between modern philosophy and British Imperial, particularly through William Dalrymple’s book on the rise of the East India Company and the decline of the Mughal Empire – the Anarchy.The history looks at the life of the megalomaniacal Robert Clive, the idea of Gentlemanly Capitalism, theories of Imperialism, and, most horrifyingly, the Great Indian Bengal Famine of 1770, where a third of the population of Bengal died.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Great Barrington Declaration: Science and Politics

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 19:30:11 GMT

How do we deal with coronavirus? I look at the 'Great Barrington Declaration' - a group of scientists against lockdowns - and the history of how science is always political.The Declaration has been signed by over 20,000 medical practitioners and scientists, including Professor Sunetra Gupta from Oxford.There are some problems, though. First, anyone can sign the form – a look through the signatures reveals signatures from Johnny Bananas and the notorious serial killer, Dr. Harold Shipman.But the so-called Great Barrington Declaration event was also hosted by a libertarian think-tank funded by multi-billionaires including the Koch Brothers. But this doesn’t immediately delegitimize their position.Another letter signed by Professor Gupta said:‘Any objective should be framed more broadly than COVID itself. To place all weight on reducing deaths from COVID fails to consider the complex trade-offs that occur: (i) with in any healthcare system; and (ii) between healthcare, society and the economy.’How do we make sense of this? I take a tour through history from the Scientific Revolution and Isaac Newton through to today's COVID-19 lockdown science to find out.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Proudhon: Introduction to Mutualism

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 19:30:21 GMT

I look at the thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, his anarchism, his mutualism, and his theory of politics. Proudhon was the first self-declared anarchist. He wrote What is Property in 1840. He was not a wide-ranging and difficult writer, he wasn’t a system builder, he was critical of utopianisms, and was fascinated with contradictions.For Proudhon, The ideal society was a contractual one – where individuals are free to arrange their relationships under conditions of justice. But for justice to flourish, its laws had to be known to all.The tension between liberty and order is always at the heart of Proudhon’s politics.He intended his mutualist philosophy to be an approach to political life that could be a ‘synthesis of the notions of private property and collective ownership,’ a synthesis of liberty and order.Both private property and collective ownership had major flaws; so what could the solution be?As we saw in What is Property? Justice is at the heart of the solution.fairness, right, morality, should be the premise of economic, social and political arrangements.But at the same time, Proudhon argued that the only law people should follow is the law they choose for themselves. Why would people voluntarily follow any law? And where would it come from?I look at his views on anarchism, communism, the labor theory of value, and contracts to find out.I find some answers in his work 'General Idea of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century' and 'What is Property?'Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Proudhon: What is Property?

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 19:30:37 GMT

An introduction to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's 1840 book, What is Property?Pierre Joseph Proudhon was the first self-declared anarchist. He wrote What is Property in 1840. He was not a wide-ranging and difficult writer, he wasn’t a system builder, he was critical of utopianisms, and was fascinated with contradictions.For Proudhon, The ideal society was a contractual one – where individuals are free to arrange their relationships under conditions of justice. But for justice to flourish, its laws had to be known to all.Proudhon looks at the justifications for property - occupation and labor - and argues that they both really only justify possession.Proudhon ultimately argues that all possession has a dual nature. A part that is ours by virtue of needing it for the flourishing of our own liberty, and a part that is society’s who have contributed to its value, and still has a right to it based on need. Another way of saying this might be that everything is only borrowed.His theory of property can be summed up by his phrase:‘‘The right to product is exclusive – jus in re ; ¬the right to means is common – jus ad rem’Proudhon is one of the most important figures in the history of socialist and radical thought.As George Woodcock writes he argues that ‘property is incompatible with justice, because in practice in represents the exclusion of the worker from his equal rights to enjoy the fruits of society.'Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Isaiah Berlin: Two Concepts of Liberty

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 19:42:28 GMT

An introduction and overview of the British/Latvian philosopher, Isaiah Berlin's 1958 classic lecture on Two Concepts of Liberty.Berlin thought that where philosophers, politicians, and commentators had talked about the idea of freedom as one definable concept, throughout the history of modern thought you could identify two different ideas about what freedom or liberty meant.He called them negative and positive liberty. And in short, they’re the freedom from, and the freedom to. Negative freedom is the freedom from coercion, interference, authority.But positive liberty, he writes, 'derives from the desire on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and my decisions to depend on myself and not on external forces of whatever kind.’It’s the desire to Self-directed, self-determined, independent, competent; it's the the will to self-mastery, to autonomy. I want to be the master of my own life, to choose for myself.I also look briefly at critiques, including Gerald MacCallum's triadic formulation of liberty.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Foucault: Nietzsche, Genealogy, History

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:30:13 GMT

In his 1977 essay, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, Michel Foucault criticizes the traditional historical method and makes an argument for why a ‘genealogical’ approach is important. But what is genealogy?It’s a history of us. Of the attitudes and dispositions we embody today. The way we approach and do things. These things often seem like they don’t have a history, that they’re human nature. That they’re normal, eternal, unchangeable. Genealogy attempts to uncover how they’ve changed over time – how there are different ways of approaching them. It uncovers how they’re not the way they are because they’ve gradually improved; they’re not part of an inevitable linear progression through history. They’re contingent.Genealogy often examines attitudes, beliefs, presuppositions. – Morality, discipline, sexuality. It addresses a traditional history that assumes simple movement forward over time. It draws out, uncovers, and critically examines the origins of a specific conception of what’s morally good, or the source of a particular way of disciplining societal criminality, or the genesis of attitudes about what it means to be a feminine woman.Foucault is influenced by Nietzsche, the first person to show that morality – our ideas of what’s good and bad - has a history, has changed over time.He is searching for the 'origins' of the genealogical method in Nietzsche.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State, & Utopia

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:44:03 GMT

'Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).'This is American philosopher Robert Nozick’s bold pronouncement at the beginning of anarchy, state, and utopia, a 1975 book that is largely a response to Rawl’s 1971 A Theory of Justice. It's the classic modern defense of libertarian political philosophy.For Nozick, the rights that individuals have are natural, of fundamental importance, and completely, universally, unequivocally inviolable. These rights, he argues, must be respected at all costs.They aren’t designed by institutions, or dreamed up by revolutionaries, written into contracts and protected by lawyers. They are part of being human.How then is a state justifiable? Taxation, the rule of law, a system that forces its citizens to pay for roads, schools and hospitals is surely a violation of an individual's natural rights as a human to be free to make their own choices.‘Boundary crossing’, as Nozick calls it, crossing the line and infringing upon a person's freedom, is surely only permissible with consent.This, loosely, is the position of the anarchist. The anarchist argues that because of the inviolability of individuals, no state can be justified.For Nozick, this is the fundamental question of political philosophy: whether there should be any state at all. He wants to justify what he calls a minimal state. One that simply protects an individual’s right to freedom, and nothing else. He wants to argue that this is both justified philosophically, and, could develop from a state of nature historically. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Rawls A Theory of Justice: Comments, Utilitarianism, Rights

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:35:29 GMT

I respond to some of your comments on the Rawls video, specifically thinking about utilitarianism, rights, race, and radicalism.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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The Flesh Of Modernity

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 10:51:22 GMT

What does it mean for a body – flesh and bones – to be politicized? For the rhythm of heartbeats, the density of muscles, and the flow of the arteries to be molded and shaped by power?What's the best way to rank citizens on a scale? To make the child’s body still, obedient, but strong? How far can we go in engineering modern utopian bodies? Is it possible to forge the iron of the national body through recommendations or if not, by force?Throughout the 19th century, bodies emigrated in droves from the country to the city. Their stomachs were hungry, for food, for work. They crowded flesh on flesh into slums. “Little Ireland” in Manchester had two toilets between 250. 5 or more often slept in one bed. Cesspools and dunghills were everywhere.At the same time, factory owners needed these bodies to be productive, energetic, malleable.We take a look at the Philosophical Radicals, who were inspired by Jeremy Bentham, Edwin Chadwick, Social Darwinism, Eugenics, and enforced sterilization. The 1846 Nuisance Removal Acts, Robert Bayden-Powel and his concerns about national degeneration that led to the development of the Scouts, productivity during the First World War, and the development of eugenicist thought and societies.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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John Rawls: Property-Owning Democracy

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:52:30 GMT

John Rawls, as we saw last time on Then & Now, came to the following conclusions about what a just society should like. He said that:‘‘All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values, is to everyone’s advantage.’’But what would this look like in practice? It’s only in recent years that attention has begun to be focused on how this might be implemented politically.Rawls barely addressed this question, but he did suggest two possible systems: liberal or democratic socialism, and property-owning democracy, and while he said that justice as fairness is agnostic between them, he leaned towards the latter.So what is a property-owning democracy?Property-owning democracy means citizens have a real stake in the productive capital of society, some ownership of the means of production.He writes: ‘Property-owning democracy avoids [inequalities], not by redistributing income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (educated abilities and trained skills) at the beginning of each period’.If all citizens have a stake in a sizeable amount of property, access to capital and the productive decisions of society, it prevents power from resting in the hands of the few.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Introduction to Rawls: A Theory of Justice

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 19:02:51 GMT

The American philosopher John Rawls was the most influential political thinkers of the late twentieth century. Born in 1921 and died in 2002, he’s responsible for a renaissance in political philosophy.In this introduction to Rawls, I look at A Theory of Justice, his magnum opus. It was published in 1971 and is a philosophy of what a just and fair society would look like. I like at concepts like the difference principle, justice as fairness, and maximin.Before Rawls, the dominant political philosophy for at least the previous 100 years been utilitarianism. There were and are many different forms of utilitarianism, but they all have their foundations in a simple premise: the greatest good for the greatest number.For Rawls, utilitarianism didn’t adequately account for the intuition that people have inalienable rights that cannot be violated for the greater happiness of others.Rawls writes that the ‘higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society.’It’s this difference principle, also referred to as maximin – maximise the minimum prospects – that leads Rawls to his formulation of the two principles of ‘justice as fairness'.The principles are in lexical order; that is, that the first should always be prioritised over the second. They are:First, each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all. Second, social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.The two principles might generally be summed up like this:‘All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.’Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Statues, Philosophy, & Civil Disobedience

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 16:37:19 GMT

I look at the Black Lives Matter protests and the controversial debate around statues like Edward Colston, Cecil Rhodes, and King Leopold II. What can the philosophy of history and civil disobedience tell us about this moment? What exactly is a statue for? What is public history? How do we think about them ethically? And when is Civil Disobedience justified? I look at John Rawls, W.E.B du Bois, and Malcolm X in particular for some answers.Statues are philosophical objects. They are clearly symbolic of something more than the material they’re cast in. They embody phenomena that philosophers often try to understand– publicness, memory, the nature of history, the abstract and the concrete. Across the world – from the coloniser Cecil Rhodes to slaver King Leopold III and confederate president Jefferson Davis - inanimate busts have become a battleground. To their more mainstream defenders, the argument is usually twofold. That first, these monuments are legitimate because they memorialise a past that, for good or bad, is our history. And second, that even if memorialising a particular figure was not legitimate, removing statues extrajudicially at the whims of the mob is itself unethical and, furthermore, has dangerous consequences for democracy.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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The Spanish Flu: Lessons

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 14:31:14 GMT

I look at the history of the Spanish Flu of 1918 - the worst pandemic in history - asking what lessons we can learn. Avoiding a traditional approach to the story, I look at history’s worst pandemic from a number of perspectives. As a preface, I think about the memory of the flu and remembrance of World War One – why was the Influenza forgotten, while the war memorialised by poets like John McCrae? Then, institutional, looking at the two main institutions involves in the response: the military and the bacteriologists. Then, material, looking at the ways it spread and how quarantines were attempted to stop it. Third, ideologically, how did ideas of the time distort the response. I look in particular at cinemas, religion in Africa, and apartheid.Ultimately, there is a theme that runs through memories of the Spanish Flu: Failure.The historian Niall Johnson sums up Britains failure like this:‘the perception of disease, the fact that it was ‘only’ inﬂuenza, the relatively mild nature of the ﬁrst wave in the spring of 1918, Imperialist or racist views and the ‘superiority’ of the English, the conﬁdence in scientiﬁc medicine to ﬁnd a vaccine, the quest for professional status of the profession, the power of ‘scientiﬁc’ medicine prevailing over preventive, and the rejection of state intervention. Many of these contributed to a delay in the reaction and recognition of the existence of a problem, particularly when the second wave arrived in the autumn of 1918.’Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Wed, 27 May 2020 14:00:43 GMT

An introduction to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962, and itself a revolutionary approach to the philosophy of science. The book was both influential and controversial.Born in 1922, Kuhn began his career as a physicist before turning to the history of science. He was interested in how scientists approach their daily work, and in thinking about the question of how science develops over time.Kuhn saw sciences progressing in two alternating phases: one he called normal and the other he called extraordinary (or revolutionary).Scientific development is traditionally thought of as simply moving faster when a discovery is made, like the discovery of bacteria, or the realisation that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around.But for Kuhn, the normal and extraordinary phases of science aren’t just different speeds of discovery, but fundamentally different approach to scientific work.Normal science progresses under paradigms, but when anomalies appear, extraordinary science can lead to a paradigm shift that changes the fundamental underlying assumptions, norms and rules of scientific activity.We can see this in the chemical revolution, when Joseph Priestly and Antoine Lavoisier weighed burning chemicals and gases and overturned the reigning phlogiston theory of combustion, replacing it with todays oxygen theory of combustion.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018Or send me a one-off tip of any amount and help me make more videos:https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JJ76W4CZ2A8J2Buy on Amazon through this link to support the channel:https://amzn.to/2ykJe6L Follow me on:Facebook: http://fb.me/thethenandnowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thethenandnow/Twitter: https://twitter.com/lewlewwaller

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The Historiography of the Police

Fri, 15 May 2020 16:01:33 GMT

In a follow up to the Fist of Modernity I look at the history of the police in England in the nineteenth century, particularly at David Churchill’s critique of the State Monopolisation Thesis which was influenced by Max Weber and articulated through the work of historians like V.A.C. Gatrell and his concept of the policeman state.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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The Fist of Modernity: A History of the Police in Britain

Fri, 15 May 2020 14:31:36 GMT

The foundations of modern policing are based not on justice, but on the punishing of poverty, the imposition of the status quo, the disciplining of the public, the constriction of liberty, and justified as the protection against an ugly, sinful, idle, greedy, and organised criminal class that has no basis in reality.In this video I look at the birth of the modern police force in Britain, what the historian V.A.C Gatrell calls ‘the policeman state.’The nineteenth century was a period of great transformation. Urbanization, industrialization, technologicalization , were all, at the heart, a change in the routines of humans. Modernity, at its simplest, was about efficiency, speed, production, of the maximizing of health, wealth and profit.It was about scientifically searching for those rules, those methods, those laws, that would bring about the ideal human order.The first modern, standardized police forced – the Metropolitan Police – was created in 1829, and continued to expand across the century, increasing from around 20k in 1860 to 54k in 1911.The preventative police were to be visible, wear uniforms, be of good physique, intelligence, and character – ‘domestic missionaries’ as historian Robert Storch called them.There was protest:The Gazette called it ‘a base attempt upon the liberty of the subject and the privilege of local government’ and that the purpose of the police state was to ‘to drill, discipline and dragoon us all into virtue’A parliament inquiry concluded that ‘such a system would of necessity be odious and repulsive, and one which no government would be able to carry into execution ...the very proposal would be rejected with abhorrence’And that ‘It is difficult to reconcile an effective system of police, with that perfect freedom of action and exemption from interference, which are the great privileges and blessings of society in this country; and your Committee think that the forfeiture or curtailment of such advantageswould be too great a sacrifice for improvements in police’.In 1867 the commentator Walter Bagehot wrote that:‘The natural impulse of the English people is to resist authority. The introduction of effectual policemen was not liked;I know people, old people I admit, who to this day consider them an infringement of freedom. If the original policeman had been started with the present helmets, the result might have been dubious; there might have been a cry of military tyranny, and the inbred insubordination of the English people might have prevailed over the very modern love of perfect peace and order.’Despite all of this, the fist of modernity raised its clenched rational plan, and swung.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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What is Modernity? Foucault, Governmentality, & the Plague

Tue, 05 May 2020 12:57:48 GMT

What is modernity? I look at this question through my previous video - the Shock of Modernity - and my next video - the Fist of Modernity - and ask how we can think about the vague term and how it applies to the current COVID-19 pandemic. I take a brief look at Foucault's comments on the Plague during the 17th century and its place in the genealogy of governmentality, while thinking about contemporary issues like Viktor Orban in Hungary and authoritarianism in Russia.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Romanticism: Covid-19, Climate Change, & Critique

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 15:36:39 GMT

I take a look back at the introduction to Romanticism to see if it can offer any insights to current events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and little issues like modernity, reason and industrialization.

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The Philosophy of Creativity & The Castle of Indolence

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 16:21:53 GMT

What is creativity? I take a look at the philosophy of creativity to try and find out. Plato said the inspiration is a kind of madness. To the Ancient Greek philosopher, creativity was a kind of divine inspiration – it came from outside the limited understanding of men – a burst of lightening not reducible to human reason.Almost 2000 years later, he mathematician Henri Ponclaire influentially argued that creativity felt like swarms of ideas combining randomly in his unconscious followed by the conscious selection of one of them according to aesthetic criteria.To Ponclaire then, unlike Plato, creativity came from inside the person, but was still guided by aesthetic criteria – trends, standards, social norms, histories - on the outside – determined by society.But how is that aesthetic criteria determined? What makes this a better example of creativity than this?Almost all psychologists and philosophers agree that creativity must be both original and valuable. This, although contested, is likely the best definition of creativity we have.I take a look at where value and originality come from, while building a tentative approach to creativity that includes Study and Knowledge, Activity and Industry, Tranquillity and Reflection, Tension and Opposites, and finally, always remember, to add a bit of randomness…Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Pandemics: The Politics of Trust & Optimism

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 16:32:14 GMT

In this video, I take a look at what ‘trust’ is philosophically. When trust is in low supply in our societies, it’s a sign of a deeper issue. That’s why any social progress involves, in some way, an increase in trust. Trust is a difficult concept to define, but it is, ultimately, an optimism in people; which is why any positive social change should revolve around trust in some way.So much of our modern society relies on trust. We trust the food we buy is safe, the medicines we take aren’t poisonous, that drivers and pilots won’t crash us, that electricians won't poorly wire our houses…Many studies have shown that trust influences economic growth and societal prosperity. The economist Kenneth Arrow wrote that ‘virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust’Trust that a person can do the best job, shares your goals, won't scam you, trust is required to setup businesses, to deal with people and work in groups.Trust sometimes involves letting others make a decision for you. Believing that someone has your best interests at heart. Admitting that they’re better placed to understand a situation or to help with a goal.How might pandemics of the past, present, and future, be shaped by, and have an effect on, social trust?Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Coronavirus & Scapegoats: Rene Girard

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 16:31:05 GMT

I take a look at the Rene Girard text 'The Plague in Literature and Myth', taking an introductory perspective on Girard's thought before seeing if we can learn anything about 'scapegoating' - a central Girardian concept - and Coronavirus.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Stoicism & Coronavirus

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 15:34:40 GMT

In another lockdown special, I look at my introduction to Stoicism video to see if we can learn anything about our attitudes to coronavirus.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Metaphors We Live By & Coronavirus

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 14:36:48 GMT

In a lockdown special, I look back at George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By to see if it can offer any insights in a time of Coronavirus pandemic.

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Metaphors We Live By: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 14:35:13 GMT

Metaphors We Live By is an influential book by linguists and philosophers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson published in 1980. It has since revolutionized the way we understand language and how we relate our own experiences to the world around us.But what exactly are metaphors?Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphors aren’t just poetry, but a fundamental part of our brain conceptual system. That is, they’re central to the way we perceive ourselves, others, and the world.Lakoff and Johnson write that the ‘essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.’One of the most common examples is all the world’s a stage – an example that draws similarities between acting for an audience and human life in general.Metaphors aren’t simply rhetorical, artistic, and creative, they help us understand, structure and communicate experience that is difficult to communicate literally.They write ‘the concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people.’ Furthermore, ‘our conceptual system is largely metaphorical.’Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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The Myth of Sisyphus: Responding to a Pandemic

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 13:49:40 GMT

Albert Camus was an early twentieth century French philosopher whose works expressed a philosophy of the absurd. In the Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1952, Camus challenges the idea of reason, logic and rationality, describing the limits of our understanding of the world as humans, protesting that philosophy itself is an almost useless and self-negating task.Camus is always asking that age old question – what is the meaning of life? Because if we knew the answer to that question we’d know how to act.The question of acting is an ethical question – what should we do?The traditional answers to these questions have, for millennia, come from religion. Religion tells us what we should do and why we should do it.We should not kill because we’ll go to heaven if we don’t. Answering these questions secularly without the aid of a higher celestial authority becomes more difficult. For Camus, in fact, it’s almost useless. How can we ever know what to do with any certainty when even the clearest questions have exceptions?For Camus, the absurdity of habit and the limits of any transcendental reason are illustrated by the image of Sisyphus – condemned by the gods to roll a rock to the top of a mountain every day, only for it to roll back down for him to repeat all over again. IN Sisyphus, Camus sees the human conditioned at its starkest.But he highlights the moment when Sisyphus returns back down to the bottom of the mountain towards the rock – it’s in this moment that he is most aware, and in an awareness of the truth everything becomes clear, we acknowledge our fate and return to it anyway. Acknowledging the problems of acting and acting anyway takes courage. Knowing that absolute truth is unavailable and being resolute anyway is a demand of being human.He writes that ‘all Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols.’We become most human – most free- when we acknowledge this.We must live with an awareness of this absurdity or risk falling into a numb and frozen immobility – our fate is to act without being sure of how to act.The important thing, Camus writes ‘is not to be cured but to live with one’s ailments.’ Life is ‘unjust, incoherent and incomprehensible.’ We must live anyway.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Introduction to Stoicism

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 13:35:41 GMT

You’re probably already a stoic in someway. It’s part of our culture. Influenced by Socrates and emerging in Ancient Greece in the 3rd century BC, it’s a foundation of Christianity, is maybe the first psychology, contributed to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, guided a Roman Emporer, and has become increasingly popular in recent years, through events like Stoicon, Annual Stoic Week, and a flurry of new of popular books and articles.Could it really be a guide to the best possible life?This introduction to Stoicism will mix two things: what the Stoics of Ancient Greece and Rome actually said – the original doctrines – and how this might be interpreted and be useful today.IN the first part, I’ll look at the Ancient Stoics – Marcus Aurelius (Meditations), Epictetus (Discourses), Seneca, and Zeno; and in the second part, I’ll look at Stoicism in practice, especially through William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.The Greek Stoics divided Stoicism into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. None of these terms, though, meant what they do today.Logic was formal logic, but also rhetoric, language, poetryPhysics mostly meant the study of God and the world – essentially how things work.They also broke all of this into two parts: theory and practicePhilosophy, importantly, needed to both studied and practiced, learned and executed. Exercises, reflection, and self-improvement were fundamental.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Rene Girard: An Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 13:07:24 GMT

In this introduction to the work and theory of René Girard, I look at mimetic desire, scapegoating, mimetic crisis, ritual, sacrifice, culture, and religion.Rene Girard, born in 1923 and died in 2015, was a French thinker whose thought spanned across disciplines. His focus was on mythology, violence, sacrifice, and religion, but the range and implications of his thought touch on history, psychology, literary criticism, anthropology; in fact, you could list every area of the humanities here.Girard seems to be able to supply answer to a difficult question: how and why did culture emerge?Scholar Harald Wydra calls it a ‘fundamental anthropology’ and tells us that Girard’s thought can help us make sense of ‘humanity’s immense “progress” during the short time of its existence.’In other words, the question is this: why did the first myths and stories emerge – culture – and how do they underpin humanity’s direction since.He’s one of those rare thinkers that can change your entire way of looking at things.I take a look at some themes running through works such as Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, Violence and the Sacred, and the ScapegoatThen & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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The Culture Industry: Adorno and Horkheimer

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 11:23:09 GMT

In this video I look at the second part of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment on the Culture Industry. They write, ‘culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines forms a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together. Even the aesthetic manifestations of political opposites proclaim the same inflexible rhythm. The decorative administrative and exhibition buildings of industry differ little between authoritarian and other countries.’For all of the Critical Theorists of the Frankfurt School, the individual lives in a world dominated by highly concentrated capital. The critique has more flexibility that orthodox Marxism, but the emphasis is the same: the drugs that save our lives, the manufacturing plants that build our products, the routine of the worker and the consumer, are dominated by the profit motive and the power of capital.The culture industry is no exception:‘All mass culture under monopoly is identical.’They say that the defenders of the culture industry argue that they are driven by the demand of their customers: They demand cheap, reproducible products that can be accessed easily and everywhere.The effect though is mass standardization: ‘Something is provided tor everyone so that no one can escape; differences are hammered home and propagated.’They argue that the culture industry supports the tiring workday. Rather than think about their positions at the end of day, its much easier to switch off. To consume the same libidinal routines of enjoyment without considering the possibility of difficult change.To be creative, to read something new, to follow a new plot, to take the time to enjoy completely new music is laborious.The culture industry organizes free time in the same way capital organises work time. Everything is defined you without room for individual creativity and difference.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Adorno and Horkheimer: Dialectic of Enlightenment - Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 11:21:33 GMT

In this video, I look at the first part of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. I takes an introductory look a the first three parts: The Concept of Enlightenment; Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment; and Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality.The first part, through some general reflections on Enlightenment, reason, mythology, and totalitarianism, poses that all four are already intertwined. For Adorno and Horkheimer, ‘Myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology.’In the two ‘excursus’ they interpret the Odyssey, Marquis de Sade, and Nietzsche, as backing up this claim. What makes mythology and enlightenment the same? Odysseus is the proto-bourgeois individual using his logic to manipulate nature through instrumental reason so he get home. De Sade uses his logic to get what his passions desire. And Nietzsche is famous for his ‘will to power.’ In all of this, we can see the philosophical roots on totalitarianism.Both enlightenment and mythology attempt to naturalise the universal rule – attempt to dominate the individual based on an eternal rule of instrumental reason. Even magic was an exchange – a deal with nature, with the gods, to preserve man. All are based on the same logic.Whether its the codified myth of Scylla and Charybdis. The rationality of working out your desire and convincing others to follow it – if objects are valueless – to be used for the purposes of self-preservation – why would this not apply to people too?Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Bourdieu: Cultural Capital and the Love of Art

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 11:19:13 GMT

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu was interested in how the organisation of culture and the social world around us could affect our individual view of the world. How we didn’t just pick the culture we liked, but in some ways culture picked us – made us more or less likely to act in certain ways.I look at Bourdieu’s ideas about cultural capital, social capital, and institutional capital, primarily through his book, the Love of Art. For Bourdieu, facts about the world could be measured, collected, and recorded; but they were also instinctively absorbed by us from a young age – they became subjectified into our own behaviour. He was interested in how these cultural and social phenomena tcouldhat connect us to the wider world. Our tastes, accents, styles of speaking, mannerisms, and values can be the product of our social environment and our own minds. He sought ‘the subjective dispositions within which these structures are actualized.’ Our preferences in art, literature, or music are, in large part at least, determined by our social positions, our family’s exposure to specific cultural artefacts, our economic possibilities, or the interests of the faculty of the school we attend. In the most obvious sense, an American girl attending high school today is unlikely to enjoy 16th century Mongolian folk songs. But why is this? Why are our tastes often so uniform?Bourdieu’s answer is cultural capital.He saw that If we are bought up in an aristocratic family who’s friends and teachers all read the Homeric epics then we too are more likely to attach a value to that cultural artefact. If everyone tells us these stories are good as a child we are of course, more likely to value them because praise for reading them is a reward as powerful as any financial reward. Economic capital, like money, can be exchanged for other goods. And so too can cultural capital.Finally, I look at what this means for culture today, taking a Bourdieuan look at hip-hop and grime.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Introduction to Bourdieu: Habitus

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 11:16:53 GMT

In this introduction to Pierre Bourdieu, I look at a number of his key concepts: Habitus, Field & Cultural Capital, while focusing primarily on habitus. First I contextualize Bourdieu's sociology in the debates between structuralism, existentialism, and postmodernism. I look at how Bourdieu can help us understand emotions, class and children's health inequalities.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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Introduction to Baudrillard

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 22:13:08 GMT

In this introduction to Baudrillard, I look at his thought as it developed from a Marxist framework in Symbolic Exchange and death through to his hyperreal postmodern period exemplified in Simulacra and Simulation. I take an in-depth look at a number of his concepts. First I look at sign-value, which he argued must supplement Marx’s framework of use-value and exchange-value. He then takes this central concept forward arguing that copies of the real – simulacra – became increasingly detached from reality, referencing themselves more than the real and so developing a hyperreality. Postmodernity directs social life through code and simulation. Finally, I look at the concept of Symbolic Exchange; a basis for revolutionary thought that is meant to emphasize social life, ritual, gift-giving, energy expenditure, and neo-aristocratic values. In doing this, Baudrillard hopes to escape from the ‘law of value’, utilitarian logic, and dialectic history typical in much modern thought.

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Introduction to Deleuze: Difference and Repetition

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 22:11:07 GMT

I introduce the thought of Gilles Deleuze through his 1968 book, Difference and Repetition. I look at Deleuze's basic concepts - especially difference, repetition and the virtual; his relationship to philosophers like Spinoza and Kant; and how he provides some of the ontological foundations for other 'poststructural' or postmodern theorists like Foucault and Derrida.I also look at the relationship between the virtual, the Idea and the multiplicity - all important concepts for understanding the rest of Deleuze's work. This introduction should serve to give a fuller understanding of ideas like the Rhizome, the haecceity and 'lines of flight' that are a large part of his later work with Félix Guattari - a Thousand Plateaus. Most importantly, I try to make understanding Deleuze as simple as possible!

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Introduction to Foucault

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 17:52:31 GMT

In this introduction to Foucault I look at the poststructuralist philosopher’s influences and context (Nietzsche, Levi-Strauss & Sartre, among others), and summarise his position through his three most influential works, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality. Foucault’s thought takes two approaches that are loosely related – the archaeological and the genealogical. The most important concept is that power and knowledge are intimately linked.For Foucault, different time periods – what he calls epistemes – have different underlying assumptions, codes, and rules, mostly unconscious or at least structural, about how to think about things in the world.Foucault analyses the way we're discipline by power in the same way. In her introduction to Discipline and Punish, Lisa Downing puts like this: Foucault analyses the ‘means by which the body is made to conform to the utilitarian ends of social regimes thanks to the operations of disciplinary power.’Finally, the central question outlined in vol. 1 is that of the ‘repressive hypothesis'. The narrative dominant in the 70s argued that where Westerners were once sexually oppressed, we have become slowly more liberated, more liberal. Is it really that simple? Like the rest of his work, Foucault questions this progressive, teleological narrative.

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Introduction to Jacques Derrida: Deconstruction

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 17:46:36 GMT

In this video, I take an introductory look at the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction. I look at the basic tenets of Derrida's thought, and his relationship with Ferdinand de Saussure and Jean-Jacques Rosseau in Of Grammatology.

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John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 10:15:47 GMT

An introduction to John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism

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John Stuart Mill: On Liberty

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 10:14:54 GMT

An introduction to John Stuart Mill's important and influential, On Liberty.

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