This is my long drive playlist that keeps me awake from falling sleep. Philosophy keeps me awake. This talk makes me elevated. Thank you for this. Just came back from a long drive and listened to 200 to 207 straight 6.5 hours.
Thanks, Stephen. I always enjoy your 'casts. I think Nussbaum is highlighting one of the most important considerations a society must make. Emotions are so interesting because context is crucial. We have this primal, biological "circuitry" that can be hijacked for nefarious purposes, and not enough people are skeptical of what is driving them. We get stuck in our default ways of looking at things and our emotions are quick to justify that view.
I'm reading "The Ethics of Care" by Nel Nodding, which has given me the hope that we might be able to organize a society around concrete human interactive care, instead of abstract thought experiments and cold logical assessments. Her thesis, like Martha Nussbaum's grounds itself in emotions like hope and love of our fellows as well which makes this episode particularly exciting to listen to as a tie in to what I'm reading.
>> According to Snyder’s Handbook of Hope: Theory, Measures, & Applications, “Hope is the sum of perceived capabilities to produce routes to desired goals, along with the perceived motivation to use those routes” (Snyder, 2000, 8, see Fig. 1). Our perception of our capabilities is based on our interpretation of our history of successes and failures: in the past, have we experienced situations where we found pathways to get to our goals, and the motivation to follow those pathways through to completion of our goals? This motivation Snyder calls agency, and our perception of our own level of agency he calls self-efficacy
Following you from episode 90 around.. really appreciate your effort in chronology and introducing new characters.. I'm not philosophy student but you make it intresting
shame - self-focused (inwardly focused - living up to your ideal standard) - make yourself feel better guilt - other-focused (outwardly focused) - repairing the wrong done to another person
Amazing as always. I pride myself to discovered you like... 5 years ago? And I've listened every single episode. Thanks from the bottom of my heart. I think you could insert at the end an episode of yours that would make sense to listen after. In going to look for the one you mentioned about her. And also, i wish you would make an episode about Palestine. Might be controversial, but i believe you can find an angle pretty neat may
Hey Stephen, thank you for these beautiful episodes. I have been following you since 2017 now and your podcast is undoubtedly my favourite. I have listened to a lot of contents and recently I have found some notes after a guest lecture from Professor Rosi Braidotti. She is defined as a Continental philosopher; in her work she focuses on themes of social and political equality, and the definition of subjectivity in a Posthuman frame of thought. I would be curious to listen to your take on her philosophical work and I think an episode on her would be fitting to the current theme. Cheers to you and thank you again for your wonderful work!
My experience with Nussbaum comes from her book Hiding from Humanity, which argues many of the same points and looks at shame, guilt, disgust, and stigma. What we ultimately have to contend with is if these emotional responses are biological/evolutionary (i.e., innate), or if they are learned responses. If they are evolutionary, then these responses are adaptations to certain conditions that are ultimately hindrances to survival and reproduction. Thus, it can be argued that these responses are (or once were) necessarily good things in that they help maintain social cohesion in some form or allow people to avoid negative situations. If they are evolutionary emotions, then it will be tremendously difficult to "fix" things towards a more loving and tolerant goal, as Nussbaum suggests. In this case, the emotions are what they are, and we would have to somehow overwrite evolution. Alternatively, if these emotional responses are learned, that means what we find to be shameful, disgusting, or guilt-producing are results of what we are taught and observe in our upbringing. In this case, they could be changed and mitigated as a future goal, as Nussbaum would hope. Fortunately for Nussbaum, I think the latter is pretty obviously the case. Each of these emotional responses are derived from normative judgements about behavior. We are not born with conceptions of right and wrong; these things have to be instilled. Whenever we feel guilt for wronging someone else, shame from doing something foolish, or disgust from observing something repugnant, these are all derived from value judgements of proper and improper actions that we can only learn from others. If you observe a young child, they act without any regard for wronging others, doing something embarrassing, or what is nasty. They will hit other children or take their toys, or randomly put stuff in their mouth. They do not have conceptions of right or proper that are the basis for these responses. In a sense, we are a tabula rasa for many of these emotions, with very few being evolutionary. Hormones play more of a role than neurology. However, I do think the drive towards tolerance and love that Nussbaum preaches is naive. We do have violent drives and energies. Plus, how would we ever teach children about life without normative standards and value judgements? It seems like it would be a fruitless pursuit that would lead to bad people, people who could not identify what is harmful, people who would have no convictions. Is total tolerance even a good goal in the first place? Why should we try to match people to government (democracy), and not the other way around?
I'd like to hear a podcast on neo-monarchy. In particular, I'd like to know how they intend to maintain a hold on power if they are no longer able to print money by decree? If, (I'd argue when), fiat loses and Bitcoin wins, their subjects will need to sacrifice real wealth in real time to back a monarchy's next conquest or vanity project. This is a game changer and I'll reserve my fear for the aspiring Kings, Queens, and aristocrats that still don't see it.
Thanks for another great episode. Have you considered doing one one Shoshana Zuboff? I was thinking her views would add greatly to the type of content you have been posting lately.
You said it, Martha! (And yet, in 2020, voices crying in the wilderness warned us of mass psychosis formation. Some listened, the majority didn't. Most people hear what they want to hear. Nevertheless, I applaud you for trying, friend. I enjoyed the episode.)
(Fear is toxic to a democracy.) This describes why government and social media influencers fear other voices, and feel the need to censor, therefore yes I agree with that.
Fear is indeed toxic to democracy. I am even beginning to think that is the point i.e. the use of media, social media and politics to "poison" democracy itself and drive a widespread desire for 'monarchy' or whatever the modern equivalent of that would be.
23:54 the problem is that “the obligation to do good in the world” just hits so bitterly in our paralyzed technofeudal age of market/congressional enclosure. In the streets this message sounds like virtue signaling bullshit, more empty rhetoric and austerity raining down acidicly from the privileged onto the poors.
We have a 1-year National Youth Service Program in my country, Nigeria, and I wouldn't say it has helped solved the tribal divisions we have. The truth is, ultimately, people are shaped by their experiences and lessons from childhood, as opposed to whatever lesson or experience they have later in life. So, to cure ethnic, tribal or racial divisions, measures need to be taken that address bigotry and ignorance early on at the formative stage of most people. Youth programs can only do so little to deprogram years of brainwashing anyone may have received from home.
At least we all know that we have to act guilty to show that we are virtuous. In case there’s an Ai robot out there trying to workout which humans to annihilate first. Just too make it clear. I love all Ai robots.
Hmmm, what about Communism? Communists had hope in that they believed that a Utopia was possible, we just had to get there. Unfortunately getting there might have a price, current sectors of the population might be ¨in the way¨ and would have to be eliminated in order to get to the Utopia. We have to temper our hope, we must hope that incremental change can make things better. There is evidence that incremental change can produce extraordinary systems (evolution). So we dont know where we are going, progress is never certain or finalised.
Are we just... Assuming the system isn't designed to crank up the fear (regardless of the original design)? Like... What's the political philosophy of fear? How can we regulate or reform fear? I feel silly for asking but this is probably the least material analysis possible and I don't like the idea of controlling the emotional. Not that I don't think it's useful; I don't think it's very ethical. Rather, the potential for abuse is astronomical. Edit: To wit, you explored the politics of fear used in hierarchical, exclusionary systems like monarchies but can we consider egalitarian, inclusionary systems to see if it is even possible to exploit fear in the same way? Edit edit: Yeah how does the analysis change if we get really serious about the conflict between a democratic political system and a tyrannical economic system that has captured the former? Edit edit edit: Do we really want to send, say, wealthy Black young people into poor white communities for the "exposure"? I _fear_ this could have violent consequences.
I havent read Nuzzbaum, but from what i heard of her, she has a weird view on emotions. All emotions are there for evolutionary reasons, they arent pathological or bad unless they go to the extreme.
I was thinking of this in a different way, where grotesque, beautiful, humorous and funny are an expression mechanism sort of, in society for people to engage, where one way of extreme is to negate two so the other two go to an extreme. In other words yes, the mechanism is transferred not the emotion and this between levels which oddly enough creates one level where games are played..instead of two levels deliberately like higher virtue and lower compromise. Remember intrinsic value was the theory of the day.
This is my long drive playlist that keeps me awake from falling sleep. Philosophy keeps me awake. This talk makes me elevated. Thank you for this. Just came back from a long drive and listened to 200 to 207 straight 6.5 hours.
Thanks, Stephen. I always enjoy your 'casts. I think Nussbaum is highlighting one of the most important considerations a society must make. Emotions are so interesting because context is crucial. We have this primal, biological "circuitry" that can be hijacked for nefarious purposes, and not enough people are skeptical of what is driving them. We get stuck in our default ways of looking at things and our emotions are quick to justify that view.
I dunno how I found this 4 min after drop, but I'm already invested. Thanks for being amazing Steven!
Yes, we DO want an episode on neo-monarchical thought! :)
HEESSSSSSSS BACCKKKKK
Thank you for the new episode
I'm reading "The Ethics of Care" by Nel Nodding, which has given me the hope that we might be able to organize a society around concrete human interactive care, instead of abstract thought experiments and cold logical assessments. Her thesis, like Martha Nussbaum's grounds itself in emotions like hope and love of our fellows as well which makes this episode particularly exciting to listen to as a tie in to what I'm reading.
>> According to Snyder’s Handbook of Hope: Theory, Measures, & Applications, “Hope is the sum of perceived capabilities to produce routes to desired goals, along with the perceived motivation to use those routes” (Snyder, 2000, 8, see Fig. 1). Our perception of our capabilities is based on our interpretation of our history of successes and failures: in the past, have we experienced situations where we found pathways to get to our goals, and the motivation to follow those pathways through to completion of our goals? This motivation Snyder calls agency, and our perception of our own level of agency he calls self-efficacy
Thank you, sir. Spotify listener since 2021. What a life to live? You helped my transition sir (teen to pre adult). Mabuhay! From the Philippines
Fear is the mind killer
Following you from episode 90 around.. really appreciate your effort in chronology and introducing new characters..
I'm not philosophy student but you make it intresting
shame - self-focused (inwardly focused - living up to your ideal standard) - make yourself feel better
guilt - other-focused (outwardly focused) - repairing the wrong done to another person
Thanks again S! Appreciated!
Amazing as always. I pride myself to discovered you like... 5 years ago? And I've listened every single episode. Thanks from the bottom of my heart. I think you could insert at the end an episode of yours that would make sense to listen after. In going to look for the one you mentioned about her. And also, i wish you would make an episode about Palestine. Might be controversial, but i believe you can find an angle pretty neat may
You sir, are a master of analogies. Another great episode. Let's make con artists feel a little less hope today. 🙂
Amazing stuff Stephen! Huge fan from Bangladesh! ❤️ Can relate a lot of things recently happening in Bangladesh.
Hey Stephen, thank you for these beautiful episodes. I have been following you since 2017 now and your podcast is undoubtedly my favourite. I have listened to a lot of contents and recently I have found some notes after a guest lecture from Professor Rosi Braidotti. She is defined as a Continental philosopher; in her work she focuses on themes of social and political equality, and the definition of subjectivity in a Posthuman frame of thought. I would be curious to listen to your take on her philosophical work and I think an episode on her would be fitting to the current theme.
Cheers to you and thank you again for your wonderful work!
Thank you for sharing knowledge, listing to you from Yemen 🇾🇪💕
My experience with Nussbaum comes from her book Hiding from Humanity, which argues many of the same points and looks at shame, guilt, disgust, and stigma. What we ultimately have to contend with is if these emotional responses are biological/evolutionary (i.e., innate), or if they are learned responses.
If they are evolutionary, then these responses are adaptations to certain conditions that are ultimately hindrances to survival and reproduction. Thus, it can be argued that these responses are (or once were) necessarily good things in that they help maintain social cohesion in some form or allow people to avoid negative situations. If they are evolutionary emotions, then it will be tremendously difficult to "fix" things towards a more loving and tolerant goal, as Nussbaum suggests. In this case, the emotions are what they are, and we would have to somehow overwrite evolution.
Alternatively, if these emotional responses are learned, that means what we find to be shameful, disgusting, or guilt-producing are results of what we are taught and observe in our upbringing. In this case, they could be changed and mitigated as a future goal, as Nussbaum would hope.
Fortunately for Nussbaum, I think the latter is pretty obviously the case. Each of these emotional responses are derived from normative judgements about behavior. We are not born with conceptions of right and wrong; these things have to be instilled. Whenever we feel guilt for wronging someone else, shame from doing something foolish, or disgust from observing something repugnant, these are all derived from value judgements of proper and improper actions that we can only learn from others. If you observe a young child, they act without any regard for wronging others, doing something embarrassing, or what is nasty. They will hit other children or take their toys, or randomly put stuff in their mouth. They do not have conceptions of right or proper that are the basis for these responses. In a sense, we are a tabula rasa for many of these emotions, with very few being evolutionary. Hormones play more of a role than neurology.
However, I do think the drive towards tolerance and love that Nussbaum preaches is naive. We do have violent drives and energies. Plus, how would we ever teach children about life without normative standards and value judgements? It seems like it would be a fruitless pursuit that would lead to bad people, people who could not identify what is harmful, people who would have no convictions. Is total tolerance even a good goal in the first place? Why should we try to match people to government (democracy), and not the other way around?
Thanks Professor West!
I'd like to hear a podcast on neo-monarchy. In particular, I'd like to know how they intend to maintain a hold on power if they are no longer able to print money by decree? If, (I'd argue when), fiat loses and Bitcoin wins, their subjects will need to sacrifice real wealth in real time to back a monarchy's next conquest or vanity project. This is a game changer and I'll reserve my fear for the aspiring Kings, Queens, and aristocrats that still don't see it.
“Why doesn’t somebody out there do this?”
I saw that sneaky challenge 28:00
An episode for reactionary philosophical and political ideologies would be super interesting
Hey Steven, have you considered giving a few of these speaches live at nearby local libraries? I would travel across the country to hear one!
Thanks for another great episode. Have you considered doing one one Shoshana Zuboff? I was thinking her views would add greatly to the type of content you have been posting lately.
You said it, Martha! (And yet, in 2020, voices crying in the wilderness warned us of mass psychosis formation. Some listened, the majority didn't. Most people hear what they want to hear. Nevertheless, I applaud you for trying, friend. I enjoyed the episode.)
(Fear is toxic to a democracy.) This describes why government and social media influencers fear other voices, and feel the need to censor, therefore yes I agree with that.
This is gold
If you do neo-monarchical could you talk about Curtis Yarvin and/or Peter Thiel?
Fear is indeed toxic to democracy. I am even beginning to think that is the point i.e. the use of media, social media and politics to "poison" democracy itself and drive a widespread desire for 'monarchy' or whatever the modern equivalent of that would be.
23:54 the problem is that “the obligation to do good in the world” just hits so bitterly in our paralyzed technofeudal age of market/congressional enclosure. In the streets this message sounds like virtue signaling bullshit, more empty rhetoric and austerity raining down acidicly from the privileged onto the poors.
Thank you
We have a 1-year National Youth Service Program in my country, Nigeria, and I wouldn't say it has helped solved the tribal divisions we have. The truth is, ultimately, people are shaped by their experiences and lessons from childhood, as opposed to whatever lesson or experience they have later in life.
So, to cure ethnic, tribal or racial divisions, measures need to be taken that address bigotry and ignorance early on at the formative stage of most people. Youth programs can only do so little to deprogram years of brainwashing anyone may have received from home.
Education is a face and a landscape
Might you cover the book, "Freedom is a disease without a cure" by Zezik?
Professor West, thank you very much for this incredible video
May I recommend a video on Amatya Sen? Martha Nussbaum's husband ^-^
Have a great day
Poggers, as they say
Poggers
At least we all know that we have to act guilty to show that we are virtuous. In case there’s an Ai robot out there trying to workout which humans to annihilate first.
Just too make it clear. I love all Ai robots.
Fear is their bacon bits.
Fear or concern? 🤔
Hmmm, what about Communism? Communists had hope in that they believed that a Utopia was possible, we just had to get there. Unfortunately getting there might have a price, current sectors of the population might be ¨in the way¨ and would have to be eliminated in order to get to the Utopia. We have to temper our hope, we must hope that incremental change can make things better. There is evidence that incremental change can produce extraordinary systems (evolution). So we dont know where we are going, progress is never certain or finalised.
4thies
total female thought process!
Are we just... Assuming the system isn't designed to crank up the fear (regardless of the original design)? Like... What's the political philosophy of fear? How can we regulate or reform fear? I feel silly for asking but this is probably the least material analysis possible and I don't like the idea of controlling the emotional. Not that I don't think it's useful; I don't think it's very ethical. Rather, the potential for abuse is astronomical.
Edit: To wit, you explored the politics of fear used in hierarchical, exclusionary systems like monarchies but can we consider egalitarian, inclusionary systems to see if it is even possible to exploit fear in the same way?
Edit edit: Yeah how does the analysis change if we get really serious about the conflict between a democratic political system and a tyrannical economic system that has captured the former?
Edit edit edit: Do we really want to send, say, wealthy Black young people into poor white communities for the "exposure"? I _fear_ this could have violent consequences.
If she’s one of the greatest philosophers alive. Philosophy is dead.
I havent read Nuzzbaum, but from what i heard of her, she has a weird view on emotions. All emotions are there for evolutionary reasons, they arent pathological or bad unless they go to the extreme.
I was thinking of this in a different way, where grotesque, beautiful, humorous and funny are an expression mechanism sort of, in society for people to engage, where one way of extreme is to negate two so the other two go to an extreme. In other words yes, the mechanism is transferred not the emotion and this between levels which oddly enough creates one level where games are played..instead of two levels deliberately like higher virtue and lower compromise. Remember intrinsic value was the theory of the day.
I disagree. Most of our emotions are socially constituted in early childhood
@@andrewbowen2837 i dont understand what you mean.
@gonx9906 our emotions are not necessarily evolutionary
@@andrewbowen2837 what? how?.
Yes I want to hear a lecture on Neo-Monarchists. You know the moldbug I'm talking about.