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104. The Evil Episode: Can We Save Our Nation By Talking To One Another?
We have a lot of conversations on this podcast about issues which are often moral in nature, such as the Israeli occupation of Palestine and defunding the police but often we aren't talking about the specific moral framework behind our positions on those issues, and so in this episode, we are going to have a more explicitly moral conversation than usual.
We sit down with Luke Phillips, who has appeared on the show before in the Patriotism Episode (13) and the Loneliness Episode (41), and Randy Lioz, both of whom work at Braver Angels, a nonprofit organization Isabel has been volunteering at for 2 years, that is dedicated to fostering politically depolarizing conversations in America using family therapy techniques. This conversation came out of a previous offline conversation we had at a Braver Angels meetup on whether evil exists as a useful concept in general and specifically if it is a helpful or harmful concept when thinking about how to heal our politically divided nation.
In this episode, we touch on topics like whether it is valuable to have a conception of justice in which we condemn evil acts unconditionally, such as with post-World War II Germany or American slavery, or whether it is better to pursue less-than-perfect justice because we know that continuing to condemn others simply perpetuates the cycle of backlash forever. One example of this is Darryl Davis, a musician who convinced over 200 former KKK members to give up their robes simply by reaching out to them and extending radical empathy. We also talk about whether or not the political divisions in this country stem primarily from differences in morals or less explicitly moralistic ideas, such as whether social hierarchies must necessarily continue to prevail or not.
And out of all of this, the biggest question is: can people who disagree deeply on these types of fundamental moral issues still work together in trying to heal our politically divided country?
Links:
Braver Angels Website: https://braverangels.org/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.
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By Isabel Knight & Deondre' Jones
5
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We have a lot of conversations on this podcast about issues which are often moral in nature, such as the Israeli occupation of Palestine and defunding the police but often we aren't talking about the specific moral framework behind our positions on those issues, and so in this episode, we are going to have a more explicitly moral conversation than usual.
We sit down with Luke Phillips, who has appeared on the show before in the Patriotism Episode (13) and the Loneliness Episode (41), and Randy Lioz, both of whom work at Braver Angels, a nonprofit organization Isabel has been volunteering at for 2 years, that is dedicated to fostering politically depolarizing conversations in America using family therapy techniques. This conversation came out of a previous offline conversation we had at a Braver Angels meetup on whether evil exists as a useful concept in general and specifically if it is a helpful or harmful concept when thinking about how to heal our politically divided nation.
In this episode, we touch on topics like whether it is valuable to have a conception of justice in which we condemn evil acts unconditionally, such as with post-World War II Germany or American slavery, or whether it is better to pursue less-than-perfect justice because we know that continuing to condemn others simply perpetuates the cycle of backlash forever. One example of this is Darryl Davis, a musician who convinced over 200 former KKK members to give up their robes simply by reaching out to them and extending radical empathy. We also talk about whether or not the political divisions in this country stem primarily from differences in morals or less explicitly moralistic ideas, such as whether social hierarchies must necessarily continue to prevail or not.
And out of all of this, the biggest question is: can people who disagree deeply on these types of fundamental moral issues still work together in trying to heal our politically divided country?
Links:
Braver Angels Website: https://braverangels.org/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.