About Reality Podcast

A guest episode with Nikole, wherein we discuss David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' and the societal problems which the individuals in his novel must grapple and cope with, as they realize in this life they have one of two choices to make: succumb to endless pleasure for lack of any other option, or else delay their gratification for the sake of a lifestyle that is healthier for them mentally and physically.

Picked this book up at a used book store two weeks ago - just getting started on it, and so far it is dynamite!

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This episode is relaunching the series, so in it I spend time stating what is the purpose and intention of continuing with the 'About Reality' Podcast. I am very excited to resume podcasting about philosophy, and this episode (conveniently a round number, at 50) is the beginning of a much more regular series exploring all manner of philosophical ideas, from the past as well as -- maybe -- from the present, so long as we find philosophers in the present stating new things that turn out to be necessary for the conduct of philosophical living.

This episode about how the thoughts we are able to think are limited or bounded by the assumptions we hold about reality, including notions of time, of the freedom of the individual versus determination, etc., and how the discoveries of philosophers are phenomena used to think beyond those limits. The question is whether philosophers have discovered all that there is to uncover about humankind and their presence in the world—and then, if they have, where does that leave us in the present age?

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What does it take for an individual, or a nation, to forget what history has inscribed on their land and their psyche, in order to be able to see the reality of the moment for what it is, and resolve the historical tension and conflict diplomatically in order to envision together a different world for tomorrow? What role does philosophy play in this?

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Let's forget everything we thought we knew, without letting go of all that we've gained.

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'About Reality' Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

Also, check out the YouTube channel of this series, where you can find the video recording: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaiMn_zH9BcGGLAlNVYIcLw?app=desktop

Exploring a classical philosophical question today, owing to the past month where I've undergone a change in perspective in my valuation of knowledge gained through books and theory versus what is gained through accepting that we can't think our way out of our bodily experience and what we're bounded to in these corporeal forms filled with desire and instinct.

Thank you for tuning in! Please subscribe and rate! It's very much appreciated.

Check out the 'About Reality' Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

Also, check out the YouTube channel of this series, where you can find the video recording: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaiMn_zH9BcGGLAlNVYIcLw?app=desktop

Still searching for the philosopher as heroic figure embodying the spirit of the present age, and the need we may have, insofar as we are seekers of truth, to find someone who practices a wisdom grounded in corporeal reality while simultaneously maintaining a view toward higher, perhaps even eternal, truth. How do we do this in the globalized, modern world, using the instruments provided to us as conscious, embodied beings, even as our local, personal experience is cheapened in the vision of the globalized world.

Thank you for tuning in! Please subscribe and rate! It's very much appreciated.

Also, check out the YouTube channel of this series, where you can find the video recording: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaiMn_zH9BcGGLAlNVYIcLw?app=desktop

This weekend I was reading the second part of Kant's 'Critique of Judgment', as well as the fourth book of volume one of Schopenhauer's 'The World as Will and Representation', and in this episode I get to talking about both of them, particularly in their relevance to the protagonist in the novel I am writing, Anatole. This project involving this podcast and my writing is coming together, folks, and you're here for the start of it! Thank you for your support!

Thank you for tuning in! Please subscribe and rate! It's very much appreciated.

Here we make an argument that 'good' and 'bad' are stagnant terms for evaluating emergent phenomena in an ever-changing world, and that as terms of judgment they refer back to a static and traditionally conservative worldview, where 'good' and 'evil' are eternal presences in the cosmos and the world is a battleground between them in which humans too take part. There's certainly a case to be made for the coherent order this provides the individual desperate for a way of making sense of what is otherwise the chaos of existence, but in this episode I introduce the possibility of supplanting ethical theory with an aesthetic one that is more appropriate and accommodating of the modern world and our experience of it.

Thank you for tuning in! Please subscribe and rate! It's very much appreciated.