Agora Politics

I am joined by director of the metamodern think tank, Abstract-Org's Brent Cooper, for an exercise in constructive disagreement.

We come together from different perspectives to address leaky abstractions, The IDW, Critical Race Studies vs. Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, globalization & cosmopolitanism, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and thinking big in the face of endemic incrementalism.

Agora Politics is about upgrading our outdated theories of politics. To do so, we need to be willing to have challenging conversations that not only push us to our intellectual limits, but our interpersonal and ideological limits as well. None of us are born with a worldview out of whole cloth, it is shaped by our disposition, upbringing, and experiences. What we mustn’t forget, however, is that the choices we make will influence our perspective now, in the future, and how we interpret the past.

I’m Alex Murshak, political theorist.

Subscribe to my channel for videos and interviews: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

Follow Agora Politics on Twitter: https://twitter.com/agora_politics/

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/amurshak/

—

Subscribe on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agora-politics/id1496531814

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/agora_politics

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xfgHAlhswC6PWlTZC5S58?si=fY-OxZqASPWtxFnAqyLCbg

Wherever you find your podcasts.

Nicholas is writer, author, and creator of the Eclectic Spacewalk project.

We talk about the Overview Effect, the dangers of overarching narratives abstracting away from particulars, connection through storytelling, making the invisible visible, information flows, Open Source Everything, the 2nd psychedelic renaissance, and his hope for a moon base.

You can find more of Nicholas' writings and learn more about Eclectic Spacewalk on Substack & Medium, and follow him on twitter @Espacewalk.

–

Agora Politics is a podcast dedicated to making sense out of our outdated theories of politics.

Follow Agora Politics on Twitter: https://twitter.com/agora_politics/

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/amurshak/

—

Subscribe on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agora-politics/id1496531814

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/agora_politics

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xfgHAlhswC6PWlTZC5S58?si=fY-OxZqASPWtxFnAqyLCbg

Wherever you get your podcasts!

Heraclitus stands alone among the pre-socratic philosophers. Contradictory, riddlesome, and enigmatic, he remains one of the most influential, yet least well-understood figures in Western philosophy.

Born to a noble family in Ephesus, a city in Ionia, Greek Asia Minor, present day Turkey. Supposedly, he passed on a kingship, awarding it instead to his brother, to pursue a life as a roaming philosopher. He was self-taught. Heraclitus is not associated with any of the prominent schools of philosphy known to us from the time, and is regarded as an independent thinker and misanthrope, one who looked to break away from orthodoxies that pervaded his day. He drew influence from Anaxamander, Thales, and others; was critical of Pythagoras, and was most notably influential on Cratylus, who brought his philosophy to Athens, where Plato was introduced to it. Aristotle viewed Heraclitus as contradicting the Law of Noncontradiction, and regarded his unusual style of obscurantist, pithy, and ambiguous assertions as incoherent. Regardless, he proved influential not only to the Stoics, but also to nearly all of Western philosophy that followed.

Whenever you hear of the life of Heraclitus, they will say we don’t know much on the account of his life due to the sparse remaining fragments of his writings, and suspiciousness of the stories passed down from later writers, or sayings attributed, that may be imposed or fabricated altogether. Most of what we know comes from a single source, Diogenes Laertius and his Lives. In his lifetime, Heraclitus, produced but one book, which was stored in the great Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. and has since been lost in time. This work was supposedly tripartly divided into sections on cosmology, politics, and theology. The book was so inlfuential in its time, despite there being only one original copy available to whoever ventured to seek it out. It spawned a legion of followers, known as the Heraclitians, posthumonously. What remains of his life’s work comes down to us in fragments, 12 9, which constitute the perplexing, paradoxical, playful, somewhat sardonic philosophy of the Weeping Philosopher.

A sampling of the fragments will constitute our main subject today. In true Heraclitian fashion, I will expound upon selected fragments, and give but my interpretation of what might be meant. Some have decided, in other readings, to choose passages at random, employing random number generators for the task, a method which I find to be trivializing to both Heraclitus and the student of Heraclitus. The philosopher himself encouraged what we might recognize as Stoic virtues of courage, rectitude, and an overall antiplebian, even aristocratic orientation. Therefore it is prudent to exercise one’s capacity for discernment in selecting from his works; to do otherwise is to treat him not as a philosopher, but as an archaic curiosity, observed voyeuristically in the zoo of ancient ideas. Core Heraclitian principles: the unity of opposites, the theory of flux, the primordial flame in all things and which was there in the beginning, will make themselves known as we go along. It is worth noting, that a not insignificant portion of the meaning that would be passed down in writing, even discounting our lack of original volume, may be lost in translation, as many of his sayings and espousings involved semantic and rhetorical wordplay, but neither I, nor most of you, read Ancient Greek. If you find my interpretations wanting, I’d encourage you to posit your own. There are only 130 fragments, most of which are quite brief, so those of you looking to see for yourself what Heraclitus was all about, can easily work through them in under an hour to gain familiarity, and even seek out additional translations/footnotes/and interpretations, to complement the ones provided here. In keeping cognizant of the principle of flux, I expect my own understandings to change going forward. After all, you can’t cross the same fragment twice.

In Western philosophy, we have yet to move beyond the life and death of Socrates. Though his time has long since passed, we would be remiss to think there’s nothing to be gained, or to be remembered, by returning to accounts of this legendary figure. Socrates, the gadfly of Athens. A man, held in such high esteem that he is revered even to this day, despite writing nothing down to be recorded for posterity, and otherwise lacking in the accouterments of worldly and material success. Not a conqueror of lands and peoples, but of minds, and maybe even souls.

Despite the persistence of his spirit, he was put to death by the city he sought to serve, mocked and derided, in his own time, by men and women less noble than himself. In my recent conversation with Michael Millerman, on the political philosopher Leo Strauss, we talked of the irresolvable tension between the philosopher and the city, between knowledge and custom, between truth and piety. Strauss, too, believed in returning to the Great Works, to begin anew our confrontation with the most fundamental questions. Questions surrounding the interplay among these forces are eternal and remain relevant for philosophers and in all places and all times. If the aim of this show is to move beyond mere entertainment or a frivolous notion of education, then in seeking a way forward for political theory, we ought to individually revisit these old questions, the forms in which answers of various kinds were bequeathed to us, and gradually begin to live out our presuppositions in practice. Philosophy, after all, is most fundamentally about doing, not just thinking.

So here, presented for you now, is an excerpt of Socrates’ parting words upon receiving the sentence of death from his Athenian jurors, followed by a brief analysis of this particular segment of Plato’s Apology, which I wrote for a senior seminar on the 4 Trials. The cited translation is from 4 Texts on Socrates by Thomas G. and Grace Starry West.

Cody Moser is an anthropologist and PhD candidate studying cultural evolution in the department of cognitive and information sciences at University of California Merced.

We talk about science and scientism, famed molecular biologist Rupert Sheldrake, his theory of Morphic Resonance, and what he calls the 10 tenets that make up the ideology of scientific materialism, asking whether evolution has a telos, how to reboot scientific exploration through patronage, tolerating cranks and free inquiry, and barriers to growth & innovation, not only in science, but in institutions more broadly.

Agora Politics is a podcast dedicated to making sense out of our outdated theories of politics.

Subscribe on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/agora_politics

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agora-politics/id1496531814

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/agora_politics

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xfgHAlhswC6PWlTZC5S58?si=fY-OxZqASPWtxFnAqyLCbg

Wherever you find your podcasts.

Jim Rutt is the former CEO of Network Solutions, and former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute for the study of complex systems sciences, as well as host of the Jim Rutt Show, an interview podcast series examining cutting-edge thinking in science and technology and the future of our economic, political and social systems and institutions.

Jim Rutt joins me to talk Game~B, an ambitious, decentralized civilization-level operating system for optimizing human flourishing.

We cover: the origins of Game~B, the financial drivers pushing us to extinction, technological hygiene in a world of information overload, the prospects for blockchain, DeFi, and federated trust, revivifying Kibbutz-style Dunbar-level communities, debt, competence-based leadership, liquid democracy, the tradeoffs of design vs. iteration, staving off predators in Game~B, forming strong social bonds irl, and parasitizing Game A.

You can find Jim Rutt at: https://www.jimruttshow.com/

The website for Game~B: https://www.game-b.org/

The Game~B wiki: https://www.gameb.wiki/

Pre-Game~B Emancipation Party: http://emancipationparty.org/

–

Agora Politics is a podcast dedicated to making sense out of our outdated theories of politics.

Website: https://agorapolitics.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/agora_politics

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/agora_politics

–

I’m Alex Murshak, Political Theorist

Subscribe to my channel for interviews & videos on political theory: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

You can follow me on Twitter @amurshak: twitter.com/amurshak

—

Subscribe on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/agora_politics

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agora-politics/id1496531814

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/agora_politics

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xfgHAlhswC6PWlTZC5S58?si=fY-OxZqASPWtxFnAqyLCbg

Wherever you find your podcasts

Richard Bartlett is an expert on decentralized organizations as well as cofounder of The Hum Team, Enspiral, & Loomio.

We talk about practical anarchism, the Occupy movement’s experiments in radical democracy, escaping domination and coercion, Patterns of Decentralization, debt, and the future of work.

You can follow Richard on Twitter: @richdecibels

You can follow me on Twitter: @amurshak

--

Agora Politics is dedicated to making sense out of our outdated theories of politics.

Subscribe on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/agora_politics

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agora-politics/id1496531814

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/agora_politics

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xfgHAlhswC6PWlTZC5S58?si=fY-OxZqASPWtxFnAqyLCbg

Wherever you get your podcasts

John David Ebert is a cultural critic, poet, and author of over 20 books, including: Art After Metaphysics, The New Media Invasion, The Age of Catastrophe, and Dead Celebrities, Living Icons. We talk about mentorship, constructing a bespoke education, the Monomyth, the Night Sea Journey, ideology vs. myth, Spengler, civilizational life cycles, late stage American Imperialism, wether Western Civilization is doomed, hermeticism, radical subjectivity, Anima & Animus possession (Jung), tension between the sexes, civilizational immune systems, Schmitt’s Political Theology & the State of Exception, hyperreality, and living intellectual life outside academic institutions.

Matthew Pirkowski joins me to discuss crypto, money and the state, sovereignty and global arbitrage, multipolar traps, corporation and defection, information warfare, complexity catastrophe, time preferences, and fitness vs. truth.

You can follow Matt on Twitter: @MattPirkowski

If you enjoy this episode, please consider funding more conversations like these with our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/agorapolitics

--

You can follow Agora Politics on Twitter: @agora_politics

Follow Alex Murshak: @amurshak

Agora Politics is a podcast dedicated to making sense out of our outdated theories of politics.

Subscribe on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/agora_politics

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDjdhAe9Z7EatYg3OGLKug

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agora-politics/id1496531814

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/agora_politics

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xfgHAlhswC6PWlTZC5S58?si=fY-OxZqASPWtxFnAqyLCbg

Wherever you find your podcasts

-- SUBSCRIBE ON PATREON FOR FULL EPISODE --

In Western philosophy, we have yet to move beyond the life and death of Socrates. Though his time has long since passed, we would be remiss to think there’s nothing to be gained, or to be remembered, by returning to accounts of this legendary figure. Socrates, the gadfly of Athens. A man, held in such high esteem that he is revered even to this day, despite writing nothing down to be recorded for posterity, and otherwise lacking in the accouterments of worldly and material success. Not a conqueror of lands and peoples, but of minds, and maybe even souls.

Despite the persistence of his spirit, he was put to death by the city he sought to serve, mocked and derided, in his own time, by men and women less noble than himself. In my recent conversation with Michael Millerman, on the political philosopher Leo Strauss, we talked of the irresolvable tension between the philosopher and the city, between knowledge and custom, between truth and piety. Strauss, too, believed in returning to the Great Works, to begin anew our confrontation with the most fundamental questions. Questions surrounding the interplay among these forces are eternal and remain relevant for philosophers and in all places and all times. If the aim of this show is to move beyond mere entertainment or a frivolous notion of education, then in seeking a way forward for political theory, we ought to individually revisit these old questions, the forms in which answers of various kinds were bequeathed to us, and gradually begin to live out our presuppositions in practice. Philosophy, after all, is most fundamentally about doing, not just thinking.

So here, presented for you now, is an excerpt of Socrates’ parting words upon receiving the sentence of death from his Athenian jurors, followed by a brief analysis of this particular segment of Plato’s Apology, which I wrote for a senior seminar on the 4 Trials. The cited translation is from 4 Texts on Socrates by Thomas G. and Grace Starry West