An Intellectual Johnny Appleseed

Julian Baggini is no musician, he’s a philosopher, a journalist and writer (The Godless Gospel, Babette’s Feast, How the World Thinks, A Short History of Truth…). But he knows how to make music. It’s about awareness of otherness, he says, attention to underlying unity. Spin the knobs, adjust your value sets, create more tolerance, nothing is completely alien.

Julian’s ideas resonate across domains and make for captivating conversation. Sharing small thoughts about big things and big thoughts about small things, our conversation touched on ballet, the NHS, comparative philosophy, jazz and, oh yes – leadership and ethics.

Along the way, we discuss what Covid has exposed in individuals and society. Our culture, for example, hasn’t equipped us for transience. And the myth of self-sufficiency has blinded us to how the individual and the collective intertwine. Cutting yourself off makes you less creative; it’s precisely collaboration that allows for the expression of individuality. You never really piss in just your end of the pool.

Julian mentions the embarrassment of non-awareness - that there’s more than one way to be intellectual and rational. The history of western thought is NOT the history of thought, he emphasizes. The attempt to understand the world by applying reason, without religion or mythology, has been underway for centuries, everywhere.

And while admitting that philosophy is a luxury – requiring time to think – this generous intellectual Johnny Appleseed forged ahead, scattering seeds of thought everywhere along the way. I wish we could have elaborated on his view of universal basic income.

Join us. Stay tuned!


About Julian Baggini:
www.julianbaggini.com


If you like to know more about Fief Macrander and her Leadership Programs:
www.Fiefmacrander.com
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