The Liberal Soul

This episode is a little bit more personal than most of the previous solo ones. In this episode, I discuss the Greek myth of Prometheus. I subsequently talk about my concept of a Promethean and how they relate to the liberal soul. After, I relay a few honorable mentions, plus my top five Prometheans that have given me fire in my life. There is no source text for this episode (other than the myth itself), so it's a little bit more spontaneous than most of the solo episodes. I hope you enjoy it. Some of the specifics of this episode include:

- The fact that Prometheus translates to foresight

- Go through the Prometheus story; also noticing how great it is that he is saved by a human.

- The difference between a Promethean and a hero

- My top five Prometheans.

Happy Twentieth episode and thank you for listening!

Welcome back to another episode of The Liberal Soul. For todays episode I was happy to be joined by Alex Cormier. Alex and I cohost a show on local radio called Full Spectrum Cinema; and in every episode we choose a movie and talk about it for an hour. Naturally, Alex seemed like a perfect guest for the podcast. We talk all about movies; why we love them and what they have meant for us in our lives. Some of the specific things we discuss are:

- Some of the early films in our lives that were meaningful to us.

- Films that made us feel new things

- Some of the factors that made us think about films as more than just entertainment.

- How great movies leave you thinking more about them, and how more context can help you appreciate them.

- Adaptations vs. original screenplays

- Our thoughts specifically on David Lynch and Richard Linklater

- How movies have made us think differently about the world

- And how our even getting together is an example of emergence and self made community.

Thank you for listening to the show. Please tell any friends who you think may enjoy it.

In this episode I give a very introductory opening to the idea of Pragmatism; the first American philosophy. I have come to think about Pragmatism and it's relationship to Liberalism by its adherence to reality and practical, real world effects. For this introduction, I discuss some of the lectures of Pragmatism by the great psychologist and philosopher William James. Some of the points I discuss in this episode are:

- How Pragmatism was the first philosophy given to the world by American thinkers

- Pragmatism - what do you practically mean?

- Layer of analysis and materialism as a basis for it but not always the most interesting part of it

- The truth as utility at not merely as principle

- How Pragmatism is a reality based philosophy that shifts the onus and responsibility of decision making and question asking back onto individual people

Here is a link to all eight lectures if you are interested:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htm

I was pleased to be joined by some friends from high school, Russ Fountain and Eric Wahn, to discuss their love and affinity for all things mountain biking. We talk about how they first came to love mountain biking, some of the influences on that passion, the love/hate relationships they have with trail building, how mountain biking allowed them to go to Germany to help out with some trails there, and how the relationship with the bikes and nature affects their feelings about it all.

Just a big thank you again to Russ and Eric for joining the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to The Liberal Soul on whatever app you use for your podcasts. Here is a link to the full podcastography: https://theliberalsoul87.libsyn.com/

Here is the conclusion of my four part series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. This episode finishes up Popper's observations on Marx as well as his general overview on how we should best think about history. In this episode I discuss Popper's thoughts on:

- How upon success revolutionary leaders become the new ruling class - and how there are many different classes; not just two.

- How modern democracies are not what Marx knew as capitalism - political intervention as a less sexy but also less violent reform instead of revolution

- The impoverished conception of Marx's practical program

- Violence ended the exact moment it is not needed is the point of revolution

- The Left Wings ambivalence and ambiguity toward violence is something to be suspicious of - equality or table turning?

- The working class are realists and Marx had a lack of imagination in regards to Capitalism - the world today doesn't mean the world forever

- We can use our thoughts to change our environment - the ethos of The Liberal Soul is about reflection and being able to change your mind

- Honesty is making sure other people know what you mean by your words - traditions need to be analyzed before celebrated

- Rationalism vs Irrationalism

- Equality before the law - not a fact but a political demand based on a moral decision

- One can only learn if you take others seriously

Thank you once again for listening to The Liberal Soul. If you enjoy the podcast please subscribe and leave a rating or review.

*Mild spoilers for season two of House of Cards in this episode*

Welcome to part three of a four part series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. If you haven't listened to the first two parts yet I would highly recommend that you do, as the book builds through the parts and I will make references in todays episode that will have more context if you are familiar with the previous two episodes. In part three, I discuss Popper's take on how Aristotle and Hegel have intellectually contributed to the closed society ethos; and also begin with how Marx did. In this episode I discuss:

- Teleology and its application to the forms from Plato - that it is process driven Essentialism, and that there is in fact no such thing as static reality.

- Competing arguments is how we live and it is necessarily so

- Hegel as a politically useful philosopher - he had ability to use language to his own ends. His contribution was beginning our sense of Nationalism in the modern sense, and how that always needs an enemy.

- Heroism as only being as good as the cause for which one is a hero in

- The "ya but how" heuristic

- How economies and ideas are a two way street

- How economic power is dependent on political and physical power.

Thanks again for listening, have a great day!

Just a couple of rebels sitting around trying to take down the Empire. In this episode of The Liberal Soul I am so pleased to be joined by my wonderful friends Alex Wan and Billie Schultz. The three of us also do the Nothing To Fear podcast where every week we watch a scary movie and talk about it so you don't have to!

However, in today's episode we go back to our roots: Star Wars. The saga is one of the first things that bonded us and was one of the first movies that made us fall in love with movies. In this episode we talk about:

- Our first experiences with Star Wars (for both Alex and Billie it was The Empire Strikes Back, but not so for me)

- How it was all about adventure and very cleverly blew past the details

- How we view the original trilogy now and how you don't really need to care about the plot because of how charming the characters are

- Our relationship to the prequel and the sequel trilogies

- And finally how meeting your legends is a hard thing to do.

Thanks so much for listening. Here is a link to the Nothing to Fear podcast if you want to check that out (which I highly recommend): https://anchor.fm/nothingtofear

This episode is part two of a four part series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. Please listen to episode one before this as it will give context for this episode. In this episode I discuss:

- Plato's formulation about who should rule is a useless question - rather we should ask how we can make institutions that prevent bad rulers from doing too much harm, as many to most rulers are below average in real life.

- Shortcomings in a democratic state are the responsibility of the citizens in that state and should not be blamed on democracy itself.

- Focusing on the question of who should rule will turn the education of leaders into a kind of race or competition rather than having those students focus on their studies for its own sake. They will rather be focused on furthering their careers instead.

- My formulation of the Noble Truth to counteract against Plato's the Noble Lie - we have to create and discovering our own meaning in life by consciously selecting our own stories to live by.

- The concept of philosopher as made clear by the distinction between Socrates and Plato; the former as a lover and seeker of wisdom and the latter as a proud possessor of knowledge.

- The difference between the Utopian and Piecemeal social engineer

- Plato as noticing the strain from the rise of democracy, and took advantage of existing sentiments to use language duplicitously to attempt to bring a more closed society.

- And how we can't return to the closed society without becoming beasts.

First episode on George Orwell. My guest for this episode is my great friend Danica Weager. We take as our launchpad the Orwell essay Politics and the English Language. It's been a goal of this podcast to also talk about language and how we use it. Orwell is the perfect writer in this regard. In todays episode we talk about:

- The ease of invoking names without understanding the underlying principles

- The Liberal ethos "yes things are bad, but we can improve them"

- What we mean by the words is more important than the words themselves

- Part of the liberal ethos is to concretize your points with vivid examples

- How nominalizing verbs makes language boring

- How the disciplines that are mediated through people have the vaguest language

- And how Orwell had the power to face unpleasant facts. https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/

Welcome to part one of a four part mini-series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. This book is a Promethean level of fresh air intellectually when it comes to understanding how a free society can operate; and what are the kind of mentalities that are opposed to that. Even though it is mentioned as unknowing in the episode, this book was published in 1945. It comes in two volumes, and for this episode I will be talking about the first half of volume one. In today's episode I discuss that parts of Poppers argument that deal with:

- Historicism as Popper's catch all idea for the undergirding of all those interested in the closed society

- How a turbulent world or social structure often inspires people to feel a need to return to a closed society - with all the tribal myths and stories about the greatness of a given people coming back into the fore

- Plato's theory on the forms/ideas - postulating the idea of perfection

- Plato's conclusion that change is evil and rest is divine - and how he begins to apply this idea to that of the State

- How the concept of something being socially constructed does not necessitate that is is completely arbitrary. That in fact a better way to think about social constructions is asking what kind of problem are they purporting to solve.

- The underlying fear of people that ethical obligations are the our responsibility

- How Plato would twist the meaning of words to his own designs

- And how borderline moral and intellectual cases are welcome in an open society because it keeps our thinking sharp.

I hope you enjoy this first part, and there are three more to come.