The Liberal Soul

Welcome to double digits of The Liberal Soul! For today's episode I will be talking about Jonathon Haidt's book from 2012: The Righteous Mind (Why good people are divided by politics and religion).

I wanted to do this episode to draw in some moral psychology into political and religious philosophy. Haidt's careful consideration of why people believe different things and his analogies for how the mind has different default settings is really fascinating and useful for navigating a world with other people who don't agree with you. I highly recommend the book if you have time.

Some of the highlights in this episode are: The phenomenon of moral dumbfounding, how babies appear to have a moral sense, Moral Foundations Theory, how people are pulled to being more objective if they have an audience with unknown opinions, exploratory vs confirmatory thought, and how (in my view) the pillars in MFT can often be in conflict with each other.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

In this solo episode I talk about the 1841 essay Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This essay had a profound effect on my life when I first read it, and I still go back to it every year or so for inspiration. Emerson talks about the psychological importance of non-conformity, of trusting your own mind, and being the author of your own creations and endeavors. Here is a link to the essay if you are interested in reading it: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html

In this episode of The Liberal Soul, I speak with musician, sound engineer, and my cousin Zach Gerber. Zach lives in Ontario and has been involved professionally in music for the last decade. Zach is a touring musician with the Canadian band Walk Off The Earth, so he has lots of great stories about festivals and concerts. Music being my first love, I wanted to have an episode talking to Zach about music and how it has shaped our lives. Some of the things we talk about are:

- Zach's beginnings in music and sound engineering

- Some of the great stories Zach has from interacting with other big name acts at festivals

- Our first memories of music, and music's ability as truth telling

- The universalization of music and how it becomes circular with appreciation and inspiration

- What music has had the deepest impact on our lives

- Music as good and necessary for the misfits of the world

- Lots and talk about pop punk bands and especially Jimmy Eat World

- And finally, what role music plays now in our lives that we are a little older.

Thanks for listening! Don't forget to subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use!

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I take a little detour down a Karl Popper path and discuss a section from his book The Open Society And Its Enemies. There is an incredible section of that book where Popper dissects the difference between individualism and egoism; and how Plato conflated them for his own propaganda. By equating individualism with egoism, Plato made it easy to dismiss as uncaring, selfish, and without interest in altruism. Popper points out a simple error in logic from Plato that leads to this (intentional?) misunderstanding. Popper points out that individualism in the philosophic sense is contrasted against collectivism, not altruism. By stating that individualism is a synonym of egoism, Plato forgoes the responsibility of arguing the merits or demerits of collectivism (which is unsurprising given his totalitarian ambitions discussed in The Republic). In this formulation, Popper argues that a person can be a Individualist Altruist (caring for the wellbeing of individual people). This is the idea I explore in this episode.

In this episode I talk about:

- The example of the individualist - altruist in the figure of Charles Dickens

- The phenomenon of NIMBY (not in my back yard), and the longer, deeper, further and harder work it actually is to help people who are struggling and suffering.

- Pericles sense of justice vs. Plato's.

- Music and the arts as a prime example of the benefit and need for individualism

- How the quirky individual is no good for a collectivist culture or state

- Some quotes from Plato demonstrating his intentional dishonesty

- Some of the totalitarian ideas in Christianity inherited from Plato

- And how individualism isn't just an abstract idea to make it work; it needs to be alive in the hearts of people.

Annyeong!

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I talk to my good friend David Harris. David lives in England and we met each other while living in Gwangju, South Korea. It was a real pleasure having Dave on the podcast; he is a ton of fun to talk to. We spend most of this episode talking about football (soccer) and what it means often to people living in England. Some of the things we talk about are:

- How we met and what a Hash is

- The Tottenham Hotspurs and how there are many professional football leagues in England

- Hockey Vs. Soccer and the FA Cup

- Football fandom and how it very much is a communal, working class sport from the beginning

- The historical place football plays for England

- How it is such an international and connecting thing for people, and how it is such a release.

Thanks for listening! Please subscribe to The Liberal Soul and leaving a rating or review if you feel so inclined.

This episode is the second in a two-parter talking about the book A Thousand Small Sanities by Adam Gopnik. In part two, I'll be talking about Gopnik's observations of why the Right and Left politically dislike liberals.

Some of the things I talk about are:

- Liberals and Conservatives having different temperaments - and that they both share a tragic view of life but the liberal believes in the possibility of incremental improvement over time

- Strong man politics is the norm in the human history, not the aberration. The question isn't "how does it arise" but rather "what has ever kept it from happening?"

- Clan or identity based groups end up having internal schisms (who is the REAL Conservative?). They will build their own out groups internally after they get their way. Because of the panoply of human diversity, there will always be misfits even in closed societies.

- Liberal states are uncomfortable places if you don't want your dogma debated

- Free markets being a liberal invention in their inception, not a conservative one

- Liberals are anti-essentialist and anti-determinist, and this often puts them at odds philosophically and logically with Leftists and Reactionaries.

- Liberals are concerned with what makes humans similar, and understand an obsession with what makes us different is venom

- Liberals are unequivocally committed to free speech, and because of the underlying conceptions around power and cognition, this often puts them at odds with Leftists.

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I talk with my friend Cole Kander. I wanted to talk to Cole because he and I have had a very similar life trajectory. We were both born and raised in a very Protestant house and church culture, and we both have decided that kind of life isn't for us. I know this can be a really hard thing to talk about for many people, so I'm really proud of Cole being able to put himself out there like this.

Some of the things we talk about are:

- Our religious upbringings and how it affected our younger selves

- Creationism Vs. Evolution and the empirical claims of Christianity

- How people rationalize their beliefs

- The Four Horsemen and what they did for our understanding of Christianity (especially Christopher Hitchens)

- An example of human sacrifice in the Bible (the name we were looking for and couldn't find was Jephthah's daughter)

- Some criticism of how Jordan Peterson talks about Christianity, and what he seems to assume about Christians.

- How we feel at this stage in our life about other people believing

- How bad actors are attracted to where people's attention is already oriented

- And finally, what gives our lives meaning if it isn't God.

There are also spoilers for the movie Surrogates mentioned in this episode. Thanks for listening! Here is a link to The Liberal Soul:

https://theliberalsoul87.libsyn.com/

And here is the link to the Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/Liberalsoul87

This episode of The Liberal Soul is part one of a two part reflection on the 2019 book A Thousand Small Sanities by Adam Gopnik. I have mentioned this book a couple times in the first couple episodes, so I wanted to give it its due here. This book was the proximate impetus for this podcast as I recall being quite inspired and educated when I first read it. In part one I talk about:

- Liberalism being an emergent philosophy with the discovery that other people have a moral conscience as well as ourselves. This helps us move out of solipsism because we can understand that other people feel the pull of the world as well as us.

- Rhinoceros vs. Unicorn political theories - real vs. ideal

- Human life has always been contentious, this is nothing new to the modern world

- Liberals are passionate about self made community, and liberal people have made Liberalism

- The human condition is messy, and everyone has a little liberal and conservative within their own hearts; liberalism makes room for this doubleness and fallibility. Our problems are stamped into human nature.

- And finally, revolution isn't anathema to liberals, but it is the last resort. Liberals, if there is no other option, are willing to fight with minimum necessary force and forego any vengeance after winning. The liberal model is Cincinnatus, not Caesar.

For the second episode of The Liberal Soul I'm very pleased to be joined by my cousin and cohost of our other podcast Really True Fiction: David Parker.

In this episode, David and I chat about the seminal and foundational liberal essay On Liberty (1859) by John Stuart Mill. Here is a link if you want to read it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm

In our chat, David and I discuss:

- liberty as a first person endeavor and taking it away fundamentally robs a person of the autonomy of their conscience and consciousness, not just their enfranchisement.

- Without freedom of opinion even the true things that we know lose their vitality and we become lazy in teaching them

- Both Socrates and Jesus were put to death for blasphemy

- Censorship makes you and your society stupid and doesn't create moral intellects

- Principles cut both ways - that's their whole point.

- The general difficulty in discerning harm and how it needs to be an ongoing negotiation

- New ideas are the energy to prevent social entropy - a truly progressive take

- Art needs individuals who think different

- And finally, how the principles of the Enlightenment are universal and not just for the peoples of Europe and America. Finally, David is the host of The Canadian Story podcast. You can listen to that podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1AP0ujpeDXnyk39hEHTSEG

Hello,

You've found The Liberal Soul.

In this inaugural episode I am joined by my friend Danica to give an introduction and overview on what inspired the creation of this podcast and what I hope to explore as more episodes come out.

Some of the main things we talk about in this episode are:

- Where the idea for The Liberal Soul came from in the first place

- My formulation for Highest Common Denominator and how I hope it to be the abiding heuristic for the podcast

- Liberalism as an embodied, human first, anti-solipsism based philosophy

- How I see the liberal soul as similar or different to stoicism

- How initiating kindness, vulnerability and curiosity is the starter for getting trust off the ground

- The paramount value of freedom of opinion because of the knowledge that every human is fallible and can be wrong

Additionally, there are spoilers for Batman Begins in this episode.