Indian Philosophy, Capitalism, the Left, and the Pandemic w/ Vinay Gupta

 On this edition of Parallax Views, futurist thinker and global resilience expert Vinay Gupta joins us to discuss a number of topics related to philosophy, politics, religion, humanitarianism, and the current coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. For the unfamiliar Vinay is not an easy guest to describe. He is perhaps best known for playing a key role in the launch Ethereum, a blockchain-based software, and is now the CEO of Mattereum. His primary areas of interest include technology, global resilience, futurism, and crypto-currencies. And he is not one to shy away from controversy, as this uncensored conversation will ilustrate.

In this discussion, Vinay begins by telling us a little more about his background and his the underpinnings of his worldview, which is informed by by the Western Scientific model and Indian spirituality. We then delve into work involving refugees with Hexayurt Project before pivoting into the topics of politics. Specifically, Vinay offers his view and, ultimately critique, of the Left. In particular, believes that the Left has gone too far away from a politics of socialist class solidarity and into identity politics too much. Although some of Vinay's views on this matter do not sit well with my listeners or, truth be told, myself in many regards, I believe that this aspect of the conversation at least provokes a challenging discussion.

From there we delve into the topics of the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. Vinay has done a great deal of work on pandemics over the years and offers some clarifying points about the nature of this particular pandemic as well as illucidating the class war element of the social tensions arising from COVID-19 sweeping the world.

All in all, I believe that, while I and my listeners may greatly disagree with Vinay Gupta on some matters, that this conversation will live up to the title of being "A Parallax View".

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