let's THiNK about it

Mapping out how we got here, and why Baudrillard's ideas of the simulation and simulacrum can explain much about how our institutions and ideals have lost touch with their original motivating force, falling into simulating previous goals."After the orgy" is an essay on the post-modern plight that Ryder briefly reads through in Part 3. 1:32 Part 1: Where we are at, and why Baudrillard can help A walk through the 4 or 5 books, from education to capitalism, and why the world doesn't make sense. More distressing is that when crisis hits, we have no new ideas but keep following the same playbook. This is (arguably) because our institutions and ideals are simulacra. 14:25 Part 2: Simulating, Dissimulating, and Simulacrum in the Art Worlda short story about an art talk where Ryder simulates having knowledge, while smarter people dissimulate, and seemingly no one knows what is really happening. 18:58 Part 3: After the Orgy, essay by BaudrillardA bad dramatic reading of parts of Baudrillard's essay, After the Orgy, where he discusses achieving the goals of modernity, the liberation of all things, and the plight of not knowing what to do after. What happens when sex or money or politics are just an act, and the results precede the event? 

This is a loosely beginner friendly, and broad, look at Baudrillard's notions of simulacrum and simulation. Baudrillard is frequently cited in the art world in reference to all things that have steps away from the original, just like any artist using multiples (lots of something) tends to mention Walter Benjamin. Once the simulation, the illusion, or the copy comes into play, we need to start thinking of how that new object (or idea) operates. Baudrillard offers stages and steps that map out how we go from 1) "referencing a profound reality" to 2) "masking a profound reality" to there being an 3) "absence of profound reality" and finally, 4) the simulation become a simulacrum when there is no longer any relation to the real. In this case, the simulacra, without relation to it's original sacred drive or purpose, merely embodies or acts out the actions of a simulation without purpose.The implications of an ungrounded simulacra, such as politics or money, are that they become pure theatre, in that good and evil are equivalent, as are truth and secrecy, where they are working to cover up the fact that there is no conspiracy, or that good and evil are relational values within a play or plot device, and thus equivalent, despite the real world pain and suffering they manifest.Next week, we will take a look at Baudrillard's essay "After the Orgy" in "The Transparency of Evil." Hopefully, by digging in a bit further, we can understand more about how this equivalence of all things takes place, and consider the folly of fighting a system that punishes clear-sightedness more than crime.

In his interview, we discuss Tom's book. While speculative fiction, it is based in a realism that predicts a chain of events leading to a more and more despotic, tyrannical presidency by Trump. While somewhat dystopian, it is lively, and shows a number of flaws and strengths in our democratic process. During the show we discuss Trump, facts as stranger than fiction, and how this becomes a difficult problem when writing. We discuss Putin and Russia, China, and the overall thorny problem we find ourselves in. https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-37-trumps-second-term-tom-fischgrund/ 

This was a delightful conversation with Rebecca Coffey, author of the book "Science and lust" available on Amazon, or wherever you buy things that make you smarter.We cover a lot of ground, while primarily remaining focused on our shared heritage with apes and our evolutionary basis for behavior. We discuss Freud, Darwin, Morris, natural selection and how culture and sexual selection modify our behavior. We talk about how women can be choosey and men indiscriminate, technology, romance,  Japan, polygamy, incels, and mice wearing polyester pants.  

This week, I talk with Zackary Seitz, a doctoral student in Education and Social Studies at Univeristy of Texas at Denton.We cover how to be a global citizen, especially when our globalized society is composed of multi-national companies, often dominated by them more than by the nation/states with whom we affiliate most often. This neoliberal, globalized capitalism works well for consumers (and those making millions of dollars), but we need to center the people who are hurt by these systems. This requires a new ethics of value, consumption, and desire, or perhaps a new means to measure happiness. Seitz and I discuss Marxian separation from processes of labor, hidden costs for ease and comfort, and ethical consumption versus poverty.  Humans behaving as machines, racist protocols and surveillance, and how animals factor into our humanity, and -of course- how we should reconsider our systems of power. We also discuss racial bias in technology. Towards the end of the hour Sietz discusses education, the failures of standardized testing, and the very narrow window of achievement they disproportionately focus on. 

Part 1 Is the culture of new capitalism, and our capitalist economy creating a New Politics?Yes, of course. Increasingly, there is a divide between the wealthy workers who are, as Robert Reich calls them, the SKILLS ELITE and the stagnant middle class. These achievers, these skills elite, the "symbolic analysts" in the new institutional model are not provided with a life-narrative or promise of security in the public realm.As mentioned in the last episode, a successful capitalist technocracy will need fewer elites, yet as they take home the dragon's share of wealth, without security or a life-narrative, they hoard it, making the inequality visible: it produces ressentiment.Under this deep rage, Sennett says, religion and patriotism become weaponized tools of revenge. The material stress of inequality pushes those without into seeking symbolic power.THE WALMART EFFECTIn 2004 WALMART employed 1.4 million workers, generating 2% of US GDP. Everything has been put under one roof, there is a lot of it, and it is cheap and low quality. The salesman, the mediator, has been removed. The consumer is "empowered" to rely on their ability to suss out truth from the globally manufactured marketing packages. Due to it's planned obsolescence, we also make temporary decisions, throwing away the products and moving on.So, this is perhaps a bit flippant and simple, but as Sennett says,just as advertising seldom makes things difficult for the customer so the politician makes him or herself easy to buy.”And yes, while Walmart has certainly oppressed it’s workers, and destroyed small businesses, nothing is entirely that simple:“Only a snob could look down on cheap products; should we then look down on “cheap” Politics? The political version of the Megastore could repress local democracy but enable, as advertising does, individual fantasy; erode the content and substance of politics but stimulate the imagination for change.” Sennett VOTINGNow, back to putting everything under one roof at Walmart, a classic idea from the Athenians: separate your economics from your politics. Plato says that economics operates on need and greed, while politics should operate on justice and right.Yet, we now conflate the two. And as Marx and Engels discuss, as the consumer becomes distanced from the means of production, we lose the knowledge and life experience to make informed decisions. All that is left is to rely on the packaging.DESIREhttps://youtu.be/DiTy5-RC1-4“A desire is never simply a desire for a certain thing, it is always also a desire for desire itself… The ultimate melancholic experience is loss of desire itself.”Slavoj Zizek To be fulfilled is the saddest world we could imagine. Marx, Lukac’s and Balzac talked about desire: How capitalism would produce an increase in desire. More cheap stuff, more desire. Yet, this does not explain the subsequent withering of pleasure in possession.One claim is “marketing” did this to us, molding our desires, and another claim is manufacturing and “planned obsolescence” did this to us. There has been a break in how we relate to commodities: all objects are disposable, newer is better, we seek novelty beyond functionality. And none of this is to imply we can or should return to the old way of doing things, the cat is out of the bag so to speak with desire unleashed: it is merely a way to see that appearances, desire, and the “symbolic” function at a higher level than utility or need. BRANDING Sennett points out a distinction: branding is pretty straightforward and attempts to make something seem distinct. Yet most of the time the product is blandly identical to other products, and to disguise the homogeneity, you must make an artificial distinction. Sennett says manufactures call this “gold plating”: the small difference and the brand must seem to the consumer to be more than the thing itself. So a car or computer may share 90% of the industrial DNA with another car, but sell for a 100% price difference… this is, of course, manufactured value through “gold-plated” differences.Sennett brings up that The Craftsman or engineer may look at this, and not be swayed by the gold-plating realizing the utility value, “the thing does what the thing should do” value, versus the inflated prestige value. They may know the boring backstory.Yet, this is more about how we consume in a world of global capitalism: with excess, marketing, and decreasing pleasure in fulfilling desire.Guy Debord brings up that tourists travel from city to city, but visit the same gift shops buying the same crap, and the important stimulation for them is not the items bought, but the process of moving, of moving on. This is the planned obsolescence of experience: to be consuming them and getting new experience is the desire. The important thing is the spectacle, to shift your desire is to change, and feel yourself shifting. We are the gold-plating in this scenario. We step in, and become the small difference that we overvalue, and in this way, our commodity fetishism is self-consumptive: we are autocannibalists abandoning everything.Yet, what Sennett brings up several times is the invitation to imagination that advertising promotes in us. And to sneer at someone imagining a better future, a new politics, and a shared fantasy for change would be callous indeed.CITIZEN CONSUMER“Today the consuming passion has a dramatic power: possessive use is less arousing to the spectator-consumer than to the desire for things he does not yet have; the dramatization of potential leads the spectator-consumer to desire things he cannot fully use.”“Politics is equally theatrical, and Progressive politics in particular requires a certain kind of rhetoric. It deploys a willing suspension of disbelief of citizens and their own accumulated experience.”So, stick with me on this one: The consumer-spectator-citizen now actively enters their own passivity. To believe in hope and change, you have to imagine a future, suspend belief momentarily of your ‘accumulated life experiences’... you have to want a thing you don’t have.The illusions we are fed as consumers, the “dramatized potential we can’t even use,” allows us to imagine the potency will be conferred upon us. These illusions are exhausting, and paradoxical, often undercut by our lived experience, which drains us of our progressive hope and our stamina for change.Much like the cars, maybe the Chevy or Ford debate, our political platforms resemble products. The political parties sound very different, but it is all gold-plating, it is all user friendly, and there is always a new product, an upgrade for sale: once politicians are in office they perform almost identically… Righty Reagan for instance, ran up Keynesian deficits while expanding bureaucracy and befriending the soviets, while Lefty Bill Clinton, grew businesses but not the minimum wage, and like Obama continued military actions. Right, Left, Ford, Chevy. The difference is superficial. It is consensus politics. No one seems to care about a politicians record while in office: that is too boring. Instead let’s focus on their hair, their tastes and preferences… let's focus in the glittering package, pay no attention to the obfuscated history.This gold-plating tendency is what Freud called the “narcissism of small differences" in which we lose the realistic value, the purpose, of what’s at stake. And it opens the door to preference judgement extending into prejudice. And in so doing, in believing the gold plating, we divorce Power from responsibility.Charisma and packaging don’t take responsibility, they don’t work for you: they manipulate you. Sennett says we need a community beyond superficial human connections to reassert mental and emotional anchors. We don’t want to become ghosts, or zombies, or hitmen… we need anchors to remain human.We need a culture that re-asses if power, privilege, and work are worthwhile. And a culture that provides us with a narrative of forward movement beyond the dehumanizing effects of the Culture of the New Capitalism. 

During the depression people couldn't find work, so now we get an education, but today we still can't find work, and have lost our place in a society that devalues craftsmanship, stability, and experience in favor of speed, superficial processing, and potential ability. Part 1:SKILL & TALENTSennett asks, how does SKILL translate into TALENT? And how does TALENT translate to economic value? Sennett says the answer might be too darn complicated, involving ethnography, sociology, psychology and economics, but he does map out how we got here.It really starts in the industrial revolution, where there were 6 men for every unskilled factory job. These jobs needed a pair of hands, not a brain. Adam Smith and others called the factory work “brain deadening." So, now we educate people. Problematically, David Ricardo points out that due to technology and advances by all these smart people, society may need a smaller, and smaller elite to profitably and efficiently run society. So, due to capitalism, it is talked about as a “race to the bottom.” Sennett says this is only half-right.For instance, Indian call centers require 2 years of university, while most factory workers in MExico are quite skilled mechanics who opted for “brain deadening” work. So, capitalism not only finds cheap labor, but also retrains talent, and in doing so these people now participate in the economy because they have a line of credit. They are regarded socially by their peers as prestigious. Sennett shows that xenophobia and racism easily extends from a very real fear that the immigrant or foreigners, with all their talent and skills, with their discipline and dedication, with their cultural and social worth derived from alternative values, may be better equipped for survival in our modern world.Part 2AUTOMATIONYou know what else creates the USELESSNESS? The inevitability of AUTOMATION. Even when the corporation stays in America, such as Sprint, by using voice-recognition software over 3 years, they cut 11,500 jobs while increasing productivity 15% and growing revenue. Steel production, from 1982 to 2002, in America rose by 35% while cutting jobs by 75%.Originally, the thought was machines would only be able to replace human hands, but in the post-industrial era we are looking to replace the whole human. Tech in general is a paradox where our cleverness (grown from our  education) replaces humans. This is both a psychological and social issue (not just an economic issue), and maybe, just maybe, the virtual world does provide the answer, but we need to be careful not to bring our exploitative practices into the virtual.Part 3:AGINGSo, another “specter of uselessness” is through AGEISM, or prejudice against age. At an advertising agency Sennett brings up that anyone over 40 is seen as “out of it”: set in their ways and losing energy, yet this is not accurate in cognitive labor. Sennett discusses “skills extinction”. This refers to the need to re-learn your trade at least 3 times during your life. It is the same for computer repairmen or doctors. Retraining is expensive, and it is easier to hire a bright, desperate new 25 yr old than retrain the stable, self-possessed and judgemental 50 year old.The experienced worker actually complicates everything with their judgements, while the younger generation just walk out. This is the difference between “exit” and “voice”. Where the young exit, the older (more judgemental) give voice to their discontent.“The employer’s choice is clear: the younger person is both cheaper and less trouble.”SennettThe ideal person, even as they get older, must remain full of “potential talent” and must be able to easily surrender their past experiences, “give up possession of an established reality” or “identity.” Part 4:THE PUBLIC SPHERETying these corporate notions to the public sphere Sennett leans into meritocracy, which we covered fairly extensively in Sandel's book "Tyranny of Merit" ( Step 20 and 21 ), but I want to do a brief recap to show how “uselessness” from lack of work dovetails with social and personal values.The welfare state is for those in need, for social stability, and we went from the Bismarck’s pyramidal bureaucracy that gave everyone in society a place to be... Sennett brings up how the government decidedly turned a blind eye on the problems automation brought onto the citizens. Under the CULTURE of the NEW CAPITALISM, those in need are diminished: corporations just want the talented young who can make us money with no friction or hardship. As a matter of fact, the young resent having to pay for the elderly: it’s not like anyone asked them to vote on it. And this signals a decrease in public responsibility as each person is concerned with their own survival. This life is driven by, as Sennett says, “a fear of falling.”Once one is “let go” from your job, people work vigorously to pursue leads, but they start to become invisible to their community: the public sphere eschews them as it is socially taboo to be useless. To remain visible is to have “use potential”. Part 5:THE MERIT TRAPSo, this is part of the meritocratic trap: when we despised the unjustness of wealth conferring position, we weaponized the notion of ‘talent’. This meant: to be creative or intelligent is to be a person of worth_… that worth becomes _moral value, or moral prestige. In the end, creative or intelligent people have become superior to others. The social way this played has lots of examples, but basically, to test for talent, we ended up “objectifying failure”. Failing the test became an internal, personal failing. The negative association was, as Sandel, Sennett, and Michael Young say, more shaping and harmful than the positive outcomes of "quantifying talent."Maslow and others in their quest to test for “potential” had a bleed over into biological studies, where geneticists said we had capabilities that we had not tapped or used: we all had potential that could be mined. This also equated “potential” with “justice,” in that it theoretically was race or sex or age blind.But anyone who has read anything about IQ tests or the SAT’s knows this is not true, many problems come down to cultural knowledge and vocabulary. The mistaken notion here is that “aptitude could be isolated from achievement.” process divorced from content … this purely operational thinking requires mental superficiality.”SennettAnd in this way, we train people for PROCESS work, task to task, problem to problem, moving from team to team… operational thinking…it “divides analyzing from believing, ignores the glue of emotional attachment, and penalizes digging deep.” Part 6:Knowledge & PowerSennett brings up Michel Foucault. People say “knowledge is power” but really power is not power until it is applied, or used… before that it is "potential power." Similar to “potential ability” or "talent," they are types of knowledge. Sennett says Foucault never focused on “superficial knowledge” as a tool of power, but he did mention that Meritocracy DISEMPOWERS the large majority of those under its sway. Foucault brought up how the elite would “get under the skin” of the masses bymaking them feel that they did not understand themselves, that they were inadequate interpreters of their own experience of life.”FoucaultOrganizations used the new flexible metric of "talent" or "potential" to judge people. Managers say they can spot potential or talent based on a “gut feeling.”Your “potential ability” is really a test for a kind of “knowledge” that has power and use today... that knowledge is “superficial processing”...  which is really the art of “superficial ability.”  These people claim “I can work with anyone on anything.”Sennett says, ability itself has been “hollowed out”... just like “trust” in a corporation or “accumulated experience.” With this “superficial processing,” Sennett says we skim, we don’t go deep, and even reaching “good enough” is probably wasted time… so, we have also “institutionalized impatience.”Sennett closes this chapter on the question:how do we find value in someone else's eyes?”Traditionally you became good at something, you became a craftsman, developing a talent. That path no longer assures stability or usefulness in a constantly shifting, increasingly automated society, that finds cheaper labor and talent elsewhere.

PART 1: militarization of societyTracing back to Max Weber’s insights, Sennett talks about the “iron cage” of the militarized bureaucracy is mapped onto society by Otto Von Bismarck.This does 2 things: it gives everyone a place in society, so they won’t rebel, and it creates “rationalized time.” That is regimented time you can plan around, which develops agency for citizens. For the first time, you could plan for what should happen, instead of worrying about what might happen.Part 2: The Fresh PageThe “fresh page” theory is that as pyramidal, bureaucratic stability crumbles around us, this is not a return to a previous age, but instead a new page in history.Sennett maps out how in 1962, the Port Huron statement asked for the dissolution of large companies and social frameworks that held people in a rigid, iron grip. Part of that happened: we lost jobs that employ people for life and the ability to plan our life around stability as the corporations dismantled the structures that gave people a place in society and a future they could envision and narrate their lives around. These were not replaced with the communal, sympathetic negotiations and strong social structures, as the authors had envisioned.Instead, we have a “fresh page” where “relations” have been replaced with “transactions.”The characteristics of the unique individual who can survive on this fresh page are 1) people who can function in short-term time frames (with no long-term life narrative), 2) a person who can mine their talent for potential rather than becoming a craftsmen at one thing, and 3) they must surrender to their sense of self, over and over.On the ‘fresh page’ free from rules, many meet failure, and are left drifting alone.“Alone, they suddenly discovered time- the shapeless time, which before had exhilarated them, the absence of rules for how to proceed… Their fresh page was blank. In this limbo, isolated , without a life narrative, they discover failure.”Richard SennettPart 3: Social CapitalThe “iron cage” taught delayed gratification. Where people internalized their desire fulfillment to the extent that they could never arrive at fulfillment, and thus made the cage their home. The psychological trap became very rigid, producing drones and automatons, people who behaved like the machines they worked around.Sennett wishes that Max Weber had a little more insight into the military to realize this pyramid hierarchy has some built in features of personal autonomy through the negation and translation of messages: each level gets the chance to interpret the order to fit conditions on the ground.Feeling this sense of agency, to be able to “make a difference,” is an illusion that people need to proceed with an adult life.Part 4: CapitalWith the replacement of the local banker by a global merchant banker and the introduction of leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers, the corporations themselves became the capital.This destabilized them as previous associations and processes were broken apart and loyalty (along with employees) was shed. This faster, more ambitious, more cut-throat organization served capital, not people, because investors with “impatient capital” wanted short-term rewards.institutional solidity became an investment negative… stability was a sign of weakness… the willingness to destabilize one’s own organization sent a positive signal.Richard SennettThis stripped down, de-layered version of the company was also changed by technology, such as e-mail communication. Now, instead of passing a command through managers (requiring interpretation and granting agency) a CEO could send an email directly and document their compliance… to the letter. So, email cut that layer out.As well, automation stripped a layer of the pyramid at the bottom. Now people have to outpace machines to keep their jobs. They no longer have a place in society. Which in Otto Von Bismarck’s bureaucratic pyramid is a failure: the whole reason it existed was to stabilize society by giving everyone a place and role.Today, the new workers are ashamed of dependency, and “worry about a loss of self-control.” We have reinvigorated and institutionalized the traumas of the unstable past, breaking community and social bonds, a sense of self, and communal history along the way.Part 5: MP3 PlayerSennett compares the new system to technology: the corporation acts as an MP3 player. The laser shines from the center, playing one track (function) at a time. The workers are hired, perform their function, then are discarded with no loyalty of consideration. Now the workers must self-govern and educate for a changing future, offering no stability. But the companies suffer as well without formal or informal trust: they have lost formerly institutionalized knowledge of what works and the adaptability of people with agency, often making hubristic mistakes.Leaders today no longer think critically of their employees, choosing instead to outsource anything painful smacking of responsibility of authority. They divorce power from authority, and hand it over to “consultants,” who know little about a company, and whose actual job is often not to be honest, but to shield leadership from the hard or dirty work.loyalty is dead90’s leadership guru

THE PUNISHER, is a comic book character who is an ex-military, badass vigilante. He is all dark and broody, and smashy and gunsy.In 2019 the Punisher death’s head skull logo became conflated with the police movement ‘blue lives matter’ and ‘the thin blue line.’ What we want to do, is not only recognize where this comes from, but how it works in our society, despite it’s myriad contradictions.PART I:becoming the punisherDid you know that baby birds, shortly after their eyes open, instinctually know the shape of a predator bird’s silhouette? They are born with this knowledge. When a non-predator flies over, they just keep on chirping and pooping, but the second a predator’s silhouette comes into view they shut up and scrunch down. This is called the Hawk/Goose effect.Now, police, once wearing brown or light blue, have almost uniformly shifted to black. Pair this up with bulky body armor, sunglasses to prevent reading the eyes, monosyllabic encounters, and a utility belt laden with human submission tools, and we see the shaping of a predator. Here, we begin to engage with the aesthetics, the construction of symbols and a form that signals something… in this case power and violence. In his comic Strip, “About Face,” Nate Powell maps out this transition of the militarized “eternal warrior” as “forever innocent,” linked to fighting for “lost causes” of the past, like Vietnam or the Confederacy. This misspent youth fighting other men’s wars means they are ultimately innocent, and used. Upon returning home from an unpopular war, they bring back the military signs as “a shield against shame and trauma.” As Powell says, with the cooptation of punisher’s death head logo “power lay in its apolitical mass appeal, cool stuff to buy, while functioning to normalize a paramilitary, proto-fascist presence.” … equally, the flag is rebranded, as the “thin blue line”, now a“fully masculinized militarized icon, eager to make way for an authoritarian future.” Nate PowellStripped of symbolic color, it’s black and white redesign, remarketing, and re-branding… some might say desecration… asserts any spectrum is weakness. It now signals “allegiance” (or a higher moral code) that is aggressively above the rule-of-law. PART II:bureaucracy Now, the real gift of a vigilante, is he gets things done with none of that fussy red-tape of bureaucratic legalization. Red-tape? How does you paperwork hold up to my tactical knife? Equally, people have lost their place in the system, and the future is moving beyond them and their skills. To take action, to get results, is to be USEFUL. This dream of action is a dream of freedom.But when the bureaucracy in place is to prevent coercion and abuse by civil servants, yet the police see themselves as warriors and sheepdogs embrace the contradictory vigilante symbol… one must pause and consider the implications of this desire portrayal.What we see is that those promoting the punisher flag align with a morality and allegiance ‘beyond the law’ and are merely shackled by the law, not servants of it. With the darker implication being that once the shackles are removed… dissenters are in for a world of hurt.PART III:empty symbolsThis a more Baudrillard conception of the world.The world since modernity has exploded, or broken apart the complicated rich histories of all things. It can now travel lighter, and faster, but the means to get that speed was to remove the cumbersome baggage linking it to authentic ideals. The ‘process’ is liberated from ‘meaning,’ thus the process is a simulation without governing ideals, leaving it in a state of indeterminacy or uncertainty. From this place, any meaning can be attributed, but equally (now that it is not weighed down with all that meaning and ideals that you have to reference) the symbol moves faster, dispersing outwards to proliferate, maintaining only the superficial aspect. In this simulated state Baudrillard shows that “evil” and “good” coexist, losing meaning as well without difference.Anything that has lost it’s idea is a man without a shadow. Disconnected from reality, and running ahead with rampant virility. So, when you see a punisher skull, with a thin-blue-line flag, with trumps hair or a MAGA hat, saying ‘blue lives matter’ all smashed into one thing on a cop car…  ~ well, the accumulation of multiple effects is actually a disappearance of causes. (similar to good and evil coexisting.)Through an excess of functionality, it is rebranded with a murderous vitality. Still, devoid of clear ideology, it manifests a rebellious urgency and the need for movement, progress, and affiliation… this is drawn from the most superficial levels and now manifested as the deepest motivation, an allegiant belief. In short, its contradictory messages empower an anti-logic, an obstinate rejection (abreaction) of the status quo and the rules of communication. It signals, like a dark superhero, a willingness to win through pain and loss… a sacrificial dark knight tilting at windmills. What does matter is it clearly bonds wide swaths of our population. The punisher+think-blue-line mash-up is the culmination of reductionist superficial appearances over functional, idea driven processes, like policy reform.Yet, that comes from somewhere: a failure in the system. The bricolage ethos manifest in allegiant loyalty and vigilantism expounds a moral truth “beyond the rule of law,” and it speaks of a dark desire rising and swelling. Beware paramilitaries. The next step is the authoritarian state. Timothy Snyder 

For the podcast's first interview, L and I read William James "Pragmatism" as well as a few other texts. We are mostly concerned with how objective and subjective truths or beliefs intertwine, at once having a framework to gauge and judge truth and it's use in the real world, but wanting to maintain a pluralistic notion that allows space for fallibility and individual experience.