Listen to Ayishat Akanbi
Five minutes on our culture of fear and the great importance of free speech: My subtitle: An excellent introduction to Chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.
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Philosophy
Seth Levine on Reading the Market’s Postmodern Mind
Financial-market analyst Seth Levine on why understanding postmodernism matters to investors: “No matter how you slice it, markets are human. This even applies to the “algos” as it’s we who write their mechanistic marching orders. Thus, understanding human behavior can be helpful in assessing and anticipating market moves. There’s no choice in the fact that
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The Great Awokening
Early America had the Great Awakening—a movement of religious zeal and guilt and damnation.Late America has the Great Awokening. (Wikipedia on the Great Awakening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening.)
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Colgan’s Pocket Guide to Postmodernism
Canadian philosopher Andrew Colgan, Ph.D., wrote this Pocket Guide to Postmodernism. I wrote an Introduction for it. Aimed at students and those looking to wrap their minds around the often-strange world of postmodernist ideas and activism, the Pocket Guide is a short, clearly written overview of the themes and arguments of my full-length book Explaining
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Marian Tupy (Cato), Jennifer Grossman (TAS), and I on human progress
I was a guest, along with the excellent Marian Tupy, on the TASA show hosted by Jennifer Grossman. We discuss the origins of Cato’s Human Progress project, how we entered the Age of Abundance, social media and the patience needed to deal with online brutalism, the many positive social indicators of modernity, whether optimism vs.
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“8 Socialists Define Socialism” [Waterfall]
This week we feature Socialists Define Socialism. Eight prominent socialists offer their definitions of their desired system: *Intellectuals: Karl Marx (Germany), Henri de Saint-Simon (France), Robert Heilbroner (USA), Michael Harrington (USA). * Politicians: Vladimir Lenin (Russia), Mao Zedong (China), Clement Atlee (Britain), Jawaharlal Nehru (India). Waterfall is a guided series of courses for everyone interested in
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Your Sex Life Under Socialism [Open College transcript]
We’re now posting serially at thinkspot the transcripts of my Open College podcasts. Here’s the seventh: OC7: Your Sex Life Under Socialism. “If socialism means collective ownership of the means of production, and human beings are the most important means of production, then socialism means collective ownership of human beings. And if human beings are
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Tyranny of the majority, New York Times version
Paula Nedved reminds me of Tocqueville’s diagnosis in Democracy in America, Volume 2 (1835): “In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Within these limits, the writer is free; but woe to him if he dares to go beyond them. It isn’t that he has to fear an auto-da-fé, but he is exposed
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