Episode 1420
Frederick Douglass in Haiti / Peter James Hudson
Jan 3 2022
The starting point of our book is trying to take a depersonalized approach to Musk. The thing that you get when you try to step back from the kind of outrageous behavior and statements of the man himself and try to think about him more broadly is that he actually becomes this really powerful teaching tool where from the vantage point of his life and career, racking it over the decades, you can actually tell a different story about the last 40 to 50 years of global capitalism. These different inflection points in political economy and in particular how they stitched together into a kind of ensemble help explain our present moment.
Quinn Slobodian returns with his co-author, Ben Tarnoff, to discuss their just-published book from Harper Collins, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview.
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Deborah Goodman
Apr 15
Labor Struggle in Higher Ed: An Update from Loyola University Chicago SEIU 73 Faculty Forward Union
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Dec 13 2021
Dec 2 2021
Posted by Matthew Boedy
12-2-21 The Durian Witches
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
There are a lot of unsturdy judgments laymen have come to about science and medicine. It seems the more we probe and discover about the universe the more fodder amateurs have to build mistaken beliefs on. And the more we probe mistaken beliefs, the more certain we become that what we call the nature of reality reflects not aspects of the universe so much as our prejudices. Prejudices about social stratification and the way society ought to be. Being a layman myself, and an especially dilettantish layman to boot, I exhibit these prejudices as much as, if not more than, anyone.
There’s an efficiency model of evolution, where a Darwinist mechanism weeds out losers within a generation or two, rapidly leaving a species better adapted to be its best self, without being weighed down by feeble kin. This model pairs nicely with an über-capitalist view of winner-takes-all, losers weepers. It also feeds the neo-Nazis’ and other eugenics enthusiasts’ Nietzschean argument that the weak masses of humanity have polluted our species. They have manipulated collective morality, fooling the strong into wasting time and resources taking care of them, whereas in some putative state of “nature” they would have been left to die for the good of posterity.
That state of nature exists in some parallel universe where humans are not communal animals with an innate impulse to care for each other. It’s a fantasy where humans are lonely gatherers competing in an austere landscape for limited resources.
Research lately indicates that beings caring for less self-sufficient members of their own species is a rule rather than an exception. Trees in a forest sense each other’s needs through a mycological nerve network and respond to the distress of others by redirecting nutrient resources and water their way. Lizards form bonds of affection. Vampire bats have been observed sharing blood with needy vampire bats nearby, even those outside their kinship circles. Nature as the realm of the rugged individualist is a pathological rationalization for maladaptive, greedy, cruel treatment of others. It is not somehow more real than the instinct for compassion and mutual aid.
On an only slightly related topic, I recently... read more