let's THiNK about it

https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-64-artificial-negativity--repressive-tolerance Part 1 : Hegel, antithesis and sublation, the spiral, and the ground.  Part 2 : Paul Piccone & Telos Piccone was the editor of Telos, a journal. After being disenchanted by the "exhaustion of the left" he drifted from a Marxist/Hegel leaning ideology to embrace the ideas of the right, through the more totalizing...

 https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-63-the-one-dimensional-man  Part 1: Captialism absorbs everything: even your rebellion against it becomes a published book, which feeds capitalism, and generates pro-capitalists books. In a dynamic system, each tactic has a counter, and this generates (cleverly) more capitalism. A famous example is of Che Guevara’s rebellion sold as a cheap t-shirt: a purcha...

https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-62-the-double-bind/ PART 1 Ryder discusses Alan Watt's interpretation of the "tough-minded" and "tender-hearted" as "prickles and goos" that need each other, yet are confused by each other and lash out.  Of course, like Alice in Wonderland, we can refuse to play the game: the competitive rules laid out by another in a grid, but Watts says to remember that lif...

Why would anyone want to escape from Freedom? Psychologically freedom is a tremendous burden, especially in a competitive society commoditizing your individuality. Erich Fromm in “Escape from Freedom” maps out three means to escape the anxiety, isolation, and doubt of the Modern Age: Sadomasochism (aka authoritarianism), Destruction, and Automaton Conformity. The burden to be uniquely you within a...

Why would anyone want to escape from Freedom? Well, in a complex system, any move will produce countermanding forces, and humans are slow-evolving creatures, and by merely shouting “you are free” we encounter some problems: 1) now what? and 2) it doesn’t line up with the reality of working every day and still falling behind. While freedom is held up as an ideological holy grail, the reality on the...

Gambling has grown, as has gambling addiction. With technology improvements driven by behavioral science, gambling is more addictive than ever. While it may be your choice to gamble, the cards are stacked against you, and more gambling addicts commit suicide than any other addiction group. Exactly how do we get addicted, why do we begin gambling in the first place, and if it is a flaw in our socie...

Our identity is multifaceted, but people love the simplicity and tend to reduce people to a singular trait, which objectifies them. This reduction leads to violence, in part because it allows an "us vs them" narrative. Amartya Sen points out the ramifications in his book "Identity and Violence".  To consider it personally, we look at Martin Buber's "I-thou" to show how most of the time we are in a...

Step 57: Design facilitates Agency Part 1: The Mouskedoer Crawford tells this story about watching the Mickey Mouse channel, and on the show they have these segments where, say, 4 objects are in a grid, and a river shows up on the screen.  Do you use the bridge, the ladder, the hammer, or the banana to cross the river? Did you guess banana? That’s a common mistake. Smart mouses ask for help! Let’s...

Intro Today we continue considering “the world inside of our head” as quite narrow versus “the world of your body”, pulling heavily from Matthew Crawford, but also Iris Murdoch and Iain McGilchrist. We are going to look a bit at the mind/body split that became the “my self is the voices in my head” problem. And hopefully cast some doubt on the intellect as a lone arbiter for decisions, and reinteg...

Part 1: Jggy wit it I personally do a lot of woodworking, making cabinets or entertainment centers, I'm currently trying to build a window. I have tools that help me, such as a table saw is great, but sometimes there is a finicky cut in a difficult spot and you need a handsaw.  The hand saw has a downside to it: I'm not skillful enough or experienced enough to make sure it cuts it a perfect 90° an...

SHOW NOTES at  https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-54-the-world-beyond-your-head-pt-2/ 0:00 intro 2:11 part 1: environmental suppression 5:31 part 2: the illusion of the self 8:35 part 3: situated self & ecologies of attention 11:17 part 4: autonomy  vs heteronomy 14:33 part 5: the current cultural narrative 19:16 part 6: freedom! 21:16 part 7: the ideal self as projection

1: Attention as a cultural problem “Capitalism has gotten hip to the fact that for all our talk of an information economy, but we really have is an attentional economy , if the term economy applies what is scarce and therefore valuable.” Matthew Crawford Crawford goes further because if capitalist corporations seek our attention, the easy way to get it is to stimulate us: to poke and prod our atte...

Ryder consumed over 50 books and about 200 podcasts in 2021. Walking through concepts of the origins of bureaucracy and how the protestant work ethic shaped corporations and consumer behavior, he moves into healthcare related to liberty, how to solve many problems on our way to utopia, and a model for transitioning away from capitalism into a nature-based economics. https://www.letusthinkaboutit.c...

The most obvious problem with optimization is "who (or what) are you optimizing into?" First you must know yourself, then have a mission with little goals along the way allowing you to hack productivity. But if you are in a rush to gain career capital for survival or to earn freedom, your mission is likely not your own, thus requiring disciplined willpower to pursue. This opens us to problems with...

The Hero Story  Perhaps there has always been an effort towards optimization, and it generally looks like technology. When speaking of self optimization, or overcoming , we are speaking of the hero’s journey popularized by Joseph Campbell . Campbell spoke a lot of the parallels of the external journey and the internal journey… the external circumstances gave the individual the opportunity to react...

Part 1: The Aggregation of Marginal Gains Habits are really about identity change. Behaviour change is simply the means to get there (the feedback loop). What are atomic habits? They are the smallest possible habits, tiny little things that you can begin doing easily for remarkable changes. Example: The British cycling team wasn’t doing so well until their new coach, Dave Brailsford, implemented v...

Series overview There is a mystical power to self optimization, to becoming better. With all the Behavioral Science, behavioral economics, psychology, neurological studies, and FMRI tech we have figured out how to make you “better.” Yet, according to movies and myth, attempts at control or better living through science cascade into tragedy. From the 80’s man now considered toxic, to the perfect ho...

Intro Check Step 46 for a history of how money developed from sacred origins into “a force for evil.” Part 1: Separation and Oneness This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.” ~ C...

Eisenstein asks “Why is money a force for evil in the world?” When did money, once a sacred promise and gift, become a means to separate individuals from each other and nature, to create competition, extraction, and hoarding?  Key takeaways from Eisenstein's book "Sacred Economics"  1: We are ungrateful teenagers: the earth nurtured us into adolescence, but we won't become responsible adults.  2:...

https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-45-free-guy/ Part I This week, we were offered a story of an NPC, non-player character, in a video game called Free City . And what happens when Guy, played by Ryan Reynolds becomes sentient. He is triggered awake by seeing a girl. Shocker right? He becomes a sentient algorithm, able to see his desires, take action, and even judge the relative value and merit...

PART I The art world is a complicated place with diverse motivations, bizarre criteria and social norms, yet it also offers profound friendships and solidarity through community. Ryder speaks of the psychology that drove him to choose art as a form of self-help therapy versus a more stable career path,  but also his ridiculous tendency to apply "salvation through works" to his art practice.  PART...

Our conversation ranges from daily routines, gut health and probiotics, taking supplements, being in therapy, meditation practice, physical fitness as part of a daily routine that produces chemicals to help our mind-body balance, and setting up structures that don't rely on willpower. Oh, and naturally, we talk about reducing our media intake, or at least not watching the news. The topics are a bi...

Given the recent news of Hong Kong's protests being squashed, the "China Question" looms larger. As no expert, the best way to learn is bring someone on the show who has been podcasting about the multi-facted and historical complexities involved as China pushes it's way center stage.  Jason Szeftel writes and speaks on the politics and economics of China. His podcast "China Unraveled" covers in de...

Rutger Bregman’s book, Utopia for Realists , maps out how Universal Basic Income was nearly real in the 70’s. Coupled with increasing automation (robot uprising) and prospects of joblessness (along with a growing confusion of what is “work” without “labor”) we should also consider the role of humans in a world of plenty. Providing proof for that disarms our culturally conditioned biases, the text...

We walk through the dreamland of Cockaigne, and our small utopic dreams. Bregman reminds us democracy was once a dream, and slavery was once unthinkably common.  We nearly had UBI in the 70's, because all the data proves it works, but morality, economics, and conservatism have re-written our notions of what is possible or responsible in ways that only exacerbate wealth inequality. Bregman walks th...