We Are Not Saved

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/26/book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/   This is a review I did for the first issue of American Hombre , a new magazine being published by a friend of mine. I did an excerpt of it back in episode 292, but he's graciously agreed to let me release it in its entirety. If this makes you interested in the full magazine, the PDF is currently available for free...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/19/finding-the-answer/ A somewhat discursive episode where I reflect on a book I just read about meritocracy and different answers for the best way to organize society. And how what we thought was the answer—liberal democracy—appears to be fracturing, leaving everyone to fight over what part of it is the most important. What part was truly The Answer.

Link to survey: https://forms.gle/tCxmpwM4RTxPCJKUA What We Owe the Future  by: William MacAskill The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe by: Michael D. Gordin Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by: Jonathan Shay Socrates: A Very Short Introduction by: C.C.W. Taylor  Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by: Mortime...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/31/eschatologist-22-a-survey/ Survey: https://forms.gle/toRzdKPervpygw8MA   It's time for me to stick my head out and see what people think of me. Yes I'd like you to fill out a survey. Tell me what you think. I mean it. Be brutal!

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/29/chip-off-the-old-bloc/ Recently the US enacted a set of punishing trade restrictions on China with respect to high-end chips. Some have called these restrictions the annihilation of China's semiconductor industry. Maybe so, but China's not going to go down without a fight, and the situation is complicated by numerous factors, including the complicat...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/22/the-midterms-biases-and-a-lack-of-moderation/   We're a few weeks from the midterms and it seemed like a good time to review the state of things. Though they're changing rapidly. In between composing this episode and recording it people went from expecting the Democrats to keep the Senate expecting them to lose it by a few seats. Beyond the reshuffl...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/15/dalio-vs-zeihan/ Ray Dalio and Peter Zeihan have both written books about the future of America, China, and the world. On some points they agree and on some points they're profound disagreement. I compare and contrast these too books, hoping by doing so to tease out a credible view of the future. It's a view that's pretty pessimistic. But I think on...

The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization  by: Peter Zeihan The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World  by: David Deutsch Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism  by: Anne Applebaum Post-Truth  by: Lee C. McIntyre Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be  by: Steven Pressfield   A Reader's Companion to Infinite Je...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/30/eschatologist-21-but-what-if-theyre-wrong/ I consider the predictions of three books and how one might approach these predictions when deciding how to prepare for the future.  It seems clear that most people start by trying to determine if a prediction is more likely than not to be accurate, but you should actually do somewhat the opposite, you shou...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/28/the-bifurcation-created-by-technology/ This episode started as a tweet: Technology bifurcates problems. 99% of problems go away, but the 1% that are left are awful. Case in point customer service: 99% of the time you don't even need customer service from Amazon, etc. but the 1% of the time you do you're suddenly in a story by Kafka. Which I followed...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/21/the-tails-of-the-cultural-bell-curve/ If we imagine that culture has historically taken the form of a bell curve. Does it still do so? Or have we gutted the middle in service of making sure that the tails don't feel neglected? This seems very likely to be the case, and if it is what are the consequences?

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/14/excerpt-book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/ An excerpt from a book review I recently did for the new magazine American Hombre (available here: https://americanhombre.gumroad.com/ )

The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail  by: Ray Dalio The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century  by: Louise Perry The War on the West  by: Douglas Murray The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: Woke, Entitled, and Drunk with Power  by: Mark Bauerlein Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life  by: Luke Burgis The Giver  by: Lois Lowry The En...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/08/31/eschatologist-20-the-antifragility-of-taboos/ We covered the fragility of systems and technology in the last newsletter . In this newsletter I'd like to move from the material to the ephemeral. In other words, let's talk about culture. This is a huge topic for a short newsletter, so while much of what I say can be applied to traditional culture in g...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/08/26/the-involution-of-everything/   Recently I came across a theory for the progression of subcultures, which seemed to have significant explanatory power for what's happening to Western culture in general. Among the many things this theory speaks to is why cultural fights have become so vicious, why young people are disengaging, and whether wokeism has...

To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism  by: Evgeny Morozov Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?  by: Mark Fisher How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe  by: Thomas Cahill The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History  by: Alexander Mikaberidze Kidnapped  by: Robert Louis Stevens...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/07/31/eschatologist-19-the-non-linearity-of-baggage-systems/ I use the baggage chaos I encountered on a trip to Ireland as an example of fragility.

Liberalism and Its Discontents  by: Francis Fukuyama Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World  by: Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross Creative Evolution  by: Henri Bergson (didn't finish) An Introduction to Metaphysics  by: Henri Bergson The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849  by: Cecil Woodham-Smith  (didn't finish) The Man Who Died Twice: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/06/30/eschatologist-18-famines-and-fragility/   I'm leaving for Ireland in just over a week. The trip is about half touristy stuff and half genealogical. I discuss my Irish ancestors, in particular Charles Conner who came to America during the Potato Famine. I then discuss some potential lessons that famine has for our own time.

The future is important, it is where we're going to spend the rest of our lives. But there are lots of different frameworks for how the future is going to go. Has technology saved us? Is it about to save us? Or will technology doom us? Does the arc of the moral universe bend towards justice or are we a few years away from collapse. In this episode I consider a half dozen eschatological frameworks,...

Interestingly, the tragedy of Uvalde has been overshadowed by the unconscionable delay of the police. This is not the first time law enforcement has failed to operate in the way it should. An action by US Women Gymnasts seeking $1 billion dollars from the FBI for failing to stop Larry Nassar was also in the news recently. And again we have to ask why did law enforcement, in this case the FBI, fail...

The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology Is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society  by: Azeem Azhar Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men  by: Leonard Sax The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos  by: Sohrab Ahmari The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/05/31/eschatologist-17-weve-solved-all-the-easy-problems-only-hard-problems-remain/ Abortion is back in the news, but rather than arguing for one side or the other I thought I'd take a look at the arena of moral debates in general. Are we getting better at solving these thorny problems or worse? I suspect we're getting worse, both because of internet echo...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/05/26/conscience-authenticity-and-true-freedom/ In an episode that draws heavily from the book The Unbroken Thread :  Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos  by  Sohrab Ahmari I consider the apparently conflict between being authentic and doing what you're "supposed" to do.    

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/05/19/thoughts-on-yard-care-and-the-modern-world/ I'm moving and as a result I'm thinking of my decades long battle with my yard, and I'm wondering if there is any lesson for the modern world. I suspect that there is, but you should also consider that fact that I really hate yard work.