Delorean Philosophy: Recent Episodes
Steve McAlpine
Where are we going as a society? And will you be happy when we get there? Steve McAlpine is here to help you answer those questions.
If a Delorean time machine pulled up in front of your house - Back To The Future style - and someone offered to show you what the future would be like, would you be content with what you found? And if not, what could you do to change it? Thinking this through is what Steve McAlpine calls Delorean Philosophy.
Steve McAlpine is a well-known social commentator, respected theologian and popular author. Each week, he takes a crucial trend or event that's playing out in society now and asks, "Where is this taking us?"
Rather than just pontificating, Steve then provides practical steps listeners can take if they want to change the future. That's Delorean Philosophy.
Steve McAlpine says the media-fuelled controversy surrounding Qatar, the host-nation of the World Cup reveals a hint of neo-colonialism in the way the West treats nations that don't agree with it.
There are more than two football sides on the pitch these days. There are also opposing sides in another way. Two ways – at least two ways – of looking at the world.
This World Cup is being held in a Muslim-majority country in West Asia and it’s being held at the very time sport in the West has taken on a teaching role - an almost religious instruction role - in promoting what it considers human flourishing to be all about.
Steve says the problem is much of the rest of the world - the majority of the world which includes Qatar - values different values and often views those Western viewpoints unfavourably. And that's something our modern taste for tolerance just can't tolerate.
To celebrate the launch of Undeceptions Network's newest podcast 'Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine', we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book ‘Being the Bad Guys’ to be won. To enter, head to undeceptions.com/delorean.
Steve McAlpine looks at the apocalyptic angst that is engulfing younger generations and asks if there is no off-tap to their earth-shaking fears.
Those whose early memories are of the twin towers falling are experiencing not simply a climate crisis but a crisis climate.
Crisis abounds. The end has seemed nigh for some time - for all of their lives at least - and they’re just waiting for the axe to fall. Or the fire to fall. Whatever it may be.
Steve finds it’s a climate of crisis in seemingly every direction.
To celebrate the launch of Undeceptions Network's newest podcast 'Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine', we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book ‘Being the Bad Guys’ to be won. To enter, head to undeceptions.com/delorean.
Steve McAlpine looks into a brewing crisis at the juncture of health care and euthanasia legislation.
Stories emerging from Canada demonstrate that people with chronic illness or pain are choosing to end their lives not because they want to die but because it is too expensive to live.
With countries like the Netherlands ever widening the door to assisted death, Steve asks what incentive exists for Western governments to repair struggling healthcare systems when clearing the path out of this world is so much more cost-effective.
What hope is there for improving the lot of the chronically ill when the overwhelming need is to make things CHEAPER?
To celebrate the launch of Undeceptions Network's newest podcast 'Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine', we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book ‘Being the Bad Guys’ to be won. To enter, head to undeceptions.com/delorean.
Steve McAlpine asks where our increasing preference for two-person families is taking us?
Not only are one in four Australian households child-free in 2022, but it's predicted that between 2023 and 2029 the number of couples living without children will overtake the number living with kids.
This is NOT a podcast about couples who are unable to have CHILDREN. Nor is it a promotion for having ten and living in isolated communities behind barbed-wire fences.
However, for whatever reason, many younger secular couples in the West have decided not to have CHILDREN. And if that trend continues, then more religion not less is our future.
LINKS
‘People seemed threatened by it’: Three couples on their decision not to have children, Dilvin Yasa, The Sydney Morning Herald.
Click here to learn more about the Love Mercy Foundation.
And Steve recommends you check out Mary Eberstadt and her books.
To celebrate the launch of Undeceptions Network's newest podcast 'Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine', we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book ‘Being the Bad Guys’ to be won. To enter, head to undeceptions.com/delorean.
Steve McAlpine takes a look beneath the surface of the heavy seas that are swamping Western governments and asks whether or not we have bigger things to fear than political instability.
Our political turmoils are the tip of deeper cultural churning. The West is balkanising. We are fracturing, not along ethnic lines but along cultural ones.
No one is willing to cede their authority, and that only leaves one way for us to get other people to do what we want them to: power.
Political instability might be an inconvenience, but cultural in-fighting leads to society-wide power struggles. And that, says Steve, is where we are headed.
(And if you're looking for a secret word this week, we would encourage you to watch out for the ICEBERG)
LINKS
To celebrate the launch of the newest podcast in the Undeceptions Network, ‘Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine’, we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book Being the Bad Guys to be won. Click here to enter!
You can also find much more from Steve over at his blog site, Stevemcalpine.com.
To celebrate the launch of Undeceptions Network's newest podcast 'Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine', we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book ‘Being the Bad Guys’ to be won. To enter, head to undeceptions.com/delorean.
'You do you' is the mantra of western society. The technical term is expressive individualism – the almost sacred right of every person to find out what aids their flourishing and to do that, even if it comes at the expense of other people.
It’s a project seemingly full of promise. Full of personal growth. And it’s built on the philosophical assumptions of the past couple of hundred years, in which communities – particularly family and faith communities – are viewed as restrictive and damaging to your flourishing as an individual.
But Steve McAlpine asks, what if the ideas or values we feed ourselves with, all designed to help us flourish and grow, are actually making us fade and wither? What if, in our search to figure out how best to move ourselves forward, we’re taking a huge step backwards? What if what we hoped would help us is actually as toxic to society as WEED-killer?
(And if you're looking for a secret word this week, WEED would be a good place to start ;) )
LINKS
To celebrate the launch of the newest podcast in the Undeceptions Network, ‘Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine’, we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book Being the Bad Guys to be won. Click here to enter!
You can also find much more from Steve over at his blog site, Stevemcalpine.com.
To celebrate the launch of Undeceptions Network's newest podcast 'Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine', we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book ‘Being the Bad Guys’ to be won. To enter, head to undeceptions.com/delorean.
Steve McAlpine introduces us to ‘The Sexular Age’ - one in which sexual rights trump religious rights because they’re seen to be more core to what it is to be human.
Spring-boarding off a controversial football sacking in Australia, Steve shows how restrictive sexual rights have become.
Individual expressions of belief that don't celebrate someone's sexual self-expression are now considered a violent act worthy of the utmost condemnation.
LINKS
To celebrate the launch of the newest podcast in the Undeceptions Network, ‘Delorean Philosophy with Stephen McAlpine’, we are giving away a LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine! There are also 5 copies of Steve’s book Being the Bad Guys to be won. Click here to enter!
Steve McAlpine draws our attention to the wider implications of a data hack that's exposed the personal information of 40% of Australia's citizens.
The attack on the data vaults of Australian telco Optus seems alarming, but a far greater amount of data is being released daily - willingly - by the digital citizens of the West.
It's already being 'hacked' by political parties and corporate giants, and is likely to be sifted to a greater extent in the not-too-distant future.
So what should we be doing if we don't want to end up living in a state where our information is used to shape and shift our beliefs?
Steve McAlpine looks at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II as a metaphor for a much bigger change in society.
The death of the Queen was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin of a public acknowledgement of something transcendent, a God who orders the world. But instead what we’re finding is a longing for something more - something more than a materialist view of the world, or, as one writer put it, “something magical” to fill the void.
If we're going to have a future without a personal monarch, Steve suggests, we're going to have to find something worthy to put on the throne.
Steve McAlpine suggests that your future perspective on sex will have a lot to do with who you think won the sexual revolution.
Is masculinity - and femininity - to be defined by the Andrew Tate's of this world? Or will the reactionary blowback against such cancelled individuals have the greater say?
Steve says that both sides have lost in the war to define what is sexually acceptable and the only way to a safer future is to find ourselves a better standard.
Steve postulates that there are two models of work being offered for your consideration - the drudgery of Fred Flintstone and the relaxed atmosphere of George Jetson.
But neither offers a place to rest your soul. And in a world where corporations are seeking to own as much of you as possible, all the time, we would do well to consider where meaningful work can be found.
Steve asks, do we simply drop tools at the end of each day, or double down in our search for work-as-paradise? The future of our employment depends on finding a way to hold the pressures of work in balance before we are torn apart by these competing ideologies.
John Dickson, the sovereign of the Undeceptions Network, introduces listeners to the latest addition to this growing territory.
Meet Steve McAlpine - social commentator, theologian, author and futurist. With the help of a bit of mental time travel, Steve's weekly show will look at where our world is headed, ask if we like what we see, and suggest what we can do about it.
That's Delorean Philosophy.