Hard Truth and a Big Hug: Recent Episodes
Paul Snyders
Challenging and compassionate talks about the state of the world, the lies we often celebrate about how we got here, and what we might try next. (Because only truth can empower the caring and intelligent)
So you say you want to change the world...
Rebellion isn’t new at all, but we’ve been lying about old rebellions for so long now, that we have almost forgotten what the real thing looks sounds and feels like (and especially, which part of the heart it comes from).
Timothy Leary is an especially misunderstood figure, from the especially misunderstood but genuinely turbulent sixties, but I openly confess I bring him along on this one not only because his personal story reveals much of interest, but also because I am very simply grateful for his life thought and work.
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What do we need memory and free speech for? Why is it crucial that we are allowed to offend the powerful? Because they are trying to get us all killed with war and ecological collapse, and citizens are going to have to learn to cooperate again and steer ourselves responsibly, together (known as democracy), and then run all those scheming creeps out of town.
Hello folks - time for some full-strength politics once again!
It is such a strange moment right now – I’d really like to be able to link directly to my most passionate friends on the right, middle and left and ask them to give this one a listen and a think, but I don’t want to accidentally set up a petrie dish for a grudge-match (social media's new favourite trick). So instead let me just ask all my pals to try this one on with an open mind. And as fraught as these times are, trust me folks – despite our high emotions, it simply isn’t true that practically everyone is a despotic, demonic, unprincipled, ignorant, intolerant, insufferable immoral maniac nowadays – some people are still centrists!
My apologies to one and all, of course – but then, I also trust that any with humour still intact will appreciate the irresistibility of that one (and the necessity of the chuckle). ;o)
We talk (and nowadays argue) quite a lot about what we use computers for, but we don't so often think about what they are, and how we are changed by using them. I think there are hopeful clues to positive possibilities, and also helpful ways to resist emotional manipluation which are perhaps more obvious if we stop and think like the blacksmith, instead of just worrying like the rider.
Hello my friends!
Politics is an especially scary subject in this insanely polarized moment. Very serious stuff, the consequences of which will stay with us a whole lot longer than this fearful crisis.
So far - left right and middle, we have all failed to meet the moment. Performance and sanctimony have been tried - they obviously aren't going to cut it. Rediscovering principle just might.
Hello my friends – time for a podcast once again. Afghanistan is the subject of the hour – but I haven’t heard a single word said yet, which reflects context or memory. Never in my own living memory has the professional news media industry been quite so dumb, casually racist, dishonest, immoral, or counterproductive.
As usual – I have several other big ideas to discuss as well – I try hard to make these programs useful, time independent and general, rather than going into huge depth about momentary situations and perishable technicalities. But propaganda is weird stuff. This century has nearly perfected lying by omission, which enables ideas which would be obviously insane, if we didn’t buy into the first lie.
In any frightening upheaval, there are always questions of who was at fault and who bears the responsibility (not necessarily the same who). The question for those who must fix things is how.
Who is a rebel – what is the system? What is oppressive conformity, and what is heroic resistance? Where is corruption? Who and what holds real power? When is knowledge dangerous, who gets to decide? How free are we really willing to risk being? How much responsibility must we take?
Most of these are questions which seem to have several different sets of rather simple answers, depending on which belief system and/or tribe they are coming from. But I don’t think any of the answers to questions like these are simple anymore. More twisted and puzzling than anything. And I don’t see any serious rebels here at all.
I hate to be rude and perhaps overly direct but – If we were doing this right, it would feel good.
Nowadays, we talk awfully excitedly about our precise cultural moment, but hardly at all about how we got here. Most generations mythologize their contributions, and try their best to hide their faults. But I say we learn much more, show truer respect and also sometimes find surprisingly deep grounds for compassion, when we look past these myths and think about people and lives instead.
Hello friends - so much of what we hear is furious and righteous hard polarity nowadays, I thought this would be a good time to talk about some of the many ways we misunderstand each other and the world. Everyone is angry - but everyone is wrong, also - at least some of the time. We can do better, show more respect for the incalculable sacrifices which got us here - and more humility understanding and determination for the sake of our lives now - and the sort of future we will leave, for those who follow behind us to inhabit.
What with shrill tribalism and a maelstrom of finger-pointing theories, the one thing that we all seem to share today is an irrational and barely controllable fury. The theories and targets vary, but the rage is everywhere.
Problem is, none of us think properly when we’re angry. We look for things to justify our anger, instead of stepping back and judging fairly – we take pleasure in stories that allow us to accuse others of creating our frustrations, instead of looking for ways to overcome our challenges – even though recrimination keeps us stuck in pain, and only practical plans can improve the situation we find upsetting. Anger isn’t thinking, or debate, or inquiry. But it is starting to push every one of those crucial principles off of the public stage.
Tempers are high, and meanings have never been so confused – good and bad all mixed together. But it is always important for us to ask - How big is the difference between intentions and outcomes?
Turns out, it is as big as the difference between temperance and gangsterism!
Podcast time again - and once again my title is a play on words, rather than any sort of an ornery sentiment. I come bearing practical hope of all kinds of victory, including the expansion of compassion and embracing love - not to win an argument. Hope it makes you feel less alone - and your goals feel more possible.
My friends, this one is a bit of a sh1t kicker – I apologize and you’re welcome in advance.
I have a ton of friends on the left who are disillusioned, and I know others in the middle and on the conservative side of the spectrum who are no less happy about the way things are going. Spokespeople on both sides like to pretend their team’s anger is important, but the anger of the other side is trivial or outright fraudulent – but to me, this really says that the posturing leadership classes of both sides greatly fear legitimate popular furies uniting. Far worse for them still, if we all added our brains and will together, to create a new and much fairer deal with the powers that be.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It is kind of amazing how many lies are told nowadays, and how much harm comes from the way we so easily believe them. There are a lot of different ways to oppose this, but most of what we hear about them is also - drumroll please, wait for it - lies! ;o)
All world-craziness aside, this is the holiday season, so for this episode I thought I would look at hope – and not in some feel-good ‘wishingist’ way. I mean the sort of sensible rigorous and rational stuff that everyone can test for themselves and believe in together, even if they might be skeptical about a whole lot of things – because it really is not only objective but has also proven useful to people across a wide range of experience.
Have you ever actually sat down and read Leviticus, from start to finish? The other day I was thinking hard about how to carefully describe some of the serious problems of reason and compassion in the political correctness movement, and I realized that for all the arguments I have heard referring to Leviticus, I not only hadn’t read it, but also didn’t personally know any leftist who was familiar with it.
Criticism that begins without any attention paid to the thing itself is way too much like bad art criticism – nothing to do with advancing understanding, everything to do with promoting fashionable taste. We do still see an awful lot of it – but I don’t ever want to get that lazy, especially about book knowledge.
How do we create a basis for genuine hope?
Magical thinking is fun – good enough for poetry and rock concerts, but vastly insufficient for the sort of sustained social transformations so many believe are required. The good news is that the practical and the heartfelt do not have to be alienated. That’s just a longstanding (and very foolish) tradition, not an actual law. The better news is that both qualities unified, can accomplish what neither fragment can even seriously begin, alone.
Hello my friends! I am sorry to have been silent so long. I have been trying (as I explain within) but like everyone else, I am finding many things more of a struggle than usual lately.
This one came from several sources of inspiration – especially a bracing blog (which I must guiltily admit appeals as much to my narrative curiosity, as to my thirst for direct honesty), a film which I expected to dislike, and a podcast by a friend who is even clearer about the priority of environment than I am – which is rare in the extreme.
Above all else though, this is for my dear friend Chris – and the many like him, who are feeling frustrated and disconnected from traditional allies in an already very lonely time because of the sort of passionate mix-ups, misunderstandings and mishearings, which can sometimes harmfully mask our far deeper heartfelt agreements, just when we need our confidence in them, them most.
This is a moment of high passion and righteous calls for justice. Good time also to think about the history of advances in rights, and the outcomes of previous movements – so we can incorporate lessons about strategy – and make sure this justice energy isn’t wasted, coopted or thwarted, by evil but politically skillful gamesmanship.
Is the government our common parent? Is it a large network of people very much like us, operating under rules that can sometimes baffle? Is it our enemy? Are we its heroic opponent? Is there another approach altogether?
Here’s a piece about language, conflict, political misunderstanding, and even true and false spirit. Along the way I talk about the early labour-organizing socialists, the Soviet Union, the first and second world war and the cold war which followed. It’s really hard to take apart a big and central myth, but I have always found meta understandings get much easier, when we look at what original researchers were responding to, with their new theories and experiments.
A whole lot of us, young and old, are very tired of living in a hopeless, bleak ironic caricature of a democracy.
Long past time to try the real thing – even if only so we can go down vividly, like poets, lovers and warriors – instead of pointlessly, like an overstuffed Pompeii full of infantile, never satisfied, eternally whiny customers.
We may never know why this is – but thanks to a couple of cool scientists, we actually can now objectively say that the ignorant are often too ignorant to recognize their own ignorance. Idiots? Metacognition deficit? Counter-revolutionaries? Have a listen and decide for yourself.
Fear is a very strange force in the world - capable of producing even stranger results - some of them foul, and some surprisingly valuable. How we see and conduct ourselves can help the odds - in either direction.
Buckminster Fuller is one of my greatest personal heroes because he never stopped trying to improve the survival odds of humanity - even when humanity seemed gleefully determined to harm itself.
Hard-headed optimist! Relentlessly peaceful and world-embracing!
Rigorous, unstoppable and notoriously sweet. He also said the best thing I've ever heard about conversation. (I must paraphrase).
"Ideally, as we converse, each of us comes to ideas which would not have been possible, without the interchange with the others present!"
Uplift from the downdraft - scaling the behemoth with leverage, too.
Check this one out. Best show yet, no kidding.