Capitalisn't: Podcast - Economics/Political Economy (Shooting Azimuths)

Part of ENG 102: Concepts, Theories, and Thinkers

 Capitalisn't is a podcast hosted by Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean: "Is capitalism the engine of destruction or the engine of prosperity? On this podcast we talk about the ways capitalism is—or more often isn’t—working in our world today. Hosted by Vanity Fair contributing editor, Bethany McLean and world renowned economics professor Luigi Zingales, we explain how capitalism can go wrong, and what we can do to fix it." 

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Ahmari, Sohrab. "When Capitalism Becomes Tyranny." Capitalisn't (November 2, 2023) ["In his new book, Sohrab Ahmari argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few corporations has created a new form of tyranny in America. "Coercion is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think—provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of private coercion," he writes. Ahmari, founder and editor of Compact magazine, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his book, "Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It." In this episode, they discuss the complex relationship between capitalism, personal freedoms, and political power. The conversation sheds light on what classical liberalism ignores, how today's Right is discovering what the Left may have forgotten, and ultimately, where today's political Left and Right may be able to work together."]

Coffee, John C. "How Corporations Get Away With Crime." Capitalisn't (July 22, 2022) ["When it comes to corporate rulebreaking, data from 2002 to 2016 reveals that the US government arranged more than 400 "deferred protection agreements" as a means of deterrence. Under these, a company acknowledges what it did was wrong, pays a fine, promises not to misbehave for a period of time -- and thus is largely let off the hook. Columbia Law School Professor and author of "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement", John C. Coffee, says these have done little to deter future wrongdoing. Coffee joins Luigi and Bethany, both of whom have also extensively researched and exposed corporate wrongdoing, to discuss how to reform aspects of enforcement, such as self-reporting mechanisms, internal investigations, independent external auditors, whistleblowers, and even shame and humiliation."]

Faux, Zeke. "Crypto: SBF and Beyond." Capitalisn't (November 16, 2023) ["In his new book "Number Go Up," Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has done and not what it can do. They discuss whether it is too soon to write crypto off, what larger commentary it offers about capitalism, and why Luigi, who teaches a popular MBA course on fintech, feels "crypto is money that can only be created by computer scientists who don't understand history.""]

Haidt, Jonathan. "The Economic Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood." Capitalisn't (July 18, 2024) ["In one of this year's bestselling books, "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness," New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that today's childhoods spent under the influence of smartphones and overprotective parenting has led to the reported explosion in cases of teenage anxiety and depression. He calls this process a "three-act play": the diminishment of trust in our communities, the loss of a play-based childhood, and the arrival of a hyper-connected world. Haidt also believes the problem is solvable. On this episode of Capitalisn't, he joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss parenting, learning, adolescence, and in an age where Congress won't act on regulation, his four proposed solutions to break social media's "collective action trap" on children. But are his solutions feasible? How do we weigh their costs, benefits, limitations, risks, and the roadblocks to their implementation? What are the consequences of an anxious generation for our economy — and what can we really do about it?"]

Ahmari, Sohrab. "When Capitalism Becomes Tyranny." Capitalisn't (November 2, 2023) ["In his new book, Sohrab Ahmari argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few corporations has created a new form of tyranny in America. "Coercion is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think—provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of private coercion," he writes. Ahmari, founder and editor of Compact magazine, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his book, "Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It." In this episode, they discuss the complex relationship between capitalism, personal freedoms, and political power. The conversation sheds light on what classical liberalism ignores, how today's Right is discovering what the Left may have forgotten, and ultimately, where today's political Left and Right may be able to work together."]

Coffee, John C. "How Corporations Get Away With Crime." Capitalisn't (July 22, 2022) ["When it comes to corporate rulebreaking, data from 2002 to 2016 reveals that the US government arranged more than 400 "deferred protection agreements" as a means of deterrence. Under these, a company acknowledges what it did was wrong, pays a fine, promises not to misbehave for a period of time -- and thus is largely let off the hook. Columbia Law School Professor and author of "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement", John C. Coffee, says these have done little to deter future wrongdoing. Coffee joins Luigi and Bethany, both of whom have also extensively researched and exposed corporate wrongdoing, to discuss how to reform aspects of enforcement, such as self-reporting mechanisms, internal investigations, independent external auditors, whistleblowers, and even shame and humiliation."]

Faux, Zeke. "Crypto: SBF and Beyond." Capitalisn't (November 16, 2023) ["In his new book "Number Go Up," Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has done and not what it can do. They discuss whether it is too soon to write crypto off, what larger commentary it offers about capitalism, and why Luigi, who teaches a popular MBA course on fintech, feels "crypto is money that can only be created by computer scientists who don't understand history.""]

Mullins, Brody. "How Lobbying Led to Crony Capitalism." Capitalisn't (October 24, 2024) ["Mullins is the co-author (along with his brother Luke, also an investigative reporter) of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government. Brody joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss how corporations ranging from Genentech to Google participate in the invisible but massively influential lobbying industry to bend government policy toward their favor. Together, the three trace the roots and evolution of political lobbying from the 1970s to now and explore how it penetrates and leverages other spheres of society to abet its operations. How are academia and the media complicit in this ecosystem of influence operations? How has lobbying adapted to the changing attitudes of Americans towards Big Business? How might it change under either a Harris or Trump administration and beyond?"]

Rodrik, Dani. "The New Economics of Industrial Policy." Capitalisn't (August 1, 2024) ["Harvard professor of international political economy Dani Rodrik has long been skeptical of what he calls "hyperglobalization," or an advanced level of interconnectedness between countries and their economies. He first introduced his theory of the "globalization trilemma" in the late 1990s, which states that no country can simultaneously support democracy, national sovereignty, and global economic integration. At the time when he proposed his trilemma, Rodrik was considered an outcast. However, economists and policymakers have come to accept his theory as governments seek to address populism, trade imbalances, and uneven growth through renewed interest in industrial policy, or government efforts to improve the performance of key business sectors. Rodrik joins co-hosts Bethany and Luigi to discuss changing attitudes towards globalization: its distributional effects, how it affects politics, and how it is still searching for a narrative consistent between academic circles and the media. Together, the three of them discuss what role corporate America should play in our world restructured by economic and political populism and if economics is getting too far away from the rest of the social sciences when it comes to shaping industrial policy and creating the jobs of tomorrow."]

Schaake, Marietje. "Can Democracy Coexist with Big Tech." Capitalisn't (September 26, 2024) ["International technology policy expert, Stanford University academic, and former European parliamentarian Marietje Schaake writes in her new book that a “Tech Coup” is happening in democratic societies and fast approaching the point of no return. Both Big Tech and smaller companies are participating in it, through the provision of spyware, microchips, facial recognition, and other technologies that erode privacy, speech, and other human rights. These technologies shift power to the tech companies at the expense of the public and democratic institutions, Schaake writes. Schaake joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss proposals for reversing this shift of power and maintaining the balance between innovation and regulation in the digital age. If a "tech coup" is really underway, how did we get here? And if so, how can we safeguard democracy and individual rights in an era of algorithmic governance and surveillance capitalism? Marietje Schaake’s new book, “The Tech Coup: Saving Democracy From Silicon Valley."]

Jason Stanley: Epistemology/Fascism/Language/Political Philosophy/Propaganda (Azimuths)

Beaver, David and Jason Stanley. The Politics of Language. Princeton University Press, 2023. ["
A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language. In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role. Drawing on a wealth of disciplines, The Politics of Language argues that the function of speech—whether in dialogue, larger group interactions, or mass communication—is to attune people to something, be it a shared reality, emotion, or identity. Reconceptualizing the central ideas of pragmatics and semantics, Beaver and Stanley apply their account to a range of phenomena that defy standard frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language—from dog whistles and covert persuasion to echo chambers and genocidal speech. The authors use their framework to show that speech is inevitably political because all communication is imbued with the resonances of particular ideologies and their normative perspectives on reality. At a time when democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, and diversity and equality are being demanded, The Politics of Language offers a powerful new vision of the language of politics, ideology, and protest."]

Stanley, Jason. "Erasing History." Converging Dialogues (November 3, 2024) ["... Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Jason Stanley about the importance of preserving history. They talked about why authoritarians attempt to erase history, fascist ideas, nationalism, immigration, book burning, classical education, how to defend history, and many other topics. Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and honorary professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University and was also Professor at the University of Michigan (2000-4) and Cornell University (1995-2000). He has his PhD in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT and his BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of seven books, which include How Propaganda Works, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them , and the newest book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future."]

---. Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Atria/One Signal, 2024. ["From the bestselling author of How Fascism Works, a searing confrontation with the far right’s efforts to rewrite history and undo a century of progress on race, gender, sexuality, and class.
The human race finds itself again under threat of a rising global fascist movement. In the United States, democracy is under attack by an authoritarian movement that has found fertile ground among the country’s conservative politicians and voters, but similar movements have found homes in the hearts and minds of people all across the globe. To understand the shape, form, and stakes of this assault, we must go back to extract lessons from our past. Democracy requires a common understanding of reality, a shared view of what has happened, that informs ordinary citizens’ decisions about what should happen, now and in the future. Authoritarians target this shared understanding, seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused. By setting us against each other, authoritarians represent themselves as the sole solution. In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations’ history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, the authoritarian right’s tip of the spear, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right must erase this history, and, along with it, the very practice of critical inquiry that has so often been the engine of future progress. In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right’s attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots. He illustrates how fears of a fascist future have metastasized, from hypothetical threat to present reality. And he shows that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, he explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway. Deeply informed and urgently needed, Erasing History is a global call to action for those who wish to preserve democracy—in America and abroad—before it is too late."]

---. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House, 2018. ["As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."]


---. How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015. ["How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention. Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]

---. "Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda." How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015: 1 - 26. ["Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us―not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy―particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality―and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]

Fall 2024 ENG 102: First Essay Topics for Student Essays

The rising popularity of cosmetic surgery among young people, driven by social media and popular culture, is reshaping perceptions of beauty and self-worth
The Criminal Mind: What Makes a Murderer? Is it Learned or our Genetics?

Is the Death Penalty helping society
The Positive of The Negative: A Critique of the Myth of Positive Thinking
Abortion - a Pro-choice Argument
Fast Fashion, Please Slow Down
The Importance of Nature to Our Mental Well- Being
Video Games: The Underrated Story Medium
Inflation and How it is Destroying The Economy
The Negative Impact of Social Media on the Young
Social Media: The Negative Impact on Our Society
Ultra-processed food is an addiction and what we are consuming is progressively killing us
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world
Gambling, and Why it Should be Regulated by The Government
The Ongoing Struggle for Equitable Treatment of Artists
Plastic as a Pollutant: How Harmful is it to the Environment
Disability Rights: We Are Human Too
Conspiracy theories: the more they’re denied the harder people fight.
Fitness: The Power of the Mind and Body

Agape: An exploration of “love” in the Christian faith
Exploring the Themes of Fate, Morality, and Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men
A Critique of America's Tipping Culture

Importance of Mental Health
The Effects of Drugs on Athletes
Psychological Analysis of Marvel Characters
The internal military conflicts and civil war in Burma (Myanmar)
Serial Killers: Are They Born or Created?
The impact of a ketogenic diet on mental and physical well-being
The Bible’s Authority in Modern Ethics

Eschatology: The Study of the Biblical End Time
Artificial Intelligence: The Impact on Jobs
Marilyn Monroe: The story behind the blonde beauty

On Social Suffering, Healing, and Art
We need proper mental healthcare in America's prison system

Don’t That Picture Look Dusty?: An Argument for the Continuing Relevance of the Western Genre
The History and Psychology of Advertising
Modern-Day Propaganda: The Biggest Influence on Young Voters
Ancient Slavic pagan myths are not just interesting stories, fairy tales, or legends but also a legacy of ancient knowledge.
Problems with funding and performance of social care in America
The Negative Impact of Electric Vehicles
Social Media: Disconnected Minds
Overmedicating of Prescription Drugs & Loss of “Drug War”
Identify and control your anxiety
Unraveling the Tragedy: Addressing Injuries and Fatalities in Thoroughbred Horse Racing
Improving STEM Education in Grades K–12 for Academic Achievement and Job Readiness
The Origins of you: How your childhood impacts your later life

Why Read: A Defense

The Importance of Enterprise Management in Leadership
The Dangers of Pesticides
Policing and White Power
Childhood Echoes- How Early Experiences Sculpt Later Life
We as a human species need to form a solution to our destructive behaviors before it gets out of control and reaches a point of irrevocability.
Is Social Media Detrimental to Adolescents Development and Mental Health
Social Media: The Teenage Effect
Rapid Etymological Changes in the Language Used by Gen Z
Good and Bad Parenting and Its Effects on Children
The impact of poverty on overall health
Asteroid Mining: Is It Ethical?
Why is soccer so popular, and why is it interesting?
The Power and Influence of Microtrends in Modern Society
Social Media in Relation to Childhood Development and Psychology
Animal Experimentation: Inhumane or Progress
Cybersecurity plays a crucial role in modern criminal justice by enhancing the investigation and prosecution of cybercrimes through advanced digital forensics, legal frameworks, and historical context
Is Cloning Soldiers Ethical in the Star Wars Universe
A Defense of African American Studies
The Red River Gorge does not need a resort built due to economic and environmental reasons.
Black Education as Resistance: From Historical Struggles to Contemporary Activism

Eraserhead (USA: David Lynch, 1977)

 

A dream of dark and troubling things . . .
David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey continues to haunt American cinema like no other film. - Criterion Collection

Our Eraserhead screening was naïve and unexpected and for me had lasting impact, because when art enters our heads uninvited, leaves traces after it’s flashed through our consciousness, jars the brain beautifully so we can’t help watching wide-eyed, these experiences take root and give the imagination fertile reach. - Chris Vaughan

 
Eraserhead (USA: David Lynch, 1977: 89 mins)

Bond, Lewis. "David Lynch: The Elusive Subconscious." (Posted on Youtube: September 3, 2016)

Caldwell, Thomas. "Great Directors: David Lynch." Senses of Cinema #20 (May 2002)

Carvajal, Nelson. "Beautiful Nightmares: David Lynch's Collective Dream." (Posted on Vimeo: 2013)

Cox, Catherine S. "Eraserhead." Senses of Cinema #40 (July 2006)

Ebiri, Bilge. "David Lynch Thinks That No One Will Ever Agree on What Eraserhead is About." Vulture (September 16, 2014)

"Eraserhead: Who Hurt You David Lynch?" The Critical Cinephile (February 1, 2014)

Godwin, Kenneth George. "Eraserhead: An Appreciation." Cagey Films (ND)

Gonzalez, Francisco. "David Lynch's Eraserhead Explained." The Film Connosieur (November 18, 2013)

Graham, Garrett. "Made my film students watch Eraserhead and this was their reaction." r/davidlynch (2021)

Johnson, David. "Henry's Window is the Key to Eraserhead." Welcome to Twin Peaks (November 25, 2014)

Lim, Dennis. "David Lynch's Elusive Language." The New Yorker (October 28, 2015)

Lynch, David and Chris Rodley. "I See Myself: Eraserhead." The Current (September 16, 2014)

Sobczynski, Peter. "Defying Explanation: The Brilliance of David Lynch's Eraserhead." Roger Ebert (September 16, 2014)

Vaughan, Chris. "Strangest Damn Things: Eraserhead in My Head." Bright Lights Film Journal (October 23, 2020)

ENG 102 2024: Resources #27

    Communication is communion. When we communicate with others, we take something from them into ourselves, and give them something of ours.
    Perhaps it is this thought that makes us so nervous about the idea of encountering cultures outside the human. The thought that what it means to be human will shift - and we will lose our footing.
    Or that we will finally have to take responsibility for our actions in this world. - Dr. Ha Nguyen (Nayler, Ray. The Mountain in the Sea. Picador, 2022: 301)

Orinoco, Achelous, Mississippi, Nile ... Ganges, Hudson, Danube ... Styx and Lethe ... Namings of moving waters flowing between two banks, waters rolling as Time itself, as if veins of Great Mother Earth. River is vital fluidity; the rivers move through both the upper world and the lower world, over ground and underground, inside and outside: rivers of fertility and prosperity, rivers of forgetting, rivers of binding oath, rivers of commerce, rivers of blood and rivers of water, rivers of rebirth, rivers of death, rivers of sorrow, all presided over in our mythic history by beneficent deities, dreadful nixes or changeable river spirits, offering fresh or freshening water, living fish, clay, fertile soil, flood cycles and waterways as famously along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates. The rivers have been the abode of immortals who have offered these many gifts of purity, cleansing, grace and a mythic passage to the "other shore." Nefarious river spirits can just as easily take life, claiming the bodies of  those who drown in swift and unpredictable currents. The river speaks of life a s flow, freedom, movement, dangerous currents, drowning, running ever along, running its course, flooding, also as confinement, direction, holding, channeling. The river reminds us that we can never rise above our source; all rivers flow downhill from their source, finally terminating in a sea or confluence. Creatures can be driven to swim upstream, like the salmon, and others just go with the flow; rivers carry things and are transporting in ways both literal and metaphorical. And rivers can run dry, their beds worn and empty, signs of a changing course or season, nature living in time. Language is a river of words ... a river of poetry and music transporting the head of Orpheus; rivers are weary, strong, flowing, sparkling, gushing, falling, rapid, smooth, heavy, bright. Everything that lives partakes of the quality of riverness (40). -- The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Taschen, 2010)

Yet how could so many good, committed liberals - philosophers and statesman who were otherwise so dedicated to the ideals of human freedom and self-governance - allow chattel slavery to flourish in America. ...
The answer to that question can tell us something not only about slavery in America but also about the shadow side of American vision of self-making as a whole, an insidious undercurrent that will continue to run throughout the narrative of American self-creation. ...
Liberal language about human rights was in this regard often contradictory - insisting on equality and yet locating human dignity in highly specific conceptions of what (some) people were capable of doing. Those who did not fit the paradigm of what human beings should be, conversely, were understood as moral children, still needing the authoritative guidance of those civilizations that had already come of age. Thus, for example, does the English philosopher and statesman John Stuart Mill, a major proponent of the ideal of personal liberty who was nevertheless employed the the colonial East India Company, insist in 1874 that so-called barbarians are too intellectually immature to observe a social contract. "They cannot be depended on for observing any rules," he announced, and therefore "nations which are still barbarous have not gone beyond the period during which it is likely be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners. (76-78) Burton, Tara Isabella. Self Made: Creating Our Identities from DaVinci to the Kardashians. Hachette Book Group, 2023.

In the old days, when you couldn't show sex on film, directors like Hitchcock had metaphors for sex (trains going into tunnels, etc). When you can show more realistic sex, the sex itself can be a metaphor for other parts of the character's lives. The way people express themselves sexually can tell you a lot about who they are. Some people ask me, 'Couldn't you have told the same story without the explicitness?'. They don't ask whether I could've done Hedwig without the songs. Why not be allowed to use every paint in the paintbox? --John Cameron Mitchell, "How to Shoot Sex: A Docu-Primer" (2007): Shortbus Region 1 DVD release (Th!nk Film) 

Because we are ostensibly a democracy, whose citizens potentially have the world’s information at their fingertips, powerful interests work to ensure that we are the most propagandized society. Propaganda can work to purposely distort reality through targeted misinformation, but it also operates to distract through endless entertainments and disillusion through aggressively disruptive white noise chatter. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge is available to us if we remain blind to the possibilities of critical thinking and active resistance. This is not a hyperbolic conspiracy theory; it is just common sense that those who benefit the most from the current socio-political structure will work to reproduce the status quo and keep those who are not benefiting, who are even suffering, from recognizing their predicament. One important way in which propaganda works in a democratic society is to keep us blissfully entertained and distracted while indoctrinating us into an official narrative. This can be most clearly seen in the Pentagon and CIA directed support, funding and vetting of a range of TV Shows and films that follow a narrow and manipulative action entertainment narrative about American wars abroad while conditioning Americans to accept abhorrent and anti-democratic practices, such as torture. Three prominent examples are the TV show 24 (2001 - 2010) and the films Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and American Sniper (2014), all of which turned torture and assassinations into entertainments designed to reinforce a complacent American public's belief in the necessity of these acts of state terror. - Michael Benton, "Ideological Becoming" (September 30, 2022)

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Eig, Jonathan. "King: A Life - New Bio Details Extensive FBI Spying & How MLK’s Criticism of Malcolm X Was Fabricated." Democracy Now (May 30, 2023) ["We speak in depth with journalist Jonathan Eig about his new book, King: A Life, the first major biography of the civil rights leader in more than 35 years, which draws on unredacted FBI files, as well as the files of the personal aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to show how Johnson and others partnered in the FBI’s surveillance of King and efforts to destroy him, led by director J. Edgar Hoover. Eig also interviewed more than 200 people, including many who knew King closely, like the singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. The book has also drawn attention for its revelation that King was less critical of Malcolm X than previously thought."]

Flight, Thomas. "Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now?" (Posted on Youtube: May 23, 2023) ["In this video I dive into what Metamodernism is and what it looks like in film, and chart how the movies have evolved since their modernist origins."]

Galeotti, Mark. "Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2022)." New Books in Military History (May 5, 2023) ["Mark Galeotti's book Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2022) is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers. This is an engrossing strategic overview of a rejuvenated Russian military and the successes and failures on the battlefield. Thanks to Dr Galeotti's wide-ranging contacts throughout Russia, it is also peppered with anecdotes of military life, personal snapshots of conflicts, and an extraordinary collection of first-hand accounts from serving and retired Russian officers. Russia continues to dominate the news cycle throughout the Western world. There is no better time to understand how and why Putin has involved his armed forces in a variety of conflicts for over two decades. There is no author better placed to demystify the capabilities of the Russian military and give a glimpse into what the future may hold. Putin's Wars is an engaging and important history of a reawakened Russian bear and how it currently operates both at home and abroad to ensure Russia is front and centre on the world stage."]

Habib, Connor. "The Archangel Michael and the Challenges of Our Time." Against Everyone #275 (September 29, 2024) ["Michaelmas is the esoteric christian celebration of the Archangel Michael. How can connecting with the impulses of the holiday show us how to co-share their burden of those who are suffering; strengthen love through our will; and leave the path of empowering violence?"]

Hertag, Julia. "Timekeeping." Sidecar (May 19, 2023) ["Unrueh – ‘unrest’ – the title of Swiss director Cyril Schäublin’s latest film, set in 1877 among anarchist watchmakers in Saint-Imier, a remote village in Switzerland’s Jura mountains, is the term for the wheel in the centre of a mechanical watch that ensures its continuous and even ticking. The unrest wheel inside a pocket watch is so tiny and the act of adjusting it so meticulous that, despite the film’s extended close-ups on the mechanism, its workings remain mysterious. Even the detailed explanations given by a young factory worker, Josephine Gräbli (Clara Gostynski), to her fellow anarchist, Pyotr Kropotkin (Alexei Evstratov), who happens to be visiting the village, don’t entirely clarify it. When Josephine asks if he understands her, Kropotkin replies: ‘I think so’. If the functioning of the unrest wheel is largely impenetrable, Unrueh suggests, so are the forces revolutionizing production in Kropotkin’s time (as well as those that keep our own economic system running)."]

Hoag-Fordjour, Alexis and Sara Mayeux. "We the People: Legal Representation." Throughline (August 8, 2024) ["The Sixth Amendment. Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford a lawyer, the court will provide one for us. And in fact, the right to an attorney is written into the Constitution's sixth amendment. But for most of U.S. history, it was more of a nice-to-have — something you got if you could, but that many people went without. Today, though, public defenders represent up to 80% of people charged with crimes. So what changed? Today on Throughline's We the People: How public defenders became the backbone of our criminal legal system, and what might need to change for them to truly serve everyone."]

Kelsey, Janice and Paul Kix. "60 Years Ago Today: Police Attack Children’s Crusade with Dogs & Water Cannons in Birmingham, Alabama." Democracy Now (May 2, 2023) ["Sixty years ago today is known as “D-Day” in Birmingham, Alabama, when thousands of children began a 10-week-long series of protests against segregation that became known as the Children’s Crusade. Hundreds were arrested. The next day, “Double D-Day,” the local head of the police, Bull Connor, ordered his white police force to begin using high-pressure fire hoses and dogs to attack the children. One photograph captured the moment when a white police officer allowed a large German shepherd dog to attack a young Black boy. Four months after the protests began, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a Black Birmingham church, killing four young girls — Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. We revisit the history of the Children’s Crusade with two guests: civil rights activist Janice Kelsey, who joined the Children’s Crusade as a 16-year-old in 1963, and author Paul Kix."]

Li, James. "America's New Caste System Exposed." 51/49 (Posted on Youtube: June 11, 2023) ["James breaks down two new laws, HF 68, known as the “The Students First Act”, which approves the use of taxpayer money to fund private schools, and SF 542—“An Act Relating to Youth Employment”, which allows 14 year olds to work 6 hour night shifts, allows 15 year olds to work on assembly lines moving items up to 50 pounds, and also allows 16 and 17 year olds to serve alcohol. Are these new laws meant to provide more opportunity to ordinary Americans, or are the rich passing laws to codify a modern day caste system?"]

Like Stories of Old. "Escaping Our Mental Prisons: What Psychedelic Movies Are Really About." (Posted on Youtube: May 31, 2023) ["An analysis of psychedelia in cinema, and of the philosophical and neurological insights it provides."]

Lombardo, Paul A. "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (John Hopkins University Press, 2022)." New Books in Political Science (April 24, 2023) ["“Three generations of imbeciles are enough” were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v. Bell, an almost unanimous Court upheld a Virginia law allowing the sterilization of people the state found to be “socially inadequate” and “feebleminded.” This landmark decision allowed the eugenics movement to take full effect, with multiple states passing similar laws. In Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), Dr. Paul Lombardo unpacks the case of an individual – Carrie Buck – to argue that the case not only represents the collective power of the eugenics movement in the early 20th century but an individual miscarriage of justice. Using extensive archival sources, Dr. Lombardo demonstrates that Carrie Buck was neither a “moral degenerate” or “feeble-minded.” She was a rape victim of sound mind. Her sterilization was based on fraudulent evidence. The powerful eugenics lobby manufactured a case – and a sympathetic court gave them a precedent that justified Carrie Buck’s sterilization – and over 60,000 sterilizations in the following decades. Three Generations, No Imbeciles frames the history of sterilization as essential to understanding contemporary legal fights over birth control and abortion. Does the constitution’s promise of “liberty” include the right to become pregnant or end a pregnancy? Dr. Lombardo’s epilogue and afterward outlines the connections between Buck and modern cases involving abortion, disability rights, and reparations for those sterilized. Originally published in 2008, the book has been updated in 2022 with a terrific epilogue and afterward with an eye towards contemporary events in reproductive politics. Dr. Paul A. Lombardo is Regents’ Professor and Bobby Lee Cook Professor of Law at the Center for Law, Health & Society at Georgia State University. He has published extensively on topics in health law, medico-legal history, and bioethics and is best known for his work on the legal history of the American eugenics movement. His website houses the images and all documents discussed in the podcast including the petition for rehearing created by the National Council of Catholic Men."]

Longworth, Karina. "Thelma & Louise (Erotic 90S, Part 4) ." You Must Remember This! (April 17, 2023) ["One of the most controversial movies of the 1990s, Thelma & Louise pushed every hot button of the new decade: date rape, sexual harassment, the failure of the feminist movement to create real change for the working class, and how pissed off women were, or were not, entitled to be about all of the above. Though it made more noise as a media phenomenon than at the box office, Thelma & Louise made so many people so mad that it had the feeling of a turning point. We’ll talk about the anger the movie communicated, the anger it inspired, and debate its lasting legacy."]

Remnick, David. "Israel vs. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran — and Itself." The Ezra Klein Show (September 20, 2024) ["It’s been almost a year since Oct. 7. More than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza are dead. The hostages are not all home, and it doesn’t look like there will be a cease-fire deal that brings them home anytime soon. Israeli politics is deeply divided, and the country’s international reputation is in tatters. The Palestinian Authority is weak. A war may break out in Lebanon soon. There is no vision for the day after and no theory of what comes next. So I wanted to talk to David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker. Remnick has been reporting from Israel for decades and has a deep familiarity and history with both the region and the politics and the people who are driving it. He first profiled Benjamin Netanyahu back in 1998. In 2013, he profiled Naftali Bennett, the politician leading Netanyahu in polls of who Israelis think is best suited to be prime minister. And he recently profiled Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza. In this conversation, we talk about what Remnick learned profiling Netanyahu, Bennett and Sinwar, as well as where Israel’s overlapping conflicts with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah and Iran sit after nearly a year of war. Remnick and I were both recently in Israel and the West Bank, as well as near Israel’s border with Lebanon, and we discuss our impressions from those trips."]

"Tested: Questions of a Physical Nature." Throughline (August 6, 2024) ["In 1966, the governing body of the Olympic track and field event started mandatory examinations of all women athletes. These inspections would come to be known as "nude parades," and if you were a woman who refused the test, you couldn't compete. We're going back almost a century to the first time women were allowed to compete in Olympic track and field games, and to a time when a committee of entirely men decided who was a female and who wasn't."]

House (Japan: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1977)

How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie House (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equally absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet. Never before available on home video in the United States, it’s one of the most exciting cult discoveries in years. - The Criterion Collection

House (Japan: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1977: 88 mins)

Juzwiak, Rich. "The Joy of Hausu." Four Four (January 21, 2010)

Kittle, Alex. "House [Hausu] (1977)." 366 Weird Movies #71 (November 24, 2010)

Pridham, Matthew. "The Cutest Nightmare You Ever Did See: A Review of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu." Weird Fiction Review (June 14, 2013)

Stephens, Chuck. "House: The Housemaidens." Current (October 26, 2010)

Williams, Evan Calder. "Sunset with Chainsaw: A New Way of Reading Horror Film Politically." Film Quarterly 64.4 (Summer 2011): 28-33. 

ENG 102 2024: Resources #26

I have tried to invent a story which may seem a possible, or at least not wholly impossible, account of the future. ... To romance of the future may seem to be indulgence in ungoverned speculation for the sake of the marvelous. Yet controlled imagination in this sphere can be a very valuable exercise for minds bewildered about the present and its potentialities (9). -- Stapledon, Olaf. The First and Last Men. (1930)

To come upon a lake is to come upon a fluid expanse of mystery, apparently still and yet moving. At lake's edge the earth is suddenly missing, gives way to another medium and appears again at the shore beyond. Hence our word "lacuna" is derived from "lac" or lake, and signifies something omitted or missing, a hiatus. The lake, for many people, has been a symbol of the land of the dead, of life gone missing into the fluid substance and darkness of another world. The contained reflecting presence of a lake has evoked many mythical ideas. For example, the lake has been seen as earth's open liquid eye at the edge of knowledge where all that is solid dissolves into a two-way mirror of the soul - a sometimes visionary, at other times hungry eyes that look up from the underworld below. Standing at water's edge and gazing out over the surface, we pause and give way to dream, reflection, imagination and illusion; to other worlds below and beyond in ourselves, making lake symbolically the entry, for good or will, into psyche's unconscious dimensions. (44)  The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images. Taschen, 2010.

"As citizens of a globalized world it is imperative that we develop a broader awareness of key issues. A quick exercise: Ask yourself: in how many countries are Americans currently engaged in active military missions? Or, how many American military bases are there around the world? Or, how many corporations control 85 - 90% of the world’s media that informs us about these issues? (Answers: 80 countries in 2017 - 2018, approximately 40% of the world; approximately 800 military bases in 70 countries; estimates vary of 5 to 6 media giants controlling app. 80% of the world's media and this is further problematized by the rapid spread and variation of new media). Some people would be surprised by this information regarding America’s "national security corporate complex" and the filters in the corporate media that ensure most American citizens remain unaware of the extent of our imperialism. How many of us could discuss in depth why we are fighting in these countries, or what are the democratic implications of media consolidation. Even worse, how many could explain the connection between American imperialist wars and corporate media consolidation?" - Benton, Michael D. "Ideological Becoming." Dialogic Cinephilia (September 30, 2022)

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Anderson, Elle, et al. "Love in the Time of Replika." Hi-Phi Nation (April 25, 2023) ["We explore the lives of people who are in love with their AI chatbots. Replika is a chatbot designed to adapt to the emotional needs of its users. It is a good enough surrogate for human interaction that many people have decided that it can fulfill their romantic needs. The question is whether these kinds of romantic attachments are real, illusory, or good for the people involved. Apps like Replika represent the future of love and sex for a subpopulation of people, so we discuss the ethics of the practice. Host Barry Lam talks to philosophers Ellie Anderson and David Pena-Guzman of the Overthink podcast about what theories of love would say about these kinds of relationships. AI lovers include Alex Stokes and Rosanna Ramos."]

Blocher, Joseph. "We the People: Gun Rights." Overthink (August 1, 2024) ["The Second Amendment. In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The robber, Jack Miller, put forward a novel defense: that a law banning him from carrying that gun violated his Second Amendment rights. For most of U.S. history, the Second Amendment was one of the sleepier ones. It rarely showed up in court, and was almost never used to challenge laws. Jack Miller's case changed that. And it set off a chain of events that would fundamentally change how U.S. law deals with guns."]

Fontainelle, Earl. "A Secret History of Secret History, Part I." The Secret History of Western Esotericism #1 (September 5, 2017) ["In this episode we borrow the following description of western esotericism from the website of the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents and use it as a guide for the first half of a survey of western esoteric traditions: 

The term “Western esotericism” covers a wide spectrum of neglected currents in Western cultural history. As an umbrella term that intends to highlight connections and developments over a long period, from antiquity to the present day, esotericism includes phenomena as varied as Gnosticism, Hermetism, and Neoplatonic Theurgy, Astrology, Alchemy, and Natural Magic … 

We attempt to give a very basic introduction to each of these currents of thought and to the texts that tell us about them. If you’ve always heard that ‘Neoplatonism’, ‘Hermeticism’, and ‘Gnosticism’ were somehow important precursors to the more familiar esoteric currents which we know and love from the Renaissance and early-modern periods, but don’t really know much about these movements in their natural habitat, this episode is the perfect introduction. We also introduce three of the most important occult sciences, Astrology, Alchemy, and Magic, and foreshadow the complexity and intricacy of the textual traditions which transmit them, which will take this podcast from the muddy banks of the Euphrates and the Nile circa 1,500 BCE to the drawing-rooms of Enlightenment Europe and beyond."]

---. "A Secret History of Secret History, Part II." The Secret History of Western Esotericism #2 (September 5, 2017) ["In this episode, part two of our overambitious survey of western esotericism, we look at the second half of the summary borrowed from the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, which mentions:

… Christian Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Christian Theosophy and Illuminism, the currents of modern Occultism, Spiritualism, Traditionalism, the New Age movement, Neopaganism, Ritual Magical groups, and a host of contemporary alternative spiritualities and forms of popular “occulture”.

Our list has jumped from the occult sciences discussed last episode right into the Renaissance; where are the middle ages? All too often, this period is devalued in historiography. We therefore spend some time surveying the amazing flowering of esoteric sciences, Hermetic lore, the kabbala, and ‘mystical’ ideas in the middle ages, and emphasise the importance of the medieval Islamicate world in the history of western thought generally, and western esotericism specifically. We do get to the Renaissance (finally), and discuss a few key players. We then dart through the Reformation period, sketching the context of European death, destruction, and ideological warfare which provides a context for so much of the flowering of esoteric thought in this period. Finally, we make the briefest of nods to the modern period, the new types of esoteric thinking that have arisen in the period of ‘disenchantment’ following the Enlightenment, and their continued development today."]

Franks, Mary Ann. "We the People: Free Speech." Throughline (July 25, 2024) ["The First Amendment. Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. Today on Throughline's We the People: What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?"]

Hanegraaff, Wouter. On Western Esotericism." The Secret History of Western Esotericism #3 (September 5, 2017) ["We ... discuss the thesis of his recent book Esotericism and the Academy, and in the process explore the contours of the historical development of western esotericism from late antiquity down to modern times, and consider the formation of western esotercism as an object of historical study in now almost forgotten polemics of the Reformation period. Finally, Professor Hanegraaff gives a cogent and forceful argument that the study of western esotericism is not just interesting to specialists and nerds (although it is), but absolutely essential to creating a more accurate history of the development of western thought as a whole."]

Olsson, Tore C. "What Red Dead Redemption II Reveals About Our Myths of the American West." Literary Hub (August 28, 2024) ["This near-universal decision to foreground the game’s western-ness was not inevitable. Of the ninety-six main story missions in Red Dead Redemption II (by my count), only a thin majority of fifty-one take place in a western setting, while forty-five are set in the Deep South, Appalachia, or the Caribbean. Why then is the game almost exclusively classified as a western? It is due to the simple fact that in American popular culture, there are no established genres called “southerns,” “Appalachians,” or “Caribbeans.” But for more than a century, there have been a jaw-dropping preponderance of “western” films, TV series, comics, novels, and, of course, games. Both the producers and reviewers of Rockstar’s game knew that of all the regions it showcases, only one is a deep-rooted genre and a national obsession."]

Pappe, Ilan. "On Zionist Mythologies." Against the Grain (September 10, 2024) ["Since last autumn, we’ve witnessed an unspeakable crime perpetrated by the state of Israel with our tax dollars. And that crime has been rationalized by much of the U.S. media. Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe says that such justifications rest partly on a distorted view of the history of Palestine/Israel. He suggests that dismantling the mythologies about the formation and nature of the state of Israel is key to fighting for justice."]

Sirota, David. "Milk Money." Master Plan (August 27, 2024) ["Ever wonder how America became so corrupt? It didn’t have to be this way. Our series begins in 1971, a time when hot pants were hot, bell bottoms were swinging, and campaign cash flowed like… milk. "]

West, Stephen. "The Frankfurt School: Erich Fromm on Freedom." Philosophize This! #151 (February 6, 2021) ["Key Takeaways:
Development of Individualism: Fromm compares the evolution of human society to the growth of a child, highlighting a move from dependence to independence. This individuation process, seen through historical stages from pre-civilization to modern society, reflects an increase in personal freedom and responsibility.
Freedom’s Double-Edged Nature: Fromm argues that increased individual freedom, while providing autonomy and choice, also brings isolation and anxiety. This duality is evident in modern society, where people enjoy unprecedented personal freedoms but also face the burden of making meaningful choices alone.
Negative vs. Positive Freedom: Fromm distinguishes between negative freedom (freedom from external constraints) and positive freedom (freedom to act on one's own will). He suggests that true freedom requires a balance of both, emphasizing the importance of using our autonomy to foster connections and meaningful actions.
Escape from Freedom: Fromm identifies ways people escape from the challenges of freedom: authoritarianism (seeking power or submission), destructiveness (acting against life and change), and automaton conformity (blindly following societal norms). These escapes represent a retreat from the responsibilities of freedom and individuality.
Recommended Reading:
Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm (1994): This book explores the psychological challenges associated with the transition from traditional societies to modern freedom, and how this shift can lead to authoritarianism.
"The Art of Loving" by Erich Fromm: A profound analysis of love as an art that must be actively practiced and developed, rather than a passive feeling. Fromm explores how love, in its various forms including romantic love, familial love, and self-love, is an expression of one's life and a key to human fulfillment.
The Essential Fromm: Life Between Having and Being by Erich Fromm (2014): This work encapsulates Fromm's views on achieving a fulfilling life, focusing on the dichotomy between 'having' and 'being', and the art of living well."]

---. "The Frankfurt School: Erich Fromm on Love." Philosophize This! #150 (January 30, 2021) ["Key Takeaways:
The Problem of Human Existence and Separateness: Erich Fromm posits that a fundamental issue in human existence is the feeling of separateness or existential loneliness. This awareness of being separate from others and the universe drives people to seek connections beyond themselves, often through love, to alleviate this sense of isolation.
Transactional vs. Genuine Love: The podcast explores the difference between transactional love (where love is treated as a commodity in a personality market) and genuine love. Fromm criticizes the former as being about mutual benefit and not true love, suggesting it leads to relationships that are shallow and likely to fail.
Love as an Active Faculty: Fromm argues that love should be viewed not as a passive emotion that happens to someone, but as an active faculty, a skill that can and should be developed. True love involves a constant, active effort to connect and care for others.
Mastering the Art of Love: The episode discusses Fromm's view of love as an art form that requires dedication and practice, similar to mastering any skill. He emphasizes the importance of humility, courage, faith, and discipline in developing the ability to love genuinely and deeply.
Recommended Reading:
Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm (1994): This book explores the psychological challenges associated with the transition from traditional societies to modern freedom, and how this shift can lead to authoritarianism.
"The Art of Loving" by Erich Fromm: A profound analysis of love as an art that must be actively practiced and developed, rather than a passive feeling. Fromm explores how love, in its various forms including romantic love, familial love, and self-love, is an expression of one's life and a key to human fulfillment.
The Essential Fromm: Life Between Having and Being by Erich Fromm (2014): This work encapsulates Fromm's views on achieving a fulfilling life, focusing on the dichotomy between 'having' and 'being', and the art of living well."]

---. "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paulo Freire, Education)." Philosophize This! (September 12, 2024) ["We talk about Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. His critique of the banking model of education. The importance of critical consciousness. His Existentialist influence. The dialectic between oppression and liberation. The problem-posing model of education. The role of dialogue in learning and the co-creation of knowledge. Marx's influence on Freire. The flexibility of Freire’s pedagogy. And some responses to critics of Freire."]

Cultural Soothsayer - Music Mix #35

 Billy Strings; J.D. McPherson; Twen; Wet Leg; fun.; Pink Tornado; Leo London; Sir Hick; Fluid Druid; Abronia; Waffle Taco; Aimee Mann; Sinead O'Connor; Gorillaz; The Red Clay Strays; Spoon; Future Islands; Jose Gonzalez; The White Stripes; Honeyglaze; TV on the Radio; Father John Misty; Pink Fuzz; Bear Hands; Grimes; Slothrust; Beach House; Menahan Street Band; Alice Cooper; David Bowie; The Cranberries; Car Seat Headrest; Altin Gun; Elliot Smith; Blitzen Trapper; The Veils; Q Lazzarus 

Cultural Soothsayer - Music Mix #35

ENG 102 2024: Resources #25

    Traumatic events by definition elude immediate first-person embodied experience, and they tend not to stay within their chronological and spatial contexts. As Cathy Caruth has remarked, trauma is 'locatable not in the simple violent or original event in an individual's past, but rather in the way that it's very unassimilated nature - the way it was precisely not known in the first instance - returns to haunt the survivor later on' (Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 4). A traumatic event, in other words, is so overpowering that it cannot be experienced while it is happening. Instead it is reexperienced in delayed, repetitive form - through flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive hallucinations, bodiless memories of missing subjectivity.
    As a phenomenon whereby 'the most direct seeing of a violent event may occur as an absolute inability to know it' (Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 91- 92), trauma constitutes a paradox. How is it possible for the 'most direct' knowledge of an event to occur as that event's 'absolute' unknowability? The difficulty of resolving this paradox is evidenced in nonfiction accounts of trauma by a persistent recourse to figurative language: trauma is (figuratively) an 'out-of-body experience in which the victim (figuratively) 'relives' the event that caused the psychic wound or the survivor inhabits a reality that is (figuratively) 'otherworldly. (153)" - Chu, Seo-Young. Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?: A Science Fictional Theory of Representation. Harvard University Press, 2010.

    In the forests of South America, hunters sleep faceup so the jaguar will see them as beings capable of looking back at him, and leave them alone. If they sleep facedown, the jaguar will mistake them for helpless prey and attack them. 
     We must understand not only how we organize and perceive the world, but how the world sees us. We must understand how the world around is truly structured, and how we are perceived by the other selves which inhabit it.
    If we are to communicate with a sentience that has gained language skills like the ones we have, everything will rely on how sensitive we can be to how that alien mind perceives our actions. Everything (189). -- Dr. Ha Nguyen in Nayler, Ray. The Mountain in the Sea. Picador, 2022.

 

Mythological images are the images by which the consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious. That’s what they are. When you don’t have your mythological images, or when your consciousness rejects them for some reason or other, you are out of touch with your own deepest part. I think that’s the purpose of a mythology that we can live by. We have to find the one that we are in fact living by and know what it is so that we can direct our craft with competence. - Joseph Campbell (from Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation) 

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Duffy, Katherine E., et al. "The World’s Most Beautiful Bird Lives in Yellowstone National Park: Behold the Peregrine Falcon." Literary Hub (October 12, 2023) ["Evolution honed peregrine falcons to be unparalleled speed machines. They have long, pointed wings, enabling them to swoop and dive in flight at mind-boggling speeds as they pursue avian prey, from small birds to shorebirds to ducks, that they capture in midair. Their bodies are tightly cloaked in sleek feathers that contribute to their streamlined aerodynamic efficiency—no fluffy owl feathers on a peregrine. Their nasal openings have a post that baffles air so that peregrines can continue to breathe as they dive. Being struck by a diving peregrine often kills prey instantly, but if it does not, the peregrine inserts the upper part of its bill, with projections called tomial teeth, between the prey’s neck vertebrae. With a quick twist, the peregrine instantly severs the spinal cord of its prey. As it flies with prey held by tightly clenched feet, each toe ending in a sharp piercing talon, the peregrine might even eat on the wing."]

Larson, Rob. "As Much Power As the President: How Billionaires Became More Influential than World Leaders."  Literary Hub (August 29, 2024) ["This is why class is a useful concept; as researcher Katie Quan has said, “Not to think in terms of class is unfortunate, since no matter what our ideological persuasion may be, class analysis gives us a way of viewing the world that identifies power relationships. It clarifies who has power." This is an excerpt from Rob Larson's book Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More]

Longworth, Karina. "Crash and David Cronenberg (Erotic 90’s, Part 16)." You Must Remember This (September 18, 2023) ["One of the only high-profile NC-17 releases post-Showgirls, David Cronenberg’s Crash was the kind of dark adult art film that the rating was supposedly created to support. We’ll talk about how Crash fits into Cronenberg’s filmography, why it was controversial when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996 and when it was released in the US in 1997, how it played into the UK general election of 1997, how it functioned as an early warning against charismatic billionaires, and how it embodied a post-Prozac and pre-Viagara moment."]

O'Connor, Anahand. "How the Food Industry is Influencing Your TikTok Feed." On the Media (September 20, 2023) ["In July, the World Health Organization issues a report indicating that aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in many low calorie sodas and snacks, was "possibly carcinogenic to humans." The new statement on a widely utilized artificial sweetener led to controversy in the medical community, with the Federal Drug Administration saying they saw no concern over aspartame consumption. Some dietitians even took to social media to voice their contradicting opinions. Anahad O’Connor, a health columnist at The Washington Post, the response to the announcement on social media smelled a bit fishy. In a report released earlier this month with colleagues Caitlin Gilbert and Sasha Chavkin, O’Connor found that dozens of registered dietitians, some with more than 2 million followers each, were paid to counter the WHO’s announcement. He and his colleagues followed the money back to industry groups like American Beverage, which represents companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. This week, OTM correspondent Micah Loewinger sits down O'Connor to learn more about the growing trend of influencer dietitians and the long history of food and beverage lobbies attempting to influence our eating habits."]

Tolentino, Jia. "On Children, Meaning, Media, and Psychedelics." The Ezra Klein Show (September 3, 2024) ["I feel that there’s something important missing in our debate over screen time and kids — and even screen time and adults. In the realm of kids and teenagers, there’s so much focus on what studies show or don’t show: How does screen time affect school grades and behavior? Does it carry an increased risk of anxiety or depression? And while the debate over those questions rages on, a feeling has kept nagging me. What if the problem with screen time isn’t something we can measure? In June, Jia Tolentino published a great piece in The New Yorker about the blockbuster children’s YouTube channel CoComelon, which seemed as if it was wrestling with the same question. So I invited her on the show, and our conversation ended up going places I never expected. Among other things, we talk about how the decision to have kids relates to doing psychedelics, what kinds of pleasure to seek if you want a good life and how much the debate over screen time and kids might just be adults projecting our own discomfort with our own screen time."]

Seaford, Richard. "On the Origins of the Soul." The Secret History of Western Esotericism #4 (September 13, 2017) ["In some of the earliest documents we possess from Indo-European cultures – the Rg Veda and the Homeric poems – the human beings depicted do not have ‘souls’. That is to say, they have organs of what we might call different types of consciousness, but there is no indication that there is a unifying principle which knits all the different organs together. Then, at the beginning of the sixth century BCE, something rather startling happens: in both Indian texts (the Brahmanas, Upanishads, and others) and in Greece (in the movement known as Pre-Socratic philosophy) the notion arises that there is indeed a unifying, bounded, and possibly immortal soul. Richard Seaford has a provocative theory, based in a sociological / anthropological approach, as to why this new and revolutionary idea comes into being at just this time in just these places. Whether you agree with him or not, you will not want to miss Professor Seaford’s masterful survey of the Greek and Sanskritic evidence for the first appearance of that most essential entity, the soul. Other fascinating themes touched on: What is the ‘Axial Age’, and what makes it so ‘axial’? The problems of dating the Homeric poems and the Rg Veda. The origins of the concept of the incorporeal in Greece and India. What money and private property have to do with the rise of the soul."]

Valis, Karen. "On Magic and Artificial Intelligence." The Secret History of Western Esotericism (November 8, 2023) ["We are delighted to speak with Karin Valis, machine-learning engineer and esoteric explorer, on the vast subject of how the fields of artificial intelligence and magic overlap, intertwine, and inform each other. We discuss:The uncanny oracular effects and synchronistic weirdnesses exhibited by large language models, Conversations with ChatGPT considered as invocation, AI as the fulfilment of the dream of the homonculus (with the attendant ethical problems which arise), AI as the fulfilment of esoteric alphanumeric cosmologies (and maybe, like the Sepher Yetsirah, this isn’t so esoteric after all; maybe it’s just science)."]

West, Stephen. "Resistance, Love, and the importance of Failure. (Zizek, Byung Chul Han)." Philosophize This! #201 (May 6, 2024) ["Today we talk about a potential way to find meaning for someone prone to postmodern subjectivity. We talk about surplus enjoyment. Zizek's alcohol use, or lack thereof. Resisting surface level consumption. Love. And failure."]

---. "The truth is in the process. Zizek Pt. 3 (Ideology, Dialectics)." Philosophize This! #198 (March 25, 2024) ["Key Takeaways - Ideology's Function and Risks: Ideology simplifies complex realities, aiding decision-making and action, but its uncritical acceptance can perpetuate systemic flaws. Žižek's Critique of Ideological Frameworks: Žižek examines how ideologies, especially within global capitalism, shape societal norms and individual actions, often obscuring deeper systemic issues. Dialectical Understanding of Reality: The dialectical method reveals the continuous and dynamic process of change and contradiction in societal and ideological structures. Necessity of Ideology in Human Experience: Ideology is essential for making sense of the complex world, serving as both a simplifying tool and a psychological coping mechanism. Recommended Reading: The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Žižek: In this foundational work, Žižek explores the mechanisms of ideology, offering a complex analysis of how individuals interact with and are influenced by their ideological constructs. Living in the End Times by Slavoj Žižek: Žižek examines the global capitalist system and its crises, arguing that we are living in the end times of capitalism and facing an urgent need for radical change."]

Zhao, Ben and Heather Zheng. "Fighting Back Against AI Piracy." Hidden Brain (August 8, 2024) ["If you’ve spent any time playing with modern AI image generators, it can seem like an almost magical experience; but the truth is these programs are more like a magic trick than magic. Without the human-generated art of hundreds of thousands of people, these programs wouldn’t work. But those artists are not getting compensated, in fact many of them are being put out of business by the very programs their work helped create. Now, two computer scientists from the University of Chicago, Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng, are fighting back. They’ve developed two programs, called Glaze and Nightshade, which create a type of “poison pill” to help protect against generative AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E, helping artists protect their copyrighted, original work. Their work may also revolutionize all of our relationships to these systems."]

ENG 102 2024: Resources #24

We are, and have always been,a part of the world. We do not stand above it. We are "involved' with the world. This word has a sense not just of participating, not just of complication. but also of a curling inward, a coiling we call "involution." We are coiled into the world, nestled inside its processes, wound into its forms (365). - Dr. Ha Nguyen in Nayler, Ray. The Mountain in the Sea. Picador, 2022.

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"Art and the Natural World: An Entangled Life." Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2024) ["Envisioning the artist as a kind of fruit-bearing tree, Dadaist painter-poet and sculptor Hans ‘Jean’ Arp conceives of art as an extension of our bodies. We produce art, he suggests, in the literal sense, as we move and grow, sprouting artworks like berries in season."]

Bogutskaya, Ana. "A Deep Fear of Things Sincere." Talking Scared #209 (August 28, 2024) ["Anna Bogutskaya is one of the UK’s most prominent film critics, with a penchant for horror. She knows her scary onions. And in her new book, Feeding the Monster [subtitled Why Horror Has a Hold On Us], she asks an important question (well, important to the likes of you and me) – Why does horror have a hold on us? In concise but free-ranging essays, she looks at the prominent themes that sets the horror oft the last decade apart, peeling back the skin of the genre to see how it’s muscle flex and grip, and also give you tons of films to watch in the process. We have a similarly freewheeling conversation in this episode, talking about everything from our primal horror movie experiences, to the meme-ification of monsters and why Mike Flanagan is both outlier and heart of the genre." She is also the author of Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You To Hate.]

Flight, Thomas. "Why The Zone of Interest Does Not Let You See." (Posted on Youtube: May 2024) ["A look at how The Zone of Interest uses off-screen space and sound design in one of the most hauntingly powerful ways I've ever seen in a film. Featuring an interview with Johnnie Burn, sound designer who just won an Oscar for his work on this film."]

Gordillo, Gastón. "The Fascist Disposition." Verso (July 18, 2024) ["What does the word “fascism” mean today, when fossil capitalism continues its accelerated march toward a climate catastrophe and the liberal democracies of North America and Europe support and arm Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza?"]

Like Stories of Old. "In Search of Absolute Beauty." (Posted on Youtube: March 26, 2021) ["Media included:A Hidden Life; A Star is Born; Amadeus; Annihilation; At Eternity’s Gate; Baby Driver; Before Midnight; Before Sunset; Black Swan; Cloud Atlas; Days of Heaven; Doctor Who; Dreams; Equilibrium; First Man; For vs. Ferrari; Gravity; Her; Interstellar; Into the Wild; Knight of Cups; Loving Vincent; Nomadland; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Soul; Sound of Metal; Sunshine; The Thin Red Line; The Counselor; The End of the Tour; The Great Beauty; The Greatest Showman; The Grey; The Intouchables; The New World; the Perks of Being a Wallflower; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; The Shawshank Redemption; The Tree of Life; To the Wonder; Voyage of Time."]

Valis, Karin. "Divine Embeddings: From the creation dance of Lord Shiva to the multidimensional vector space of word embeddings." Mercurial Minutes (June 26, 2023) ["Language, in any form, is a divine tool, a bridge between the tangible and the ineffable. Not a territory, yet powerful enough to change us to the core, trigger emotional storms or religious experiences. From the creation dance of Lord Shiva, threading the Garland of Letters that constitute the universe, to the multidimensional vector space of word embeddings, the divine essence of language unravels. The dance continues, inside the boney rigs of A100 industrial-grade GPUs, into realms we are just beginning to imagine."]

West, Stephen. "Is Killing Animals for Food Morally Justifiable?" Philosophize This! #71 (October 31, 2015) ["We see this in our culture all the time. Go to the supermarket: there’s beef. There’s chicken. There’s duck, lamb, anything you want. Are we patronizing a cause that is inherently immoral? Not talking about factory farming. Even if you went out and hunted, is it morally justifiable to kill animals for food? Now, I want to say something right off the bat. I don’t know what the answer to this question is, alright? Just because I’m giving arguments as a podcaster refuting people’s criteria does not mean that I think I somehow know the answer and that I’m pompously attacking how other people choose to behave. Really, I have no idea if there is an answer here, seriously. What I want to do is illustrate the games that we play in our heads, how easy it is to keep two sets of books when it comes to these moral criteria that we have. And I want to do it in an interesting context, so this conversation is a good one."]

---. "Kierkegaard on Anxiety." Philosophize This! #79 (March 22, 2016) ["A lot of people are lost. A lot of people find themselves either lost in the finite—conferring their identity onto social conventions or whatever culture happened to fall into their lap when they were born—or lost in the infinite—stuck in a state of analysis paralysis about the truly infinite possibilities that they can choose from, but they never really act on one of them. And as we were talking about last time, truly being a self requires you to have the realization that, yeah, there are an infinite number of things that I can do, but it also requires you to actually make a choice and act on one of those that corresponds with who you truly are. See, when we find ourselves in this balancing act between the two, the finite and the infinite as Kierkegaard calls them, we experience what he calls a state of dizziness, dizziness caused by the fact that we look at the sheer magnitude of possibilities that we have to choose from coupled with the fact that eventually we know we got to choose one of them. As you can probably imagine, in this state our heads get filled with all sorts of questions. We start catastrophizing. What if I’m wrong? What if this is a huge mistake I’m making? What if I wake up one morning a 60-year-old, retired, Navy admiral with a prosthetic hip and I feel like I did everything all wrong. And this is the essence of anxiety, isn’t it? To fear some future outcome that we really have little control over anyway."]

---. "New Atheists and cosmic purpose without God - (Zizek, Goff, Nagel)." Philosophize This! #197 (March 10, 2024) ["As we regularly do on this program-- we engage in a metamodernist steelmanning of different philosophical positions. Hopefully the process brings people some joy. Today we go from ideology, to New Atheism vs Creationism, to Aristotle, to Thomas Nagel, to Phillip Goff's new book called Why? The Purpose of the Universe."]

---. "On Insecurity." Philosophize This! #72 (November 18, 2015) ["On today's episode, we take a close look at insecurity from multiple angles. We look at it as a stand-alone method of influencing human behavior and consider how it compares with other methods of influencing human behavior. Ultimately the goal is to understand a little more about why we think and act the way we do. If you want some additional reading, check out the links below on Kant's moral law; there is a strong connection to what we've been talking about in the last few episodes, including this one. "]