Unmaking Sense

Episode 7.13: The first BBC Reith Lecture of 2022: Freedom of Speech by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Freedom of speech.

Episode 7.12: Why we don’t need permission from something beyond the world to speak our minds.

Rowan Williams’ Reith Lecture from December 22, 2022, and why I disagree with the central point he seems to be trying to make about Freedom of Worship (Wœrth-ship): we do not need permission from something beyond the world to fight our corner, oppose prevailing social views, or speak our minds. That right is ours absolutely - if anything is - with or without any external thing or person giving us permission to exercise it.

Episode 7.11: Time and Purpose; Life and Work; Right and Left.

How should we spend this time? What is the proper relationship between work and life? Would we happily continue to spend our lives the way we do even if we were not being paid for it if we were able to afford it? What is the argument between left and right in politics really about if not about the quality of life of the workers, who generate all the wealth that the rich and powerful enjoy?

Episode 7.10: Choices of means and ends, good and values, and how they define tribal rationality.

Then goods we choose are the aims or ends that guide our lives; the values we live by are the standards we think it acceptable and humane to deploy to achieve those goods. Choice defines both, even if our choices are often inherited at birth. But we can change our choices, and so become different kinds of human being who aspire to different things achievable by different means.

Episode 7.09: What constitutes success and why power does not guarantee happiness.

Plato’s Gorgias on why power does not guarantee happiness unless it can achieve its desired ends; and why only a socially-embedded concept of personal fulfilment can be deem to constitute real happiness.

Episode 7.08: The vulnerability of self-organising societies to the emergence of rogue elements.

We could do without police and soldiers if we could be sure that no rogue elements would exploit the vulnerability that creates for their own ends. Self-organised societies all suffer from this vulnerability, as Asimov’s Mule illustrates and as we have experienced with such rogue elements as Stalin, Hitler and Trump.

Episode 7.07: The One and the Many; Spencer’s Social Darwinism and Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid.

The self-organisation possible on the basis of simple locally-implemented rules can serve many purposes. How do we reconcile individual and collective interests? Are they even incompatible? Does naked self-serving behaviour offer as much or as little prospect of collective well-being as co-operative behaviour?

Episode 7.06: Five things that make referenda undemocratic.

Balance; Opposition; Representation; Individualism; Simplification. In a word: BORIS.

Episode 7.05: The necessary components of democracy.

Agreement; accommodated dissent; freedom to speak, defend and disagree; a free flow of reliable information; education; a fair legal system; respect for minorities by majorities; and the personal active participation of every citizen in the system that is operated in their name.

Episode 7.04: Why our ineradicable differences are our greatest strengths.

We avoid fighting despite our differences by accommodating dissent, and by accommodating dissent we preserve differences that create the resilience that allows us to solve most of our problems.