Unmaking Sense

Episode 5.11: The self is created and defined in a process of becoming; it is not fixed.

Everything we do contributes to our self-creation in a process of becoming.

Episode 5.10: If everything affects us indelibly, doesn’t that inhibit us from experimentation?

If everything we do affects us in a way that can’t completely be erased, removed or forgotten, then doesn’t that produce a very serious inhibition to the otherwise seemingly advantageous benefits of doing lots of experiments in life from which to determine what best suits us and so how best to move forward? This turns out to be one of those objections which gives the key to a much deeper point which is thoroughly in favour of properly-understood experiments in life.

Episode 5.09: Everything we experience changes us; nothing’s like swapping coats; they leave a mark.

Everything we do changes us because if we are not of a dualist persuasion everything that we do must affect the one material form that is each of us. Trying something in an experiment isn’t like putting on a coat that we can take off again leaving us exactly the same; everything changes us.

Episode 5.08: The Mutually Reinforcing Dynamics and Destructiveness of Self-Loathing.

Because none of us likes to feel bad about ourselves we should be reluctant to use our ability to make other people feel worse about themselves as a way of making ourselves feel better about ourselves. In the long term it’s always better to love your enemies than to hate them, always better to share your love with them than your hatred in a way that will make them even more damaging and destructive than they already are.

Episode 5.07: Collusions of self-interest and their potential antidotes.

Coteries of leaders and their immediate supporters must solve a kind of minimax problem to decide who is the least worst person to have at the top. Doing without self-interest through such things as Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid as a feature of human other species’ natures.

Episode 5.06: Why a leader may not be as all-powerful as we suppose.

Leaders depend on the collusive self-interest of those around them to gain and retain their power.

Episode 5.05: The non-persistence of the self; how we cannot but change over time.

Various traditions suggest that the self remains the same from conception through birth to death but that’s quite clearly not a tenable position any longer. Everything that happens to us changes our bodies and so must change us, however imperceptibly.

Episode 5.04: Ten Reasons for the universality of the Cult of Leadership.

We consider 10 different reasons why we might be disposed to go on believing in the cult of leadership despite the fact that leaders have been responsible for so much of the misery that has befallen the world. Note: The title of Simone de Beauvoir’s book mentioned is “The Ethics of Ambiguity” not “The Ambiguity of Freedom”.

Episode 5.03: Unless we learn to control our nonconscious selves we become prey to manipulation.

Our nonconscious selves, our susceptibility to devotion to external influencers and our lack of self-understanding make us prey to those who would manipulate us to serve their own ends. By more self-consciously attending to the external influences we fall under - especially by refusing to buy into the myth of our need for leaders - we can take control of our lives and make the world a better and safer place.

Episode 5.02: The dangerous need for something outside ourselves that we think completes our selves.

The roots of our devotion to leaders lie in a defective notion of the self and behaviour that reflects a belief that we are made whole by things outside and beyond ourselves. The cult of celebrity and the cult of the leader. We need to unmake this mistaken sense of self to free ourselves from the Hitlers, Stalins and Putins of this world.