Unmaking Sense

Episode 1.34: Democracy and Involvement; political attitudes to dissent.

When we choose to accept the legitimacy of an external authority, we become a part of that authority and it a part of us. Governmental systems that do not satisfy this test of involvement are not properly acting on behalf of their citizens, and so not legitimate.

Episode 1.33: The authorities we respect still involve choices for which we are responsible.

If we were to reject all external authority entirely, we would all have to begin again from scratch, so what is an appropriate attitude to external authority if we are to honour the sense of personal choice that makes us who we are?

Episode 1.32: Choosing how to make sense of the world entails rejecting external authorities.

The point of pragmatism rejecting absolute external authority lies in freeing us to choose our own ways of making sense of the world. Only when we embrace this challenge can we become properly ourselves.

Episode 1.31: What purpose does living the present have?

If the purpose of the present is not found in preparing for the future, what is its purpose when properly understood?

Episode 1.30: Ranking and Stealing Another Person’s Space.

Why our obsession with ranking people is destructive.

Episode 1.29: If we are to Live the Present, what should our attitude to the future be?

Dewey’s emphasis on living the present doesn’t entail ignoring the future, so what role does the future play in our lives?

Episode 1.28: There is no definitive final theory that encapsulates everything.

We need to embrace pluralism and accept difference as positive, and that requires us to abandon belief in a final absolute external solution as well as the notion that disagreements always mean one side is right and the other wrong.

Episode 1.27: Avoiding complacent happiness by engaging with others who think and live differently.

How can we avoid the risk of becoming self-satisfied with a lifestyle that is unsatisfactory or even destructive? Engaging with dissent, embracing difference; encouraging variety.

Episode 1.26: Three kinds of happiness.

Monovalent happiness finds it in single bonds with things such as possessions; bivalent happiness finds it in relationships such as that between who we want to be and who we become; trivalent happiness looks for the triple relationship between bivalent happiness and the needs and natures of the world and others as we meet in open, vulnerable authenticity.

Episode 1.25: The open texture of meaning; the importance of vulnerability and incompleteness.

Why questions are more interesting and important than answers because they open up new lines of enquiry and allow new possibilities to enter the world. How this works in human communication and bonding, and why a closed, complete conception of truth and meaning doesn’t work.