The Liberal Soul (Luke Mason)

This is the second part of two on the book The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch. In this episode I discuss elements of the book such as:

James Madison as a harbinger for the Constitution of Knowledge, the Falibilist and Empirical rules, earned authority and credibility, the reality based community is not the only community, a lesson from wikipedia, innovation in the social and political world, being thick skinned, cancelling as performance, what to say, free expression as protecting minority rights, walking away and not taking the bait, and sticking to what the reality based community has found to be factually accurate. 

Thank you so much for listening to The Liberal Soul.

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This episode is a little bit more personal than most of the previous solo ones. In this episode, I discuss the Greek myth of Prometheus. I subsequently talk about my concept of a Promethean and how they relate to the liberal soul. After, I relay a few honorable mentions, plus my top five Prometheans that have given me fire in my life. There is no source text for this episode (other than the myth itself), so it's a little bit more spontaneous than most of the solo episodes. I hope you enjoy it. Some of the specifics of this episode include:

- The fact that Prometheus translates to foresight

- Go through the Prometheus story; also noticing how great it is that he is saved by a human.

- The difference between a Promethean and a hero

- My top five Prometheans.

Happy Twentieth episode and thank you for listening!

- Historicism, Fate, many examples of Free Will not existing, our thoughts on how this would shake up our lives, how a lack of Free Will could undermine our institutions, some personal anecdotes on the topic, and how Harris mis-emphasizes what people care about in this debate.

This episode was a ton of fun and I can't wait to have Christian back on the podcast. Please subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice to get new episodes when they are released. 

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This episode is the second in a two-parter talking about the book A Thousand Small Sanities by Adam Gopnik. In part two, I'll be talking about Gopnik's observations of why the Right and Left politically dislike liberals. 

Some of the things I talk about are:

- Liberals and Conservatives having different temperaments - and that they both share a tragic view of life but the liberal believes in the possibility of incremental improvement over time

- Strong man politics is the norm in the human history, not the aberration. The question isn't "how does it arise" but rather "what has ever kept it from happening?"

- Clan or identity based groups end up having internal schisms (who is the REAL Conservative?). They will build their own out groups internally after they get their way. Because of the panoply of human diversity, there will always be misfits even in closed societies. 

- Liberal states are uncomfortable places if you don't want your dogma debated

- Free markets being a liberal invention in their inception, not a conservative one

- Liberals are anti-essentialist and anti-determinist, and this often puts them at odds philosophically and logically with Leftists and Reactionaries. 

- Liberals are concerned with what makes humans similar, and understand an obsession with what makes us different is venom

- Liberals are unequivocally committed to free speech, and because of the underlying conceptions around power and cognition, this often puts them at odds with Leftists. 

This episode is a celebration of the life and impact of Christopher Hitchens. December 15th, 2021 is the ten year anniversary of his death, so Cole and I discuss all things Hitchens in memorial. Both Cole and I were introduced to Hitchens through the religion angle, but there was so much more to his life and career. We free associate on his charm, intelligence, humor, wit and how he became must see Youtube. We also wax a bit on Hitchens as Quality (in a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance sense), and finally give our thoughts on why Hitchens matters. Enjoy the episode!

Here is the link to Hitchens Free Speech debate in Toronto from 2006:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDap-K6GmL0&t=27s

Welcome to part two of my episodes on the book Letters To A Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens. In the continuation of the book, in this episode I talk about: being a self appointed thinker, how being a good friend sometimes means imposing yourself into your friends delusions, the universalism of people and how everywhere suffers from the narcissism of the small difference, how people everywhere just want the unquenchable sense of dignity, the uses and disuses of humor in dissidence, the next great goals for dissidents, and the importance of inspiration in mental and social life. Please see link for what I think is Hitch's most inspiring monologue: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaBfB-p9Cbg

Thanks again for listening to The Liberal Soul. If you are interested in the full catalogue, here is the link to that: 
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For this episode of The Liberal Soul I have borrowed a bonus episode from my other podcast Really True Fiction. For that episode, I recorded a chat with my RTF cohost (David Parker) and guest (Josiah Martinoski) on the 2021 film Dune; directed by Denis Villeneuve. This was a follow up to a recording about a year earlier on the novel Dune which was a full episode on RTF. Please check out that episode if you are interested.

In this episode the three of us discuss all things Dune from the new film and everything in between. Even though this wasn't initially intended as a Liberal Soul episode, I think it fits the bill. Enjoy!

For the second episode of The Liberal Soul I'm very pleased to be joined by my cousin and cohost of our other podcast Really True Fiction: David Parker.

In this episode, David and I chat about the seminal and foundational liberal essay On Liberty (1859) by John Stuart Mill. Here is a link  if you want to read it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm

In our chat, David and I discuss:

- liberty as a first person endeavor and taking it away fundamentally robs a person of the autonomy of their conscience and consciousness, not just their enfranchisement.

- Without freedom of opinion even the true things that we know lose their vitality and we become lazy in teaching them

- Both Socrates and Jesus were put to death for blasphemy 

- Censorship makes you and your society stupid and doesn't create moral intellects

- Principles cut both ways - that's their whole point.

- The general difficulty in discerning harm and how it needs to be an ongoing negotiation

- New ideas are the energy to prevent social entropy - a truly progressive take

- Art needs individuals who think different

- And finally, how the principles of the Enlightenment are universal and not just for the peoples of Europe and America.

Finally, David is the host of The Canadian Story podcast. You can listen to that podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1AP0ujpeDXnyk39hEHTSEG

This episode of The Liberal Soul is all about video games. I am joined by my two longtime friends Justin and Matt to list our top five favourite video games. We also chat along the way about why we love video games, what our earliest memories of them are, what they have done for our lives, and much more. Thanks for listening to the show! 

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I am pleased to be joined by guests Brady Gavin and Danica Weager in this episode of The Liberal Soul to talk all about travelling and visiting different places around the world. Some of the things we talk about are:

- Where in the world we have all been

- How travel affects perspective

- How easy it can be to get along with people in other countries

- Weird travel stories and highlights

- Environmentalism in travel

- Travel as interconnectedness 

Thanks again everyone. Please subscribe to The Liberal Soul if you like the podcast. 

Welcome back to another episode of The Liberal Soul. This episode is a hashing out of something I have been thinking about for a while, as well as a concept alluded to in episode 4 of this podcast with Cole Kander. It is that I have always considered Religion to be much too broad of a term; thus allowing for confusing disagreement and talking past one another when debating its merits. As such, I have broken the concept of religion (specifically Christianity for this episode) into four separate categories in order to specify what is or isn't useful about them. Namely they are: Empirical claims about the world, Metaphysical claims about the world, the Social Ethic that comes with religion, and the Psychology of the stories.

My argument is that basically the first two are incorrect, completed, non sensical or damaging aspects of what we call religion and should be more or less discarded. But also that the latter two contain much wisdom, compassion and insight and deserve to be incorporated into modern life more tightly. 

Either way, religion is not a useful term all on its own, and this is my first stab at asking what we are talking about at any given point under the rubric of "religion". Below are the time stamps for each of the four concepts. Enjoy!

Empiricism - 14:25

Metaphysics - 25:17

Social Ethics - 35:30

Psychology - 46:15

In this episode I discuss parts of the book The Conservative Sensibility by the American writer George Will. I wanted to branch out a little and read a book that is infused with Conservative philosophy to chew on. I especially was interested in Conservative philosophy that has no time for the modern manifestation of the alt right and QANON thinking; as well as a philosophy that self identifies as not needing theism. George Will manages to eschew both of those liabilities. In the book I talk about:

- The universality of human nature

- Natural Rights at the heart of the American founding - and the political philosophical backdrop to American life today is whether governments job is to secure rights for its citizens (Conservatism) or grant rights to its citizens (Progressivism)

- Natural Rights as a heuristic

- The three liberalisms in American political history

- Ignorance as an inevitable element is mass centralization

- Ingratitude as a function of intellectuals and bureaucrats

- Conservatism without Theism

- Living a flourishing life

Thanks for listening! If you want to get a hold of me you can:

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Annyeong!

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I talk to my good friend David Harris. David lives in England and we met each other while living in Gwangju, South Korea. It was a real pleasure having Dave on the podcast; he is a ton of fun to talk to. We spend most of this episode talking about football (soccer) and what it means often to people living in England. Some of the things we talk about are:

- How we met and what a Hash is

- The Tottenham Hotspurs and how there are many professional football leagues in England

- Hockey Vs. Soccer and the FA Cup

- Football fandom and how it very much is a communal, working class sport from the beginning

- The historical place football plays for England

- How it is such an international and connecting thing for people, and how it is such a release.

Thanks for listening! Please subscribe to The Liberal Soul and leaving a rating or review if you feel so inclined. 

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I begin the book The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, essayist, dissident and one of the great moral titans of the twentieth century. Largely thanks to his courage the rest of the world learned in depth what was going on behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union during the Stalin years. In part one I talk about Solzhenitsyn's observations on:

- How the Party would arrest people - and how eventually people felt relief at being arrested

- That this was happening from the start - group guilt was an essential part of the Soviet Unions ethos

- The performative and theatrical nature of the Soviet Union - because its not easy in a bureaucracy when you are bringing value

- Soviet relativity - but the bullet is absolute.

- The people who don't think or feel - these will be the interrogators in your society.

- The line of good and evil runs through everyone's heart. Ideologues don't think this.

- Insight on ideology in general - the ability to justify beliefs and behaviours.

Thanks to everyone who listens to this podcast. I will be back with more episodes on The Gulag Archipelago.

Hello, 

You've found The Liberal Soul.

In this inaugural episode I am joined by my friend Danica to give an introduction and overview on what inspired the creation of this podcast and what I hope to explore as more episodes come out.

Some of the main things we talk about in this episode are:

- Where the idea for The Liberal Soul came from in the first place

- My formulation for Highest Common Denominator and how I hope it to be the abiding heuristic for the podcast 

- Liberalism as an embodied, human first, anti-solipsism based philosophy

- How I see the liberal soul as similar or different to stoicism

- How initiating kindness, vulnerability and curiosity is the starter for getting trust off the ground

- The paramount value of freedom of opinion because of the knowledge that every human is fallible and can be wrong

Additionally, there are spoilers for Batman Begins in this episode. 

This is part one of a two parter on the book The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch. This book is about how we socially gather knowledge, and how it is distributed and adhered to in what Rauch calls the reality based community. I conceived of this book as being related to the liberal soul in the idea that knowledge is about disconfirmation; thus is something we only have provisionally, but still with degrees of certainty. This formulation always allows for further work to be done without ever having a final goal of knowledge. 

In part one I discuss different backgrounds to Rauch's conception of the Consitution of Knowledge, and what it stands to give us in life (hint: knowledge, freedom and peace). Enjoy!

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In this episode of The Liberal Soul I talk all things Ultimate Frisbee with my friends Tobias Gray and Nicole Perrin. We chat about our first encounters with the sport, the physicality of it, the many ways which it differs from other sports, the social and communal elements within it, and why we love to spend our free time engaged in Ultimate. 

This episode was a blast, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. If you enjoy The Liberal Soul you can find all episodes at this link:

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Thanks again for listening, you found The Liberal Soul. 

In this episode I give a very introductory opening to the idea of Pragmatism; the first American philosophy. I have come to think about Pragmatism and it's relationship to Liberalism by its adherence to reality and practical, real world effects. For this introduction, I discuss some of the lectures of Pragmatism by the great psychologist and philosopher William James. Some of the points I discuss in this episode are:

- How Pragmatism was the first philosophy given to the world by American thinkers

- Pragmatism - what do you practically mean?

- Layer of analysis and materialism as a basis for it but not always the most interesting part of it

- The truth as utility at not merely as principle

- How Pragmatism is a reality based philosophy that shifts the onus and responsibility of decision making and question asking back onto individual people

Here is a link to all eight lectures if you are interested:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htm

In this short bonus episode I meditate on why Christmas is such a wonderful holiday beyond its religious affiliations. 

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I take a little detour down a Karl Popper path and discuss a section from his book The Open Society And Its Enemies. There is an incredible section of that book where Popper dissects the difference between individualism and egoism; and how Plato conflated them for his own propaganda. By equating individualism with egoism, Plato made it easy to dismiss as uncaring, selfish, and without interest in altruism. Popper points out a simple error in logic from Plato that leads to this (intentional?) misunderstanding. 

Popper points out that individualism in the philosophic sense is contrasted against collectivism, not altruism. By stating that individualism is a synonym of egoism, Plato forgoes the responsibility of arguing the merits or demerits of collectivism (which is unsurprising given his totalitarian ambitions discussed in The Republic). In this formulation, Popper argues that a person can be a Individualist Altruist (caring for the wellbeing of individual people). This is the idea I explore in this episode.

In this episode I talk about:

- The example of the individualist - altruist in the figure of Charles Dickens

- The phenomenon of NIMBY (not in my back yard), and the longer, deeper, further and harder work it actually is to help people who are struggling and suffering.

- Pericles sense of justice vs. Plato's.

- Music and the arts as a prime example of the benefit and need for individualism

- How the quirky individual is no good for a collectivist culture or state

- Some quotes from Plato demonstrating his intentional dishonesty

- Some of the totalitarian ideas in Christianity inherited from Plato

- And how individualism isn't just an abstract idea to make it work; it needs to be alive in the hearts of people. 

Welcome to part one of a four part mini-series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. This book is a Promethean level of fresh air intellectually when it comes to understanding how a free society can operate; and what are the kind of mentalities that are opposed to that. Even though it is mentioned as unknowing in the episode, this book was published in 1945. It comes in two volumes, and for this episode I will be talking about the first half of volume one. In today's episode I discuss that parts of Poppers argument that deal with:

- Historicism as Popper's catch all idea for the undergirding of all those interested in the closed society

- How a turbulent world or social structure often inspires people to feel a need to return to a closed society - with all the tribal myths and stories about the greatness of a given people coming back into the fore

- Plato's theory on the forms/ideas - postulating the idea of perfection

- Plato's conclusion that change is evil and rest is divine - and how he begins to apply this idea to that of the State

- How the concept of something being socially constructed does not necessitate that is is completely arbitrary. That in fact a better way to think about social constructions is asking what kind of problem are they purporting to solve.

- The underlying fear of people that ethical obligations are the our responsibility

- How Plato would twist the meaning of words to his own designs

- And how borderline moral and intellectual cases are welcome in an open society because it keeps our thinking sharp.

I hope you enjoy this first part, and there are three more to come. 

What are we talking about when we are talking about doing science? How is doing science different from the other forms that we call knowledge or discovery? This is the philosophical task at hand covered by Karl Popper in his work Conjectures and Refutations. I have already done several episodes on Popper's book The Open Society And Its Enemies; but I thought it would be fruitful to talk a little as well about some of the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method as they strike me as similar to the concept of fallibility which is so crucial in understanding liberalism.

In this episode I discuss Popper's notions on:

- The problem of demarcation in science

- The difference between asking "How do you know that?" vs "How can be best eliminate errors?"

- Criticizing our own theories if we can - Critical Rationalism

- Verificationism actually a weakness of a theory, not a strength of it.

- Scientific theories are risky - and can be disproved by certain observations

- Irrefutability a vice

- Dogmatic thinking in line with verification thinking and critical thinking in line with scientific thinking

- Using philosophy to solve problems outside of philosophy - its about problem solving not just internal gazing

I hope you enjoy another episode from the unperishable Karl Popper.

For this episode I (only begin) tackling the concept of Free Will and it's relationship to our liberal lives. I use the short book Free Will by Sam Harris as a springboard to discuss to my thoughts on this concept; and why I think it's been a little misunderstood in the culture since his book was published in 2012. (At least to the extent it's been in the culture at all haha). Some of the things I talk about are:

- Framing the concept of Free Will different than Harris

- Volition is the kind of free will we care about because it manifests itself in the social world

- That there has been a confusion about Free Will that comes from Christian metaphysics and its attempts to solve the Problem of Evil

- A poker analogy for what part of the game (real life) we care about

- Some musical examples to illustrate my point (PS. I mention in the recording that I had perfect syllable fidelity for the Harry Potter song. I don't know if that is true actually, but it is very close if not).

- A tennis analogy for morality

- A special surprise at the end. 

Thanks again for listening to The Liberal Soul. I hope you enjoy and please give a rating or review if you listen on Apple Podcasts. Here is the link to the show as well:

https://theliberalsoul87.libsyn.com/

Welcome to the last part of a three part series on the book The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In this final episode I talk about:

- What it's like to live in fear with no peace of mind - which means no psychological freedom

- The betrayals in the Soviet Union - and how they are a little bit reminiscent of cancel culture 

- The great lie - cliches and slogans and slave psychology

- The kids that are guarding him - like the puppies in Animal Farm

- Expansion of the enemy group will be inevitable when your Utopia not realized

- How there is no freedom to opt out of Utopia - a regime being irrelevant is insufferable 

Thank you so much for listening. I will be back soon with another episode. 

In this episode of The Liberal Soul, I speak with musician, sound engineer, and my cousin Zach Gerber. Zach lives in Ontario and has been involved professionally in music for the last decade. Zach is a touring musician with the Canadian band Walk Off The Earth, so he has lots of great stories about festivals and concerts. Music being my first love, I wanted to have an episode talking to Zach about music and how it has shaped our lives. Some of the things we talk about are:

- Zach's beginnings in music and sound engineering

- Some of the great stories Zach has from interacting with other big name acts at festivals

- Our first memories of music, and music's ability as truth telling

- The universalization of music and how it becomes circular with appreciation and inspiration

- What music has had the deepest impact on our lives

- Music as good and necessary for the misfits of the world

- Lots and talk about pop punk bands and especially Jimmy Eat World

- And finally, what role music plays now in our lives that we are a little older.

Thanks for listening! Don't forget to subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use! 

Welcome to a new episode of The Liberal Soul. This is part one of a two parter on the book Letters To A Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens. In December 2021 it was the ten year anniversary of the death of Hitch. Because of the impact Hitchens had on my intellectual development, I wanted to do an episode(s) on him. Letters being his most philosophical book, it seemed the appropriate one. In part one I muse on ideas from the book such as: how contrarian is a slightly misleading word considering what this book is about, being principled over partisan, anti-scapegoating, the As If principle and its relationship to Highest Common Denominator, moral triage, don't go thereism, and standing up to a crowd.

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This episode of The Liberal Soul is part one of a two part reflection on the 2019 book A Thousand Small Sanities by Adam Gopnik. I have mentioned this book a couple times in the first couple episodes, so I wanted to give it its due here. This book was the proximate impetus for this podcast as I recall being quite inspired and educated when I first read it. In part one I talk about:

- Liberalism being an emergent philosophy with the discovery that other people have a moral conscience as well as ourselves. This helps us move out of solipsism because we can understand that other people feel the pull of the world as well as us.

- Rhinoceros vs. Unicorn political theories - real vs. ideal

- Human life has always been contentious, this is nothing new to the modern world

- Liberals are passionate about self made community, and liberal people have made Liberalism

- The human condition is messy, and everyone has a little liberal and conservative within their own hearts; liberalism makes room for this doubleness and fallibility. Our problems are stamped into human nature.

- And finally, revolution isn't anathema to liberals, but it is the last resort. Liberals, if there is no other option, are willing to fight with minimum necessary force and forego any vengeance after winning. The liberal model is Cincinnatus, not Caesar. 

Welcome to double digits of The Liberal Soul! For today's episode I will be talking about Jonathon Haidt's book from 2012: The Righteous Mind (Why good people are divided by politics and religion). 

I wanted to do this episode to draw in some moral psychology into political and religious philosophy. Haidt's careful consideration of why people believe different things and his analogies for how the mind has different default settings is really fascinating and useful for navigating a world with other people who don't agree with you. I highly recommend the book if you have time.

Some of the highlights in this episode are: The phenomenon of moral dumbfounding, how babies appear to have a moral sense, Moral Foundations Theory, how people are pulled to being more objective if they have an audience with unknown opinions, exploratory vs confirmatory thought, and how (in my view) the pillars in MFT can often be in conflict with each other.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

*Mild spoilers for season two of House of Cards in this episode*

Welcome to part three of a four part series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. If you haven't listened to the first two parts yet I would highly recommend that you do, as the book builds through the parts and I will make references in todays episode that will have more context if you are familiar with the previous two episodes. In part three, I discuss Popper's take on how Aristotle and Hegel have intellectually contributed to the closed society ethos; and also begin with how Marx did. In this episode I discuss:

- Teleology and its application to the forms from Plato - that it is process driven Essentialism, and that there is in fact no such thing as static reality.

- Competing arguments is how we live and it is necessarily so

- Hegel as a politically useful philosopher - he had ability to use language to his own ends. His contribution was beginning our sense of Nationalism in the modern sense, and how that always needs an enemy.

- Heroism as only being as good as the cause for which one is a hero in

- The "ya but how" heuristic

- How economies and ideas are a two way street

- How economic power is dependent on political and physical power.

Thanks again for listening, have a great day!

This is part two of a three part series on the book The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. If you have not yet listened to part one I would recommend you do as it sets the context for the book and the episodes I am doing on it. In this episode I discuss the parts of the book that have to do with:

- The over capacity of the prison cells as well as the implications that has for basic human functions

- When the concentration camps started in the Soviet Union as well as the estimated amount of lives lost in said Union.

- All of the imaginative ways people could violate Rule 58 (political agitation) 

- What it was like for the Communists who got arrested

- Particular forms of Soviet Logic

- The weeding out process of the guards until it was only the cruelest people left

Thanks again for listening! If you want to get in touch with me you can send an email to theliberalsoul87@gmail.com. 

You can also follow on Twitter: @liberalsoul87 or search for The Liberal Soul on Facebook. 

For this episode I do a book that I wasn't even thinking of doing for this podcast before I started reading it. It's The Life Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. There were a number of points of this book that struck me as relevant to The Liberal Soul; so I jotted them down. In this episode I discuss: birthdays, seperation from a parent, unjust punishments, slavery and the Soviet Union, rock bottoms, bad faith actors, meritocracy and cheating.

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Welcome back to another episode of The Liberal Soul. For todays episode I was happy to be joined by Alex Cormier. Alex and I cohost a show on local radio called Full Spectrum Cinema; and in every episode we choose a movie and talk about it for an hour. Naturally, Alex seemed like a perfect guest for the podcast. We talk all about movies; why we love them and what they have meant for us in our lives. Some of the specific things we discuss are:

- Some of the early films in our lives that were meaningful to us. 

- Films that made us feel new things

- Some of the factors that made us think about films as more than just entertainment.

- How great movies leave you thinking more about them, and how more context can help you appreciate them.

- Adaptations vs. original screenplays

- Our thoughts specifically on David Lynch and Richard Linklater

- How movies have made us think differently about the world

- And how our even getting together is an example of emergence and self made community.

Thank you for listening to the show. Please tell any friends who you think may enjoy it.

In this solo episode I talk about the 1841 essay Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This essay had a profound effect on my life when I first read it, and I still go back to it every year or so for inspiration. Emerson talks about the psychological importance of non-conformity, of trusting your own mind, and being the author of your own creations and endeavors. Here is a link to the essay if you are interested in reading it: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html

Here is the conclusion of my four part series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. This episode finishes up Popper's observations on Marx as well as his general overview on how we should best think about history. In this episode I discuss Popper's thoughts on:

- How upon success revolutionary leaders become the new ruling class - and how there are many different classes; not just two.

- How modern democracies are not what Marx knew as capitalism - political intervention as a less sexy but also less violent reform instead of revolution

- The impoverished conception of Marx's practical program

- Violence ended the exact moment it is not needed is the point of revolution

- The Left Wings ambivalence and ambiguity toward violence is something to be suspicious of - equality or table turning?

- The working class are realists and Marx had a lack of imagination in regards to Capitalism - the world today doesn't mean the world forever

- We can use our thoughts to change our environment - the ethos of The Liberal Soul is about reflection and being able to change your mind

- Honesty is making sure other people know what you mean by your words - traditions need to be analyzed before celebrated

- Rationalism vs Irrationalism 

- Equality before the law - not a fact but a political demand based on a moral decision

- One can only learn if you take others seriously

Thank you once again for listening to The Liberal Soul. If you enjoy the podcast please subscribe and leave a rating or review. 

In this episode of The Liberal Soul I talk with my friend Cole Kander. I wanted to talk to Cole because he and I have had a very similar life trajectory. We were both born and raised in a very Protestant house and church culture, and we both have decided that kind of life isn't for us. I know this can be a really hard thing to talk about for many people, so I'm really proud of Cole being able to put himself out there like this.

Some of the things we talk about are:

- Our religious upbringings and how it affected our younger selves

- Creationism Vs. Evolution and the empirical claims of Christianity

- How people rationalize their beliefs

- The Four Horsemen and what they did for our understanding of Christianity (especially Christopher Hitchens)

- An example of human sacrifice in the Bible (the name we were looking for and couldn't find was Jephthah's daughter)

- Some criticism of how Jordan Peterson talks about Christianity, and what he seems to assume about Christians.

- How we feel at this stage in our life about other people believing

- How bad actors are attracted to where people's attention is already oriented 

- And finally, what gives our lives meaning if it isn't God. 

There are also spoilers for the movie Surrogates mentioned in this episode. Thanks for listening! Here is a link to The Liberal Soul:

https://theliberalsoul87.libsyn.com/

And here is the link to the Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/Liberalsoul87

Just a couple of rebels sitting around trying to take down the Empire. In this episode of The Liberal Soul I am so pleased to be joined by my wonderful friends Alex Wan and Billie Schultz. The three of us also do the Nothing To Fear podcast where every week we watch a scary movie and talk about it so you don't have to! 

However, in today's episode we go back to our roots: Star Wars. The saga is one of the first things that bonded us and was one of the first movies that made us fall in love with movies. In this episode we talk about:

- Our first experiences with Star Wars (for both Alex and Billie it was The Empire Strikes Back, but not so for me)

- How it was all about adventure and very cleverly blew past the details

- How we view the original trilogy now and how you don't really need to care about the plot because of how charming the characters are

- Our relationship to the prequel and the sequel trilogies 

- And finally how meeting your legends is a hard thing to do.

Thanks so much for listening. Here is a link to the Nothing to Fear podcast if you want to check that out (which I highly recommend):
https://anchor.fm/nothingtofear

I was pleased to be joined by some friends from high school, Russ Fountain and Eric Wahn, to discuss their love and affinity for all things mountain biking. We talk about how they first came to love mountain biking, some of the influences on that passion, the love/hate relationships they have with trail building, how mountain biking allowed them to go to Germany to help out with some trails there, and how the relationship with the bikes and nature affects their feelings about it all. 

Just a big thank you again to Russ and Eric for joining the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to The Liberal Soul on whatever app you use for your podcasts. Here is a link to the full podcastography:
https://theliberalsoul87.libsyn.com/

First episode on George Orwell. My guest for this episode is my great friend Danica Weager. We take as our launchpad the Orwell essay Politics and the English Language. It's been a goal of this podcast to also talk about language and how we use it. Orwell is the perfect writer in this regard. In todays episode we talk about:

- The ease of invoking names without understanding the underlying principles

- The Liberal ethos "yes things are bad, but we can improve them"

- What we mean by the words is more important than the words themselves

- Part of the liberal ethos is to concretize your points with vivid examples

- How nominalizing verbs makes language boring

- How the disciplines that are mediated through people have the vaguest language

- And how Orwell had the power to face unpleasant facts.

https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/

This episode is part two of a four part series on the book The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper. Please listen to episode one before this as it will give context for this episode. In this episode I discuss:

- Plato's formulation about who should rule is a useless question - rather we should ask how we can make institutions that prevent bad rulers from doing too much harm, as many to most rulers are below average in real life.

- Shortcomings in a democratic state are the responsibility of the citizens in that state and should not be blamed on democracy itself.

- Focusing on the question of who should rule will turn the education of leaders into a kind of race or competition rather than having those students focus on their studies for its own sake. They will rather be focused on furthering their careers instead.

- My formulation of the Noble Truth to counteract against Plato's the Noble Lie - we have to create and discovering our own meaning in life by consciously selecting our own stories to live by.

- The concept of philosopher as made clear by the distinction between Socrates and Plato; the former as a lover and seeker of wisdom and the latter as a proud possessor of knowledge.

- The difference between the Utopian and Piecemeal social engineer

- Plato as noticing the strain from the rise of democracy, and took advantage of existing sentiments to use language duplicitously to attempt to bring a more closed society. 

- And how we can't return to the closed society without becoming beasts.