Radio Free Beszel

Dec 24 2021 20 ep. 11 mins 14

Radio Free Beszel Podcast artwork

The world is changing. What was stable has become unstuck: mass movements and class conflicts, elite hubris and institutional failure, authoritarianism and a collapse of authority: and everywhere a crisis of meaning. How should one live in this world? In this podcast, I take books I read and ideas I find and try to bring them down to earth, to understand what is happening here and now. I seek lasting principles, not hot takes. Topics include the professional class; critiques of social justice and identity politics; the information society; myth, narrative and meaning. I want to see clearly and speak freely. "Who knows, doesn't talk. Who talks, doesn't know." — Tao Te Ching

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Discourse, the Demon of Social Justice

Dec 24 2021 8 mins

Discourse is at the heart of social justice: the idea human beings are not free actors in the world, but are instead constrained by language, in the form of discourses that have been established over time. And we do not create our identities freely: who we our is our experiences of different discourses - discourses like race, gender, nationality, and so forth.Discourses are power r

Racecraft: Constructing Race

Dec 17 2021 7 mins

"Racism always takes for granted the objective reality of race . . . [which] transforms racism, something an aggressor does, into race, something the target is, in a sleight of hand that is easy to miss." — Karen & Barbara Fields, RacecraftRace is invisible. Skin colour is merely in indication of something deeper, a hidden quality of the intellect or the personality. But that

Witchcraft's Reason

Dec 10 2021 10 mins

We need someone to blame. When something bad happens, we don't want to hear that it's because of chance or nature, because then it's meaningless. We want a social explanation. That's what witchcraft delivered for the Azande people, studied by Edward Evans-Pritchard,For the Azande, everyday misfortunes are caused by witchcraft. If you get sick, and the illness gets progressively wor

What Are Social Constructions Made Of?

Dec 03 2021 12 mins

"When a dancer stops dancing, the dance is finished." - Bruno LatourWhat Latour calls "critical sociology" (an intellectual foundation of social justice) does three things. 1) It replaces the activities of real people with abstract forces from a limited set of existing categories, like capitalism, society, racism, etc. 2) It ignores the protests of the actors when they say that's n

The Invention of White Privilege

Nov 26 2021 7 mins

Plantation owners in 17th century Barbados had a problem. They purchased white indentured servants and black slaves. At that time, there was little difference: life expectancy was so short that most indentured servants never saw freedom. The decision to buy servants or slaves was often dictated by price.Black and white alike, the oppressed teamed up to rebel. Their oppressors conco

The Matrix and the Heresy of Progress

Nov 19 2021 13 mins

The Matrix echoes the Gnostic heresy: the world is a prison for our souls, the creator is evil, and knowledge brings freedom. In the film, what appears to be reality is in fact an illusion created to enslave humanity. The red pill reveals the true world and grants the power to control the illusion to war against the creator.For the ancient Gnostics, the material world was false. Ou

Live Not for Others

Nov 12 2021 10 mins

Affirmation is a trap. It makes us dependent, weak and unhappy.It starts in school. Some comply and are rewarded. They do well in school: but if they have come to expect praise, they may be lost or angry in lie. Others resist and are punished, and lose out as they enter the world of work. Often it is girls who comply, and boys who do not. Both are sabotaged in life.But instead of t

Joseph Tainter: Collapse and Complexity

Nov 05 2021 13 mins

As society becomes complex, it reaches a point where the cost of coping with problems exceeds the benefits. Then, people may choose collapse as the lesser evil. But in a globalized world, no society can collapse in isolation. The alternative is the progressive immiseration of the population to preserve the rickety complexity of the system and the privileges of the few who benefit.T

Shawshank: The Prison of Professional Life

Oct 29 2021 9 mins

The lesson of The Shawshank Redemption is compliance. The film is about life, and Shawshank prison stands for the institutions to which professionals devote their careers.It seems to be a story of freedom. It is not. The film affirms a myth that all professionals are taught: They are more intelligent and better educated. They are more sensitive. Unlike the faceless masses, they are

Like Bad Parents

Oct 22 2021 8 mins

We punish adults as though they were children - in ways that don't even work on kids.We say that we are handing out "consequences" - as though we are parents and they are our children. Of course it doesn't work - no-one likes being treated that way. Not even children.The real keys to effective parenting are trust, love and respect. If your child knows you love him and respect him,