Consumerism (Robin Hanson & Agnes Callard)
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- čas přidán 6. 03. 2024
- Minds Almost Meeting: Season 8, Episode 3.
View the transcript for this episode here: mindsalmostmeeting.com/episod...
Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out.
Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: mindsalmostmeeting.com
This was a wonderful conversation, but I guess I'm surprised Socrates didn't come up more. Maybe one way to bring him in would be to look at the three part soul from Phaedurus where he talks about the human soul having three parts--the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive. To be human is to have all three, but the three should be properly ordered. Socrates seemed to argue that the rational should be the master of the other two. It seems possible to me that rampant consumerism could be an example of the appetitive part of the soul overpowering the rational part of the soul. We need some amount of consumerism (appetite) but how much is too much? That's a good and difficult question.
And from that, it's certainly fair to ask, as you do, at what points these other endeavors, such as spending time in nature, cross the line where the appetitive part overcomes the other parts of the soul. So it's not a question of whether an activity, any activity, in itself is wholesale moral or immoral, or praiseworthy or non-praiseworthy. It's more of a question of how one's soul approaches the activity in which you're engaged.
As Agnes mentions near the beginning, art collecting as a speculative monetary endeavor is certainly looked down upon more than art collecting because of the love of art. Perhaps this is because the former is seen as appetitive and the latter as rational--seeking truth or goodness.
Of course, this simply might raise the question of why many people in society have seemed to buy into Socrates' arguments about the charioteer and the horses as a metaphor for the soul even though very few people have read those arguments. Maybe Socrates had a glimpse of truth, and we've started to get closer to it in some very imperfect way. (I genuinely don't know, as I'm also a consumerist, capitalist nut.)
Love you guys! Still working my way through The Elephant in the Brain...
What elephant in the brain?
@@francpez7564 It's one of Robin's books. It's about our hidden motivations in everyday life.
@@francpez7564, it's Hanson's book.
34:00 it is all power. detachment is power. self reliance is power. shopping is power. it is all pseudo power over death. thr arent really exceptions. for existing machines. just haggling in the details. _JC
*all desire is good. collection of all resources in one place, by one agent, is bad. tyranny* is the conversation. not consuming. _JC
maybe nothing matrs. lets collect it all. _JC
*you do **_have_** to nearly make it your whole personality JUST to try & even find your feet, to begin to think on these things. & a lot of levels of defining terms. it is not just in-grouping biz. it is something else.* "right tool, right job" is not what collected capital at the scale we see it is.
thr is something aggressive in current constructed capital collecting "base state" of the worlds our mothers force us out of the birth canal into. before then paying the dr. _JC
*ima get a piza. bc im hungry, & then it will be here.* hopefully. & i will then eat it. hopefully. _JC
"I know of no one who is capable of talking about capitalism without trying to sell you something."
There are anti-capitalism youtube channels with shirts for sale that say "The Free Market has rot our world"
8:00 i have a large collection of autographed first editions of the communist manifesto. everyone needs a hobby. (plus thr worth fortune.) _JC
6:30 it is money laundering, robin. & im sure you know that. _JC
if you think consumerism is an intrinsic net positive, then i have a shirt made from special wool to sell you. _JC