First Dialog Exploring Pragmatic Utopianism and Political Philosophy by Rufus Pollock and Stephen Diehl

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In Pragmatic Utopianism Episode 1 Rufus Pollock talks with Stephen Diehl. In this episode Rufus and Stephen introduce political visioning and political philosophy of the second renaissance.

This conversation explores and elucidates pragmatic utopianism and political philosophy in general using dialog between two discussants who were sympathetic but with different viewpoints.

Dialog: https://youtu.be/yZYI2XFg6Lc

Pragmatic Utopianism Blog Post referenced at the start of the conversation: https://lifeitself.org/blog/2020/12/21/pragmatic-utopianism

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Transcript of video

The transcript is unedited

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

society, world, rational, capitalism, political philosophy, point, sense, bit, leads, largely, thought, culture, ontological, super, rationalism, view, state, buddhism, nature, structures

SPEAKERS

Stephen Diehl, Rufus Pollock

Rufus Pollock  00:04

So I think this kind of intro bit, which we make is like just maybe a brief discussion about what we're going to talk about, which is I guess, political. There theory, we could even say that political visioning start working better. And it's kind of, I hope, I hope to see as a quite open ended and kind of, like exploratory dialogue. Like it may be almost an inspiration of No, not that we're at that level. But you know, the Socratic dialogues, you have the stands to Socrates hanging out with people talking about a question or a topic and exploring it. That was my intention was to kind of really engage some kind of interesting exploring the dialogue about Yeah, our society is where we're going. And, you know, particularly I guess, this kind of question of like, what would a better start to look like? And whether the classic questions of whether, you know, utopian envisioning is a good idea or a bad idea and things like that. So I don't know, I think we could start out by maybe just thinking like, kind of question Stevens, or questions that we want to, like start exploring or, or a particular paper or something we want to discuss, you know, could be, could be the one you've looked at, or but yeah, what do you have any thoughts from your own of like, what, what we how you'd like to set it up?

Stephen Diehl  01:36

Yeah, I mean, we could talk about your essay that you wrote about pragmatic utopianism. The guy tried to like summarise it in like four bullet points that we could go through, like, like each one step by step. Yeah. And so I like the essay quite a bit, actually. Because it's on the 2020 life itself blog. It's called pragmatic utopianism. I think this is your your, like, overarching manifesto. Is this. Correct?

Rufus Pollock  01:59

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Or is it? Yeah, it's one is one attempt to summarise a part a key part of it, like one of the principles and what this approach if they so yeah, let's, let's do that. Let's talk about pragmatic utopianism to start Yeah,

Stephen Diehl  02:11

yeah. So like, okay, my reading of it, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, is that utopianism is worth considering? I think that's probably point zero, right? And I think point number one is that ontological considerations are central to understanding the human existence. Or two is that personal and cultural transformations can lead to profound societal change. I think the third point was that technological and structural changes are secondary to ontological change in terms of their capacity to create a utopian society. And then I think the fourth part is that an improvement in the human condition necessitates a shift in consciousness or a transformation in being? I think that's kind of the broad thesis that you lay out the essay. Yes. Yeah. I largely agree with a lot of those statements. Actually. There's a few points in there around like, epistemology, and like super rationalism that I find might have some problems inside of it. But like, the broad thrust of the essay is like largely one that I agree with, because it's very much a kind of outlining the ideas that you think will take us to a better, you know, society will create a more egalitarian progressive world. That's that's the goal. Right? Yeah.

Rufus Pollock  03:31

Yeah, like it's i That's a great summary of the I think, the core tenets, and then there's kind of some, I suppose, backing up kind of principles or added views that you've talked about, like, the wisdom of super rational? Yeah, that's just kind of, yeah, I think in a nutshell, one is like, it has kind of a utopian staff saying simply that we all kind of both a star and a conclusion that one could say, is a radically better world. What I mean is that we can often imagine improvements, but some world that's going to dramatically better, in a way for ourselves and for society and for the world is possible. I mean, it's not certain, it may not even be probable, but it is possible. And then, as you said, the main thrust is that, that there's kind of what we could call the ontological considerations, what we mean by that, you know, because that's a mouthful and often not used outside of philosophy traditionally, is that kind of consideration of being, you know, of our consciousness in that area is kind of crucial, but crucial to realising it. That's that's kind of where the core action is going to happen. Not in technology, and not maybe in war, we can even call structure which is for example, you know, we can all own the means of production, you know, classically and Marx Marxist communist thought, that's a structural change. And those things might still be important it just be so it's not saying that in technology instruction are important. but they're kind of secondary. And I kind of want to just take a moment about that to say that, for example, that that why that's also sometimes hard in thought, even if it's like some work when it comes to that we both agree with is that it seems to be a lot harder for us to imagine. So, just to take the example, I always think of just a moment here is some sci fi. So I imagined most this is read some sci fi or watch some science fiction. I've read and watched quite a lot. Almost, when you look at them, whether they're dystopian or more utopian, and yeah, there's many dystopian versions, but they mostly involve like, technology changes, you know, the one I have to think of is in and banks, and when people read the Culture series, which is incredible. The fascinating thing is, is that, even though they're like these incredibly advanced AI is that, you know, there's talk about things like sublimation, which is this kind of going into the spiritual plane, I don't know, transcending into some other dimension. Basically, most of its kind of space opera, like most people are acting like just ordinary human beings, they've got most defaults or strengths or weaknesses, their consciousness is not really anyway, noticeably different from ours, but they have, you know, incredible technology. And so, you know, all you know, we can think of, you know, Star Wars or whatever, you know, people, people that the things that people acting out are kind of very much what we've acted out in opera in the 19th century, or we've acted out in the Odyssey, your things for like, 1000s of years. And it's just something a lot easier for us seemingly, to imagine these kind of technological leaps, to imagine flying cars than it is to imagine, like some kind of really shift in consciousness or the way that we organise even society in an odd way. So the except, you know, and there are exceptions to this, but I think someone has proved the rule, the classic one for me is like us, you know, lucquin, which I think that actually, as I get older, I get kind of more maybe further down the path you I've read more and more even into the wizard diversity, this is actually quite a kind of a much richer and quite profound meditation on on kind of power and like that nature, you know, the whole end of that of like, the GED, you know, loses his power and, but you know, what is wisdom? What is the way to actually use these powers, and it's a lot, there's a lot less of that zapping people with your magical stuff. And it's, it's even quite, it's much more about most of this inner journey, even though the very first book is about him kind of his pride, and this, this whole issue of his kind of releasing his other this kind of demon other into the world. But you know, the most the most, I think the most example, best example might be the dispossessed, which is at least, maybe as a bit of a structuralist, but you know, they're all living in this kind of socialist kibbutz on this planet, with this kind of anarchist utopia. You know, and that's just really quite rare in most science fiction. I mean, there are famous utopian examples Bellamy's how we, you know, how, how we will live and things in the late night century was incredible bestseller. The name mainly even that was sort of a socialist technological utopia. So I think that there's just like emphasise that, while it's kind of obvious, maybe changing consciousness or being is really important, and has happened in human history, we can point to, seemingly, we've maybe particularly in the last, in the last 20 years, where we've been very technologically dominated society, it's been so much easier to imagine that or even structural change, that we're all going to be egalitarian and just own everything together. And so, but actually, what would it look like a kind of a society of sages, you know, it would be it's difficult to actually imagine without it seem like kind of Pollyanna ish or, or a bit ludicrous, you know, a bit like, everything's just perfect.

Stephen Diehl  08:50

I think science fiction is like kind of a really good reference, because like, that's really kind of like our imaginings of different ways of being, like literally manifested literature. And like, I've read all the books that you've actually mentioned, like, the Culture series, for those that don't know, it's like, it's basically a post scarcity society, which, you know, super intelligence basically keep humans as pets, and they're basically allowed to fulfil all of their goals in life and like self actualized and do requests and it's about sort of dark corners of the society, which is largely an anarchist society, actually, in banks, this universe, and what were the first examples of like, really well thought out, post scarcity society, and probably one of the most developed ones actually, yeah, I guess the other one would be sort of like Star Trek, which I guess is like, sort of space opera predicated on humanity living in a post scarcity socialist utopia, which is on built on infinite energy at the end of the day, and humanity is like evolve beyond its sort of base instincts and migrated beyond the sort of Dickensian life on Earth into a sort of post scarcity stellar society that advances its values across the galaxy. It's a simplistic world, but it's one that inspired a lot of people in our field, too.

Rufus Pollock  10:03

Yes, you? Yeah. As you grow. I mean, it's also I think it's, it's kind of noticeable, by the way in that series as well. I mean, it's gonna go off on a flight, because I also, yeah, it's one of the great, I mean, it's one of the great Sunday modern, I mean, it's up there is the very first one consider fly bass is probably I think, in my view, you know, get controversial, but probably, at least is like a novel, at least as a work of literature, probably the richest. But and partly because its protagonist is fighting on the wrong side is writing for this group who are kind of like about power and domination. I mean, it's the same as the Syrian war is the war where the cultural, you know, actually has to fight quite seriously at the beginning, and there's a bunch of them who don't want to fight and you just go like, we've totally, you know, we're non violence, and we're just going to flee off to some corner of the galaxy. But I think, why why I mentioned that is that you, it's also the one where, in a way, there's the most ambiguity or complex moral complexity. Whereas in the others, just to say most of the time, it's kind of like, it's quite clear, like the culture good, they kind of intervening, there's only really this classic question you'd like, do you intervene in some other society or not to, you know, as a kind of, to do good to do good or not. But yeah, I think it's, the point I would make about it, if I'm, if I, you know, just to reiterate, is that while it's a great exploration, post scarcity, it doesn't really address this kind of obvious question, which is like, okay, so you have 1000s of years. But like, most the time, even if the cultured people are kind of these kind of humans of the future, they don't really fight each other. But they basically spend their time like in a Hedden ism, you know, a lot, a lot of the kind of culture spends its time basically, having, taking drugs, gliding, you know, doing extreme sports, and because they got back up for their mind, it doesn't matter if they die, you know, it's kind of it's, it's your like, really, this is what you done with with infinite energy is kind of just take a lot of drugs, it's kind of it's a bit odd. And at the best, what you do is like, the more serious members like they join this kind of contact, and they go and try and meet other societies bad by intervening in subtle ways. In that, yes, it's kind of it. It's funny that I don't think it really managed to explore very much the, the moral complexity, and I even think that one that there's not, you know, another episode just to go into where they kind of, I don't think attitude to religion, I think banks, I don't know whether he was an atheist to where he is, but it's definitely an attitude towards spirituality or religion, it's a bit kind of, you know, duh, why would we? Why would we need that in the future where we kind of have ended in eternal life and could just have set can I? Can I? Can I have as much text as we want? It's kind of, it's kind of like, wow, there might be other things that are missing. And you know, it is just there. There isn't a lot of people who've got a lot of meaning crisis in it, you know. So, that's interesting, I think so dies to bring back is I think we live in a in a world where, in general, at least in political theory, the things we just come back to like the ontological change, or the change in being could be kind of central isn't something that's very serious, taken very seriously in like, mainstream political theory.

Stephen Diehl  13:22

Yeah, I mean, there's a kind of spiritual component to something like bankss writing, though, like, the minds themselves are kind of like bodhisattvas because they refuse to Sublime, or to take care of humanity and like, allow them to self actualize. And there's like, surface detail has inscription of like, the hills, like the synthetic hills that people can live in, like, so there is that kind of component to it. I think it's just seen as a bit of a kind of an anachronism in Banks's writing, because I think he probably was an atheist. And it was certainly like a hardcore leftist. But going back to the sort of the description, I mean, a lot of political theory is kind of grounded in the here. And now it's concerned with, you know, what is the ideal configuration of society, in the presence of scarcity? And much of economics is basically predicated on the same problem, right with the economic problem is how do we divvy up the resources on Earth in a so called fair way, and what better wood might actually mean? And that's pretty much all political law and economics. There's like, what is the definition of allocation and fairness in the presence of scarcity? And things were a lot more interesting in a post scarcity world, but like, a lot of our political philosophy just can't even conceive of that post scarcity world and doesn't have a path to get there, obviously, because that's predicated upon advances in technology or changes in our entire structure of organisation, and that's why it's in science fiction and not in political philosophy, I guess.

Rufus Pollock  14:45

Yeah. Why do I think so? I think it's so you, right? I mean, that. I mean, yeah. Really on the money that that a lot of it is kind of comes down to fairness or justice, a lot of the Western political philosophy edge don't know, I kind of often try to explore and what are really natural, like what is Eastern philosophy because I think there's a there's a double meaning by the way, we talk about ontological politics or the politics of being or the politics of possibility. Kind of life itself. And there's a double meaning of the ontological politics, there's both a point that basically political thought which focus seriously on taking seriously that humans could evolve in their consciousness or in our culture. That's kind of point one that you emphasise these kind of coordinate utopian point of view that we're setting out. Like, if you take that seriously, then I think there are a lot more exciting and kind of even near term possibilities than there are, you know, in the post scarcity story, and I think that, you know, one of the things I just wanted to say, again, in the culture is a lot of people in the culture don't seem that satisfied. I mean, they get to have, they got, as I said, they have kind of, they have drugs basically wired into their brain, they have they have, they can go anywhere, they can do any sports or other activities they want, but many of them are clearly dissatisfied, that kind of comes across, you know, or not, you know, they're not like really suffering, but they're not that like super happy or super, you know, well, that kind of that's that's kind of clear, there's that's there. So I think there's a kind of first point of that, if we take that seriously, that sets up a utopian. There's another point, which is, I think, also about the history of political thought in the West, which is that there is a much bigger inner interaction between our political thinking, the way that we think about politics and what's possible and the questions we ask, and our view about the nature of reality. Now that just to just to kind of spell this out, so that if you're not even interesting political force, when I say who cares, you certainly care. Ultimately, when you don't like politics, or you care about politics in a small piece. It's not about like party policy, if you care, ultimately about how our society runs, you know, whether you like it or not, that's something that you're kind of a meshed in if you're a human being. And so, just to emphasise, even if you might think I'm not interesting political philosophy, you're kind of influenced by it, whether you think it or not, we live inside the assumptions that worldviews the beliefs of long dead political philosophers that we may not have even heard of. And so this kind of come back to this point, though, is let's take Plato and the Republic, which is kind of the the original, you might say, the foundational text in Western political philosophy. And just very crudely, the Republic sets out this vision for the Republic for this kind of ideal society. To put it a bit crudely, it's run by these philosopher kings, who, you know, in certain kind of ways that people find, you know, sometimes nowadays might find a bit disturbing authoritarian, this sort of broad, he's kind of children of a certain kind of, you know, destined to be foster kings are taken off, they have a special education. This is quite a hierarchical society where they're these philosopher kings, they are like, completely committed to justice, there's a kind of vision of that they're these ideal beings, and they kind of organising this ideal society. And many people, including recently, you know, Karl Popper has criticised it as being almost this kind of also kind of an ancestral tone for kind of authoritarianism, and a vision and authoritarian utopian visions, you know, bleeding to the Nazis, or whatever, if you like. But to go back to what is what is very interesting is that what is maybe not as noticed is, whatever you think of the political philosophy, it's kind of very coincident with Plato's ontology, in the classic sense of ontology of what he thinks is reality. So he has this idea of these kind of ideal forms. And this is the analogy for the political like, there is an ideal square, there's an ideal circle, there's an ideal, ideal version of x, and some kind of, I don't know, some not kind of other reality, but that are kind of our reality. When we see an actual square, or we see an actual, you know, plate or dish, it's kind of somehow related to this ideal form that is out there. And similarly, that applies the political philosophy that there's basically this ideal form of the state of which we can then take our imprint, to some extent the, the ideals are there. And maybe, you know, maybe Stephens got some comments on that. But what I why I want to emphasise is his view about the nature of human beings and about the nature of reality, really inform his vision about science. And so for example, you know, this idea that people are perfectible or the way or the limit what's deficient in human beings, what will be corrected via this education that he discusses in some detail in the Republic, etc, etc. And so, whether we, whether we maybe notice it or not, it's there. I mean, just to give one last example, modern economics, which you just mentioned, and kind of political philosophy which are quite entwined, you know, crudely, humans are rational, their utility Max surmises, they are maybe selfish in some way, you know, although there's kind of some altruism or whatever. But you know, there's this kind of view of human beings informed how you then design your institutions and systems.

Stephen Diehl  20:15

I agree with some of what you said, like definitely like the critique about Plato, basically outlining an authoritarian society. Like, I mean, basically, in the Republic, he outlines that, like, basically people are like, cut out of like, you know, bronze, silver and gold, and that the gold people are like destined to rule and like, it's really like horrible philosophy, actually, it's like, and I think it's best relegated to the past, because I don't think most modern thinkers about society would conceive of like, there's an ideal form of, you know, the government or the state, I think, most political philosophy which I mean, rooted in like the post enlightenment, so like Rousseau, and Locke, and Hobbes, and Rawls, I think, would probably say that the ideal form of the state simply doesn't exist. And we're all just sort of muddling through and trying to find structures that work. And that this conception, today, it's a replay tonic ideal of the states actually kind of a dangerous flight one. I mean, and broadly speaking, I agree with a sort of, largely, the state has a legitimate purpose to exist, like I believe in the programme of liberalism, reason, democracy, rationalism. And at the core idea of the Enlightenment is basically uplifting society out of the sort of hubzilla and Dickensian pit, and creating prosperity and abundance. And if you look at the sort of broad arc of human history that has the programme has been largely successful, not, you know, perfectly successful, but like, far more so than anything else that's ever been tried. And I think this the sort of the conversation we're talking about, it's like, I prescribed you a sort of view called like Berkey, and progressivism, which might be seen as sort of contrasting to like pragmatic utopianism, like I believe that improvements in society should be achieved through evolutionary methods rather than revolutionary methods. And like this comes from a bit of the sort of the conservative thinker like Edmund Burke, who wrote about a critique of the French Revolution, about how this was a very highly destructive, revolutionary process ended. A lot of the state and society resulted in a lot of bloodshed and wars. And that kind of thing is the thing that we should try to avoid. By progressivism, I also mean that like, we should probably define terms here like progressivism means that we should not have any kind of disposition towards structures in the past. And yes, it should have a disposition toward improving itself over time, there'll be no preference for those and things in the past, which I largely agree with. But I also don't think that completely and rapidly and recklessly abandoning structures that have worked in the past is necessarily the best idea. So no disposition toward things in the past, or institutions of the past, but a respect and a wisdom for the reasons that they were built in the first place. I guess that would contrast with like, conservatism, which has, like an other regard for the institutions of the past and past is like the ideal form where we should live you know, I think that's what the

Rufus Pollock  23:06

burger. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Diehl  23:08

So I mean, that's where I said, like, but I'm also sort of a capitalist realism. Like, I think that largely like, like, this is the philosophy of like Mark Fisher says up front famous was like, it's easier to imagine the end of capitalism, the end of the world, and it is matching the end of capitalism,

Rufus Pollock  23:27

that we're just critiquing at the time, he was trying to say good, no, but he was he was a critique. The comment originally was from a kind of critique of like, that we can't imagine ourselves outside of it. That's why we're attracted it. But yeah, I can I Yeah.

Stephen Diehl  23:42

That we can't even conceive of like, an ontology, which capitalism is not the supreme structure that governs our markets, right, or what our allocation of resources,

Rufus Pollock  23:53

but this is what will come in, because I think this is so this is why this is a great discussion. I mean, I think because these two so first of all, we have a lot of respect, in a way, you know, for it. For like, let's say, pragmatic, that say, they have no pragmatic utopianism, but I think, pragmatic progressivism in a way, like all kind of we could say, both our viewpoint, I think you're progressive in the sense of both people, we're both we're not, neither of us are conservatives in the sense or reactionaries of wanting to go back to a past. I think the thing that's worth exploring is, for me, the point I made about Plato was also true, let's say about Hobbes or Locke or even I would say rules it's less kind of obvious in rules writing in a sentence, just like the worries swimming in but basically this what, what water are we swimming in? When we imagine I'll say, because political philosophy often is this focus philosophy in a federal thing of political philosophy is like, basically what's the organisation state what you know, classically in political philosophy, you know, we like you know, there's you know, there's a breakthrough in Montesquieu and there's we did work Because we, you know, we have the tripartite division of, you know, the judiciary, the parliament and the executive or things like that. And these are things which I think are valid, clearly valuable. But in my terms, I would say they're structuralist, they're structural changes, or, you know, are we going to be redistributed? You know, the rules that, you know, you know, why should we have a modern, liberal, redistributive democratic state in which we have social welfare and things like that, you know, these things are really valuable, let me be clear, but I guess I think they, they come from, funnily enough, I think they come from a cultural and ontological context, which was what actually drove drove them, and which they also sit within they live within a water, you know, they're the fish within a water of what human beings alive. And obviously, the famous example is, is kind of Hobbes who, although in fact, in some ways, a conservative or even a bit of a reactionary, is also a kind of, in some ways, also a founding figure of, I guess, enlightenment, political, modern political philosophy. But you know, hard to cut again, caricature Hobbes, the famous like life in a state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short. I mean, that's the actual quote, but like, it's a caricature of the richness of the leviathan. There is an assumption about human nature. In Hobbes, there's an there's an assumption about what we would be like in a state, quote, unquote, state of nature, just as there is then in Rousseau, you know, the famous, the famous dichotomy is that, you know, Rousseau is like, kind of, in a state of nature, we'd all just be like, perfect, and it's like, you know, the society that corrupts US versus Hobbes is like, well, we just kill each other. And it's what society is what, you know, brings Law and Order protects us from our baser instincts, you know, means I don't just, you know, steal from my neighbour, or go out raping people, or whatever, like, there's all these rules, and there's an order and there's a sovereign that prevent this war of one, you know, all against all. And I kind of bring this through, I think you've the thing that, for me, is the kind of classic inside just to kind of, if you're living in that assumption, if that's what human nature is, or that human nature is something that human nature is kind of permanent, and is like something, which is itself an assumption about human nature, then the kind of political logic follows. And then you can have a debate about like structures in which about a structures, you know, so mark marks isn't really in a way marks is a kind of a rezoning in the sense it's, like always the society that crops if only had the right structure, and I disagree with that also, really strongly, I'd be like, no, no, it's, I mean, it does, it does have some shaping, but it's kind of like it. You know, human nature is also not marked ideal, like your thoughts. It's more complex than both of those thinkers. And the examples want to bring up is, let's say Buddhism, as a different view. And I always remember this I was an economist, I was an economist at University of Cambridge for a while. And obviously economics one on one is like, we've got unlimited wants and limited resources. This is the problem, you know, we're going to have to try and so yeah, this was an assumption about human nature that we have unlimited ones it right built into economics is this assumption about what is our nature as humans. And if you look at Buddhism, and this I was in I was becoming a Buddhist are at that time in my 20 years. And in Buddhism, you know, Buddhism one on one is the Four Noble Truths. So we kind of boil it, you know what truth one is that there is suffering the existence of suffering, truth two is the sources of suffering, that the source of suffering a kind of attachment and craving a variety of things hatred and delusion, the three poisons. And the third noble truth is that there is a path to wellbeing, there is a path to the transcendence of suffering, it kind of that is possible. And the fourth Noble Truth is the eightfold path, which is the path that leads to the end of suffering, and only vegan caricature Buddhism. But whereas like econ 101, says, look, you've kind of got these ones, the way to get happier is to keep satisfying more and more of your wants, you know, get a bigger house, get a bigger car, be more successful, have more food, of wishes, clear truth, you know, if you're starving or whatever. That's very much true, that having more foods gonna make a real difference, or if you're have no shelter, or many things have been true throughout history or famine. But Buddhism says, Look, we're not saying that stuff that there isn't important that having food isn't important, but ultimately, the true path out of suffering is to kind of reduce your wants in some way and not reduce them and say like, oh, I want less food today, but in a profound sense of your wants. For example, you're the one in us to never die even though we will this this body mind will dissolve at some point that you can. You can kind of trends Send those aspects of our kind of ourselves, you know that and transcend does not mean exclude them, they're still there, we will still have pain we will still that this thing is. So what I'm why I'm bringing up is if you're in that worldview, then you'd be like, Oh wow, we should be dedicating most of our energy society to maybe transforming our cravings transforming kind of the craving in us, you know, that will generate the most growth and well being and utility, whereas the classic kind of, you know, I think Western modernist way of thinking is like, no, no, these are just part of us, we're always going to want more, you know, and not die and things like that. And the way to do it is to work out ways to cryogenically freeze ourselves, or to just have even more food or even more sex or even more stuff. And, you know, so just kind of contrasting how if you were in a quite a different view about the nature of human beings, like the Buddhist one, you'd have quite a different view about what you'd focus energy on as a society.

Stephen Diehl  31:00

There's a lot there actually agree with I mean, basically, your your analysis that like the presuppositions underlie economics and Western political thought, which have produced largely like the American society is probably the most canonical example, which is a hyper individualistic consumption based, let's turn the infinite hedonic treadmill up to the maximum state and basically samsara in Buddhism. Basically, Americans export their culture, which is samsara. Which is not a lot of this will be false analysis. So what's going on there, and I am not a Buddhist myself, but again, I can sympathise with the thought. But I think you can derive the same sort of assumptions from just an understanding of like natural selection, like natural selection favours for discontent. And like, individuals never fully satisfied if they're going to strive for more resources, status and reproductive success, which is what evolution has optimised our brains to do. And you know, that those traits may have benefited us in the past in the state of nature. But in sort of a modern industrial information economy, they just result in suffering and samsara and contemporary life is incompatible with the infinite hedonic treadmill, like this, even like the Culture series, for instance, like where people can literally just have infinite amounts of sex and drugs and everything, like there's still discontent, like discontent is always gonna be part of the fundamental, like, essence of human existence, if we don't learn to change our perspective about like, what is the Get off the infinite hedonic treadmill of free will. So I can sympathise with that from just a pure naturalistic, rational perspective, like you come to the same conclusions as Buddhism. Yeah, and your your entire thesis basically, like, crudely is you think that there's like this debate whether like, politics is upstream from culture, or cultures upstream in politics, and you want to say, like, the ontological sort of primacy of beings actually upstream from culture as well, and that we should address the presuppositions in our philosophy that give rise to culture.

Rufus Pollock  33:06

Yeah, yeah. It's like what I'd say, by the way, culture is kind of collective beings. So I wouldn't distinguish individual ontology and culture as as much, though, they are suddenly in the twilight kind of, yeah, I mean, we could we, if we really went into we can dive into that, but I'd say exactly cult. I mean, of course, by the way, things are circle, like, let me give. Let me give a classic example, I think is really influential for me. And I think really powerful in this story in terms of scientific evidence, which is the reason to work on cultural evolution by people like Joe Henry, which a car

Stephen Diehl  33:42

read his book, The Strange people in the world's great, the greatest

Rufus Pollock  33:45

people in the world. And I think I've done we've actually done that I've done a whole series interview series with him, because I just think, let me give one example that I think that just spells out some of the kind of political theory logic that I have is so to again, simplify kind of argument in the weirdest people in the world is okay, for some reason, early Christianity, Catholic in the early Catholic church gets these kinds of views about the kind of these views about cousin marriage and about marriage and about marriage practices that are quite unusual in basically the history of humanity. And what he calls the kind of marriage and family programme of the Catholic Church which come from basically spiritual sash religious views, they're not grounded, they're not they're not they're not like, oh, we should do this to improve our society. They kind of come from like, this is what God wants. And one of these God wants is that you don't have multiple wives, you marry one person. That by the way, is pretty unreal. Like history. Most human society think Henry says like 90% of all human societies that we have data on it, you know, from hunter gatherers to modern are like 90% of them are polygamous, which means that they allow men to have multiple partners and sometimes women but mostly men. It bans cousin marriage, it bans marry, if your wife dies, you can't marry her sister, there's a whole bunch of practices, they're actually very standard in human history. And this has this huge kind of impact on this is this kind of a cultural view, like a cultural set of views and values for religion turned into an institution, and if you like, which then turns into our laws, like you can't do, you can't do certain things, you know, it's illegal to marry your cousin and things like that, which then has this kind of, ultimately, he would argue, has this kind of, again, like a cultural effect, which is that basically you you, you destroy kinship networks in the way they traditionally work, because you can't knit together kinship groups in the same way, because that requires cousin marriage. And in some of these practices, basically, you you start having forming, rather than having a kinship network, which is has a lot of vertical ties, like I'm related to my father, my father's kind of in charge of what I do, and things like that, you have a much more horizontal set of relationships developing. So you have a much more horizontal culture, that's much more democratic. And he, you know, he kind of argues that this is the birthing of why Western society becomes the way it is becomes weird, and therefore also actually very successful. Because it turns out that democracy and individualism and it's kind of crucial to, you know, science and reason at the age of reason, and so on. So just to give just to kind of spell that out, you have a set of views and kind of ontological views or views about what God wants and about the nature of reality that lead to a bunch of institutions, that then for further people's being, you know, downs that doubt, you know, in actually kind of ways that our brain actually work or neurotransmitters, you know, the brain is actually wired, which then lead to further kind of institutional or cultural or technological changes. And that, you know, so it's a kind of it's a complex into dance of these factors, I want to emphasise, but there is this crucial point there. And that story, that kind of being our views about the nature of reality, or views about how we should you know, who human beings are, and how we should operate kind of came first in some way.

Stephen Diehl  37:09

Yeah, that's a good summary of Henrichs book. It's been a while since I've actually read the book, but like, largely, he's making the argument that a lot of like Western Anglo Saxon, Judeo Christian derivative culture has this added presuppositions baked in, that ultimately create institutions that lead to atomism and sort of very weird behaviour by historical standards, like most cultures, throughout history have not exhibited, like, the behaviours that the the church introduced. And these are producing some very, very strange societal manifestations, right? Yeah, I largely, I mean, as they say, I grew up in a, like, very, very conservative Christian upbringing. So like, the more that I understand the sort of the fish, the water that I was swimming in, when I grew up, and the more I kind of undo that thinking, broadly speaking, the happier I am, so I largely agree with a lot of

Rufus Pollock  38:04

it to say, the core hardcore Christianity, but it's like, yeah, just to emphasise things, many people haven't read the book. I mean, just, there's incredible, you know, for example, Western societies have like some of the highest levels of Stranger trust in the world, is the level at which we will trust people we haven't met, or we don't know, or don't know who our family is higher than almost any other societies in the world. We obey abstract rules, like we will cheat, funnily enough countries in like Western Europe and the US cheat less in in situations where no one can observe that Yeah, I mean, the famous company is actually like, first of all, kind of structured psychological experiments where people go and roll a dice, they have to say, what dice roll they had. And if it's like a six, they get money. And so obviously, there's no one knows where they actually got to six, they just self report. Yeah, but then statistically work out how many people were cheating because you know, how many sixes should have been rolled? If you do this with 1000 people, and they find that, you know, people in the West, for some reason lie less on average than almost anywhere else in the world. And it's because God is watching you that the argument is that you have this model, particularly in Protestantism, where you know, God knows what you're thinking it's not just what you do outside it's God knows whether you're being cheating or lying or being dishonest and this issue also is I'm just be clear this many religions have some aspect of this. For example, there's a fascinating study also reports that I think they did a study in Medius Marrakech, but like, basically, what happens when you haggle with someone in a bizarre when the minaret is when the when the mousseline is chanting the call to prayer? So when you're hearing some reminder that you're that you're Muslim, and what that means to be a Muslim, you're less likely to try and rip someone off basically, that they've actually got a study like this. So there's a really powerful effect of religion on our behaviour and Being an even on the worry about brain. Why, why kind of this, though is that it tells me it tells you a couple of things for political kind of philosophy, I think. So one is that actually focusing on culture and actually focusing on things that look like religions, frankly, you know, which you could include even one day science and that we get into that debate. But basically, strong belief systems and frameworks have a really profound effect on who we are, and maybe knows, secondary, which is even more relevant to public policy into the size of the group of people that we will trust or even die for. So basically, one of the things you're interested in maybe in political philosophy, and in particular, utopian is like, how do we care for more people over human history, we seem to have enlarged the zone of concern that we have, we do seem to have gone from maybe just caring about my family, to my kind of extended kinship network, to kind of my tribe, to even a nation, you know, etc. So we seem to have enlarged our zone of concern, and that that has happened in large part because of changing culture, and then maybe our nature, you know, like, actually in our genes and things like that. So

Stephen Diehl  41:22

we're increasing abundance as well. Yeah, we can actually have the resources to care for more people. Right,

Rufus Pollock  41:28

although I think that that's probably I don't know, like, that's a good example. I don't think that's probably actually that relevant. I think that the abundant I think, if anything, direction, causation is the other way around. I, we've got two variables. And I would suggest it's like the classic Does, does Does, does kind of capitalism, cause democracy or democracy cause capitalism debate. But just to take, you know, we could take an example another one from haemorrhage there just to answer that question. There's a group called the Ella heater, there's which he talks about quite a bit in the weirdest people the world, which is his tribe in Papua New Guinea. And they've been studied a lot, because they basically got really big, relative to most Gatto, Hunter tribes, most of them are like, under 300 people, and they're, like, 3000. And there's been this kind of extensive study of them. And what he kind of found out was essentially, a one point it was the other tribe that was aggressively expanding. And they were like, shit, you know, we're gonna get wiped out by these guys. Like, what is what's going on? Why are they so good at fighting, like what's happening, like, the eldest got together and kind of Rafi, like, oh, man, they must have some really powerful gods, they must have some really powerful stuff going on, we're gonna go and kind of like steal it, you know, we're gonna go and find out what their gods are. And we're going to call, you know, we're going to take them on, even though they're not our God. And what happened was, they did this. And even kind of what's even funny is they kind of screwed up, they, they kind of like Miss copied some of the practices, and rituals and gods, this other group. But in doing so they basically made them for a functionalist perspective, more effective, because what they really created was a whole bunch of initiation rituals, and gods that were shared across groups, kinship groups, within the tribe, because normally, what happens is the tribes kind of fractured a certain size, because there's like different families, they end up in a fight. And then they kind of, they just move off and they go off, somewhere out, one of them goes off somewhere else. And these practices needed the group together. So it's an example where they were scaling their sense of identity, and then the size of that tribe, and they ended up then be able to fight off this other group, by the way, out of a kind of change in their religious beliefs. And so, you know, to go back famously, to get into Christianity, Christianity was sort of radical, because it was also like everyone, everyone is included, if you are a Christian, if you are a Christian, but everyone is that part of, you know, part of the church. That's quite, that was quite a, quite a novel, kind of model and quite an egalitarian model at the time, as well. And obviously, I'm very egalitarian again, importances. So just, I want to kind of come back to you, but I just want to say like, this is worth exploring. Do you think it's that because we've got richer that we care for more people? Is it that we because we kind of care for more people that we got richer?

Stephen Diehl  44:12

wounds, profound question. I mean, I think it goes back to like a fundamental question about like, human nature, are people intrinsically good? And do we want to care for each other? Or are we fundamentally, you know, self interested, sort of rational actors that are optimising for our own, like survival and reproductive fitness. And I, broadly speaking, fall into the fact that people are Trinsic ly, good, so long as they have a certain level of abundance. And below that, I think things to kind of do descend into, like Hobbes would describe as the state of nature that nasty brutish and short and I think the broad arc of both capitalism, liberalism and democracy, which you as Henry noted, arises a little bit out of the sort of philosophical underpinnings of Christianity, where you get this conception of like, the ideal thing, which I guess is God or platonic forms, and the construction of high trust societies, which are conducive to capitalism, obviously, because if you can trust people and write contracts and have the rule of law, then that gives rise to, you know, large amounts of economic development and structures that can produce debt, and, you know, society and capitalism, capital markets, and then venture capital and tech and everything. That's the foundation that we live on. But I do think that the broad arc like capitalist realism is a philosophy that's meant to undermine itself by producing a society of abundance. Rubbish by, you know, we could basically like Marx could never have written Das Kapital, unless you happen to live in a society like Germany at the time that was producing such abundance that somebody could write at home, basically, deconstructing the society that created the abundance, right. And so either

Rufus Pollock  46:00

most of you wrote it in the British Library, I mean, you lived in

Stephen Diehl  46:03

the British Library. Yeah. So my broad view is that capitalism, capitalism, was a capitalist. Market, Marx's capitalist roots. Yeah, I think capitalism is largely the bootloader for a more enlightened post abundance society, that our children are probably inherent. And there's some presuppositions baked into that. But like, I think that the broad arc of the ideas of rationalism the enlightenment, and market economies, on long timescales, produce abundance and abundance allows us to extend the locus of concern and compassion to more beings. At

Rufus Pollock  46:46

this point, we could explore a bit. So I would, my apologies would be a bit like, just to be clear, like to reiterate. So first, I want to reiterate a caveat, which is, like I said, before any causal discussion is, it's an ecology, of course, it's something cause there that, you know, culture and being influenced institutions or structures, which influence technology and technology influences being and you know, that there's, there's, there's a complex chain, and they all cause each other in some way. But we are trying to discuss kind of what's maybe more primary. Now, the metaphor, I often like to think here is this metaphor the McGilchrist has about your hemispheres, you need your left and your right hemisphere. And both of that you need you need both of them. But maybe one of them should have primacy and how you see the world maybe should be the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere. So I think the thing I would say here is, I would say that haemorrhages point, for me, it's just more like a cultural change led to more cooperation, I basically stuff that was in Christianity led to the elimination of kinship networks, which led to more horizontal need for horizontal connections, and therefore trust, and also attitudes, like God is watching and other things that were there, but without maybe the level that there is an Islam, you know, like there was kind of both free and an internal kind of, you know, I shouldn't be honest, because otherwise I'm going to be, you know, going to hell, those things more were the basis on which, you know, reason, science democracy built, and then they reinforced those days now, but so I say that I would be more like the causative chain is that there are things leading to our enlargement of our zone of concern, which then, because basically solving collective action problems, which include things like enforcement of contracts, collector items, like enforcement of contracts, funding science, you know, having peace, you know, just you know, in at least within a certain state boundary, even if you're fighting other states load or things like that, we're better, we're, you know, we're things that cause then the abundance that's happened rather than any, so it was kind of enlarged, only concern caused abundance. And of course, abundance then supports that a large amount of concern, I think, I also agree with you that if we go back to a really allocated situation where everyone's fighting each other in a terrible way, we would lose a lot of our care for, you know, maybe a care for others. So I'm not saying it isn't a part of that. But I think the kind of primary cause is a bit more like we enlarged own of concern, which led to growth in abundance. And I want to kind of, you know, but then I guess we could come back to that debate. But I think it's an interesting, really interesting question, but we'll get to build on something you were. Maybe Elsie was saying, which is, I think my view often that that's also built into the ontological politics is, hey, kind of modernity has run its course. So that modernity was amazing, you know, like, like, in a way I agree with what you're saying, which is, it built the scaffolding. It kind of built the ladder which we will no longer maybe need It like, it's not that we won't want to want technological progress, we won't want more material or food for everyone in the world, but we already have actually probably enough food for everyone in the world, we just don't distribute it very well. But you know, of course, I would like even more, I'd like to, I'd like to, you know, I don't know, zoom around the galaxy, and whatever it is. But that, at the same time, there are kind of issues, there are both issues being caused by things of modernity, and that maybe we don't need it as much anymore. And the analogy I sometimes would use here is like, if we think of the late last great transition, in, I would say, kind of cultural ontological terms, which was the birth of modernity. And you're seeing there, let's say, let's say, you and I, we zoom back to the time of Thomas Aquinas, Stephen, it's like, I don't know, 1250. And we're sitting there having this, we're not having a pod, we're not doing a podcast, because we're exchanging letters by scroll or something. But you know, or we're seeing in the monastery together, we'd be like, you know, things are pretty good. Like, wow, you know, this is the High Middle Ages, it's actually been lots of technical or technological progress, that won't be reached again, for another three 300 years, actually, you know, food, it's been growing, we're building these incredible cathedrals, you know, learning is developing. And I think my thing would be like, Oh, it's what, you know, Catholicism, you know, there's a Christianity across Europe, you know, we think that things are working quite well. And what I would suggest is like, yeah, they were working quite well, but they were about to go on the Renaissance and birth the next culture. And so my question, let's say today would be like, yeah, like, the obsession, you know, there are certain clear issues, maybe with capitalism's kind of growth mindset, you know, there's clear ecological issues with that, like, we're just going to consume and eat more. There are clear, I think, issues in like, let's say, nationalism, so one of the great successes, I think humanity was growing my concern for like, a whole nation, I went from my village to caring about all English people, or French people, or all, you know, Taiwanese people are all, you know, I know, Russian people, or whatever it was, that's a huge achievement, actually, you know, in that growth, but it's also led to those groups fighting each other even more, you know, in an even more destructive ways than we did before. So I think what I guess I would, I'd ask you is, I think rationality has been amazing. I think the Enlightenment has been incredible. I think, you know, capitalism has been amazing. And I always questioned you, do you think that maybe it's kind of run its course that there's, there's, there's a there's a need for us to kind of, not as you throw away, but go beyond like, include those things that we got from them, not throughout reason. But as we talk, actually, in the essence of super rational, is it time for us to include reason, but also go beyond reason? In some ways? Is it time for us to go beyond growth? In some ways? Is it time for us to go beyond secularism, in some ways,

Stephen Diehl  53:06

was profound questions. I'm sort of playing my sort of epistemological cards here. But third, like there is nothing beyond reason. Reason is all there is. I think that there are frameworks for I say, I would bracket sort of things into sort of two ontological categories. There's, like, understanding and knowledge and there's sort of a sense making and said, speaking can be things that are more fuzzy sort of ways of conceptualising aspects of human existence that can not be tied to rationalism. And I'm probably totally fine with people incorporating that into their sort of ways of being at life with things like religion, sort of axiomatic assumptions. So like, I have an axiomatic assumption, I think, broadly speaking, more awareness leads to more compassion, but I can't rationalise this in terms of any kind of presuppositions. I think it's just axiomatic my belief system, I think, is also a tenet of Buddhism as well, by the way, like, there's plenty of those things that can exist, and they can exist in harmony with rationalism, because they're incommensurate with each other. Like they don't try to rationalise their existence in terms of other presuppositions. But I think under ways of understanding the world understanding society have done sort of in a rationalist framework, because otherwise, in this world, maybe I take a little bit of an issue with some of the things in the article about the Super rational, I think that any non rational process withdrawn require some form of epistemic justification to be considered reliable. And I think that's the kind of contradiction I see at the heart of the, like, pragmatic rationalism on is that there's no actual reason to actually incorporate super rational thinking into a description about how the world should be like making normative claims, right. I don't think you can incorporate super rational assumptions into it normative claims about how the world should be. So that's kind of getting really into wonky philosophy stuff, but let's

Rufus Pollock  55:07

just say against you, so you can't incorporate like super rational things into kind of like normative claims about how the world should be. Yeah, like, so things. So let's just distinguish, like by rational, we mean things like somehow objective or that we can all agree on through our reason of science or through empirical investigation, were super rational things that we can't do that about, like the existence of God or something like that. I think

Stephen Diehl  55:31

those can only inform how you should be.

Rufus Pollock  55:33

Yes, yeah. Just first one is distinguishing rational from Super rational, they rationally stuff that we kind of, is that an objective or that we can kind of do empirical work on that we can all agree on, like super rational things that like, like the existence of God that we can't, we're not gonna be able to prove empirically, one way or the other

Stephen Diehl  55:53

things that exist independent of the mind, and that they can be conceived of independent of one mind would be objective truths. And those have to be justified true beliefs. And I think there's a lot of things that can exist or look to the space of human thought. The superset is things that are not rational, or justified true beliefs. And those were kind of super rational. And I think those things can exist, and they can exist as part of one's worldview, but they can't inform an objective understanding of the world. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well,

Rufus Pollock  56:32

I think the thing that so first of all, let rewrite my question, which do you think so I think this is really interesting. I want to keep explore as well check. So it was like, my question was, like, let's say, the analogies we've seen in the High Middle Ages, that moment we're in we're in the kind of, we're swimming in the water of like, Catholicism, and things like going pretty well in 1250. And we sit there and we say, well, you know, like, hey, you know, like, metaphorically, like, capitalism today, like, this is going pretty well, you know, you know, feudalism is working quite well, you know, look, you know, agriculture output is up, you know, look at the look at innovation, look at the cathedrals were building. I mean, they're, like, incredible. And, you know, also our kind of way of thinking like, you know, Christian, I guess you call like, you know, I know it's kind of the the High Middle Ages. So it's kind of philosophical Christian thought is reaching Apogee with Thomas Aquinas, you were like, wow, you know, look at that this is incredible. I've seen like, metaphorically, we're sitting here saying, like, you know, capitalism is pretty good. Rationality is pretty good. You know, secularity is pretty good. You know, that was a big breakthrough, that we kind of got religion out of the state, etc. You know, religion is a private personal matter. Now, it's not something that excetera Do you those are kind of, like I'd say, kind of key tenants enlightenment, you know, key kind of assumption there even water we swim in. Would you what I guess I was asking is, do you think like you mentioned, like the east of capitalism, maybe we kind of we're going to transcend it, you know, we're going to, it's got us to somewhere, and then we're going to be in this super abundant place, we weren't really kind of need it in the same way anymore, or, you know, we'll move. But do you think that we, that any of those kind of viewpoints, like we might still incorporate them, it's not like we're gonna get rid of reason. But we might kind of, which is super rational, which includes it, but like, the circle gets bigger metaphor, you know, you know, reason was everything that was important or true about the world. And we might be like, Oh, no, there's other stuff. And I think the key point we're saying here is it's not just this other stuff that you have, personally, there's other stuff that is kind of shared societally as kind of beliefs, you know, because that's, I think, the key point is at the moment, reason is, in under the Enlightenment reason became the sole thing that like, as a collective, we agree on, you know, things that can be proved through reason that we can kind of prove scientifically, those, you know, things that, you know, you saw it in the COVID pandemic, you know, like, the sensemaking broke down where you like, oh, there's a whole bunch of people in our society who aren't listening to scientists who, you know, what, whatever we think of that. I won't get into that debate right now. But, you know, you can see these moments where epistemological agreement as a society, like, what, what is truth? How do we decide what we want what is correct or true, and what and therefore what we should act on is like, really important. And so I guess that my question to you is, do you think where Are any of these kind of key assumptions alignment going to be kind of transcended in the way that we transcended the assumptions of the High Middle Ages? So we're like, oh, feudalism is useful. It worked in some ways, but we've got a better system that you know, replaces it

Stephen Diehl  59:37

I largely believe I think there's maybe the severity for like a fundamental disagreement, I believe in like the primacy of reason as like upstream from pretty much all other thought, although I don't think it's exclusive that it defines the entire realm of human thought. I think that there are other things that we can conceive of, but like you're describing the the phenomenon of like qualia can there be kind of like errored qualia can my experience of love be the same as your experience of love? I think these are fundamentally like unknowable propositions. So maybe they could be maybe we could agree that they are, but we can't actually know it. Like, can I know that you're conscious? Or you know, they're not some sort of zombie or something, you know, like, No, I can't know these things, you can talk about them. But I think fundamentally, they can't really inform structural shifts in society, because there's no way of knowing the veracity of these claims like that, which is that we cannot name should not be spoken of, I guess we could kind of like break assignments, say of these things, right?

Rufus Pollock  1:00:36

Well, the thing I'm trying to get at, though is that I firstly think there's a book we could read, we could maybe read, maybe you've read this book by Ian McGilchrist called the matter with things.

Stephen Diehl  1:00:46

I've read the master and his Emissary. You're interesting and mature a crew with it. But yeah, it's controversial.

Rufus Pollock  1:00:53

The first part, I think, is is less controversial. But the second book is kind of going addressing exactly what we're doing. I think it's one of the first efforts trying, but within the context of reason, in a way, it's still within show the limits of it and how one could transcend it, but in a way, that would be very acceptable to the more rational mindset. I guess what I guess why, the thing I would point to is that the very, the very view, the reason is what gives us everything that we can kind of like have shared collective knowledge of and agreement on itself somehow, right? Isn't it's a model, like, maybe the best analogy I can have is, like, we don't see atoms, what we have is they Funny enough, we live in a red light, even the area that we think is covered by science, is basically models of the world that we have more or less, like, we kind of think, like, these models predict things that we could then observe. And then we agree or more, but you know, like, even not quite in my lifetime, they

Stephen Diehl  1:02:03

fail to be falsified. Right, the models.

Rufus Pollock  1:02:07

Exactly. So they're not necessarily true, but they're more like, more correct, or more likely to be correct in some way, you know, we have we have probably, we're probably easy distributions over models of the world, right? of some kind. So I guess what I'm saying is the end reason. So let's try to think something like that, let's pick another example. I think it's really kind of crucial to reason logic. And the Western tradition that I found were interesting, which is we could call it non duality. Or in Western philosophy, you be the law of the excluded middle. So it seems to me that let's take a classic a couple of classic areas where this would show up that I think reason really runs into trouble currently, so one is classically like the mind, the mind consciousness problem. So well, the brain like, you know, I've got this brain. The one other thing that most human beings I think every human has this unbelievable evidence for is they have they are experiencing there is kind of awareness there happening. And some people go or what we call material Reductionists. They're like, No, no is somehow conscious just as your brain but it's like, it just seems like really implausibly so like there's there's qualia, there's all this experience happening. Yes, it's clearly correlated with your brain. Like, they're clearly like, when things happen to your physical brain, they impact your experience of reality, but it really seems I would say, I mean, I could go into a lot more detail, but it seems implausible, that's reducible to my brain, there's something else then it's something that almost all human beings have evidence for that there is there is awareness that they they are experiencing sounds or sights or smells or thoughts, you know, things are showing up. And I want to pick that as one and it's one way where I'd say this non duality comes up in a dual world either I'm like, There's either mine or there's body, there isn't some kind of an both at the same time. Or the other classic things about like, let's say non duality is like, you know, classic things you go into trouble when there's like subject object like i There's a subject observing and there's a reality out there, or it's all in my head and it's idealism, and like classically Buddhist or other more non dual Taoism or other non dual philosophies, and I'd say this is converging with one neuroscience in some ways, is like the kind of like, it's not like it's all in my head, but nor is it all out there. Somehow reality is kind of co op code was caught in Buddhism, codependent arising, it's like an arising co dependently. You know, it's like, there's an inter woven Enos of awareness and the world that are kind of kind of somehow coming into being at the same time you know, it's like, it's not like I'm just giving these examples why be like, hey, reason really struggles materials production isn't real. really struggles in these kinds of really seemingly important areas, you know, in consciousness research in, you know, I could give some quite a few other examples, but like, these are areas where, like, ah, there's something that reason can still talk about reason can still study our brain, we can still have philosophical discussions about the consciousness problem, and it's really valuable. Um, and there's something that reason can only touch your point, you know, in the way that that but there's a famous phrase, like, you know, Buddhists as my teachings are a finger pointing at the moon, they are not the moon, don't confuse by teaching as to what I'm pointing to. Similarly, there are things that we can point to in poetry in science, we kind of know that, like, we all know, consciousness is there, but it's not going to be kind of explainable in the sense by reason, or reducible to, in some way, reason.

Stephen Diehl  1:05:56

Yes, I mean, the certainly confounded like 18th century, philosophers have had a lot of problems with sort of Mind Body dualism. But I think in a modern neuroscience perspective, like you can view the mind, like I could think of this, broadly speaking, my view is that like consciousness is a community of minds that each of us exist each other's thoughts, like, and this is supported by a lot of evidence that we have, like weird neurons where you can, like, emulate the minds of other humans in your mind. And their sort of consumption that like, yeah, they were, you know, interconnected beings. And this obviously goes back to like, Buddha's conception of like, dependent origination, and like, I don't see those two as be incompatible with each other. Right? You know,

Rufus Pollock  1:06:33

more than that, it's more than because I would say, just to be clear, I'm trying to distinguish this a bit. So in distinguishing, I kind of create a separation that may not be there, but like I said, there's body, there's mind, there's my thoughts, but there's an observer of my thoughts, right? Even my thoughts, and my words, and my experience show up in some kind of space. That is kind of where did the quality occur? Right, like, even my words, your when you hear your thoughts in your mind, or shaft shows up, it's like, there is another space that is that because that's the whole, the whole kind of like, then consciousness problem, right? The whole the whole problem of like, hey, it's not just my brain, it's like, there's a kind of some intersection is clearly connected. There's kind of like, when you do stuff to my brain, if that's certainly my thinking, or my perceiving, but it's not, I don't think that is just your awareness, I'm just giving an example. Whether that's, that's something that, you know, you can do, you know, Buddhists, famous poses, or you can just be an empirical phenomenologist, in the sense of, you can just go and do investigate your experience, you can do meditation, for example, Buddhists, and many other traditions claim, if you do enough meditation enough, kind of the right kind of training, you can enter a space where there's just pure awareness, where thoughts and perceptions have ceased, yet there is awareness still there. Now, if you can do that, and enough people do that, you'd create evidence, collective evidence amongst enough people for like, oh, yeah, like, there is this kind of this, this claim about the nature of being is true. And just to take an example, I grew up thinking I was my thoughts for a large part of my life. I thought I Rufus is his thoughts and what is his body? And then there was a point I was like, me, me, you know, like, I've got a fingernail here, I've got a finger, now, it's part of my body. But you could, my fingernail could go away, and I'd still be there. And, you know, I could do that experiment with more and more parts of my body. And I could do an even with, you know, parts of my thinking, and there's still something there. And now, it might, you might not be ruthless in some way, whatever we call in roofers, but there's something there. And I'm just giving an example where that, that investigation, I can talk about it like I can with you, but it transcends, I can still kind of always get agreement people can, there can be a shared sense of what I'm talking about. But it's not something that may be completely reducible or explainable reason. Do you see what I'm getting a

Stephen Diehl  1:08:58

phrase like, you could have complete awareness. And this is true, the word true is doing a lot of work in that sentence, because like, I'm not sure like, what's his truth mean, when you're trying, you're trying to describe like the substructure of qualia, which I agree there could be some massive amount of like internal structure to the quality of human consciousness that we can explore. But saying that any aspect of that is true. I'm not sure that that means anything in that sort of context, because I don't think

Rufus Pollock  1:09:25

Well, what I'm saying is I don't think I can ask you provide let's take let's take a related argument so I'm arguing that this this investigation of which is what a lot of right religious traditions, but particularly the more mystical, we might call it religious traditions, whether Christianity, Sufi, as in Buddhism, and Taoism and Zen take being wild like Buddhism is he's kind of saying Buddhists kind of saying to me, don't believe it. This is not a faith based religion. Do you not come and like oh, I because I've told you, he's like, go and investigate. And the argument is that you can go and do this investigation and I think you can discover consonance in a sense of like, oh, wow, what I am discovering when I go and look at the nature of my mind or the nature and the nature of my being of being. It's similar to what other people seem to say. So maybe this is like a truth in the sense of like, this is something about the nature of reality. But it's not one that I'll be able to like prove in the same way in a laboratory for just because it's related to my interest in OT, my but also maybe everyone else is entitled, I don't say internal because it sounds internally sober, my internal state. And just to take that a step further, if that was so, for example, if I am not my thoughts, I have thoughts. Definitely I have thoughts, but I'm not just my thoughts. I'm not Rufus, the mind thinking, that has like kind of important implications for our worldview, and then it has implications for political politics. So just to kind of take it is like Buddhist Buddha's kind of argument about the Four Noble Truths. He didn't call out the four noble opinions was that if you go and do this empirical on like, oh, kolleg empirical phenomenology, if you go and become a phenomenologist, and do the investigation itself, you will discover that his claims about how suffering arises, how you can transcend it are true. And that the I think that kind of comes to another point, which is that in a future world, we have a belief at the moment truth claims are things we can prove objectively, whatever that means, we should investigate

Stephen Diehl  1:11:30

what the independent of the mind Yeah,

Rufus Pollock  1:11:32

well, yeah, but that's kind of weird, because what is, I know what you're

Stephen Diehl  1:11:36

talking about the mind independent of the mind? It's like, internal contradictions, right? Yeah,

Rufus Pollock  1:11:41

what is happening is that some of the more interesting truths are, well, might not be like that. But they still might be more than just opinions. Because I am like, just saying, Be fair, I mean, I mean, I am sceptical of like, I may be wrong, but I'm not I'm not I don't believe in a classic Judeo Christian God, for example, you know, some people do. The thing I'm trying to get at, though, is in a Buddhist sense, it's like, oh, we can do this empirical phenomenology. And it would put, like, you know, if it's, if these claims about attachment are true, they would suggest a lot of stuff about how we can actually make our society well are and wiser, because it'd be like, Oh, we should really train these capacities and skills. So you know, we should have everyone do lots of mindfulness or meditation, because this actually is a way to train these capacities or skills that are hard to discover, now we can get kind of trivial traces of them. In MRI machines, we can see all if people do lots of meditation, their default mode network is less active and stuff like that, you know, we can have these correlations, but it's kind of like how I put it, it's a very, it's a very thin gruel compared to the actual phenomenological experience. And I'm trying to point out that there could be something that's not just like my opinion, or that I saw a ghost, there's somewhere between classical, we can do empirical science about it, that everyone can see the scanner machine and, you know, look at the output from the data and so on. But it's also not simply like, oh, it was I saw a ghost and it's just what I experienced, and who can invalidate it, that there's, there's some kind of like, place in between that might be might be might be really important about understanding the nature of reality, and therefore how we run society.

Stephen Diehl  1:13:24

There's no other actually I could disagree with I mean, like, I think I'm getting down to like really, really wonky, kind of like epistemology things here. But I think there can be justified beliefs about qualia. I just don't think there can be justified true beliefs about qualia. Especially about consciousness because I think having a justified true belief about quality of consciousness would involve a truth about it that would independent of the mind. So I think the statement that there is a truth value about the quality of mind itself contains a logical contradiction that you're gonna have opinions outside of the mind about the mind. So think it's like a girdles kind of paradox kind of thing.

Rufus Pollock  1:14:06

But wait one moment, the odd thing is, you know that there is something odd about the mind in that it can watch like you have an experience sometimes where you can see, you can see your thoughts, right, there's some space in which this is all kind of arising. So there's something there where there is something that this is my point, by the way, just to go back. One of the points is that in the West, we're obsessed with paradoxes are bad. Do you know non duality isn't allowed, right? Like, I'm not both that I'm not I'm not I'm in here and realities out there. If I still have two things, like I'm out here, like I'm out here, which is a classic, like non dual, you know, at least kind of people into non Jew traditions really go into his like, they are somehow out here. That doesn't mean that they're like, doesn't mean that like smudged out with all of reality, but there's somehow a way and so I'm just trying to get out there. One of the things is the law of the excluded To the middle if something can't be both true and false, you know, it's either one or the other is, I think at some crucial areas, like a mistake like things can be true and false at the same time. Your own thing famous you point out girdles point. But what girdle showed was that in mathematics, there are that well, they're not things that are necessary to Well, there are things that potentially true and false or that are true, but can't be proved and so on. You know, and so even in this kind of various precise logical area, we have things that sort of transcend these categories that we've created.

Stephen Diehl  1:15:36

We can do that in logic as well. I mean, like, you can have like paraconsistent logics where you actually reject the law of excluded middle, but you allow, or you reject the principle of explosion, which says that you can derive anything from the conjunction of a statement with its contradiction, right. And that allows you to have statements which can be neither true nor false. And like that, you can devise actually a logic based on that. And actually, there's actually some interesting work about like, paraconsistent logic and Buddhist logic, actually, which is very interesting. So like, it's entirely possible, we'll talk about that experience of like, rejecting duality and rejecting the law of the excluded middle from a rationalist framework, though as well, right, because obviously, our logical system is itself based on axioms, and you can like permute, the axioms and derive different systems, and some of them are consistent and girdle proved that No, consistent, no formal axiomatic system capable of expressing arithmetic is capable of proving statements within its own context. Right. Somebody will call me out for the Yeah, the phrase reading. But yeah, but But back to political philosophy, though. Yeah, I mean, I think that the the experiences of qualia are actually quite interesting. But I think that they're definitely demarcated from reason. And that they can both be interesting topics to talk about. But I think there is a kind of, in commensurability, and talking about them within the same framework, and people can have their descriptions about qualia. And like, you can think that the Buddhists conception of like the Four Noble Truths, could actually be truths within that framework, but they're truth in a different sense that like, you know, from us last theorem is true. And I think that's not incompatible with each other.

Rufus Pollock  1:17:30

Well, I think I think that's a great point. And that what I'm trying to get at, therefore, is that just as at a certain point, in maybe the last age that we were in, I mean, there's crudely, you know, but there was a kind of cultural ontological system, there was a point where we had to kind of break out, you know, so do you think back, if you were in a system where God there, these, you know, God knows universe things, you know, even you know, etc, etc, the way we're in our rationality and reason, we just seem kind of like, wow, that, you know, we really broke out of a structure. And I guess, that's what I'm wondering about is to say, maybe it's helpful to think of how that cashes out in terms of political philosophy, you know, what does it mean that you would believe these things, so maybe I can try to point to a couple of areas. So when, when you go down the rationalist route, you you have certain problems, I think that, that show up? Let me name a couple of them. So one is, I think the magic going out of the world in Weber's famous phrase. So when you go down the rational route, like, what happens is like, it's this kind of, it's an acid that kind of eats away at the magic of things, things get, there's a there's a tendency that you end up in a kind of reductive materialist, reductionist world where you're like, we're just all just atoms bumping into atoms, we're just like, the selfish genes. This is kind of the meaning and the kind of richness of the world is somehow lost. Now the rashes were not she said, Well look tough Teddy. That's just what so you know, face it up enjoy life that there is, you know, whatever, it doesn't make sense that you have qualia, but hey, you do this, you know, but there's something that's really, really there. And I think that shows up in the anime, the meaning crisis, the depression that we see, like, you know, and what people are left with in terms of, let's say, a religion or alternatives either left with a right of reactionary religion, they, you know, they go back to something from the past, it's almost pre enlightenment. But there's not a lot going forward in the rationalist model. There's not there's not a lot of like, you know, you know, rich a belief system to give meanings live to explain why you have ethics, why you don't behave selfishly. There's reason we end up with Wall Street. You know, there's, there's a kind of, you know, I think sometimes we're always living on the fumes of the Reformation. And then if that weren't there, you know, with the hyper capitalist individual site and be even like, kind of more black mirror than it is, you know, So I think that there's, there's there's one that's a problem, which is I think, from rationalism, which is like, hey, there's a kind of meaning crisis inherent in it. There's an ethical crisis inherent in it some way. You know, there is a lot of reason why you would treat other people Well, other than, like, oh, it's kind of efficient to cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma some of the time. Whereas I think there are much deeper reasons we want to cooperate and much more profound callings to to be loving and kind to each other. The second, I think, problem of rationality, and this is one that's going to also very visible and maybe we're trying to because more empirical, is the climate crisis. So I think that the reductionist materialist view, you know, has has a problem. And it kind of leads to markets and so on, which is that it kind of sees nature signed to be exploited. And you see this and by the way, growth, communism, capitalism, this isn't specific to capitalism. But in modernity, there's generally a sense of nature is this thing that we're given dominion over, it goes back to Christianity, sure. But there's this kind of sense that we're there, you know, we can do whatever they want with it. The other aspect about it is that we overrate our ability to understand ecosystems, we underestimate the limits of rationality. Now, of course, we can say, really good rational people would know about, you know, externalities, and they would know about the limits of markets, and they would know that there are things that can't be measured. And they would get that there's a problem with GDP that basically, you know, go in a prostitute answer GDP, but but making love to your wife doesn't, you know, like, they would get these things are a problem. But the thing is, it's kind of like, it's kind of like saying that only Catholicism, you understood, there was some some areas of the edge or some things that were a bit problematic about, you know, like, you know, there was a problem of why is that even the word of God is all good and all powerful, you know, that there are kind of things the edge, but I think these things are not just things you can patch in rationality, I think they're quite inherent in the materialist rationalist model, because kind of rationality leads to materialism, which kind of leads to reductionism, which leaves you with this, these kind of challenges. So I just want to I wonder, I mean, I'm sure you've got a response, but like, maybe sorry, the climate crisis, you know, a lot of people just sit here and say, Look, modernity gave us the climate crisis, you know, other ways of seeing the world, like whether they're indigenous or their towers, or whatever, we would have treated the world differently, the natural world. And we are, we see ourselves as separate as to exploit it, and also our rationals kind of growth mindset where we can just, we scientifically think we understood the sister and so on, is is, you know, is that is that the source of some of these problems? What do you think?

Stephen Diehl  1:22:39

There's two points you made in there. And like, second one, I largely agree with the first one I strongly disagree with, actually, that inevitably, rationalism leads to this sort of reductive materialism and ultimately nihilism. I mean, no, I mean, it's actually like, we're just adding the word justice to a lot of work in that sentence, right? Because like, Bucha, yes, we are just out of but like, atoms are beautiful. Like, if you look at like this, a Fineman quote, he says, you know, look at the flower, and like the flowers composed, follow these, like elaborate structures, and proteins and DNA and ultimately, reduce down to like, you know, ultimately, quantum field theory, which gives rise to this massive amount of chemical structure that arise with these beautiful symmetries between groups. And an understanding of that only leads to the beauty of the flower, not to a reduction to just being atoms, like those atoms themselves are beautiful, if you understand the entire structure of how existence arises out of it, right? And so like, that just adds to your awareness of the world and a greater understanding of things rather than a simplistic viewing. And that is just the flower, like no, it's a flower plus all of this beautiful structure underlying reality. And to like, the nihilism arises out of the fact that like, atoms themselves cannot be beautiful. The material things cannot be intrinsically, you know, beautiful, and that there's a separation between, like, only human experience, is, has this beautiful conception to know like math and physics and material world can itself be justified in its own outright existence. And then the second part I largely agree with, I don't think I don't think rationalism inherently Miss denialism. And I don't think that materialism is necessarily like, incompatible with sort of a sense of awe and wonder of the universe, obviously, right? I think they're fully compatible. But then, you know, you could say like, materialism leads to consumption ism, and like, crony capitalism and neoliberalism. Yes, you can make that argument. And that that gives rise to these massive principal issue problems, collective action problems, of which the climate crisis is the big one.

Rufus Pollock  1:24:50

This is a quick the question I'm asking you then is why I'm saying it's interesting. Is that that, so let's just focus on the second one. Yeah. All that want to kind of combat To this point in the pragmatic utopianism essay, is that true if we that. So claim one, which we're kind of agreeing on is that somehow our way of seeing the world and thinking about the world and these kind of core assumptions that rationalism and reason are somehow really bound up in this unfolding crisis or problem. And then my claim two would be to say so, which is a second is a distinct claim is that if we there are ways that we could transform our way of seeing the world, I er kind of cultural or ontological views, that would make a really big difference. And perhaps the are even the alternative is certainly necessary, if not sufficient conditions for addressing powerfully this this crisis. So specifically, you might be like, ah, in this rational world, it's kind of like embedded in it, there's a kind of sense of an over maybe blind sense of control, there's this materialism. And if we went to a super rational model, for example, which would be you know, what would that mean, that might be included, like seeing myself as somehow more interwoven with the world more in a sense of interbeing, with other human beings with when you could frame those, as you said, even our mind is intermingling with others, you know, you could try and fit this in a fresh, rational framework, I think, we can start by doing that, by the way, because that's the way out, but in a way, it will take you somewhere what I would call super rational, you include the rational, but there's somehow a richer understanding of our of our place, the natural world, our connection to ecosystems, our way, a greater humility, maybe about our level of understanding of the way the natural world and we ourselves work and so on. You know, as I said, we don't need to frame it, if that's unhelpful, super rational, may be saying it's like an extension of rationality. But certainly, there's some kind of significant shift in how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. And our connection with nature, could be like a really important part of addressing the climate crisis, or the other collective action problems we might face.

Stephen Diehl  1:27:08

Actually, there's a lot that actually I agree with, like, I think the problems you're describing arise out of philosophy, I would call like, primitive dualism that like I exist independent of my mind, and that I exist independent of the rest of culture. And I think that's both are fundamentally false assumptions that we both can probably agree on, like, I am a product of everybody that had been around me, right. And that like, that kind of primitive duality gives rise to the idea of like neoliberalism, and the kind of destructive forces in capitalism that we see today that are giving rise to things like the climate crisis, I can get behind that, and maybe incorporating, I would say, not super rational, but I reject the term. But like, a description of the quality is, that give rise to a description of the ego in terms of not being an independent entity, could maybe be a way to deconstruct primitive duality for some people, and that's definitely something that would be interesting to explore. I think that's largely true. Like, if you were just basically just like, I don't know, dose, your average, like, you know, the current, you know, Chicago style economix conference with acid was actually produced, like a greater understanding of the world, but everybody thought that they were all connected with each other, like, would that actually give rise to greater understanding? Maybe? thought experiment?

Rufus Pollock  1:28:32

I think it was. Exactly. So that's one. I mean, I know it was a joke. It's a good point. And I think, um Yeah, well, I mean, first, yeah, really, really. Agree. So weak, I call primitive dualism is is is an error. And I think that maybe you were pointing at something when even the joke about people taking about the guy taking acid is that the thing that's interesting is how often the things we believe, I think, are rarely, actually directly come to you through reason. You know, that what's so powerful about the experience of let's say, acid for someone is that it's very, like, it's very like, here, you know, it's like, it's not, it's not even very capturable in words, but it's yet arguably often very powerful for the people who experience or take Ayahuasca or take some other thing. It really shifted. What I also found fascinating though, and I want to come back to this as a subtle point, though, about political philosophy is that I've also noticed the resilience of people to revert when let's say someone has some healthy spirits, maybe maybe through psychedelics it might be through just I don't know, going out in nature and having some very profound experience of war and wonder, you know, it might happen out of religion, religious experience, it might happen out of meditation, or the Reason or Reason it might them like there might be something out of mathematics, you know, many, many, many great scientists had, you know, wonder at the kind of like just infinite complexity of the universe. What is odd though, I also noticed is that for some people, that insight somehow is sustained into their life, it changes how they engage with the world. But for many people, it doesn't I mean, I'll give an example. I spoke to someone yesterday, actually, who was like, he graduated from like a top college, you know, top university, he really was his dream. He was an engineer, he wanted to be he went to work for Formula One racing team. That's his whole dream. And at some point, either this, like quite profound crisis, somehow, it was like a kind of dark night, first weekend, I got depressed, but then suddenly, like meditating, and he was just like, he just had this kind of major switch, like, wow, I just really, no, it's not that I still go on being an engineer or something. But I really need to leave this world. And somehow, the energy and I, you know, went off and did a lot of meditation. But what I'm getting at that person kind of switched, but I know, there's many people who somehow have these experience. And this comes back to this Cardinal thing of like, why even have this discussion to have this kind of, I don't know, if we will put you know, this podcast or this or the sharing is that, that those beliefs are people who have these insights, but then they don't tell you state does not become trade, it doesn't change into ways of seeing world that shift, kind of broadly, you know, that, you know, I often joke, I want to get a t shirt printed saying, I am not my thoughts. You know, and, you know, you talk about the nihilism point, I can show you an essay I wrote when I was 17 or 18. At school. Well, I was I was a fully card carrying nihilist. And not because I wanted to be but I had, I really went through a lot. I was like, okay, you know, I'm not religious, because it just doesn't make any sense. And that reason doesn't work. And basically, there's no point to react, there's no point to life, you know, other than maybe to be happy, but if I'm not happy, you know, you're in this loop of contradiction, because you're not happy. But it's like, I was really lost. And I think that, while maybe you have quite a, you know, like you're quite nourished by rationality, I would, I would say that if we went out and talked to people, I think there's, you know, on this point of, like, the impact of it on people, you know, as I said, Max Weber, you know, the great sociologist, he talked about the disenchantment with the world that came out of the rational society. And I think that that's that's their and its importance is that, it it reinforces a resignation, the status quo. So from a political perspective, and from a like a social perspective, we're doing this podcast, but seemingly people, you know, we can't go in a we don't go to Chicago's professional, even if we did, if they went back the faculty with all the other Chicago School economists, they'd probably revert, or they quit, you know? And so, the question then becomes like, the iron that engine like and it comes back to evolution versus revolution, the first point we started podcast on is, how does this change happen? If even let's say we agree, let's, when we come with this perspective, like, hey, primitive duality is a mistake, let's call it that. There's a much richer view of human human society, a nation in which we're richly interwoven, and we're interwoven with, with kind of nature. And that would imply a level of kind of carrying a level of love, even you could say, a level of or, and presence that would really shift our way of acting and attitude in the world. The question I then have is, how does that come about? Is it because we can't currently, I wouldn't say that's the dominant mentality right now in our societies of hope. Because he also implies hope, by the way, was I, when I often see is quite a lot of resignation, or, or hopelessness, you know, or even like, I don't like neoliberalism, but we can't really do better or there's some people are even like, the freaking, like quireboys for neoliberalism, but you know, what do you then see is like, how do we evolve to that, you know, how, how do we not, you know, how do we, when it's the stickiness of a given way of being? How do we get to this society to switch or shift gradually, right evolution or via revolution to this different way of seeing?

Notes

Context later provided by Stephen from his POV

If you want a text to contextualize a discussion, Martin Wolf’s new book ‘Crisis of Democratic Capitalism’ is a compelling defense of incremental reform compared to utopianism. Very close to my worldview.