Then & Now: Philosophy, History & Politics

Free Will – Our Freedom to choose for ourselves – is at the heart of our sense of being human. How we think about free will effects everything from responsibility and criminal justice to laziness and poverty to seemingly ordinary choices like what I'll have for dinner. Free Will is of course the power to select from options, for ourselves, unencumbered, unrestrained, uncaused – to be the author of our own thoughts and actions. But what does this really mean? Does Free Will really exist? And is it a wider social, cultural, and political concept? Is it really about responsibility? I look at a few philosophers - P.F. Strawson, Spinoza, Plato, Socrates, and more - to explore the concept Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

A long view on the sense of Russian history that Vladimir Putin has inherited and draws from culturally. Looking at the roots of Russian anti-westernism, its response to Europe during the Enlightenment and Peter and Catherine the Great's modernizing projects. From Rousseau and the influence of the Romanitics through to Dostoevsky, Carl Schmitt's influence, and Ivan Illyin today. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Nuclear Weapons changed us. One author said we have a ‘nuclear consciousness' If so, how specifically did it develop? What shapes did it take? I'll look at some surprising consequences of the discovery of Nuclear power, how it changed our ideas about fear and irrationalism, about world government and philosophy, how it changed literature and cinema and comics, religion, science, and our idea of progress. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

A look at the darker side of MrBeast's philanthropy and the wider philanthrocapitalist model it's a part of. Looking specifically at #teamseas and a partnership with Jennie-O, I attempt to untangle how corporations and conglomerates like Coca-Cola, chemical and oil companies, and big meat monopolies all have a vested interest in financing certain ‘philanthropic' projects while side-lining others. This is a story that takes some surprising twists and turns, from whitewashing, greenwashing & ‘funwashing' sponsorships, to illegal price-fixing, an endemic of farmer suicides, and leaked corporate emails to influence charities. Examining the roots and consequences of ‘philanthrocapitalism' tells us a lot about how lobbying works under modern capitalism. This is a long video, but it'll be worth it to tell this story properly. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Let's think difference. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Anger, rage, fury: it seems like everywhere we look right now, we see rising temperatures, smoldering resentment, blood boiling, floods of emotion. From Trump to Brexit, Hindu Nationalism to Black Lives Matter, from Hollywood me too to Pandemic Protestors, ISIS to white nationalists, Ukraine to Fox News, to my ongoing conflict with my unreasonably slow computer, it seems, as the historian Pankaj Mishra has argued, like we're living in an age of anger. I look at the history and philosophy of anger. What is it? What triggers it? Is it ever good? I look at the Stoics – including Epictetus and Seneca – Aristotle, Christianity, Enlightenment figures like Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith, through to modern day anger management psychology. I make some surprising findings about the usefulness of a misunderstood emotion. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Robotics, automation, and the information age are going in a strange direction. We look at extended selves, farming drones, Tesla sensors, Facebook and Twitter feeds, Amazon, Tinder, and Deleuze and Guattari's bodies without organs. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

If you've ever wanted a complete scientific roadmap for how to live, a modern philosophy to go by, a lens through which to understand a complex world, a foundation, the 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza is as good as you'll find. He asked questions like: why are we so dogmatic? What makes us irrational? Why do we live as slaves to our emotions and others opinions. He was one of the first Enlightenment advocates for real democracy, and was the first to really criticise the bible as just a text. He was vilified for his perceived atheism and excommunicated from the Jewish community where he lived. I look at Spinoza's most influential text, The Ethics, look at what his ideas about god were and why he was a Pantheist, ask what substances, modes, and attributes are, and why he argues that the ‘many is one'. We look at the affects, the idea of conatus, the ‘free person', rationalism, his stocism, and ideas of morality and benevolence.

Why Hasn't the Internet Fixed Democracy? How can we fix it? I use the latest 'drama' with Ethan Klein, Joe Rogan, Tom Pool, Vaush etc to see if we can find out... Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

The nature-nurture debates inform almost every area of human life – from biology and botany to economics, literature, and history. To simplify, thinkers on the nature side have, in varying ways, argued that at least parts of your body and mind are behind an impenetrable skin, cannot be gotten to by upbringing, education, politics, or culture. Imagine a one-way street. For example, you have an innate eye color or a creativity that comes out of your DNA – nothing gets to it, its just in you. On the other hand we have empiricists. They believe in a two way street instead of a one way street. This video looks at some complicated sounding things: DNA, genetics, epigenetics, methylation, phenotypes, stress, twin studies, Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, and early intervention programs. But I want to avoid being technical, as much as possible, because most fundamentally, most simply, this box is about a fundamentally philosophical idea: freedom. The idea that we have a nature has been approached in countless ways – philosophically, psychologically, theologically – but the most persuasive, through the 19th and 20th centuries, the best place to start, is biology: the study of DNA and our genes. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What does 'meta' really mean? What can we make of Facebook's change to 'Meta'? Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote about the decline of metanarratives in 1979's 'The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'. Can we learn anything about Zuckerberg's aspirations from this classic postmodern text? Lyotard was prescient. He noticed in the 70s that quote ‘the miniaturization and commercialization of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited.' He also that ‘Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.'

Mary Douglas wrote that: ‘There is no such thing as absolute dirt; it exists in the eye of the beholder. Dirt offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organize the environment. In chasing dirt, in papering, decorating, tidying, we are not governed by anxiety to escape disease, but are positively re-ordering our environment, making it conform to an idea.' Dirt is a human concept. There is no such thing as dirt in nature. The natural world is neither pure nor dirty. It just is. Everything is simply where it happens to be. Until litter is dropped and houses are built to exclude and chemicals are spilled and smog rises the idea that anything could be in the wrong place is absurd. And being human, dirt is a moral concept. Something that is right or wrong. Organized correctly or not. What can it tell us about ourselves? About order-making, about right and wrong, about 'dirty' people, about racism, and creativity? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

There were several reasons lynch mobs in Jim Crow America and soldiers and police officers in Nazi Germany were motivated to kill African-Americans and Jews. Historical forces like a sense of victimhood – both having lost wars – cultural forces and propaganda that depicted the victims stereotypically as inferior, greedy, or a threat, and economic forces – ‘the frustration of basic needs' as social psychologist Ervin Staub puts it. They were motivated, in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America, by a moral culture made up of stereotypes, adverts, scientific literature, societal standards, norms, and sensibilities that all pushed the perpetrators towards killing. In both cases, the perpetrators had rationales, justifications, reasons for what they were doing, even if, with historical hindsight, we can see these to be incorrect. This begs an important question: how is resistance possible? How does one know when they're being pushed by historical forces to do something that in retrospect we see as wholly immoral? How does one escape from under the hand of history – if culture, society, and the economy are all moving you towards acting in a particular way. Do we retain a moral sense? The philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, for example, has asked whether there can be a ‘moral responsibility for resisting socialization.' Often, what makes people like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther notable, is not that they are shaped by historical forces, but that that the very same forces are felt by them as coercion and that they stand up to them, counter them, resist them. Can we find morality and ethics in history? I look at empathy and moral sentimentalism to find out. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Between 1889 and 1930 there were around 3,700 known lynchings in the US. The perpetrators ranged from single people to small mobs to huge crowds of 15,000. The reasons given were broad. While most were accused of murder of rape, many were lynched for simply being rude, for arguing, for taking the wrong job or having the wrong beliefs. Like during Holocaust, as I explored in a previous video, these were ‘ordinary men' and women, and often even children. And as in my exploration of the psychology of the perpetrators' Holocaust, I want to try and understand the factors that led both to the violence of lynchings, but also ask how ordinary Americans justified their racism more broadly. I want to use lynchings to try and examine racism more broadly, taking an action, an event, and slowly zooming outwards, looking at the psychological, sociological, and historical conditions that led to it. We'll look at a number of what I'll describe in as ‘justifications, rationalizations, or causes' – to try to understand what led to violence, and how the beliefs, attitudes, and psychologies of perpetrators were produced more broadly. We'll look at propaganda, sexuality, scientific racism, nostalgia, economics, stereotypes, and first, the power of a feeling of defeat and victimhood, on the part of whites. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Liberalism – the assumptions of which many of us live under – prioritises individual freedom – of thought, of expression, of movement. But at the same time we think of migration – which is free movement – as abnormal. We even mythologise a sedentary past – of villages, farmers, peasants, ‘tied to the land', living and dying in the place where they're from. Yet in the 17th century, around 65% left their home parish at some point in the their lives. We have, what philosopher Alex Sager calls a ‘sedentary bias'. The migrant is presented as a problem, alien, outsider, yet we move around our own countries – commuting, deciding to live elsewhere, holidaying, visiting relatives, making work trips – without thinking its in any way strange. We are, as a species, mobile, nomadic, built to move. IN 2020, you could count 280 million migrants and each year around a billion tourists. And the numbers are increasing. But so are the objects, ideas, and phenomenon – borders, passports, guards, barbed wired, nationalist rhetoric – that attempt to pin us in our place. Can we find a genealogy of our attitudes? A history of our present problem? To do so, we might start with the 18th century biologist Carl Linnaeus. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Why We're Drawn to the Sea: A philosophical enquiry that looks at the sea as a cultural, literary, biological, evolutionary, and philosophical concept. The sea has long been a source of inspiration for some of our greatest thinkers – a great unknown to be explored, a passage to be used to transport goods, a place of relaxation, a dwelling place of monsters, a provider of sustenance. But could the nature of the sea – what it is, how it moves, what it represents – tell us something surprising about ourselves? Maybe Moby Dick, The Ancient Greeks, and the psychoanalysis of Sandor Farenzi can help us find out. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Is Wokeism Civil Religion? A response to Carefree Wandering's take of Wokeism as civil religion + German-style guilt-pride. I look at Robert Bellah's article 'Civil Religion in America' and take a look at free-speech, dogmatism, cancel culture, and more. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What makes us postmodern? Do we live in a psychological condition of postmodernity? Is postmodernism everywhere? The sociologist Anthony Giddens described living in the modern world as being ‘more like being aboard a careering juggernaut rather than being in a carefully controlled and well-driven motor car.' Through the work of Zygmunt Bauman and his 'Postmodernity and its Discontents' I look at concepts like control, planning, metanarratives, values, pessimism, schizophrenia, and consumerism. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Wokeism? What is it? Is it a force for good, for bad? Is it political correctness gone mad? Is it really everywhere? Or is it a red-herring? A New MccArthyism? Puritanical? Cancel Culture? Dogmatic? This idea of being woke – of wokeism – appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Does it have a history? What's going on under the surface? When you strip away the noise. We'll look at the history of the term, how its related to political correctness, ask whether it goes back further, before thinking about what I'll describe as the broadening of the public sphere, and the cancel culture debate.

Humans love to fix things, to find the cause of a problem, to probe, tinker, and mend. We ask, in many different ways, Why does this happen? What's the root cause? What's the origin? What or who is at fault? What or who is responsible? But there are three subjects that have intertwined with the topic of responsibly more than others. The idea of responsibility has many forms both historically and culturally. Philosophers have debated whether we can be truly responsible for our actions in the context of discussions about free-will; theologians have wrestled with the idea of taking responsibility for our sins; scientists have joined the discussion by searching for causation and exploring the psychology and neurology of our brains. But today, the idea of individual responsibility is often invoked in discussions about welfare, poverty, and enterprise. Increasingly, throughout the liberal and neoliberal periods, we've – in politics and the media, at least - emphasised ‘responsibility for ourselves' at the expense of other types of responsibilities, moral obligations, or duties. Is poverty a personal inadequacy? A problem of persons? A problem of character? A problem of culture? Or is it a problem of place? Of systems? Of society? The particular form ‘individual responsibility' has taken today – atomised, asocietal, ideally self-dependent, culturally ‘backward', genetically limited – is a relatively new historical and political concept which is used to justify the dismantling of welfare, the rejection of altruism, and the unravelling of community. Any cultural interpretation of responsibility is bound-up with politics, language, culture and society, and, has a history that's not simply progressive and linear. Instead of being responsible for ourselves, the concept of 'mutual obligations' or duties includes the responsibility to work hard and improve ourselves, but can also better accommodate contributing to the world, aiding others, remembering no man is an island and turning our gaze not inwards but outwards. I look at how this idea of individual responsibility developed in parallel with the history of poverty, looking at Edward Banfield's The Moral Basis of a Backward Soceity, Oscar Lewis' Culture of Poverty, Daniel Moynihan's The Negro Family, Charles Murray's Losing Ground and the Bell Curve, and George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty. We look at poverty and responsibility from the Middle Ages, through to the Poor Laws, to Kennedy, LBJ, The Great Society, The War on Poverty, to the Reagan and Thatcher era and to Obama and Fox News today. Of course, Jordan Peterson also makes an appearance. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Is Equality Natural? Do We Have a Natural Impulse Towards Equality? This is a philosophical tour of how philosophers have answered the equality question, and how hunter-gatherers, tribesman, and homo sapiens for 95% of their history, have been egalitarian. Based on Christopher Boehm's book, Heirarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behaviour, I look at the !Kung, The Semai, The Utku, Native North Americans and others to explore why they treated each other as equals. I also take a look at Hobbes, Locke, and Proudhon and the idea of natural rights. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What makes you modern? We know that modernity means technology, industry, cities. But is there a modern attitude? A modern psychology? What sets apart from pre-moderns? Can we even imagine what a traditional attitude might feel like? Traditional life was circular. We were tied to the land day after day, month after month – the idea of improvement, or of relationships with a wider world, were largely non-existent. The philosophers of the Enlightenment – Kant, Marx, Mill, Francis Bacon, and - were motivated by a powerful idea. That we could rationally understand the world, and use the world to shape history. They were all, in varying ways, about ordering the world, putting things in their place, making it predictable, usable. So what makes up this modern attitude? I try to answer this question through Anthony Giddens' 'The Consequences of Modernity'. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Jordan Peterson is famously critical of ideology. He has a particular distain for Marxism, Stalinism, Nazism, Postmodernism, Feminism, in fact, any ism. Instead, he argues, that the individual is sovereign, ideology should be renounced, and that, quote, ‘If we each live properly, we will collectively flourish.' Rule VI of Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life is 'Abandon Ideology'. Drawing on the Russian novelist Dostoevsky, Peterson interprets ideology as ‘rigid, comprehensive, utopian' and predicated on a few ‘apparently self-evident axioms'. An ism theorist, he argues, ‘generates a small number of explanatory principles of forces' that can supposedly ‘explain everything: all the past, all the present, and all the future.' An ideologue, he continues, ‘grants these small number of forces primary causal power, while ignoring others of equal or greater importance.' The result of this is that ‘an ideologue can consider him or herself in possession of the complete truth.' I take a look at what philosophers say ideology is, what Jordan Peterson's ideology – a type of Juedo-Christian Mythic Conservatism – look at its limits, and finally, ask why we need ideology. #jordanpeterson #peterson #ideology #politics #philosophy Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Through 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order, I examine Jordan Peterson's philosophy of responsibility. First, I try to understand what Peterson says about individual responsibility. Second, I take a look at the philosophy of free will and responsibility. I look at determinism, psychology, and history to begin to draw a between what we're responsible for and what we're not. Ultimately, I argue that Peterson holds us individually responsible for too much, and that when we look to the history of social movements, we see that social and collective action is just as necessary. Peterson emphasizes individual responsibility to an unreasonable degree, while discounting the necessity and power of social or collective responsibility. We also take a few detours down some familiar routes: feminism, postmodern neo-Marxism, and identity politics. #jordanpeterson #critique #identitypolitics #responsibility Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

This is a tale of three revolutions. Revolutions past – twin revolutions that served as lessons. The second was a counter-revolution, a result of not learning those lessons. And the third, well it begins in 2030, but stirrings of it are already being felt. I look at the causes of revolutions and state crises in the past, looking specifically at the English Civil War and the French Revolution, to argue as historian Jack Goldstone does, that we're following a dangerous path to potential revolution. The Baby Boomers were the most heavily invested in generation in history but as the population boomed, debt has grown with it. Millennials, on the other hand, are underinvested in, under-housed, and are experiencing wage stagnation. This is a tour of generational debt, neoliberal revolution, tax cuts, plague, stagnant incomes, Kings, the guillotine, and more. There's a growing consensus on both sides of the aisle: neoliberalism has failed. And history teaches us that if peaceful social solutions designed to mitigate against excess and injustice aren't implemented, then more chaotic, violent, and revolutionary solutions will inevitably follow. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Philosophy is often too abstract, but the Existentialists are known for being (a bit) more practical occasionally. Here are 5 useful things we can learn from the Existentialists and existentialism, specifically Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. They are: Laugh at yourself (looking at Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Camus' Myth of Sisyphus) Stop Thinking (looking at Kierkegaard's ‘leap of faith', ‘passionate action', and ‘subjective truth') Be Creative (looking at Nietzsche and Heidegger, authenticity, the ‘They') All of our Projects are Connected: Treat them like Rocks (looking at Sartre) Turn off Autopilot (Looking at Kierkegaard and ‘double reflection') Full article: http://lewwaller.com/5-useful-things-... Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

The pursuit of an authentic self is often compared with the desire for uniqueness, of individuality, of creative freedom. But does this mean, as some have argued, that ‘authenticity' itself is an individualistic, egotistical, narcissistic, and self-absorbed concept? After all, ‘be yourself', to thine own self be true, and ‘follow your heart' all conjure up the idea of stepping away from the crowd, not towards it, of living a life for yourself, not for others. If we are an authenticity-seeking species, if we crave our own independence, have a desire to be the master of our own choices, need creative freedom, what does this mean for our politics? What does it mean for social life, for businesses and organizations? Does ‘being you' – rather than pursuing ‘duty', for example – result in a narrowing of focus just to yourself as an individual? A loss of a broader social vision? The philosopher Charles Taylor describes this as a horizon. Does the horizon shrink to focus just on yourself? Do we each have a separate horizon? Are our values relativistic? Or do certain things transcend this horizon? Are certain horizons shared? Does the shared pursuit of timber in the town disappear once the residents go their separate ways? How do we think about societies that still share horizons, that consist of individuals pursuing both their own authentic interests and dutifully respond to the needs of the wider community? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Who are we? How do we find out? What is it to find our authentic selves? What can we learn from the history and philosophy of authenticity? Today, supposedly, we're free. Free, to do what makes us happy, to be anything we strive to be, to choose our own paths. We even feel free from parts of ourselves – that our emotions are something separate from us, that there's a real us beneath them, a supra-inner rational core that transcends everything outside of it, that is somehow higher than fleeting emotions that make us do things that aren't really us. The history of the search for authenticity has sought to understand this true core of human experience. It has been approached in many ways. Sometimes as a revolt against the outer layer, against standards given to us by society. Other times as taking off a mask. Or rejecting reading a script someone else has written for us, whether god or the bible or society and its rules Philosopher Jacob Golomb writes that ‘the concept of authenticity is a protest against the blind, mechanical acceptance of an externally imposed code of values.' The history of authenticity tells us much about the modern world. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, discovering our authentic self meant removing the masks society encourages us to wear, about confessing why we really say or do certain things. Kierkegaard encouraged us to take passionate leaps of faith, to find subjective truths that were meaningful for us, to take action, to make difficult either/or choices. Nietzsche knew that the death of god meant that humans were free to create their own values, to pursue the will to power creatively, to break free from the chains others imposed on us. We should love our fates - amor fati - but give style to our characters. Heidegger thought authenticity meant facing our own deaths, as beings-towards-death, overcoming our own anxiety, and stepping away from the 'They' to create something unique and lasting in the world And finally, Jean-Paul Sartre argued that we are, above all us, free to choose who we are, what we do, and what meaning we attach to the world and its objects. We have a piercing, lucid, and powerful consciousness that can explore the world and our own characters, and not using that reflective power, not interogating our own traits, beliefs, and actions meant we'd be living in 'bad faith', inauthentically ignoring our true human potential. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

The 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is best known for giving us the concept of a leap of faith. He was a deeply religious thinker, but his ideas have as much relevance for secular lives as Christian ones. He was the grandfather of existentialism, a purveyor of authenticity, and of discovering, amid conflicting beliefs and the demand to conform to the rules of society, who you really are. Although he was born in 1813, his works were not widely read in English until the middle of the twentieth century. He published Either/Or, his most famous work in 1843, and in it, through an array of pseudonyms and fictional characters, he discusses competing and contradictory ways one might live life. Should you live for the moment? Seeking pleasure? Or should you live for the interesting? Should you live dutifully? Ethically? Should you conform to the rules? He suggests there are three stages of life, three spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Some of the key concepts are reflective aestheticism, the rotation of crops, subjective truth, passion, and, of course, Christianity. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker argues that human violence has declined across history. One part of this argument is that life in a state of nature – before civilization – was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Amongst other things, Pinker argues that hunter-gatherers, tribal societies, were – and are - much more violent than later more civilized societies. Both Pinker and Thomas Hobbes argue that the state and its monopolisation on force and authority have pacified our darker human nature. This is a common trope: In the 1996 book War Before Civilization, for example, archaeologist Lawrence Keeley argues that prehistoric violent deaths probably ranged from around 7-40% of all deaths. He says: ‘there is nothing inherently peaceful about hunting-gathering or band society'. In 2003, Steve LeBlanc and Katherine Register claimed in their book Constant Battles that ‘everyone had warfare in all time periods' Biologist Edward Wilson ‘Are human beings innately aggressive?' Yes. Coalitional warfare is ‘pervasive across cultures worldwide' John Tooby and Leda Cosmides declare that ‘Wherever in the archaeological record there is sufficient evidence to make a judgment, there traces of war are to be found. It is found across all forms of social organization—in bands, chiefdoms, and states.' The book Demonic Males argues that ‘"neither in history nor around the globe today is there evidence of a truly peaceful society'. Pinker has written that ‘Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong.' Are – and were – hunter-gatherers really that violent? Brian Ferguson and Douglas Fry argue no. Looking at chimpanzees, bonobos, Otzi – the iceman – and a range of much more insightful ethnographical and archaeological evidence is the best way to find out. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

An introduction to Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Hobbes looms over all of us as the preeminent defender of the modern state and sovereign authority. Nuanced and original, he is probably the most influential figure in modern political philosophy who, and could be described as the father of both modern liberalism and modern conservatism. Hobbes' originality was his belief that political theory could be deduced from scientific principles about psychology, the senses, language, morality, knowledge, and power. To understand politics, he argued, you had to understand people. Hobbes grounds Leviathan in a state of nature – a theoretical situation in which humans have no institutions, no government, no coercive power – a pre-societal condition. Human existence in a state of nature is, according to Hobbes, pretty undesirable. In the most famous passage of Leviathan he says that in a state of nature there are ‘no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' In a state of nature, we have a right to all things, but because we seek our own self-preservation, there are ‘laws of nature.' Hobbes says that the first law of nature is ‘that every man seek peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.' Because some ignore or misunderstand the laws of nature we require a sovereign power to keep us in awe; a leviathan. Hobbes has been reinterpreted in the 20th century in game theory terms as a prisoner's dilemma. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What can the Holocaust teach us about morality and ethics? Does the Holocaust pose a challenge for moral relativism? Zygmunt Bauman argues yes. In Modernity and the Holocaust, Bauman argues that the Holocaust proves that societal rules, norms and standards cannot be the only source of morality. Perpetrators often argued in court that they were only following the law of their country. How can we judge them if morals are the product of a relative social context? Instead, Bauman argues, the source of morality is in a fundamental responsibility to another in proximity. And there's plenty of evidence for this. A biological repulsion to killing, for example. Or the distancing and division of labor that was required to scale the genocide. If proximity and responsibility are at the heart of a kind of moral objectivity, what might the consequences of this be? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What drives ordinary everyday people to become mass killers? What are the psychological mechanisms and cultural factors that lead to genocide? What were the causes of the Holocaust? Can we theorize a psychology of genocide? A theory of genocide? The Holocaust was not perpetrated solely by a few sadistic psychopaths but by tens of thousands of everyday Germans, Poles, Frenchmen, Austrians, Slovakians, in fact, much of Europe took part. If any of us could be motivated under the right conditions to become mass serial killers, how can we protect ourselves against the threat? How might we innoculate our societies and cutlures from decending into genocide? There are a number of factors that lead to the Holocaust. Compartmentalization, euphemism, conformity, authority, rationalization, propaganda, anti-Semitism, victimhood, and association, in particular. Gustav Le Bon, for example, argued that individuals are more likely to conform in a crowd because of anonymity and mimesis. Stanley Milgram's famous experiments looked at conformity to authority. This combined with rationalisations like ‘its either us or them' or ‘they won't survive through the winter anyway.' There was still a system of belief – an ideology – and almost a decade of propaganda disseminated by the Nazi Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP). Years of anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe led to conspiracy theories about Jewish world domination. While Britain, the USSR, and America were all consistently associated with ‘Jewish aggressors'. When a person perceives themselves as a victim and a prisoner as an aggressor in a war of survival and we combine this with the pressure to conform and submit to authority the probability for murder increases. In Nazi Germany, everything was made to fit this formula. Ervin Staub proposes a model of genocide that has three initial stages: First, there's the frustration of basic needs. Second, An out-group is identified that's the cause. Next, The in-group is motivated by a ‘utopian vision' that excludes a certain group. And Herbert Kelman has also argued that the requirements are threefold: authorization, routinization, and dehumanization. How does all of this fit together? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Winston Churchill once said that ‘Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.' In the wake of what happened in Washington last week, I think this metaphor illustrates something deeper about the relationship between demagogues and their followers. Who are the tigers and why are they hungry? Riots - the voice of the unheard - clearly signify some issues within a society that if not resolved inevitably lead to the baring of teeth. Tigers only emerge from tears in the social fabric. The more the economic, social, or cultural chasm rips open, the more untamed emotions spill out of the void, and the more likely it becomes that a demagogue can saddle-up and offer a solution. Steve Bannon said that ‘we got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall….This was pure anger. Anger and fear is what gets people to the polls.” Many ancient philosophers were skeptical of democracy because it was vulnerable to the threat of demagogues. Plato argued in the Republic that because democracy must allow freedom of speech it was defenseless against strongmen who could make to the demos based on their fears and emotions. Joseph Goebbels said that ‘This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.' So why is it that democracy is vulnerable to demagogues? What do demagogues offer and how might we protect against it? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

How can we untangle Madness & Civilization and think clearly about what Foucault is saying, both in the book, and by extension in later works? Looking at some criticisms of him are a good way to try to pin down exactly what's going on with his method and view of the world, so let's start there. In 1987 Lawrence Stone, for example, criticized Foucault as being ‘unconcerned with historical detail of time or place or with rigorous documentation.' He said that Foucault ignored ‘enormous differences in the degree and organization of incarceration from country to country' in Europe. How might Foucault respond to some of his critics? To understand it's important to look closely at his method, too. In short, his method is ‘to write the history of madness will therefore mean making a structural study of the historical ensemble – notions, institutions, judicial and police measures, scientific concepts.' A Foucauldian method searches for the consistent and compatible conceptual frameworks that set the criteria for what a normal human nature is at any given time, and broadly suggest the attitudes, perceptions, and sensibilities any given society holds. These phenomena form epistemes that historically have changed over time. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Michel Foucault's History of Madness (abridged in English as Madness and Civilization) was a revolutionary exploration of how our interpretations and experience of madness have changed over time, and how they're not quite as ‘rational' – or even more ‘rational – than they first appear. Everyone who was worked on the history of psychiatry since has worked in Foucault's shadow. He looked at history not as a history of administration, of records or politics, or what the psychiatrists said happened, but as a question of something was experienced and how what we think of as timeless actually changes over time. He introduced difficult and exciting questions in both history and philosophy. Where might the voice of the excluded and silenced be heard? To what extent is madness a product of society's attitudes towards it. ‘How,' he writes ‘can a distinction be made between a wise act carried out by a madman, and a senseless act of folly carried out by a man usually in full possession of his wits? ‘Wisdom and folly are surprisingly close. It's but a half turn from the one to the other.' What does it mean to transgress? And how is it possible to reach something out of reach, something beyond reason. What does it mean to be mad? Insane? Crazy?Do these things exist outside the realms of reason?If they're unreasonable how can they be understood by reasonable means? Foucault looks at leprosy and the leper colonies, ships of fools, renaissance madness as a type of wisdom, the great confinement during the Enlightenment, different aspects of madness and how they were made sense of, and finally, William and Tuke and the birth of the asylum. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What did Descartes know for certain? That he is a thinking thing, a cogito. But what does it mean to think? Descartes lists a few modes of thinking: Doubting, affirming, denying, understanding. Heidegger embarks upon a similar project to Descartes. What, he asks, is the fundamental nature of our experience? Of our existence? Heidegger agrees with Descartes. If we want to live life well we need to be clear about its most fundamental components. Descartes answer is summarised by his phrase cogito ergo sum, which translates as thinking, therefore, being. For Heidegger, Descartes has it the wrong way around. He thinks that Descartes has neglected the sum, the being. What is it to be something? Heidegger's answer comes in a number of forms: he says as well as being thinking things we have care for things, we have an anxiety about the world, we are existential, but most importantly, we are beings-in-the-world. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

Descartes' Error is a 1994 book by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio which outlines the somatic marker hypothesis, a theory about how the mind and body not only interact, but are indissociable. Damasio argues that those feelings provide what he calls ‘somatic markers' for the mind that aid decision making. They point us in the right (or wrong) direction. The rationalist or Cartesian view – what Damasio calls the ‘high-reason' view – suggests that our mind is like a computer. We're running through all of this incomplete knowledge about the job – the commute, the career prospects, the people, the location, while weighing up the advantages and disadvantages as if its a ledger. But Damasio writes ‘you will lose track. Attention and working memory have a limited capacity.' This is where somatic markers come in. He writes: ‘before you apply any kind of cost/benefit analysis to the premises, and before you reason toward the solution of the problem, something quite important happens: When the bad outcome connected with a given response option comes into mind, however fleetingly, you experience an unpleasant gut feeling. Because the feeling is about the body, I gave the phenomenon the technical term somatic state.' He continues: The somatic marker ‘forces attention on the negative outcome to which a given action may lead, and functions as an automated alarm signal which says: Beware the danger ahead if you choose the option which leads to this outcome. The signal may reject, immediately, the negative course of action and thus make you choose among other alternatives.' Somatic markers – the collection of feelings we get from bodily and mental impulses – highlight certain options for us to deliberate while eliminating others. They're a kind of screening process. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

This is an introduction to Rene Descartes' Meditations. Descartes - born in 1596 - is often considered the father of modern philosophy. He was a radical innovator, completely sweeping away the old and inaugurating a new method – simple, pure, clear, individual thought. He claimed he read very little, and most of his work was in the sciences. When a man asked to see his library he pointed to a half dissected calf. He was primarily a mathematician. He invented the Cartesian coordinates, but today he's mostly remembered for his philosophy. There are two key philosophical works – the Discourse on Method and the Meditations – the latter is a more complete statement of his philosophy. It's short, it's reasonably simple, its' groundbreaking, it's entertaining. Descartes wants to doubt everything he knows so as to put thought and philosophy on a firm footing; he wants to discover what is certain, indubitable. He is, then focusing exclusively on reason, he's a rationalist. So, how do we go about discovering what we know to be certain? Cogito Ergo Sum. I think, therefore I am. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

An introduction to the philosophy of Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism. Bacon was born in London in 1561. He was an establishment figure born into one of the most powerful families in Britain. He as a member of the house of commons and the house of lords for 37 years, a lawyer, Attorney General, and a member of the Privy Council, the group who advises the monarch. He died of pneumonia after carrying out experiments with ice in 1626. He's interested in the question of what is useful, practical, the pursuit of improving our place in the world. He thought that the scholastic philosophy taught at the time was dry, closed off, esoteric, at a dead end. First, to know the truth we have to be able to distinguish it from falsehood and for Bacon, the mind does a good job at distorting the truth. He said that the mind was a ‘crooked mirror', distorted by what he called idols. He wrote: There are four idols: idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the marketplace, and idols of the theatre. To remedy the effect the idols have on the pursuit of knowledge, Bacon advocates for induction: the scientific method. The Baconian Method starts with simple observations. He said ‘a new beginning has to be made from the lowest foundations.' Instead of starting at the top, from general ideas, we start from the bottom, from particular observations, and work upwards to ‘general truths' or axioms. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What did Bacon give us? Induction, the scientific method, experimentation, his was a theory of epistemology – a theory about knowledge. He said that knowledge about the world comes from the senses and should be carefully and systematically collected to make use of instrumentally. Ok, so there are two lines of criticism I'd like to discuss today. First, the idols – the idea that knowledge is distorted by human cognition. Second, the idea of discovery, specifically the difference between discovery and creation. My main argument will be that Bacon neglected the subjective element in epistemology.

Modernity is many things. Urbanization, industrialization, technologization. At its simplest, it's a project of supposed improvement, science, and progress. As a project, then, modernity seeks to expand itself. If improvements can be made, they should be made. Exploration was at the heart of the modern expansionist drive that began in earnest in the 17th century. But why then? Why not before? What shifts in psychology led to this new attitude in Europe about an unexplored world? We can sometimes see shifts in the most unexpected places. In the early modern period, philosophers like Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Adam Smith, began to reinterpret morality as the pursuit of pleasure, power, and profit. In 1747 Jean-Jacques Burlham wrote that ‘Now let man reflect but ever so little on himself, he will soon perceive that everything he does is with a view of happiness'. By 1776, Adam Smith could write that “It is not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Since, the scientific revolution it was beginning to be assumed that human nature was calculable, scientific, had simple principles, that people act in rational and predictable ways. Happiness, pleasure, utility, whatever it was, was pursued, stored up, or, to use a word that the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham invented in 1817, maximized. How did this have an effect on world history? On the mentalities and psychology of people in the West. We explore the links between modern philosophy and British Imperial, particularly through William Dalrymple's book on the rise of the East India Company and the decline of the Mughal Empire – the Anarchy. The history looks at the life of the megalomaniacal Robert Clive, the idea of Gentlemanly Capitalism, theories of Imperialism, and, most horrifyingly, the Great Indian Bengal Famine of 1770, where a third of the population of Bengal died. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

How do we deal with coronavirus? I look at the 'Great Barrington Declaration' - a group of scientists against lockdowns - and the history of how science is always political. The Declaration has been signed by over 20,000 medical practitioners and scientists, including Professor Sunetra Gupta from Oxford. There are some problems, though. First, anyone can sign the form – a look through the signatures reveals signatures from Johnny Bananas and the notorious serial killer, Dr. Harold Shipman. But the so-called Great Barrington Declaration event was also hosted by a libertarian think-tank funded by multi-billionaires including the Koch Brothers. But this doesn't immediately delegitimize their position. Another letter signed by Professor Gupta said: ‘Any objective should be framed more broadly than COVID itself. To place all weight on reducing deaths from COVID fails to consider the complex trade-offs that occur: (i) with in any healthcare system; and (ii) between healthcare, society and the economy.' How do we make sense of this? I take a tour through history from the Scientific Revolution and Isaac Newton through to today's COVID-19 lockdown science to find out. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

I look at the thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, his anarchism, his mutualism, and his theory of politics. Proudhon was the first self-declared anarchist. He wrote What is Property in 1840. He was not a wide-ranging and difficult writer, he wasn't a system builder, he was critical of utopianisms, and was fascinated with contradictions. For Proudhon, The ideal society was a contractual one – where individuals are free to arrange their relationships under conditions of justice. But for justice to flourish, its laws had to be known to all. The tension between liberty and order is always at the heart of Proudhon's politics. He intended his mutualist philosophy to be an approach to political life that could be a ‘synthesis of the notions of private property and collective ownership,' a synthesis of liberty and order. Both private property and collective ownership had major flaws; so what could the solution be? As we saw in What is Property? Justice is at the heart of the solution. fairness, right, morality, should be the premise of economic, social and political arrangements. But at the same time, Proudhon argued that the only law people should follow is the law they choose for themselves. Why would people voluntarily follow any law? And where would it come from? I look at his views on anarchism, communism, the labor theory of value, and contracts to find out. I find some answers in his work 'General Idea of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century' and 'What is Property?' Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

An introduction to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's 1840 book, What is Property? Pierre Joseph Proudhon was the first self-declared anarchist. He wrote What is Property in 1840. He was not a wide-ranging and difficult writer, he wasn't a system builder, he was critical of utopianisms, and was fascinated with contradictions. For Proudhon, The ideal society was a contractual one – where individuals are free to arrange their relationships under conditions of justice. But for justice to flourish, its laws had to be known to all. Proudhon looks at the justifications for property - occupation and labor - and argues that they both really only justify possession. Proudhon ultimately argues that all possession has a dual nature. A part that is ours by virtue of needing it for the flourishing of our own liberty, and a part that is society's who have contributed to its value, and still has a right to it based on need. Another way of saying this might be that everything is only borrowed. His theory of property can be summed up by his phrase: ‘‘The right to product is exclusive – jus in re ; ¬the right to means is common – jus ad rem' Proudhon is one of the most important figures in the history of socialist and radical thought. As George Woodcock writes he argues that ‘property is incompatible with justice, because in practice in represents the exclusion of the worker from his equal rights to enjoy the fruits of society.' Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

An introduction and overview of the British/Latvian philosopher, Isaiah Berlin's 1958 classic lecture on Two Concepts of Liberty. Berlin thought that where philosophers, politicians, and commentators had talked about the idea of freedom as one definable concept, throughout the history of modern thought you could identify two different ideas about what freedom or liberty meant. He called them negative and positive liberty. And in short, they're the freedom from, and the freedom to. Negative freedom is the freedom from coercion, interference, authority. But positive liberty, he writes, 'derives from the desire on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and my decisions to depend on myself and not on external forces of whatever kind.' It's the desire to Self-directed, self-determined, independent, competent; it's the the will to self-mastery, to autonomy. I want to be the master of my own life, to choose for myself. I also look briefly at critiques, including Gerald MacCallum's triadic formulation of liberty. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

In his 1977 essay, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, Michel Foucault criticizes the traditional historical method and makes an argument for why a ‘genealogical' approach is important. But what is genealogy? It's a history of us. Of the attitudes and dispositions we embody today. The way we approach and do things. These things often seem like they don't have a history, that they're human nature. That they're normal, eternal, unchangeable. Genealogy attempts to uncover how they've changed over time – how there are different ways of approaching them. It uncovers how they're not the way they are because they've gradually improved; they're not part of an inevitable linear progression through history. They're contingent. Genealogy often examines attitudes, beliefs, presuppositions. – Morality, discipline, sexuality. It addresses a traditional history that assumes simple movement forward over time. It draws out, uncovers, and critically examines the origins of a specific conception of what's morally good, or the source of a particular way of disciplining societal criminality, or the genesis of attitudes about what it means to be a feminine woman. Foucault is influenced by Nietzsche, the first person to show that morality – our ideas of what's good and bad - has a history, has changed over time. He is searching for the 'origins' of the genealogical method in Nietzsche. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

'Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).' This is American philosopher Robert Nozick's bold pronouncement at the beginning of anarchy, state, and utopia, a 1975 book that is largely a response to Rawl's 1971 A Theory of Justice. It's the classic modern defense of libertarian political philosophy. For Nozick, the rights that individuals have are natural, of fundamental importance, and completely, universally, unequivocally inviolable. These rights, he argues, must be respected at all costs. They aren't designed by institutions, or dreamed up by revolutionaries, written into contracts and protected by lawyers. They are part of being human. How then is a state justifiable? Taxation, the rule of law, a system that forces its citizens to pay for roads, schools and hospitals is surely a violation of an individual's natural rights as a human to be free to make their own choices. ‘Boundary crossing', as Nozick calls it, crossing the line and infringing upon a person's freedom, is surely only permissible with consent. This, loosely, is the position of the anarchist. The anarchist argues that because of the inviolability of individuals, no state can be justified. For Nozick, this is the fundamental question of political philosophy: whether there should be any state at all. He wants to justify what he calls a minimal state. One that simply protects an individual's right to freedom, and nothing else. He wants to argue that this is both justified philosophically, and, could develop from a state of nature historically. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

I respond to some of your comments on the Rawls video, specifically thinking about utilitarianism, rights, race, and radicalism. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

What does it mean for a body – flesh and bones – to be politicized? For the rhythm of heartbeats, the density of muscles, and the flow of the arteries to be molded and shaped by power? What's the best way to rank citizens on a scale? To make the child's body still, obedient, but strong? How far can we go in engineering modern utopian bodies? Is it possible to forge the iron of the national body through recommendations or if not, by force? Throughout the 19th century, bodies emigrated in droves from the country to the city. Their stomachs were hungry, for food, for work. They crowded flesh on flesh into slums. “Little Ireland” in Manchester had two toilets between 250. 5 or more often slept in one bed. Cesspools and dunghills were everywhere. At the same time, factory owners needed these bodies to be productive, energetic, malleable. We take a look at the Philosophical Radicals, who were inspired by Jeremy Bentham, Edwin Chadwick, Social Darwinism, Eugenics, and enforced sterilization. The 1846 Nuisance Removal Acts, Robert Bayden-Powel and his concerns about national degeneration that led to the development of the Scouts, productivity during the First World War, and the development of eugenicist thought and societies. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

John Rawls, as we saw last time on Then & Now, came to the following conclusions about what a just society should like. He said that: ‘‘All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values, is to everyone's advantage.'' But what would this look like in practice? It's only in recent years that attention has begun to be focused on how this might be implemented politically. Rawls barely addressed this question, but he did suggest two possible systems: liberal or democratic socialism, and property-owning democracy, and while he said that justice as fairness is agnostic between them, he leaned towards the latter. So what is a property-owning democracy? Property-owning democracy means citizens have a real stake in the productive capital of society, some ownership of the means of production. He writes: ‘Property-owning democracy avoids [inequalities], not by redistributing income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (educated abilities and trained skills) at the beginning of each period'. If all citizens have a stake in a sizeable amount of property, access to capital and the productive decisions of society, it prevents power from resting in the hands of the few. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018