Podcasts about Morris Berman

HEALTH NEWS   Omega-3 levels linked with lung health maintenance Turmeric Extract Strikes to the Root Cause of Cancer Malignancy Type 2 diabetes: Ultra-processed foods may cancel out benefits of Mediterranean diet  Vasectomy linked with aggressive prostate cancer risk Drinking kombucha may reduce blood sugar levels in people with type-two diabetes The magic number: How many days a week you need to exercise to see real benefit Survival in the New Woke Order Authors Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null “We have this ability in Lake Wobegon to look reality right in the eye and deny it.” -- Garrison Keillor     Keen observers of history realize that the US and the West have entered a new Dark Age. The light of reason and the capacities for critical thought are rapidly being snuffed out by widespread emotional immaturity.  The erosion of American culture has largely been the result of a decades' long merger of adolescent attitudes and the corporate commodification of human life and values. Mass culture, Hannah Arendt observed, was not culture but personal entertainment, or better stated self-aggrandizement. Our civilizational collapse into intellectual darkness and the catastrophic failure in democracy were presciently predicted by many of our wisest cultural critics such as Lewis Lapham, Morris Berman, and Robert Kaplan two decades ago.  Likewise, earlier works of science fiction such as Fahrenheit 451, The Perfect Day and The Canticle for Leibowitz describe not only the dystopian triumph of a puerile citizenry blindly subservient to the tricks and treats disbursed by an elite corporate and political class, but also the consequences of the intentional disorientation of a distracted human mind. Aldous Huxley perfectly predicted our times in Brave New World. Hungarian-born journalist and author Arthur Koestler (d. 1983) envisioned a future America being populated with human automatons in a replay of the fall of the Roman Empire; at such time the US will have turned into a “soulless, politically corrupt, everybody-for-himself civilization.” Although these modern critics and fiction authors may not have foreseen the exact structures and popular social values society has now transitioned into, such as the worst expressions of critical race theory's inverted racism, institutionalized woke culture, endemic mental disorders, and growing gender dysphoria, they nevertheless accurately observed the trends that have led America to this impasse of moral anarchy.  Critical race theory and the woke movement will never democratize society; rather it will further erode universal ethical norms to a cacophony of subjective emotions and aberrant personal beliefs felt at any given moment. These mythologies about race and gender, which are mistaken for hard truths, now permeate our elementary schools and universities, which are being fashioned into what Morris Berman calls “a gigantic dolt-manufacturing machine.” And the global elite, political legislators and pseudo-intellectuals dominating our educational institutions, willingly or not, declare this feat of social deterioration as a political victory. At the core of our society's collective daze in the marketplace of frivolous pursuits resides a deep existential emptiness. In particular this vacuity of a life enriched by meaning and purpose is being acted out by the younger generations.  In 2022, the national suicide rate again rose to 14.3 suicides per 100,000; two years earlier 5.2 million either planned or attempted to take their lives. The prevalence of gender dysphoria continues to rise significantly and starts at younger ages. Although the percentage of people either professionally or self diagnosed, with gender dysphoria remains very small, it has nevertheless been raised to a level of national priority at the expense of other mentally and physically handicapped persons that make up 27 percent of the population.  This brief reference above noting the consequences of the dark abyss at the center of American culture only highlights a small sliver of the consequences of the intellectual ignorance underlying critical race theory and woke culture. During the past five years, there has been an aggressive encroachment of woke and postmodern race ideologies into every aspect of society: local school boards, college campuses, corporations' human resources, and the halls of federal and state legislative bodies. The leaders of this trend are by no means our culture's best and brightest; rather those are the first to find themselves cancelled or handed their termination papers. Rather it is the activists who shout the loudest who manage to be heard. Those of us who critically recognize social dynamics observe this hysterical phenomenon with credulous amusement. When Tucker Carlson reports about a woman who wouldn't change a baby's diaper unless she received the infant's permission, the sane among us step back and wonder what the hell is going on. Self-righteous university students demand professors abide by their demands and teach only what they want. Those teachers who stand up for educational integrity and the teaching profession's tradition, are ostracized. Students petition college administrators to have dissenting un-woke professors fired.  What is especially notable is how rapidly this raging woke and inverse racist movement has become incorporated into our public and private institutions.  This includes the adolescent tantrums by political parties to censor their opponents, pass laws banning certain kinds of free speech and the gradual erasure of social norms of binding relationships that fueled the founding of the nation. None of this could have happened if the majority of Americans were not asleep. In the twenty-first century we can agree that equality is crucial for harmonizing the historical aberrations such as slavery and the denigration of women and gays that have haunted us through the generations. Everyone should be able to have the opportunity to succeed in reaching their goals. However, despite the new woke and critical race movements' condemnation of meritocracy, its followers demand the same out come.  Of course, once Rome passed a certain threshold after several centuries of decline, its final collapse accelerated quickly.  This is the nature of entropy. Aside from the enormous disparity in wealth between Rome's social classes, a perpetual war economy, widespread political corruption and the decline in literacy, Roman society was also plagued by a mental virus of magical thinking and superstition. In our own time, the level of American illiteracy is astounding. The average American likewise lives in a garbage heap of superstitious hopes for a utopian carnival where a superficial free thought reigns; however, at the same time a future utopia requires a new vocabulary and the banning of words the new woke order finds personally offensive. Following the warnings of social psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s, the American populace is being “deindividuated.” Deindividuation is a state whereby individuals lose their sense of self-awareness and their realistic and healthy personal identity in order to become part of a crowd that opposes other crowds. Normal moral restraints are cast aside and replaced by impulsive and deviant behavior. The entire woke narrative now giving way to antisocial behavior is a notable consequence of the deindividuation being approved by government and private industry. Deindividuation reinforces illiteracy and blatant stupidity. For example, when Democrats brought Aimee Arrambide, an executive for an abortion rights organization, before the House Judiciary Committee to give testimony, she claimed men could get pregnant and have abortions. Again we are reminded of Jefferson's words “Illiteracy is the enemy of progress and the ally of tyranny.” Dr. Henry Nasrallah, editor in chief of the journal Current Psychiatry, remarks that we are in a historical moment when “the passage of time ruthlessly increases the entropy of everything in life.”  We not only witness entropy in civilizations and societies, but also in our possessions, dwellings, businesses, and our physical body and mental faculties. Therefore, new energy must be invested in order to slow or reverse entropic processes. Yet without the restraints of a new constructive and restorative vision, entropy runs amok. During the dramatic public shock triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns, social distancing, business and school closures, and financial loss, there was a parade of incessant media porn reminded us repeatedly that death could knock on our door at any moment. The federal government's and medical establishment's gross negligence on multiple fronts during the pandemic gave rise to a rapid degeneration of America's social order. Distress from the loss of normalcy accelerated the nation's collective psychological entropy; this in turn contributed to resurrected racial tensions, hateful biases, toxic relationships, drug addiction and suicide, permissible crime, homelessness, rampant disinformation across mainstream media, the implosion of social norms, a psychological disoriented citizenry and a ruthless cancel culture that is utterly intolerant of others' beliefs. Remarkably, the mobs in the street are little more than bland reflections, a Jungian shadow, of the instability and disorder created by the agents of chaos and entropy who sit in the seats of power. “Just as the individual has a shadow,” wrote Jung, “so does society at large. And just as the individual must come to terms with his shadow so too must society if it is to be healthy and whole.” The rising psychological deindividuation and existential angst infecting our youth over their self-identity, gender, moral alienation and a lack of existential purpose in our technological driven materialistic society has reduced our youth to sentient robots screaming for self-expression.  This is a cause for today's woke groupthink contributing to social and political unrest with its destructive outcomes. Or as Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell warned, the “collective passions” have a penchant to inflame “hatred and rivalry directed towards other groups.” Despite the original values of American liberalism and non-dogmatic healthy skeptical inquiry, today's Left has perverted its own legacy.  The woke have become every bit as intolerant and wrong-headed as the most zealous fundamentalist on the Right. This “exclusivist humanism,” as the prominent cultural philosopher Charles Taylor has termed it, is giving rise to a faux universalism. The new woke order's myopic obeisance increasingly relies on the secular power structure of the ruling elite that in turn legislates on its behalf to marginalize and imprison alternative belief systems that do not embrace a secular universalism. Hence the new radical Left no longer tolerates the diversity of traditional beliefs and worldviews. The entropic descent into irrational hostility, collective emotional hysteria, and what the Russian-American sociologist Pritrim Sorokin called  “cultural schizophrenia,” clings desperately to a grossly materialistic society and a fragile false sense of individuality, an empty void, which is completely divorced from any deeper purpose in life. America is a “society in chains,” an expression stated by Nelson Mandela to describe a citizenry psychologically crippled for making informed decisions and incapable of participating thoughtfully in a democratic process. Consequently, a democratic renaissance, a new energy to reverse entropy, can only proceed following a revitalization of moral and spiritual values that have universal appeal, which respects pluralist ideals both within and beyond national borders. To be worthy of participating in any viable possibility for a democracy in the 21st century, it is necessary to return to becoming John Adams' “moral people.”

The Man Without Qualities by Morris Berman was recommended by listener (and author!) O.F. Cieri back in December of 2020. It was recommended to them by a friend who said this book "would change America" and that "we were all going to look at each other differently "- "a new culture would emerge from this book!" Although this book is supposedly intended as satire, it left us wondering how much of it or what elements were supposed to be funny. Check out O.F. Cieri's urban fantasy, Lord of Thundertown In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes discussion of: American politics (specifically the 2015-2016 brand) & jokes based on ethnicities and gender.  Sherry Turkle: 2012 TEDtalk: Connected, but alone? Turkle's Books & Articles U.S. Socioeconomic & Political Background Info: Poverty & Disenfranchisment: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/resource/power-of-poor-voters/ https://www.prrac.org/newsletters/julaug2002.pdf https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/ https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/racist-roots-denying-incarcerated-people-their-right-vote https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9930477/ Police Brutality: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ https://policebrutalitycenter.org/police-brutality-statistics/ https://policeepi.uic.edu/u-s-data-on-police-shootings-and-violence/ March & Protest Statistics: https://stacker.com/history/famous-protests-us-history-and-their-impacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstrations_in_the_United_States_by_size https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/

EMP | On Sale Now - EMP UK, EU & US Weekend Workshops: https://www.evolvemoveplay.com/workshops - Seasonal Retreats: https://www.evolvemoveplay.com/retreats - Online Natural Movement Courses: https://learn.evolvemoveplay.com/choose-your-own-adventure1672680678329 Welcome back to the Evolve Move Play Podcast! Today we're joined by Dave Wardman and Chandler Stevens, who are sitting down with Rafe to discuss the concept of reenchantment as outlined in Morris Berman's book “The Reenchantment of the World” If you enjoy the conversation, please be sure to like, share, and subscribe if you aren't already. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Intro 00:22 – Ad | EMP Weekend Workshop Tour 01:21 - Weighing in on the book 09:28 - What is “Disenchantment”? 19:23 - The Perception Problem 23:28 - Liberation 30:38 - Categorization & Embodiment 42:10 - Anger & Rough & Tumble Play 44:57 - Wisdom and learning 54:41 - Schizophrenia & Shamanic Tradition 01:08:13 - Getting the practices to talk to each other 01:14:43 – Doing Community Well EMP | Visit Us Online - EMP Website: https://www.evolvemoveplay.com - IG: @RafeKelly - http://www.instagram.com/rafekelley/ - FB: @RafeKelleyMovement - https://www.facebook.com/RafeKelleyMovement - Twitter: @rafekelley - https://twitter.com/rafekelley - YT Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/Faelcind?sub_confirmation=1 - Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/rafekelley Dave Wardman -IG: https://www.instagram.com/physicalalchemy/ -Web: https://physicalalchemy.com.au/ -FB: https://www.facebook.com/Davewardmanphysicalalchemy/ Chandler Stevens -Web https://chandlerstevens.com/

On this episode of Doomer Optimism Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and her husband Patrick Fitzgerald (@RizomaAt) discuss the future of American democracy and the prospects for a new dark ages with author and soothsayer Morris Berman. About Morris Berman Morris Berman is an American historian and social critic. He earned a BA in mathematics at Cornell University in 1966 and a PhD in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in 1971. Berman is an academic humanist cultural critic who specializes in Western cultural and intellectual history. About Ashley Colby Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation. About Patrick Fitzgerald Patrick is one half of the power duo Rizoma Field School. He's been a Spanish teacher for over a decade at both the high school and college levels in the United States. He has a BA in Spanish Teaching from the University of Illinois and my MA in Foreign Languages and Cultures from Washington State University. Along with different kinds of language instruction (formal grammar and/or immersion training), he's also taught Spanish language literature and art, and currently teaches AP Spanish Literature through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. He almost got a hole in one once, and he used to be able to dunk.

JF and Phil have been talking about doing a show on The Glass Bead Game since Weird Studies' earliest beginnings. It is a science-fiction novel that alights on some of the key ideas that run through the podcast: the dichotomy of work and play, the limits and affordances of institutional life, the obscure boundary where certainty gives way to mystery... Throughout his literary career, Hesse wrote about people trying to square their inner and outer selves, their life in the spirit and their life in the world. The Glass Bead Game brings this central concern to a properly ambiguous and heartbreaking conclusion. But the novel is more than a brilliant work of philosophical or psychological literature. It is also an act of prophecy -- one that seems intended for us now. Header image by Liz West, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Green_marbles_2.jpg). REFERENCES Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780312278496) Paul Hindemith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hindemith), German composer Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780393321692) Alfred Korzybski, concept of Time Binding Christopher Nolan, Memento (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/) William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780312160623) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679772873) David Tracy, [The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/790661.AnalogicalImagination)_ Jeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness (https://bookshop.org/books/seeing-through-the-world-jean-gebser-and-integral-consciousness/9781947544154) Teilhard de Chardin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin), French theologian Mathesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathesis_universalis) Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze (https://bookshop.org/books/the-hermetic-deleuze-philosophy-and-spiritual-ordeal/9780822352297) Weird Studies, Episode 22 with Joshua Ramey (https://www.weirdstudies.com/22) Joseph Needham (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Needham), British historian of Chinese culture James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games (https://bookshop.org/books/finite-and-infinite-games/9781476731711)

In this episode:We look at the limits of a merely rational approach to life and the need to make place in our lives for mystery.Let's make this a conversation:Do you have a comment or  question about this episode, or about something you would like me to address in a future episode? Please contact me on Facebook (facebook.com/jungiananalyst) or Twitter (@Jason_E_Smith).For more on living a symbolic life:Please check out my book, Religious but Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life, available from Chiron Publications.Sources for quotes and more:“In our time, it's the intellect that is making darkness, because we've let it take too big a place...." ~ C.G. Jung from On the Frontiers of Knowledge in 'C.G. Jung Speaking.'“A mercenary of our will to power, the mind is trained to assail in order to plunder rather than to commune in order to love.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel in 'Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion.'Discussion of "instrumentally rational" in The Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman.“The experiment presupposes a distorted image of [the human being].” ~ Raimon Panikkar in 'A Dwelling Place for Wisdom.'“There is no such thing as a baby.” ~ D.W. Winnicott from The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship in 'The International Journal of Psychoanalysis.' “Everything hints at something that transcends it; the detail indicates the whole, the whole, its idea, the idea, its mysterious root...." ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel in 'Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion.'The Cloud of Unknowing from the 'Classics of Western Spirituality' series."Understanding is a fearfully binding power, at times a veritable murder of the soul as soon as it flattens out vitally important differences...." ~ C.G. Jung from 'Selected Letters of C.G. Jung, 1909 - 1961.'“Love can survive only if wisdom has an effective voice.” ~ Gregory Bateson from Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art from 'The Anthropology of Art.'Music:"Dreaming Days," "Slow Vibing," and "The Return" by Ketsa are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We occupy human environments that are overlapped by numerous social, moral, and political systems. Some of these interlock while it’s unclear how exactly others relate to one another. The more theoretically-minded among us—and the more ideology-craving parts within us—tend to reach for rather all-encompassing frameworks to help us make sense of what creates social and environmental ills. We look around ourselves and see shortages in nutritious food, ecological exploitation, social injustices, atomization, political radicalization, and tyranny. And depending on our ideological proclivities, we use divergent language as tools for identifying their sources, in hopes of then addressing these identified problems—using terms like socialism, capitalism, fascism, or liberalism, to name a few.  Abstractions or idealized conceptions like these have important roles to play, but how helpful are they in bringing about social change? What if instead of leading out with political ideology or philosophical theorizing, we focused our efforts on meeting needs as they present themselves? What would happen if instead of organizing with an eye toward finding like-minded individuals that share our same dogmas and creeds, we targeted concrete problems that we face within particular places or communities?  Jeffrey Howard speaks with Ashley Colby, a sociologist and author of Subsistence Agriculture in the United States: Reconnecting to Work, Nature, and Community (2020). She earned her PhD focusing on environmental sociology from Washington State University in 2018. She is currently pursuing research projects based in Uruguay, where she has recently founded Rizoma Field School for experiential learning in the area of sustainability and agroecology. Ashley is a new member of the Executive Board of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI) based in North America. Colby spotlights subsistence food producers in the United States, uncovering how “practitioner networks” empower community members with different ideological and political commitments to come together and solve local problems. She believes that our current mass agricultural system—a central element of what she frequently refers to as “industrial capitalism”—is not only in crisis but moving toward gradual collapse. Drawing from original ethnographic studies and her own experience as a subsistence food producer, she explores some of the more promising alternatives to the current system, or “shadow structures,” as she calls them. She takes on the misconception that subsistence farming only happens in rural areas and in the Global South, highlighting food producers and chicken keepers in the Chicago area. She further expresses optimism that as industrial farming, consumerism, and global supply chains continue to push beyond their ecological and moral limits, that permaculture and subsistence agriculture will serve as the fruitful nexus for what is becoming the next collection of social and political systems that will enable communities to thrive beyond the twenty-first century.  Despite Colby’s optimism, how feasible or desirable are these movements away from mass-scale agriculture? How much meaningful change can happen when political activists take this more practical approach to problems rather than leading out with theoretical frameworks? What role does polemical theorizing have in bringing about social change? Show Notes: Subsistence Agriculture in the United States: Reconnecting to Work, Nature, and Community by Ashley Colby (2020) Wandering God by Morris Berman (2000) Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West by Morris Berman (1989) The Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman (1981) The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm (1956) On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841) Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854) My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir (1911) Straw Dogs BY John Gray (2002) Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (1968) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig (1974) Critical Theory (The Frankfurt School)

Who is Donald Trump? Many books have been written to answer this singular question. Why did he get elected? Again, see the previous sentence; both answers are summed up in the title given to this episode, though its simplicity is deceptive. To draw from the Morris Berman clip included in this episode, Trump is America – HE REALLY IS! He is the personification of the Greed principle highly touted by the wealthy, as well as the most grotesque aspects of the Elites collective psychology. But, if that wasn’t enough; he is also White Civilizations most egregious aspects rolled into one orange ball of contradictions. If you’ve read any of the books published about his psychology, you’d be hard pressed not to see his personal problems as separate from this country’s societal problems. Because I am merciful and come from a people who believe personal attacks should only come after one personally attacks you, I do not speak about his personality, but instead look at his leaving thousands of people in the cold without a way to get home after a rally, as a very interesting metaphor. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please contact me at vphiamer.adis.ogaarwa@outlook.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

00:00 Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=134200 07:30 Will America Survive 2020? Special Guest: Michael Anton - JML #032, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RPJNN0vS8A 30:15 Episode 1118 Scott Adams: Polls, Antifa Versus BLM, My Police Brutality Solution, Shy Trump Voters, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1R1mdMuFI8 35:00 Mike Cernovich predicts a Trump landslide 54:00 Paul Gottfried on Antifa, BLM, the Culture Wars, and Conservatism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad2RRIMsl9Q 1:00:50 Doov vs Jenn on Week of Review, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VE7H9WSdEs 1:15:00 Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan: Live Not by Lies, https://faithangle.podbean.com/e/rod-dreher-and-andrew-sullivan-live-not-by-lies/ 1:31:00 The alt-right manifesto that has Trumpworld talking, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/23/alt-right-book-trump-1472413 1:41:40 Former White House Stenographer Says Biden Is A ‘Shell Of His Former Self', https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/09/mike-mccormick-former-white-house-stenographer-joe-biden-shell/ 1:55:00 Big Tech's war on free speech, https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1303838143225888768 2:10:00 Morris Berman on the collapse of the American empire, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPQwvm61_dI 2:14:10 Ramzpaul says avoid honey traps, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBTkMwZDhwg 2:22:35 Tucker Carlson: Trump wants our troops out of the Middle East 2:42:00 Fred Luskin: " Happier Folks Get More Done with Less Stress; So Can You", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERIiCiQyKxY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Right#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Right_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perlstein https://archive.org/details/beforestormbarry0000perl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixonland The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 Polls, questions, super chats: https://entropystream.live/app/lukefordlive Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/lukeford/ Periscope: https://www.pscp.tv/lukeford/1nAJEAnVRDaJL Soundcloud MP3s: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593 Code of Conduct: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=125692 Reb Dooovid: https://twitter.com/RebDoooovid https://www.patreon.com/lukeford http://lukeford.net Email me: lukeisback@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter.com/lukeford Support the show | https://www.streamlabs.com/lukeford, https://patreon.com/lukeford, https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback Facebook: http://facebook.com/lukecford Book an online Alexander Technique lesson with Luke: https://alexander90210.com Feel free to clip my videos. It's nice when you link back to the original.

Guy McPherson and guest host Pauline Schneider were joined by Dr. Morris Berman, renowned educator who has taught at several universities in Europe and North America. We discussed Berman’s ongoing work as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. 

¿Cuántas veces han escuchado que es mejor vivir en México que en Estados Unidos? ¿Ustedes creen que puede estar en desventaja un país que paga ocho veces más de salario mínimo respecto a México? ¿Por qué una de las naciones más poderosas puede ser tan tóxica?

Neala reads from her excellent book Artpolitik: Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation.This reading focuses on the relationship between visual art and politics over the course of the twentieth century as articulated by several key radical aesthetic movements. I have copied Neala's text below."During the same time period, the capitalist mode of unbridled production and consumption achieved ascendency. Capitalist production, in turn, was augmented by the growing impact of mass communication media, which fueled its ethos of over consumption. Art was quickly appropriated and put in service of the capitalist economy. It was demythologized and stripped of meaning, and the reconstructed image moved out of the museum and the cathedrals into the daily lives of people via mass communication media – into movie theatres, onto streets, into peoples’ living rooms.As the twentieth century progressed, the world was awash with visual imagery, and the images took on an increasingly significant role in shaping the reality in which we all live.We live in a visually artful world. Our fascination with form, light, colour and visual texture begins at birth. As we grow the external world takes on increasing distinctions. A small child discovers a flower or a stone and may try to gobble it up, an adult may appreciate the decadent and tragic beauty of a plastic bag flowing as it’s carried helplessly in the wind. We see our first snow and throw ourselves in it, delighted and overcome with excitement and pleasure. But are these experiences aesthetic? Do they belong to the realm of art?We also share our world with other people, and this means we create relationships both with the world around us, and with the people in it. We make decisions in our communities, in our workplaces and on much larger scales, we create national policies and international treaties. We have governments, decide on how we will spend our common wealth – be it on armies and war or on education or health care. We choose our level of participation in these decisions, some of us care deeply, others believe these conversations to be unimportant.Historically, works of art expressed broad social interests and concerns. The production of art was a social activity, involving both the artists themselves and the wider communities in which they worked. The power of the art was drawn from its social function – for instance icons were not just religious pictures, they carried the hopes, dreams and prayers of individuals and communities, states of being, repositories of truth, like snapshots. They were carried into battle in medieval Russia to ensure victory with their power. Icons represented existing and potential social realities, and the yearning to change these was often embedded in the art. Art can also energise action in the political arena. Throughout history Works of art represented a variety of political messages: heroic bronze statues of mounted soldiers in full armour, early photographs of captains of industry standing astride railroad tracks with factory smokestacks in the background, and paintings of great battles celebrating military victories. Dorothea Lange’s stark photographic images brought home the realities of poverty. In Germany, film was used to stoke up feelings of anti-semitism and to build up heroism in the Fuhrer. In tHe 60’s the raised fist summoned feelings of rebellion around the worldThe desire to shape external realities in meaningful ways is a basic human impulse. It’s how we give our lives meaning. Creating meaning is how we order the chaos of life around us, and the need to create stories is born from this same need – to explain the world around us. Art gives us a way of placing meaning, bringing things and places to life. Art is a kind of naming: naming something creates a symbol which can incorporate many levels of individual and collective expression. Symbols are rich packets of information that distill dense contexts of experience. Through this process of symbolic created meaning we communicate with one another and find common ground, a collective sense of community, a shared meaning.Similarly politics is a mechanism for sharing symbols and affirming collective meaning. Art and politics are two of the most powerful mechanisms for visioning, for inventing our future.Together, they hold the key to determining what kind of world we will create.How do we put imagination, desire, and determination to work to enable the realisation of symbolic messages of freedom and future hopes and dreams? What role will art play in addressing the critical challenges of the twenty first century? The shared agenda: to make our lives and our world a fit place to live for all people. We accomplish these goals through developing and implementing effective artistic and political mechanisms for social change.Her book focuses on the most influential political and aesthetic ideas that inspired the art that energized social change and the creartion of new worlds through protest: Dada, surrealism, socialist Realism and the Situationist International (SI) and certain strains of post modern aesthetics.Does art in the final analysis “matter” in the political context? And if it does matter, why and how does “work” to effectively convey a political message? How is vision put to the service of our desires? I believe that our culture is in the midst of a profound transition from print to a richer visual mode of communication. Currently, the control of mass distribution of images is in the hands of very few media corporations and these media serve non-progressive forces worldwide. This situations is apolitical problem. These highly controlled images are designed in a way to get us to think in a certain way, to buy certain things, and to come to certain political conclusions. Understanding the construction and the use of images in politics should be a central mission in the radical community. Art can change the world, it can change minds, hearts and perspectives and it can create new values, new social realities. Only through a deep understanding of how imagery and images affect us can we sort out and then create an alternative, more humane, and nourishing reality.The viewer has an active role too. Communication through art is an interactive process. In true art the visions of artists are social visions bringing together the skillsand personal persepectives of the artist and the aspirations and dreams of the people. How will the viewer perceive the work of art, the political message? From a written to a visual cultureReading and writing are a relatively new means of communication. Until the invention of printing, the skills of reading anad writing were largely confiened to a small elite class of writers, philosophers, and theologians. Prior to the spread of universal written communication, oral transmission of knowledge was the predominant form of communication. Epic narratives were memorized and transmitted from one peron to the next in along tradition of collective memory. Since the early part of the twentieth century, the united states has been gradually shifting from a written to a visual culture. Morris Berman notes in The Twilight of American Culture that today “of the 158 countries in the UN, the US ranks forty ninth in literacy. Roughly 60 per cent of the adult population has never read a book of any kind; and only 6 per cent reads as much as one book a ytear, where book is defined to include romances and self-help manuals. Something like 120 million adults in the US are illiterate or read at no better than fifth grade level. If we are shifting to a visual culture the future challenge for political art will be how to communicate and incorporate feelings, emotions and imaginations that express the complexity, subtlety and nuances of political ideas. Compounding these challenges is the shortening of attention spans as new technologies stream endless amounts of information. The sheer volume of visual media and its omnipresence in contemporary culture present major problems for the organization of ideas, for maing sense of the visual worldl around us and for interpreting complex ideas.Among many studies about the transition toward a more visual culture, an essay entitled “Twilight of the books: what will life be like if people stop reading?” merits attention – Caleb Crain draws bleak conclusions – in 1955 reading coNsumed 21 per cent of peoples’ time, by 1995 that number had dropped to 9 per cent. Crain outlines a theory that speculates TV and similar media are taking us into an era of ‘secondary orality’ akin to the primary orality that existed before the emergency of text. The transmission of info orally had significant shortcomings, cultures where memorization is the primary means to preserve and to perpetuate a culture’s idea set may have to come at a significant price: “enormous powers of poetic memorization could be purchased only at the cost of total loss of objectivity.”“Emotional responsiveness to streaming media harks back to the world of primary orality, and, as in Plato’s day, the solidarity amounts to a mutual possession.. and so in a culture of secondary orality, we may be less likely to spend time with ideas we disagree with. Self-dount, therefore, becomes less likely. In fact, doubt of any kind is rarer. Classical aesthetics and the case for meaning.The role of art in culture and the relationship of art to politics have been persistent themses in western philosophy across millennia, beginning with the greeks. Although classical ideas about aesthetics, art and beauty have been largely ignored and even rejected by contemporary philosophers I will briefly explore the tradition to reconsider some of the dropped threads of classical aesthetic arguments in partic the importance of meaning.Art, in the classical tradition, had a specific purpose and outcome. It meant something beyond the art itself – aesthetics and philosophy were deeply entwined. It is important to point this linkage out beceuse in the modern era, aesthetics has consciously been separated from larger questions of collective meaning and purpose. In the modern era, art speaks for itself, it is its own category of knowledge and makes its own rules. It claims no intrinsic meaning beyond itself. Most pre-modern aesthetics on the other hand, was grounded in a coherent metaphysics that served as a standard for evaluating the relative merits of art and the aesthetic experience. Art was to have a specific purpose: to focus on some determined end and to reflect collective meaning. For centuries the concept of beauty dominated the philosophical and aesthetic dialogue in western culture. The idea of beauty was linekd to other larger truths such as the good and the true. From the classical philosophers of plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, through the Christian era, and to a lesser extent into the modern era via the Hegelian philosophers, the discussion focused on what the purpose of art was vis a vis beauty and how we were to recognize beauty in art. The task of the artist was in manys predetermined; artist were called to place their talents at the service of a metaphysical or theological ideal. Howrver beginning with the Renaiisance, through the romantic era, and into the modern era, the roles of art and the artist have changed. The inspiration for art and beauty was increasingly attributed to the private visions of individual artists and by the late nineteenth century the importance of these personal visions came to dominate the aesthetic dialogue.In plato’s philosophy the good, the true, and the beautiful existed in fixed and timeless ideas called the forms. The forms were perfect patterns of ideal states which were permanent and immutable. The real world was a less than perfect copy of the forms. For plato, art has one purpose – to articulate the form of the beautiful. Through the contemplation of art, the soul could approach the ideal form of beautyPlato was more interested in the idea of beauty as a search for metaphysical meaning than he was in the material manifestations and products of art. Representational art conveying higher meaning and transcendent purpose continued to be the dominant aesthetic for thousands of years.The importance of meaning in art persisted into the modern era. Nearly two millenia later, German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel continued the philosophical tradition link art to idealism, bring to the discussion his own ides about the ongoing relationship between the idea and matter as the spirit moved toward what he called the Absolute idea. Art was the sensuous manifestation of the Absolute. While Hegel technically is a modern thinker, his ideas harkened back to Platonic idealism. He wrote: The philosophical idea of the beautiful.. must combine.. metaphysical universality with the determinate content of real particularity.”Art, politics and aesthetics in the modern eraThe transition to the modern era had profound implications for aesthetics. The cultural shifts in philosophy, industrialization processes, science, new modes of mass communication, and rapid urbanizations were manifested in modernist artistic practice and theory. Traditional aesthetic theories came under increasing criticism and fell out of favour. Idealist philosophies were swept aside in the path of materialist and pragmatic ways of knowing. The concept of beauty (or any other absolutists idea) along with the expectation of meaning in art was summarily rejected. Increasingly, art was defined as autonomous, freed up from the constraints of specific meaning or larger purposes that metaphysics or theology prescribed. Instead, modern art proposed its own standard – art for art’s sake. Human psychology and personality played a central role in the modernist vision and the inner world of the individual artist increasingly took precedence over socially engaged art. Style, technique, and subject matter were left undefined and cntstant exploration and experimentation were embraced. All of these tendencies defined the emereging aesthetic of what came to be known as Modernism.Politics, too underwent dramatic changes in the transition to the modern era. The ideologies of progressivism, communism and anarchism all clashed with traditional and conservative views of power and authority, with the abuses of capitalist production, and with the persisting hegemony of the church. In all of the aesthetic movements to be examined in this study, a series of political issues had to be resolved: 1) the role of ideology and propaganda in works of art, 2) the internal conflicts between competing ideologies and agendas – in particular anarchism and communism, 3) the fragmentation of postmodern politics and aesthetics and 4) the role of the state in shaping and controlling aesthetics.At the centre of the story of twentieth century political aesthetics was the struggle between an emerging capitalist consumer aesthetic and the various political and aesthetic rebellions against that hegemony. A succession of self conscious radical aesthetic movements emerged, all of which have had a lasting impact on radical political aesthetics; dada, surrealism, socialist realism, lettrism, the situatinist international and most recently neo dada – and postmodern critical theoryDada and surrealism were the first modernist movements to challenge classical aesthetics and to explicitly raise the question of the relation of art to politics. Dada called into question the entire role of art as representation and rejected an ideological articularion of the movement’s aesthetic approach. In many ways, the dada artists prepared the foundation for later postmodernist anarchist aesthetics. They challeneged not only the ocontent and making of art but the meaning of art itself and its relationship to the political world. The challenged not only the content and making of art, but the meaning aof art itself and its relationship to the political world. They redefined the role of art to demand personal artistic autonomy; to insist on autonomy for art itself as a precondition for a politicised art; and to actively engage the artist in the task of bringing art into every day life.For dadists, the artist-organiser was replaced by the artist-agitator, whose symbolic assault on culture also had precedents in social movement practices, most recently in suffragette attacks on art during 1914Surrealists were more conservative, they made a case for the preeminence of the individual artist’s vision, rejecting the bourgeois aesthetic of the mainstream art community. They highlighted the role of imagination in political change; they challenged traditional techniques and styles, and they consciously rejected realism, calling instead for a sur-realism.Socialist realism highlighted again the importance of the real, and the personal narrative in art – and reasserted the centrality of community in shaping aesthetic style and meaning. The socialist realists celebrated the connection of art to people’s real lives and they were the first to consciously apply defined aesthetic techniques and styles in political propaganda efforts aimed at a mass market and using modern mass communication media.The SI – Situationalist International narrowed and the focus by developing a critique of capitalist consumer aesthetics and the impact of these images on the culture as a wholePostmodern anarchist aesthetics privileges the performative through seamlessly merging art and politics, to create new living realities and to emphasise the shared making of art and political changePerformative art is also consistent with anarchist principles of direct action and autonomous expression. Further, performance is proposed as a way to remain free of the hegemony of the structures of global power and the control of representation by the mass mediaPost modern aesthetics is in many ways a continuation of the earl Dada modernist agenda, and is often referred to as neo Dadaism. It rejects the notion of a fixed ideological mission for art; it is committed to art as action, and it is deeply committed to autonomy for the individual artist. More than dada it emphasizes participatory activities.ENDS

We return to the broadcast with cultural historian Dr. Morris Berman to discuss his latest book titled “Are We There Yet?” which consists of a collection of lectures, unpublished essays and reflections on the continued decline of American Empire. Websites http://morrisberman.blogspot.com Publications http://www.amazon.com/Morris-Berman/e/B001HCWOWM About the Guest Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural […]

We return to the broadcast with cultural historian Dr. Morris Berman to discuss his latest book titled “Are We There Yet?” which consists of a collection of lectures, unpublished essays and reflections on the continued decline of American Empire. Websites http://morrisberman.blogspot.com Publications http://www.amazon.com/Morris-Berman/e/B001HCWOWM About the Guest Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural […]

This series had its genesis at a meeting of the Royal Society of Canada - in 1985, as I recall, though it may have been the year before. The subject was the relations of religion and science, and several of the people featured in this series were present - among others physicist Iain Stewart, philosopher Albert Shalom, and British scientist James Lovelock, whose "Gaia hypothesis" was then still new and controversial. I had long been interested in the developments in physics and other sciences that were leading some to speak of a "new science," and in the implications of these developments for theology and philosophy, so I took the Royal Society meeting as a starting point for the following programmes. The series came back to mind recently when I read an essay David Bohm had contributed to a festschrift for Owen Barfield back in the 1970's. Bohm, an adventurous philosopher physicist, is one of the featured speakers in the second programme of the series, along with Ilya Prigogine, a Nobel laureate in chemistry for his work on irreversibility, complex systems, and what he called dissipative structures. Also featured are James Lovelock and Rupert Sheldrake, whose then recently published A New Science of Life had so scandalized fellow biologist Sir John Maddox, the editor of the journal Nature, that he had declared it a "candidate for burning." Reading Bohm's essay, it seemed to me it was time to share these still vital and interesting voices.Discussion of religion and science has a long history, but the discussion entered a new phase in the years before these programmes were broadcast in 1985. Among the reasons were recent experimental confirmation of the reality of quantum entanglement, or what Einstein had called "spooky action at a distance"; and the appearance of the sciences of complexity and emergent order, sciences which were then completing the job begun by early 20th century physics in overturning the postulates of classical science. The world according to science was becoming more subtle and mysterious. Rupert Sheldrake suggested that it was time to replace the old metaphor of "laws of nature" with something more provisional like "the habits of nature." David Bohm suggested that mind and matter must have "the same basic order" - two aspects of a single underlying process. Ilya Prigogine dared to "dream...about a more unified culture" in which science no longer posited a universe in which human consciousness is an anomaly. In what follows scientists, philosophers, and theologians discuss the implications of this "new science." More than thirty years have elapsed since these shows were first broadcast, and no doubt details would need to be changed if they were to revised today, but it seems to me that the outlines hold up pretty well. I should also note that the series was honoured by the Canadian Science Writers Association as the year's best radio programme. My work rarely attracted prizes, but this was an exception, and the $1,000 that went with it, I recall, was a welcome addition to a then somewhat strained household budget... The people heard in the series, in order of appearance, are as follows:Part One: James Lovelock, Morris Berman, Rupert Sheldrake, Stephen Toulmin, Albert Shalom, Philip Hefner, Trevor Levere, Ravi Ravindra, Ilya Prigogine, Jacob NeedlemanPart Two: David Bohm, James Lovelock, Rupert Sheldrake, Ilya Prigogine, David PeatPart Three: Stephen Toulmin, Robert Rosen, Iain Stewart, David Bohm, Philip Hefner, Thomas Berry, Jacob Needleman, Ravi Ravindra

Speaker or Performer: Clay Jenkinson Date of Delivery: April 2, 2017 Clay Jenkinson will talk about the ways in which Native Americans see resource questions differently from non-Indians. The talk will be based on Clay's reading of such books as John Neihardt'sBlack Elk Speaks, Paul vanDevelder'sCoyote Warrior, and Morris Berman'sThe Re-Enchantment of the World. Clay will attempt to show that as long as the two cultures see basic questions of the human relationship with nature in fundamentally different ways, there will be confusion and conflict in resource questions. In other words, sovereignty is only one of a number of issues at the center of the DAPL controversy. Water issues leave a particularly bad taste in the mouths of Native Americans because of the military and economic colonialism of the Pick-Sloan Project that dammed the Missouri River six times between Fort Peck and Yankton, SD, between 1945-1965. This program is part of our Water Is Life series.Clay Jenkinson is a public humanities scholar who loves North Dakota. He was born in Minot, grew up in Dickinson, lives in Bismarck, and considers the badlands south of Medora as his spiritual home.Video version: https://youtu.be/H4iHvWxyRUU

Geopolitics & Empire · Morris Berman: Is There Any Hope for America? #041 Acclaimed cultural historian Dr. Morris Berman and declinist fields questions from Political Science majors on how the United States is falling apart and what the future holds. Websites http://morrisberman.blogspot.com Publications http://www.amazon.com/Morris-Berman/e/B001HCWOWM About the Guest Morris Berman is well known as an innovative […]

Geopolitics & Empire · Morris Berman: Welcome to Trumpland and the Post-American World #039 Acclaimed cultural historian Dr. Morris Berman dissects the US elections, the crimes of Clinton and introduces us to Trumpland. He muses on the Post-American world and gives his prognosis for Mexico. Website http://morrisberman.blogspot.com Books http://www.amazon.com/Morris-Berman/e/B001HCWOWM About Morris Berman Morris Berman is […]

Geopolitics & Empire · Morris Berman: The American Way of Life, The Mexican Way of Life #026 Morris Berman fields questions from Mexican university students. What used to be the American way of life? What is the “hustler” mentality? How will the American Empire transition? What does he think of people who deny the decline […]

From time to time I have the opportunity to meet with great minds in person. That happened to be the case recently in the historic Mexican city of Guanajuato where I joined American cultural historian, social critic and academic Morris Berman for breakfast to discuss his work related to the decline of America. We mused […]

#263 — Cultural historian, social critic and author Morris Berman yaks with JHK about his new book, Neurotic Beauty: An Outsider Looks at Japan, and a lot of other topics around the crisis of Modernity. Berman’s books include the trilogy: The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, and Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline.

The Lone Reader; one librarian talks about the books he reads. Dark Ages America by Morris Berman   Music: L'Histoire du Soldat Igor Stravinsky    time: 0:02:12 size: 2.02 mb  

Guest speakers: Amanda Sage and Bruce Damer Watch a video of this talk Watch a video of Bruce Damer's brief history of the Palenque Norte lecture series PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Amanda Sage.] “Let's turn the museums into temples. I think the new museums are going to be temples.” “I'm interested in this collaboration, because I'm interested in what can we do to wake people up, to turn people on.” “And dream. I mean if this is about dreaming, what can each of us do to evoke the dream, a deeper dream, in another?” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Amanda Sage (official site) eARTh Voyage::: The mission is the art of transformation Amanda Sage “Vision Mapping for the Golden Age” - Burning Man 2012 from Palenque Norte on Vimeo. A brief history of Palenque Norte, from which the podcasts sprang . . . by Dr. Bruce Damer Dr. Bruce Damer "A Brief History of Palenque Norte" - Burning Man 2012 from Palenque Norte on Vimeo. The Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman Dark Ages America by Morris Berman

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Daniel B. Clendenin. Essay: *Dragged Along?*, guest essay by David Buschart for Sunday 16 July 2006; book review: *Dark Ages America; The Final Phase of Empire* by Morris Berman (2006); film review: *Good Night and Good Luck* (2005); poem review: *Oven Bird* by Robert Frost.

Talk about a Monday buzz kill,  "Dark Ages America:  The Final Phase of Empire"...   Morris Berman likes to beat himself up,  so we help him.    Then,  deer huggers think 15 varmits per square mile  is the ideal.    AAAAAAAARRRRGGGG!    You ever wonder why the immigration problem seems to be illusive to the political class?  Jerome Corsi  thinks he knows.   NAFTA and money.    A new cuss word.  If you ever run out of invective,  call somebody a "Sacerdotal Flagist"....  I double-dog dare ya.