Podcasts about protestant ethic

Jan Overwijk discusses critical systems theory, sociologies of closure and openness, and cybernetic capitalism.   Shownotes Jan Overwijk at the Frankfurt University Institute for Social Research: https://www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de/personendetails/jan-overwijk.html Jan at the University of Humanistic Studies Utrecht: https://www.uvh.nl/university-of-humanistic-studies/contact/search-employees?person=jimxneoBsHowOfbPivN Overwijk, J. (2025). Cybernetic Capitalism. A Critical Theory of the Incommunicable. Fordham University Press. https://www.fordhampress.com/9781531508937/cybernetic-capitalism/ on the website of the distributor outside of North America you can order the book with a 30% discount with the code “FFF24”: https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781531508937/cybernetic-capitalism/ on Niklas Luhmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann Baraldi, C., Corsi, G., & Esposito, E. (2021). Unlocking Luhmann. A Keyword Introduction to Systems Theory. transcript. https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5674-9/unlocking-luhmann/ Fischer-Lescano, A. (2011). Critical Systems Theory. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 38(1), 3–23. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0191453711421600 Möller, K., & Siri, J. (2023). Niklas Luhmann and Critical Systems Theory. In: R. Rogowski (Ed.), The Anthem Companion to Niklas Luhmann (pp. 141–154). https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/anthem-companion-to-niklas-luhmann/niklas-luhmann-and-critical-systems-theory/982BC5427E171D2BA0D14364377A40F5 on Critical Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory on Cybernetics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics Future Histories explanation video on cybernetics (in German): https://youtu.be/QBKC9mM8-so?si=64v0OgBKV3xjXvLl on Humberto Matuarana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana on Francisco Varela: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Varela Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1992). Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Shambhala. https://uranos.ch/research/references/Maturana1988/maturana-h-1987-tree-of-knowledge-bkmrk.pdf on Ferdinand de Saussure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure on Post-Structuralism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism on the differentiation of society into subsystems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_(sociology) on Jaques Derrida: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida Bob Jessop on Luhmann and the concept of “ecological dominance”: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318543419_The_relevance_of_Luhmann%27s_systems_theory_and_of_Laclau_and_Mouffe%27s_discourse_analysis_to_the_elaboration_of_Marx%27s_state_theory Jessop, B. (2010). From Hegemony to Crisis? The Continuing Ecological Dominance of Neoliberalism. In: K. Birch & V. Mykhnenko (Eds.). Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order? (pp. 171–187). Zed Books. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318524063_The_continuing_ecological_dominance_of_neoliberalism_in_the_crisis on Surplus Value in Marx and Marxism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value on Louis Althusser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser Althusser, L. (2014). On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Verso. https://legalform.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/althusser-on-the-reproduction-of-capitalism.pdf on Stuart Hall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist) on Capital Strikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike on the concept of “rationalization” in sociology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(sociology) on Max Weber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber Weber, M. (2005). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Routledge. https://gpde.direito.ufmg.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MAX-WEBER.pdf Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books. https://profilebooks.com/work/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/ on Surveillance Capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism on Herbert Marcuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse Marcuse, H. (2002). One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Routledge. https://files.libcom.org/files/Marcuse,%20H%20-%20One-Dimensional%20Man,%202nd%20edn.%20(Routledge,%202002).pdf on Jürgen Habermas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas on Jean-François Lyotard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard Lyotard, J.-F. (1988). The Differend. Phrases in Dispute. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816616114/differend/ on Thermodynamics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics on the Technocracy Movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Polity. https://giuseppecapograssi.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/bauman-liquid-modernity.pdf on New Materialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_materialism on Gilles Deleuze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze on Bruno Latour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour on Donna Haraway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway for criticisms of new materialism and associated tendencies and authors: Malm, A. (2018). The Progress of this Storm. Nature and Society in a Warming World. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/574-the-progress-of-this-storm Brown, W. (2019). In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. Columbia University Press. https://www.social-ecology.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Wellek-Library-Lectures-Wendy-Brown-In-the-Ruins-of-Neoliberalism_-The-Rise-of-Antidemocratic-Politics-in-the-West-Columbia-University-Press-2019.pdf Hendrikse, R. (2018). Neo-illiberalism. Geoforum, 95, 169–172. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718518302057 on N. Katherine Hayles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._Katherine_Hayles Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October. Vol. 59. (Winter 1992), 3-7. https://cidadeinseguranca.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/deleuze_control.pdf Brenner, R., Glick, M. (1991). The Regulation Approach. Theory and History. New Left Review. 1/188. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i188/articles/robert-brenner-mark-glick-the-regulation-approach-theory-and-history.pdf on the “Regulation School”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_school Chiapello, E., & Boltanski, L. (2018). The New Spirit of Capitalism. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/1980-the-new-spirit-of-capitalism Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Harvard University Press. https://monoskop.org/images/9/95/Hardt_Michael_Negri_Antonio_Empire.pdf on the Tierra Artificial Life Program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_(computer_simulation) on Gilbert Simondon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Simondon on Karen Barad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Barad on Post-Fordism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Fordism on Taylorism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity. https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=platform-capitalism--9781509504862 Hayek, F. A. (2014). The Constitution of Liberty. Routledge. https://ia600805.us.archive.org/35/items/TheConstitutionOfLiberty/The%20Constitution%20of%20Liberty.pdf van Dyk, S. (2018). Post-Wage Politics and the Rise of Community Capitalism. Work, Employment and Society, 32(3), 528–545. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017018755663 on Rosa Luxemburg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg on Luxemburg's thought on imperialism: https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/44096/rosa-luxemburgs-heterodox-view-of-the-global-south Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal Capitalism. How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/2685-cannibal-capitalism on Mariarosa Dalla Costa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariarosa_Dalla_Costa on the “Wages for Housework” Campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_Housework Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/74-capitalism-in-the-web-of-life on Stafford Beer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer Pickering, A. (2010). The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo8169881.html Foucualt's quote on socialist governmentality is from this book: Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Palgrave Macmillan. https://1000littlehammers.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/birth_of_biopolitics.pdf Groos, J. (2025). Planning as an Art of Government. In: J. Groos & C. Sorg (Eds.). Creative Construction. Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond (pp. 115-132). Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction   Future Histories Episodes on Related Topics S03E30 | Matt Huber & Kohei Saito on Growth, Progress and Left Imaginaries https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e30-matt-huber-kohei-saito-on-growth-progress-and-left-imaginaries/ S03E29 | Nancy Fraser on Alternatives to Capitalism https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e29-nancy-fraser-on-alternatives-to-capitalism/ S03E19 | Wendy Brown on Socialist Governmentality https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e19-wendy-brown-on-socialist-governmentality/ S03E04 | Tim Platenkamp on Republican Socialism, General Planning and Parametric Control https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e04-tim-platenkamp-on-republican-socialism-general-planning-and-parametric-control/ S03E03 | Planning for Entropy on Sociometabolic Planning https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e03-planning-for-entropy-on-sociometabolic-planning/ S02E31 | Thomas Swann on Anarchist Cybernetics https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s02/e31-thomas-swann-on-anarchist-cybernetics/   --- If you are interested in democratic economic planning, these resources might be of help: Democratic planning – an information website https://www.democratic-planning.com/ Sorg, C. & Groos, J. (eds.)(2025). Rethinking Economic Planning. Competition & Change Special Issue Volume 29 Issue 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ccha/29/1 Groos, J. & Sorg, C. (2025). Creative Construction - Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond. Bristol University Press. [for a review copy, please contact: amber.lanfranchi[at]bristol.ac.uk] https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction International Network for Democratic Economic Planning https://www.indep.network/ Democratic Planning Research Platform: https://www.planningresearch.net/ --- Future Histories Contact & Support If you like Future Histories, please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories Contact: office@futurehistories.today Twitter: https://twitter.com/FutureHpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurehpodcast/ Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@FutureHistories English webpage: https://futurehistories-international.com   Episode Keywords #JanOverwijk, #JanGroos, #Interview, #FutureHistories, #FutureHistoriesInternational, #futurehistoriesinternational, #NiklasLuhmann, #FrankfurtSchool, #CriticalTheory, #SystemsTheory, #Sociology, #MaxWeber, #Economy, #Capitalism, #CapitalistState, #Cybernetics, #Rationalization, #PoliticalEconomy, #DemocraticPlanning, #DemocraticEconomicPlanning, #Governmentality, #Ecology, #NewMaterialism, #Posthumanism, #CyberneticCapitalism, #Totality

Hello Interactors,This week, the European Space Agency launched a satellite to "weigh" Earth's 1.5 trillion trees. It will give scientists deeper insight into forests and their role in the climate — far beyond surface readings. Pretty cool. And it's coming from Europe.Meanwhile, I learned that the U.S. Secretary of Defense — under Trump — had a makeup room installed in the Pentagon to look better on TV. Also pretty cool, I guess. And very American.The contrast was hard to miss. Even with better data, the U.S. shows little appetite for using geographic insight to actually address climate change. Information is growing. Willpower, not so much.So it was oddly clarifying to read a passage Christopher Hobson posted on Imperfect Notes from a book titled America by a French author — a travelogue of softs. Last week I offered new lenses through which to see the world, I figured I'd try this French pair on — to see America, and the world it effects, as he did.PAPER, POWER, AND PROJECTIONI still have a folded paper map of Seattle in the door of my car. It's a remnant of a time when physical maps reflected the reality before us. You unfolded a map and it innocently offered the physical world on a page. The rest was left to you — including knowing how to fold it up again.But even then, not all maps were neutral or necessarily innocent. Sure, they crowned capitals and trimmed borders, but they could also leave things out or would make certain claims. From empire to colony, from mission to market, maps often arrived not to reflect place, but to declare control of it. Still, we trusted it…even if was an illusion.I learned how to interrogate maps in my undergraduate history of cartography class — taught by the legendary cartographer Waldo Tobler. But even with that knowledge, when I was then taught how to make maps, that interrogation was more absent. I confidently believed I was mediating truth. The lines and symbols I used pointed to substance; they signaled a thing. I traced rivers from existing base maps with a pen on vellum and trusted they existed in the world as sure as the ink on the page. I cut out shading for a choropleth map and believed it told a stable story about population, vegetation, or economics. That trust was embodied in representation — the idea that a sign meant something enduring. That we could believe what maps told us.This is the world of semiotics — the study of how signs create meaning. American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce offered a sturdy model: a sign (like a map line) refers to an object (the river), and its meaning emerges in interpretation. Meaning, in this view, is relational — but grounded. A stop sign, a national anthem, a border — they meant something because they pointed beyond themselves, to a world we shared.But there are cracks in this seemingly sturdy model.These cracks pose this question: why do we trust signs in the first place? That trust — in maps, in categories, in data — didn't emerge from neutrality. It was built atop agendas.Take the first U.S. census in 1790. It didn't just count — it defined. Categories like “free white persons,” “all other free persons,” and “slaves” weren't neutral. They were political tools, shaping who mattered and by how much. People became variables. Representation became abstraction.Or Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish botanist who built the taxonomies we still use: genus, species, kingdom. His system claimed objectivity but was shaped by distance and empire. Linnaeus never left Sweden. He named what he hadn't seen, classified people he'd never met — sorting humans into racial types based on colonial stereotypes. These weren't observations. They were projections based on stereotypes gathered from travelers, missionaries, and imperial officials.Naming replaced knowing. Life was turned into labels. Biology became filing. And once abstracted, it all became governable, measurable, comparable, and, ultimately, manageable.Maps followed suit.What once lived as a symbolic invitation — a drawing of place — became a system of location. I was studying geography at a time (and place) when Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and GIScience was transforming cartography. Maps weren't just about visual representations; they were spatial databases. Rows, columns, attributes, and calculations took the place of lines and shapes on map. Drawing what we saw turned to abstracting what could then be computed so that it could then be visualized, yes, but also managed.Chris Perkins, writing on the philosophy of mapping, argued that digital cartographies didn't just depict the world — they constituted it. The map was no longer a surface to interpret, but a script to execute. As critical geographers Sam Hind and Alex Gekker argue, the modern “mapping impulse” isn't about understanding space — it's about optimizing behavior through it; in a world of GPS and vehicle automation, the map no longer describes the territory, it becomes it. Laura Roberts, writing on film and geography, showed how maps had fused with cinematic logic — where places aren't shown, but performed. Place and navigation became narrative. New York in cinema isn't a place — it's a performance of ambition, alienation, or energy. Geography as mise-en-scène.In other words, the map's loss of innocence wasn't just technical. It was ontological — a shift in the very nature of what maps are and what kind of reality they claim to represent. Geography itself had entered the domain of simulation — not representing space but staging it. You can simulate traveling anywhere in the world, all staged on Google maps. Last summer my son stepped off the train in Edinburgh, Scotland for the first time in his life but knew exactly where he was. He'd learned it driving on simulated streets in a simulated car on XBox. He walked us straight to our lodging.These shifts in reality over centuries weren't necessarily mistakes. They unfolded, emerged, or evolved through the rational tools of modernity — and for a time, they worked. For many, anyway. Especially for those in power, seeking power, or benefitting from it. They enabled trade, governance, development, and especially warfare. But with every shift came this question: at what cost?FROM SIGNS TO SPECTACLEAs early as the early 1900s, Max Weber warned of a world disenchanted by bureaucracy — a society where rationalization would trap the human spirit in what he called an iron cage. By mid-century, thinkers pushed this further.Michel Foucault revealed how systems of knowledge — from medicine to criminal justice — were entangled with systems of power. To classify was to control. To represent was to discipline. Roland Barthes dissected the semiotics of everyday life — showing how ads, recipes, clothing, even professional wrestling were soaked in signs pretending to be natural.Guy Debord, in the 1967 The Society of the Spectacle, argued that late capitalism had fully replaced lived experience with imagery. “The spectacle,” he wrote, “is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”Then came Jean Baudrillard — a French sociologist, media theorist, and provocateur — who pushed the critique of representation to its limit. In the 1980s, where others saw distortion, he saw substitution: signs that no longer referred to anything real. Most vividly, in his surreal, gleaming 1986 travelogue America, he described the U.S. not as a place, but as a performance — a projection without depth, still somehow running.Where Foucault showed that knowledge was power, and Debord showed that images replaced life, Baudrillard argued that signs had broken free altogether. A map might once distort or simplify — but it still referred to something real. By the late 20th century, he argued, signs no longer pointed to anything. They pointed only to each other.You didn't just visit Disneyland. You visited the idea of America — manufactured, rehearsed, rendered. You didn't just use money. You used confidence by handing over a credit card — a symbol of wealth that is lighter and moves faster than any gold.In some ways, he was updating a much older insight by another Frenchman. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s, he wasn't just studying law or government — he was studying performance. He saw how Americans staged democracy, how rituals of voting and speech created the image of a free society even as inequality and exclusion thrived beneath it. Tocqueville wasn't cynical. He simply understood that America believed in its own image — and that belief gave it a kind of sovereign feedback loop.Baudrillard called this condition simulation — when representation becomes self-contained. When the distinction between real and fake no longer matters because everything is performance. Not deception — orchestration.He mapped four stages of this logic:* Faithful representation – A sign reflects a basic reality. A map mirrors the terrain.* Perversion of reality – The sign begins to distort. Think colonial maps as logos or exclusionary zoning.* Pretending to represent – The sign no longer refers to anything but performs as if it does. Disneyland isn't America — it's the fantasy of America. (ironically, a car-free America)* Pure simulation – The sign has no origin or anchor. It floats. Zillow heatmaps, Uber surge zones — maps that don't reflect the world, but determine how you move through it.We don't follow maps as they were once known anymore. We follow interfaces.And not just in apps. Cities themselves are in various stages of simulation. New York still sells itself as a global center. But in a distributed globalized and digitized economy, there is no center — only the perversion of an old reality. Paris subsidizes quaint storefronts not to nourish citizens, but to preserve the perceived image of Paris. Paris pretending to be Paris. Every city has its own marketing campaign. They don't manage infrastructure — they manage perception. The skyline is a product shot. The streetscape is marketing collateral and neighborhoods are optimized for search.Even money plays this game.The U.S. dollar wasn't always king. That title once belonged to the British pound — backed by empire, gold, and industry. After World War II, the dollar took over, pegged to gold under the Bretton Woods convention — a symbol of American postwar power stability…and perversion. It was forged in an opulent, exclusive, hotel in the mountains of New Hampshire. But designed in the style of Spanish Renaissance Revival, it was pretending to be in Spain. Then in 1971, Nixon snapped the dollar's gold tether. The ‘Nixon Shock' allowed the dollar to float — its value now based not on metal, but on trust. It became less a store of value than a vessel of belief. A belief that is being challenged today in ways that recall the instability and fragmentation of the pre-WWII era.And this dollar lives in servers, not Industrial Age iron vaults. It circulates as code, not coin. It underwrites markets, wars, and global finance through momentum alone. And when the pandemic hit, there was no digging into reserves.The Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet with keystrokes — injecting trillions into the economy through bond purchases, emergency loans, and direct payments. But at the same time, Trump 1.0 showed printing presses rolling, stacks of fresh bills bundled and boxed — a spectacle of liquidity. It was monetary policy as theater. A simulation of control, staged in spreadsheets by the Fed and photo ops by the Executive Branch. Not to reflect value, but to project it. To keep liquidity flowing and to keep the belief intact.This is what Baudrillard meant by simulation. The sign doesn't lie — nor does it tell the truth. It just works — as long as we accept it.MOOD OVER MEANINGReality is getting harder to discern. We believe it to be solid — that it imposes friction. A law has consequences. A price reflects value. A city has limits. These things made sense because they resist us. Because they are real.But maybe that was just the story we told. Maybe it was always more mirage than mirror.Now, the signs don't just point to reality — they also replace it. We live in a world where the image outpaces the institution. Where the copy is smoother than the original. Where AI does the typing. Where meaning doesn't emerge — it arrives prepackaged and pre-viral. It's a kind of seductive deception. It's hyperreality where performance supersedes substance. Presence and posture become authority structured in style.Politics is not immune to this — it's become the main attraction.Trump's first 100 days didn't aim to stabilize or legislate but to signal. Deportation as UFC cage match — staged, brutal, and televised. Tariff wars as a way of branding power — chaos with a catchphrase. Climate retreat cast as perverse theater. Gender redefined and confined by executive memo. Birthright citizenship challenged while sedition pardoned. Even the Gulf of Mexico got renamed. These aren't policies, they're productions.Power isn't passing through law. It's passing through the affect of spectacle and a feed refresh.Baudrillard once wrote that America doesn't govern — it narrates. Trump doesn't manage policy, he manages mood. Like an actor. When America's Secretary of Defense, a former TV personality, has a makeup studio installed inside the Pentagon it's not satire. It's just the simulation, doing what it does best: shining under the lights.But this logic runs deeper than any single figure.Culture no longer unfolds. It reloads. We don't listen to the full album — we lift 10 seconds for TikTok. Music is made for algorithms. Fashion is filtered before it's worn. Selfhood is a brand channel. Identity is something to monetize, signal, or defend — often all at once.The economy floats too. Meme stocks. NFTs. Speculative tokens. These aren't based in value — they're based in velocity. Attention becomes the currency.What matters isn't what's true, but what trends. In hyperreality, reference gives way to rhythm. The point isn't to be accurate. The point is to circulate. We're not being lied to.We're being engaged. And this isn't a bug, it's a feature.Which through a Baudrillard lens is why America — the simulation — persists.He saw it early. Describing strip malls, highways, slogans, themed diners he saw an America that wasn't deep. That was its genius he saw. It was light, fast paced, and projected. Like the movies it so famously exports. It didn't need justification — it just needed repetition.And it's still repeating.Las Vegas is the cathedral of the logic of simulation — a city that no longer bothers pretending. But it's not alone. Every city performs, every nation tries to brand itself. Every policy rollout is scored like a product launch. Reality isn't navigated — it's streamed.And yet since his writing, the mood has shifted. The performance continues, but the music underneath it has changed. The techno-optimism of Baudrillard's ‘80s an ‘90s have curdled. What once felt expansive now feels recursive and worn. It's like a show running long after the audience has gone home. The rager has ended, but Spotify is still loudly streaming through the speakers.“The Kids' Guide to the Internet” (1997), produced by Diamond Entertainment and starring the unnervingly wholesome Jamison family. It captures a moment of pure techno-optimism — when the Internet was new, clean, and family-approved. It's not just a tutorial; it's a time capsule of belief, staged before the dream turned into something else. Before the feed began to feed on us.Trumpism thrives on this terrain. And yet the world is changing around it. Climate shocks, mass displacement, spiraling inequality — the polycrisis has a body count. Countries once anchored to American leadership are squinting hard now, trying to see if there's anything left behind the screen. Adjusting the antenna in hopes of getting a clearer signal. From Latin America to Southeast Asia to Europe, the question grows louder: Can you trust a power that no longer refers to anything outside itself?Maybe Baudrillard and Tocqueville are right — America doesn't point to a deeper truth. It points to itself. Again and again and again. It is the loop. And even now, knowing this, we can't quite stop watching. There's a reason we keep refreshing. Keep scrolling. Keep reacting. The performance persists — not necessarily because we believe in it, but because it's the only script still running.And whether we're horrified or entertained, complicit or exhausted, engaged or ghosted, hired or fired, immigrated or deported, one thing remains strangely true: we keep feeding it. That's the strange power of simulation in an attention economy. It doesn't need conviction. It doesn't need conscience. It just needs attention — enough to keep the momentum alive. The simulation doesn't care if the real breaks down. It just keeps rendering — soft, seamless, and impossible to look away from. Like a dream you didn't choose but can't wake up from.REFERENCESBarthes, R. (1972). Mythologies (A. Lavers, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1957)Baudrillard, J. (1986). America (C. Turner, Trans.). Verso.Debord, G. (1994). The Society of the Spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Zone Books. (Original work published 1967)Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Vintage Books.Hind, S., & Gekker, A. (2019). On autopilot: Towards a flat ontology of vehicular navigation. In C. Lukinbeal et al. (Eds.), Media's Mapping Impulse. Franz Steiner Verlag.Linnaeus, C. (1735). Systema Naturae (1st ed.). Lugduni Batavorum.Perkins, C. (2009). Philosophy and mapping. In R. Kitchin & N. Thrift (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier.Raaphorst, K., Duchhart, I., & van der Knaap, W. (2017). The semiotics of landscape design communication. Landscape Research.Roberts, L. (2008). Cinematic cartography: Movies, maps and the consumption of place. In R. Koeck & L. Roberts (Eds.), Cities in Film: Architecture, Urban Space and the Moving Image. University of Liverpool.Tocqueville, A. de. (2003). Democracy in America (G. Lawrence, Trans., H. Mansfield & D. Winthrop, Eds.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1835)Weber, M. (1958). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). Charles Scribner's Sons. (Original work published 1905) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

In this episode, our guest is Sascha Becker from the University of Warwick, and we talk about religion, how it is related to economic growth, Max Weber's theory on the Protestant Ethic, Erasmus, Luther, power dynamics, and more! 14:00 Religion and Economic Growth 17:00 Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic Theory 21:47 Digging for the Data 28:28 Objections from Various Disciplines 32:15 Diffusion of Ideas, and Innovations 35:59 Power Shift, Luther, and the Church 46:05 Cheezy Questions! 49:55 This or That? Who are you going to write a book with?!

Delve into the influential work of Max Weber, one of sociology's founding figures, as we explore his seminal text, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." This episode examines Weber's revolutionary ideas that reshape the humanities and philosophy, extending their significance to contemporary society. Join us as we summarize his thesis and discuss its far-reaching consequences. #MaxWeber #ProtestantEthic #SpiritofCapitalism #sociology #humanities #philosophy #contemporarysociety Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us for a fascinating discussion with Slavoj Žižek as he delves into the intersection of spirituality and capitalism. Drawing from Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Žižek provides intriguing insights into the most compatible spirituality with modern capitalism. Discover surprising perspectives and thought-provoking ideas in this engaging lecture. 0:00: Introduction to the episode.1:25: Exploration of spirituality in the context of capitalism.3:39: Discussion on the Buddhist form in capitalism.6:15: Emergence of new self-help ideologies.8:17: Analysis of what capitalism truly is.11:06: Final message and closing thoughts. #SlavojŽižek #spirituality #capitalism #MaxWeber #ProtestantEthic #Buddhism #self-help Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're taking it easy! In episode 103 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a leisurely dive into laziness, discussing everything from couchrotting to the biology of energy conservation. They explore Devon Price's idea of the ‘laziness lie' in today's hyperproductive society and search for alternatives to work through Paul Lefargue's 19th century campaign for ‘the right to be lazy.' They also look into the racialization of laziness in Ibn Khaldun and Montesquieu's ideas on the idle tropics, and think through how the Protestant work ethic punishes laziness, even when technology could take care of the work.Patreon | ptreon.com/overthinkpodcast Website | overthinkpodcast.comInstagram & Twitter | @overthink_podEmail |  Dearoverthink@gmail.comYouTube | Overthink podcast Works DiscussedDevon Price, Laziness Does Not ExistBarthes, “Let us dare to be lazy”Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal ExperienceJared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and SteelChristine Jeske, The Laziness MythIbn Khaldun, MuqaddimahPaul Lefargue, The Right to be LazyKarl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist ManifestoMontesquieu, The Spirit of the LawsMax Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of CapitalismSupport the Show.

Most governments around the world – whether democracies or autocracies – face at least some pressure to respond to citizen concerns on some social problems. But the issues that capture public attention — the ones on which states have incentives to be responsive – aren't always the issues on which bureaucracies, agents of the state, have the ability to solve problems. What do these public agencies do when citizens' demands don't line up with either the supply of state capacity or the incentives of the central state?Our guest, Dr. Iza Ding, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, examines one way in which bureaucrats try to square this circle. In her recent book The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China, Iza argues that state actors who need to respond but lack substantive capacity can instead choose to perform governance for public audiences. Iza explores the puzzling case of China's Environmental Protection Bureau or the EPB, a bureaucratic agency set up to regulate polluting companies. This issue of polluted air became a national crisis during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics when athletes were struggling to breathe let alone compete. Since then, Chinese citizens have been directing their pollution-related complaints to the EPB, which Iza found, has been given little power by the state to impose fines or shut down polluting factories. But that doesn't mean the civil servants working in this agency do nothing. Instead, Iza documents how and why they routinely deploy symbols, language, and theatrical gestures of good governance to give the appearance of dynamic action – all while leaving many environmental problems utterly unaddressed. We talk with Iza about how she uncovered these performative dynamics through months of ethnographic research in which she was embedded within a Chinese environmental protection agency. She also tells us about how she tested her claims using original media and public opinion data. Finally, we talk about how her findings about performative governance in the environmental space translates to China's COVID-19 response.Works cited in this episode:Beraja, Martin, et al. "AI-Tocracy." The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 138, No. 3, 2023, pp. 1349-1402.Dimitrov, Martin K. Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China. Oxford University Press, 2023.Fukuyama, Francis. State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. London: Profile Books, 2017.Goffman, Erving. “On Face-Work.” In Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behav­ior, edited by Erving Goffman, pp. 5–45. Chicago: Aldine Transaction, 1967.Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Edited by Jeffrey C. Isaac. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations [Book IV-V]. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. New York: Penguin 2010.Walder, Andrew G. Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.Weber, Max. “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Other Writings, edited by Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.Weber, Max. “Politics as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology , edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 77–128. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.

Understanding America: Is there a connection between faith and firearms? Gloria is 40 years old, a mother of five and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is also a gun owner. Gloria was one of the dozens of gun owners interviewed by two University of Kansas researchers, Abbie Vegter and Margaret Kelley, for a groundbreaking new study exploring the religious connection to gun ownership. “When asked about why she owned a gun,” the researchers write in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Gun Ownership,” published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of... View Article

Gather ‘round for an episode recorded in front of a LIVE AUDIENCE in Portland, Oregon! We take a piece of listener (e)mail and answer the call: to talk about books that have been deeply impactful for our lives and research—books that anyone could read and learn a lot. From classics in the early history of sociology to ritual to women in the church to child sacrifice, it's a magic carpet ride of books. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elementary_Forms_of_the_Religious_Life Gianni Vattimo, ideas in this book about the incarnation Brian mentioned: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-future-of-religion/9780231134941 On the “deep incarnation” idea: https://inters.org/gregersen-incarnation Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ritual-theory-ritual-practice-9780199733620Jon Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300065114/the-death-and-resurrection-of-the-beloved-son Anthea Butler, Women in the Church of God in Christ: https://uncpress.org/book/9780807858080/women-in-the-church-of-god-in-christ/ Brian's third book that we didn't have time to talk about! Mark Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-origins-of-biblical-monotheism-9780195134803

ژان کالوین گفت کار یعنی عبادت. گفت باور داشته باشید که انتخاب شدید تا موفق و در نهایت رستگار شوید. چرخش بزرگ اتفاق افتاد و به عقیده‌ی ماکس وبر این ریشه‌ی سرمایه‌داری بود. چطوری؟ متن: بهجت بندری، علی بندری |  ویدیو و صدا: نیما خالدی‌کیا برای دیدن ویدیوی این اپیزود اگر ایران هستید وی‌پی‌ان بزنید و روی لینک زیر کلیک کنید یوتیوب بی‌پلاس کانال تلگرام بی‌پلاس منابع: اخلاق پروتستان و روح سرمایه‌داری، ماکس وبر Calvinism, Huguenots and the Industrial Revolution, Bernard C. Beaudreau  The Spirit of Capitalism Revisited: Calvinists in the Industrial Revolution, Gary S. Smith John Calvin: The Religious Reformer Who Influenced Capitalism Is the Protestant Work Ethic Real? - Freakonomics 12.3: Calvinism - Chemistry LibreTexts A Colourful History of Watchmaking in Switzerland | TAG Heuer Official Magazine John Calvin's Austerity and the Birth of the Swiss Watch Industry - Monochrome Watches (monochrome-watches.com) Calvinism in the Netherlands: why are the Dutch so Calvinist in nature? | DutchReview 16. Weber on Protestantism and Capitalism The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - Max Weber Max Weber & Modernity: Crash Course Sociology #9 7.8 The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism  

Stelios, Connor, and Calvin Robinson discuss Max Weber's famous work: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Western philosophy started… at the gym. In episode 83 of Overthink, Ellie and David tackle the philosophy of workouts, from Plato's days as a wrestler to the modern loneliness of a solitary bench press. As they discuss the role of exercise — which the Greeks called gymnastics — in building bodies and training souls, they consider the ancient Olympics, the cravings for health and beauty that guide us through what David calls the "Protestant work-out ethic," and Jean Baudrillard's thoughts about the Americans' passion for jogging.Works DiscussedJean Baudrillard, AmericaMark Greif, “Against Exercise”Drew Hyland, Philosophy of SportPlato, The Republic, The Laws, and EuthyphroHeather Reid, Introduction to the Philosophy of SportJean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, and “The Government of Poland”Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black BodyMax Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of CapitalismPatreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast Website | overthinkpodcast.comInstagram & Twitter | @overthink_podEmail |  Dearoverthink@gmail.comYouTube | Overthink podcastSupport the show

On this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink, Mario Ramos-Reyes, and Valerie Niemeyer discuss “the prosperity Gospel” as the tip of an unholy alliance between individualism in theology and philosophy and capitalism in economics. This alliance reaches into the larger culture, including education, science, and the arts. We have a welcome and returning guest, Thomas Storck, to help us. He's the author of several books, most recently The Prosperity Gospel: How Greed and Bad Philosophy Distorted Christ's Teachings (TAN, 2023). Arouca Press published a revised edition of his Foundations of a Catholic Political Order last year. In addition, he recently translated and wrote a new forward for Louis Cardinal Billot's Liberalism: A Critique of Its Basic Principles and Various Forms (Arouca Press, 2019). Storck is a prolific contributor to the New Oxford Review. And, to top it off, he's associated with the American Solidarity Party. We'll be asking the following questions. Please feel free to suggest your own!Just what is “the prosperity Gospel,” and who are some of its current proponentsYou note that some central elements in our culture give rise to the prosperity Gospel. Just how do you define “culture”?What is a bourgeois culture? A consumerist culture?You draw on the work of Max Weber. Why is Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of special significance?What happens to a culture that loses sight of teleology?6Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his opinion in the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” What does this declaration imply?Why do you claim that technology is not neutral?Fewer and fewer students major in the humanities. What are the social consequences of this steep decline?Is there room in art for expressive individualism?What's your next book?

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/MASTYORASTY and get on your way to being your best self. -------------------------To visit Mehran's page go to www.mindbodyintegration.ca/A while back Raam found some audio recordings  of himself and his late father, Kavous Seyed Emami, where he was helping him study some lessons for his political science course. The recordings are from over a decade ago and  act as a time capsule that capture his father's patience, intellect and vast knowledge that made him such a great professor, and human being. In this episode they cover the topic of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. As usual Jason joins Raam on these episodes to add his insights as well.***Masty o Rasty is not responsible for, or condone, the views and opinions expressed by our guests ******مستی و راستی هیچگونه مسولیتی در برابر نظرها و عقاید مهمان‌های برنامه ندارد.***-------------------------King Raam Tour:Toronto - June 23Montreal - June 24Vancouver - July 1kingraam.com/tour-------------------------Social Media: @kingraam Voice Messages: www.t.me/mastyorasty Merch: www.kingraam.com/merch NFT: www.foundation.app/kingraam Donations: paypal.me/raamemami Venmo: @kingraam

The pandemic caused many to rethink our relationship to work. But how did that relationship develop in the first place? Sean Illing talks with George Blaustein, professor of American Studies, about the legacy and influence of Max Weber, the German theorist whose best-known work is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) — which, Blaustein says, is often misunderstood. In the summer of 2020, George wrote an essay interpreting Weber's ideas on the psychology of work, the origins of capitalism, and the isolation of modernity — just as it looked like everything might change. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: George Blaustein (@blauwsteen), senior lecturer of American Studies and History, University of Amsterdam; editor, European Review of Books References:  "Searching for Consolation in Max Weber's Work Ethic" by George Blaustein (The New Republic; July 2, 2020) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber (1905; tr. by Talcott Parsons, 1930) The Vocation Lectures, by Max Weber: "Science as a Vocation" (1917) & "Politics as a Vocation" (1919). Published together as Charisma and Disenchantment: The Vocation Lectures (NYRB, 2020; translated by Damion Searls) Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin (1536) Der Amerikamüde by Nikolaus Lenau (1855) The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber (Simon & Schuster; 2018) "Bullshit jobs: why they exist and why you might have one" by Sean Illing (Vox; Nov. 9, 2019) Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A huge thanks to Seth White for the awesome music! Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thewayfourth/?modal=admin_todo_tour YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTd3KlRte86eG9U40ncZ4XA?view_as=subscriber Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theway4th/  Kingdom Outpost: https://kingdomoutpost.org/ My Reading List Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21940220.J_G_Elliot Propaganda Season Outline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa4MhYMAg2Ohc5Nvya4g9MHxXWlxo6haT2Nj8Hlws8M/edit?usp=sharing  Episode Outline/Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/131_02boxbdq67ynpxH4qTo08lhpHWJKEdPsXRC0Z2xk/edit?usp=sharing  Manipulating the Masses: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53232641-manipulating-the-masses?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=H9uIM5Aqi4&rank=1 C.D. Jackson: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18968778-c-d-jackson?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=4v8VJbnSUA&rank=4 The Brass Check: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54850.The_Brass_Check?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=31QD9Z05ST&rank=1 What to the Slave is the 4th of July: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1852-frederick-douglass-what-slave-fourth-july/ Dawn of Everything: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269264-the-dawn-of-everything?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=f8V35Ghqol&rank=1 War is a Racket: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198259.War_is_a_Racket?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=hAmz9Yhokm&rank=1 Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1120159.Taking_the_Risk_Out_of_Democracy?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=dXT2Mj1LU2&rank=1 The Fine Print song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvANy49Kqhw The Technological Society: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274827.The_Technological_Society?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=rgzFLjmZo6&rank=2 Propaganda: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274826.Propaganda?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MJ0Jt4z7sR&rank=1 Supreme Injustice chapter on Citizens United: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110285.Supreme_Injustice?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=HesBhL4UNC&rank=1  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74176.The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=FMaV9bgi7L&rank=2 Corruption is legal in America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig&t=248s The Persuaders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRv8syM-zy8 HUME QUOTE: Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinion.DOUGLAS QUOTE: But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. -- Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.SELECTED WIMBERLY QUOTES: - Most individuals are quick to note that they are no dupes and harbor many suspicious and critical thoughts about propaganda. But, in trying to evaluate the impact of propaganda, it has to be remembered that propagandists have almost no interest in the individual. Propagandists focused on mass subjectivities—human beings in their collective social relationships and actions. It is perfectly possible that an individual might feel as an individual that she is critical and little impacted by propaganda: after all, does not she know that it is all smoke and mirrors? However, what we are judging is not what the individual thinks but what the public does. An individual may think whatever she wants, but if in her collective actions (e.g., as an 18- to 34-year-old television watcher, an automobile consumer, or a corporate or university worker) she acts in the collective fashion the propagandists create (e.g., watches the television, buys a nice midsized SUV, or completes the university administration–mandated course assessment work), then what do the rebellious thoughts of the individual matter to the propagandist who is measuring TV viewership, automobile sales, or how well a university serves its core customer base? Put otherwise, the propagandist seeks to forge mass subjectivities, which it calls the publics, to carry out the conduct their clients want, not to focus on the beliefs of individuals: “Very frequently propaganda is described as a manipulation for the purpose of changing ideas or opinions… . This is completely wrong… . The aim of modern propagandist is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.”If the terms of mass subjectivities, large groupings of psychologically bonded individuals, give no room for those individual rebellions to crystallize into collective social action but instead reliably lead to the conduct corporations want, then one can perfectly well feel as an individual untouched, critical, or even radicalized but nonetheless still remain massively governed. In fact, isn't it all the better that individuals believe themselves ungoverned, critical, and unaffected if that results in complacency and a lack of motivation for action? The point is that the thoughts of the individual and the conduct of the publics have to be distinguished: though one might feel critical as an individual, the question is how social and public relationships of subjects are constituted and conduct themselves. If a radical still buys the dress, movie ticket, or 12-piece dinner set, what does it matter that it is a radical who buys it when there is no room for that radicalism to manifest itself in the public? Propagandists would tell us that the appropriateness of the language of subjectification versus modification has to be judged at the level of the conduct of the public, not at the level of the thoughts of the individual.- Certainly, authors like Stanley (epistemological interpretation) and Marcuse (ideological interpretation) are both correct insofar as propaganda does lie and repress. However, I will argue that these functions are subsidiaries of a much more threatening function of propaganda: its ability to shape human beings' “body and soul and spirit” in the quest to produce the relationships that would sustain corporate growth.1The stakes in misinterpreting propaganda are high. If you take propaganda to present a problem of belief, then the solution is to replace false belief with true. If you take propaganda to be ideological, covering over true human desire with false and destructive desires, then the solution is to recover true desire and banish the chimera of the false. Both of these ways of interpreting propaganda place true belief or true desire as the untouched savoir of contemporary life; the true remains present and unaltered whatever the deceptions propagandists foment and it is the critic's job to recover them. But if the aim of propaganda is to produce new subjects who will cooperatively and spontaneously adopt the wanted relationships with corporations, then there is no going back: the subject is not deceived but transformed, and the task of combatting propaganda will not be best conceived as a project of enlightenment but of subjectivation. The future will have to be created by producing new subjects and not through recovering what has been supposedly hidden but is better described as lost. Without grasping the impact of propaganda, attempts to counter it are unlikely to be effective.- For instance, when Bernays wanted to get women to smoke Lucky Strikes, he had to change not only the image of cigarettes but also the self-image of the women who would smoke them. Bernays and psychoanalyst A. A. Brill determined that women would smoke if cigarettes if women viewed themselves as crusaders for liberation and the cigarette was positioned as a symbol of equality, freedom, and pleasure. To get women to smoke, Bernays guided women into thinking of smoking as an act of defiance and empowerment that would make them revolutionaries. Every woman could conceive of herself as contributing to women's liberation, just by smoking a Lucky Strike. Bernays kicked off this campaign on Easter Sunday in 1929, when he recruited women to break the law against public smoking by women in New York by smoking Lucky Strikes in the Easter Day Parade. He used this symbolic gesture to link smoking to the liberation of choice, pleasure, and voice and as an act of resistance against patriarchy. Feminist Ruth Hale encouraged women to join in, saying, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!”72 The aim was to get women to regard themselves and cigarettes differently such that women would form the relationship to cigarettes that Lucky Strike wanted (e.g. as avid and fierce consumers)...Bernays wanted to redirect drives—the true drives—to point at new ends; he did not falsify desires but rechanneled them from their source. He created objects of desire as true as any by working with their unconscious sources. Thanks to our monthly supporters Michael de Nijs ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

A huge thanks to Seth White for the awesome music! Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thewayfourth/?modal=admin_todo_tour YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTd3KlRte86eG9U40ncZ4XA?view_as=subscriber Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theway4th/  Kingdom Outpost: https://kingdomoutpost.org/ My Reading List Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21940220.J_G_Elliot Propaganda Season Outline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa4MhYMAg2Ohc5Nvya4g9MHxXWlxo6haT2Nj8Hlws8M/edit?usp=sharing  Episode Outline/Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pqVH3DUXWbbk8f8HdjpH8EClQNcK8DIALLeorTa9Zgk/edit?usp=sharing Mein Kampf: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54270.Mein_Kampf?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=ovwYMtecRX&rank=1 The Technological Society: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274827.The_Technological_Society?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=rgzFLjmZo6&rank=2 Propaganda: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274826.Propaganda?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MJ0Jt4z7sR&rank=1 Supreme Injustice chapter on Citizens United: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110285.Supreme_Injustice?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=HesBhL4UNC&rank=1  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74176.The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=FMaV9bgi7L&rank=2 Corruption is legal in America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig&t=248s The Persuaders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRv8syM-zy8 Thanks to our monthly supporters Michael de Nijs ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Today we explored the question of the question, to conduct a study of the Caribbean, where must we begin? This episode is a summary of Lecture 3 which was a five-hour long lecture. This the condensed version of Conceptualizing the course, Caribbean Thought. We ask, when we study the Caribbean Thought, including diverse currents that have shaped its present that speaks to a future, how far must we go back? Where must we start? The answer is a complex one because we stated in class that the Caribbean is an invention of the past which must now reinvent itself in the future if we are to surpass the challenges of the present. We say the Caribbean is uncompetitive stemming from a violent past that continues today through neoliberal Globalization. We did not explore neoliberal globalization but provided an understanding of Neoliberalism, Neo-capitalism &Capitalism. We explain Neoliberalism as a form of liberalism used within economics by capitalists to liberalize economies so as to penetrate thereby ensuring profit. We said that we will explore Neoliberalism in more detail later in relation to its effects on the Caribbean when we watch "Life and Debt" by Stephanie Black based on a book "A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid - a book about Antigua whose experience of structural adjustment and fight for prosperity resembles Jamaica's so that the film could take from the book and talk about Jamaica. This speaks to the symbiotic relation between the West Indies. We examined the processes of Colonization from the perspective of Fanon who defines colonization as involving a violence of depersonalization - stripping away the individual. We provided an academic answer/response to the question: Are "White-Collar in Jamaica a Crimes a result of Colonization"? And Why are crime rates so high in places like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica? We suggested a Marxist materialist reply - "Relative Deprivation". What is Relative deprivation? We defined it as the correlation between high crime & high poverty and income inequality. Jamaica and the Caribbean suffers from high poverty and inequality correlated with the highest crime rates in the Caribbean. This is commensurate with what is happening is black and brown communities all over the world - hence supporting the conclusion/analysis of "relative deprivation". We pointed out that to study Caribbean Thought is to do philosophical inquiry which involves logic & Descartes phenomenology, who coined "cogito ergo sum" - I think therefore I am. He recognized the subjectivity of reality outside of objective verification. Further, we pushed the exploration of knowledge by discussing Kant who says that history is a result of human nature and circumstances, and questions Newtonian Physics which formed the basis of western civilization's understanding of reality. The Caribbean as part of a reality of western civilization is influenced by that bent. We reviewed the economic history of western society and capitalism stating that it is within a system that has impoverished or weakened the Caribbean States. We revisited Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations & Weber's Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism regarding the justification and economic principle behind Capitalism. However, we challenged the wealth of nations by invoking Karl Marx who critically re-examines Adam Smith's Accumulation of Capital idea, saying that it was not one in hard work but theft and violence. This then led us to consider the socio-economic/political interests of the Caribbean such as Michael Manley and Fidel Castro who were Nationalists influenced by Marxists critique of capitalism and his idea of Communism. Caribbean Political and literary thinkers were off-center and regarded as Democratic Socialists which had threatened American domination and penetration in the region to what they had believed had given way to socialist ideology. Read on at www.theneoliberal.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal/support

How much has religion influenced the propagation of diet culture, if at all? Are atheists affected by religious moralizing of food? Do beliefs about “indulgences” from the 1500's still have an impact on us today or are they quite notions from the past? Let's talk about it in today's episode! Episode show notes: http://www.fiercefatty.com/152 Come with me to the Dominican Republic: https://trovatrip.com/trip/north-america/dominican-republic/dominican-republic-with-vinny-welsby-jun-2023 Diet Culture Timeline: https://dietculturetimeline.com/infographics/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/protestant-reformation https://www.futurity.org/fat-phobia-book-sabrina-strings-2130182-2/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1516625/societys-warped-idea-of-healthy-living-is-based-on-puritanism-not-science Consuming Bodies: Fatness, Sexuality, and the Protestant Ethic: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gw1m18r Purity Through Food: How Religious Ideas Sell Diets: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/the-puritanical-approach-to-food/392030/ Purity Through Food: How Religious Ideas Sell Diets https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/the-puritanical-approach-to-food/392030/

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference! Resources mentioned in the pod: Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com) Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022) Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021) Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022) Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017) McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019) Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013) Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net) Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University's Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference! Resources mentioned in the pod: Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com) Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022) Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021) Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022) Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017) McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019) Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013) Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net) Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University's Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference! Resources mentioned in the pod: Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com) Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022) Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021) Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022) Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017) McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019) Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013) Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net) Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University's Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference! Resources mentioned in the pod: Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com) Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022) Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021) Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022) Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017) McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019) Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013) Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net) Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University's Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference! Resources mentioned in the pod: Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com) Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022) Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021) Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022) Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017) McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019) Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013) Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net) Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University's Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference! Resources mentioned in the pod: Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com) Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022) Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021) Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022) Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017) McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019) Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013) Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net) Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University's Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Scandinavian countries are well-known for high standards of living and many people wonder about the origins of the welfare state model in Scandinavia and why it has worked so well. The features of the welfare state in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden typically include high state spending, strong universal public services, and relatively high equality in gender roles.But what explains the success of this model of development and how did these countries get to where they are today? These are some of the questions my guest – Harald Eia – tries to answer in a recent book co-authored with Ole-Martin Ihle. The book – The Mystery of Norway – discusses how Norway became one of the most prosperous countries in the world. It focuses on the relationship between wealth and happiness, and the power of civil society and trade unions in negotiating wages and a range of benefits. The book also highlights the important role played by The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration – popularly known in Norway by its acronym – NAV, which administers a third of the national budget through schemes such as unemployment benefit, work assessment allowance, sickness benefit, pensions, child benefit and cash-for-care benefit.Harald Eia is a sociologist and became a household name in Norway in the mid-1990s having starred in several hit comedy shows. He has since then been one of the country's most popular and well-known comedians. Key highlights Introduction - 00:52Is there a Norwegian model of development? - 03:18Origins and functions of the welfare state in Norway: 06:22Can money make you happy? 20:20Relative poverty in one of the world's wealthiest countries: 28:30Immigration: 35:13Host:Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPodApple Google Spotify YouTubehttps://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/

Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz recorded on  December 15th 2022 on Clubhouse. Joseph is the first and only biblical personality characterized as a success. With a nod to Max Weber who wrote the iconic socioreligious study; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, we take this opportunity to explore the Biblical and latter Rabbinic definition of financial and other success. Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/453456  Transcript on episode web page: https://madlik.com/2022/12/15/joseph-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism/ 

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference!Resources mentioned in the pod:Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com)Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022)Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021)Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 bookSalguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022)Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017)McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019)Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013)Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net)Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)

Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism is probably the most important foundational text for modern sociology, and we think that's kind of a downer, actually. We talk about how we are thoroughly unconvinced about his central historical claim in the book, which seems to be that the Protestant reformation created the subjective conditions for the emergence of capitalism somehow. We also take him to task for his weak criticism of historical materialism and for his own sorely lacking methodology. The book's definitely got some interesting stuff in it, but it's mostly a swing and a miss for us! Sorry, Weberians!leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil References:Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, trans. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (New York: Penguin, 2002).Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

As a Thanksgiving treat and in honor of the hard-working religious maniacs we know as the Pilgrims, we're releasing a re-edit of the very first episode of Wetwired. Notice that classic Wetwired sound? ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ For $3 a month, get an extra couple subscriber only episodes every month. We have a limited number of True Believer memberships available. https://patreon.com/wetwired Get in on the ground floor of the Wetwired Discord. https://discord.gg/fr62mpUy5c Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/wetwiredpod and Instagram at https://instagram.com/wetwiredpod

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita presents a novel explanation for western exceptionalism.Today's book: The Invention of Power: Popes Kings, and the Birth of the WestFollow @IdeasHavingSexx on twitterOther works by BruceContact Bruce: bruce.buenodemesquita@nyu.eduBruce's recommended reading: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber, and The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joseph HenrichEconomic growth, Catholicism, religion, church and state, democracy, revolution, politics, Trump

Dr. Jared Rubin is the co-author of How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth, which he wrote with Mark Koyama, a previous guest on the podcast. We are so happy to welcome Jared to the show today to discuss the thesis of his book, and what he and Mark aimed to add to the literature on the subject of economic growth in the contemporary context. This is a fascinating and thoughtful conversation, packed with insight and nuance on important arguments of the past, what is needed to broaden and enhance our understanding of economic growth, and how far these projects might go towards enabling us to see a better future. Dr. Rubin answers some questions about geographic, legal, and technological explanations for growth, and stresses the importance of synergy and interplay between these theories for a more illuminating picture. So to hear all this and a whole lot more, including many reasons to pick up his latest book, tune in today!   Key Points From This Episode:   •   Introducing the role of culture in economic growth, and tracing the roots of this inquiry. •   Positioning How the World Became Rich in the lineage of literature on the subject of growth.  •   Looking at England and the emergence of modern growth; arguments over the most important factors. •   Why Dr. Rubin tried to bring different theories into conversation through writing this book. •   Unpacking the argument for the role of liberal speech norms in the history of development, proposed by McCloskey. •   Technological progress and geographic endowments; why this relationship is worth exploration. •   Dr. Rubin's perspective on the role of law and legal systems in the growth trajectory of a country. •   Discussing the relative slowing of growth in the Western world and what this may mean. •   Dr. Rubin briefly comments on an argument for total factor productivity growth being linear. •   Thoughts on big picture topics through a micro lens. •   The lessons we can take from history for the most impactful policies for growth in the future.     Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:   https://www.jaredcrubin.com/ (Dr. Jared Rubin) https://www.chapman.edu/ (Chapman University) https://www.amazon.com/How-World-Became-Rich-Historical/dp/1509540237 (How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth) https://twitter.com/jaredcrubin?lang=en (Dr. Jared Rubin on Twitter) https://economics.gmu.edu/people/mkoyama2 (Mark Koyama) https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/podcast/charter-cities-podcast-episode-16-state-capacity-religious-toleration-and-political-competition-with-mark-koyama/ (Charter Cities Podcast Episode 16 with Mark Koyama) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1995/lucas/biographical/ (Robert Lucas) https://economics.northwestern.edu/people/directory/joel-mokyr.html (Joel Mokyr) https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Growth-Origins-Schumpeter-Lectures/dp/0691168881 (Culture of Growth) https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/ (Joe Henrich) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Max-Weber-German-sociologist (Max Weber) https://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Ethic-Spirit-Capitalism/dp/1603866043 (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1992/becker/facts/ (Gary Becker) https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo5970597.html (Culture and the Evolutionary Process) https://press.princeton.edu/our-authors/o-grada-cormac (Cormac Ó Gráda) https://www.deirdremccloskey.com/ (Deidre McCloskey) https://growthecon.com/ (Deitrich Vollrath) https://www.amazon.com/Fully-Grown-Stagnant-Economy-Success/dp/0226820041 (Fully Grown) https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/thomas-philippon (Thomas Philippon) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/...

James Poulos is a Tocqueville scholar who wrote The Art of Being Free (2017) and Human Forever (2021). He was a co-founder of The American Mind and his latest project is a magazine called Return. We discuss humanism and post-humanism, the merging of Big Tech and Woke Capital into an atheist cyborg theocracy, why James rejects accelerationism, the importance of human memory, Bitcoin, Urbit, and much more.✦ Human Forever✦ Return Magazine✦ James on TwitterOther Life✦ Subscribe to the coolest free newsletter in the world OtherLife.co✦ Get a free Urbit planet at imperceptible.computer✦ We're building a new country at imperceptible.countryIndieThinkers.org✦ If you're working on independent intellectual work, join the next cohort of IndieThinkers.org

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John's Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today's edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. Like many of you, I'm sure, I was distraught to hear the news of the shooting at Oxford High School in southeastern Michigan. That school is actually not far from Rochester University, where I did my undergraduate studies, and I have several friends who are alumna. My heart goes out to all those who have been impacted, as well as to families in our own area trying to keep their heads above water with our schools now shut down out of an abundance of caution while local threats are being investigated.As seems to happen every time there is a shooting, we've seen the same arguments for and against gun control pop on up social media, everyone rehearsing the same old lines. We send up thoughts and prayers to help our kids, when what they really need are policies and action. So, this week I thought I'd try to break some of the myths that persist in American Christianity about God, Guns, and what it really means to protect others. Our country does have a strange love affair—some might say an addiction—to guns. Americans own half of all guns in the world, even though we are only 5% of the world's population. And at this point, it's pretty clear that both race and religion are factors that influence gun ownership. In 2020, an article was published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Gun Ownership.” They found that for many white evangelicals, owning a gun stems from their felt need to protect their families from a sense of threat. White evangelicals are not only more likely to own a gun, they are also less likely to support gun control. Some people have been trying to change that though. Activist Shane Claiborne published a book in 2019 called Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence. Since that time, he has gone around the country, organizing events where people turn in their guns which are then melted down and turned into farming implements. He does this drawing from the words of the prophet Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible, who imagines that in the end, when God heals all things, “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.” And it's not only a question of violence against others. Of the nearly 40,000 gun related deaths in America each year, more than half are the result of suicide. Claiborne also points out that the idea of safety is really a myth. For every one gun used in self-defense, six more are used to commit a crime. Keeping a gun in your own home means that you or someone in your family is 12 times more likely to be injured by that gun than you are to use that gun to protect them. Claiborne sees the question as a simple one: guns are violent and we are followers of a prince of peace who urged us to turn the other cheek and engage instead in non-violent resistance against evil and injustice. So, Christians shouldn't have guns. No I should be clear—I'm not anti-gun. I don't go quite as far as Claiborne does. I happen to own two guns myself, both used for hunting. My dad was a member of the National Rifle Association back before that organization got as crazy and aggressive as it has in recent years. But, our love affair with guns needs to end so that we can start coming up with plans and policies to make our country safer. Gun manufacturers have been expert at weaving the myth of the essentiality of the freedom to own any and all guns out there, and they have co-opted the Christian desire to protect others in order to increase their own bottom line.There are steps, clear steps, we can take to make our world safer, to make our kids safer. And many of these steps have strong support in our country. A Fox News poll two years ago found that 90% of respondents favor universal background checks, 81% support taking guns from individuals who are at risk, and 67% favor banning assault weapons.And for the kids who died in Oxford? A law that requires gun owners to store guns in a locked container or disable them with a trigger lock when not in use or being worn on their person… that would have stopped that senseless violence. And since statistics indicate that 46% of gun owners in the US who have children don't secure their weapons, it's only so long before we return to this cycle of violence and grief.Jesus told us that the peacemakers would be blessed by God. We need some peacemakers in the world today, that's for sure, some people that will work together to make our country a safer place for all people, who will reach across the lines and find solutions that can save lives.Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today. 

Part 2 of our series on the Protestant Ethic. Jules and Sean talk about Frederick Winslow Taylor, his Scientific Management (Taylorism) and how it's helped create our addiction to productivity porn. Along the way, they talk about bullshit jobs, side hustles, and Taylorism's connection to the Soviet Union. ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ For $3 a month, get an extra few subscriber only episodes every month. We have a limited number of True Believer memberships available. https://www.patreon.com/wetwired Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/wetwiredpod

Max Weber belongs to the names that create the foundation of sociology. In this classic work, Weber examines the relation between reformation and the creation of the spirit of capitalism. Along the work he sets out a idealistic perspective to examine historical progression of society and broadens the sociological perspective by introducing a way to connect two seemingly distinct societal phenomenons to each other. 

Jules and Sean talk about the origin of what we call the Protestant Ethic, and how it drives us to work longer and harder on things we never really cared about. Before that, they chat about recent reports that AT&T inspired the creation of OAN. ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ ⛬ For $3 a month, get an extra few subscriber only episodes every month. We have a limited number of True Believer memberships available. https://www.patreon.com/wetwired Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/wetwiredpod

Hello Interactors,As the rain returns to the northwest it’s time to summon even more motivation to get outside for exercise. I established a bit of a fitness pattern this summer and I’m motivated to keep it up. But the rain isn’t the only thing holding me back, so is my body and my mind.As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…THE DEVIL MADE ME DO ITAs part of my Monday fitness routine, I begrudgingly slog jog up a steep hill in my Market neighborhood, zig-zag my way through gravel alleys, down calm side streets, and through occasional narrow easements that snake between homes guarded by fences and barking dogs. Some called this route the ‘Market wiggle’.It drops me onto an arterial road that skirts along a wooded wetlands. I suffer as I shuffle on a rolling narrow strip of painted bike lane for about a half a mile where I’m presented with a decision. Do I keep running up a gradual hill to achieve more distance or do I face the challenge of ascending a wall of over 100 steps that climb up a steep grade to my destination. It’s a short cut, but also a glute burn.My destination is an outdoor gym plopped on a patch of asphalt nestled in the corner of an expansive park made of grassy ball fields and scattered pines. I have my routine: a series of upper body exercises on machines that leverage my body weight. I do pull-ups (kind of), seated bench press, and sit-ups. I usually have the place to myself. Though I was once surprised by an eager and excitable white toy poodle. As I was doing sit-ups he ran up behind me and licked the salty sweat off my face.Upper body fitness has never been my favorite. It’s a necessary evil that seems to be getting harder all the time. But I have my repetition goals and I’m determined to improve. Pullups are the hardest. After a summer of just holding my chin above the bar, I’m finally getting to a point where I can actually pull myself up. (kind of)My forearms don’t much like supporting my weight. I finish my routine and head back home. Just across from the park is a the middle school track. It’s a cinder track; a relic in the rainy northwest where most tracks have turned artificial. On the weekends I do a timed mile. I can’t help but be disappointed in my time and progress. I just can’t run as fast as I used to.I also beat myself up over my lack of progress. I should be getting faster by now. I should be able to do more pullups. A battle in my brain ensues.DEVIL: If you lose weight, maybe you can run faster and do more pullups.ANGEL: Yeah, but you’re not really overweight – in fact, you’re maintaining a healthy weight because you’re running.DEVIL: Unless, of course, the extra weight is coming from the added muscle mass from all those stair climbs, and upper body work.ANGEL: But you can’t stop doing upper body work. You know you’ve been losing muscle mass since the day you turned 30.DEVIL: C’mon, dudes older than you can run faster than this. You can’t run faster until you start running faster. And you just have to keep doing more pullups if you want to do more pullups!”Then an independent interloping inquisitor interrupts; “Why are you trying to run faster? Why is the number of pullups important? What is your goal? Is it to increase the number of pullups and decrease your running speed, or is it to maintain your health?”It’s hard to rally behind asymptotic performance plateaus. Just ask any aging professional athlete. And it’s depressing to consider that as long as that plateau may be, its end is punctuated by a certain mortal decline. I am fully aware of my body’s limitations in this race with mortality, but my mind is trained to expect, and even crave harder, better, faster, stronger.WHAT GOES UP, MUST COME DOWNWe are all trained by a culture infused with metaphors that lead to a desire to increase growth and optimize time. In 1980, two cognitive linguists, scientists, and philosophers, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson wrote a seminal book called Metaphors We Live By. They give examples of how orientation concepts and words like up and down shape how we think and act.You can see evidence of it in the words I’ve already written. I was beating myself up and feeling down because the number of pullups wasn’t going up. I get depressed when my running times fall off. My athletic abilities are declining as I near the height of my physical abilities. Have I reached a peak? I am now longer in top shape. As my age slowly climbs up, my abilities will be sinking fast. What if I come down with an illness? My health will decline. And one day, I will drop dead.They suggest other metaphorical orientation concepts by category:HAPPY IS UP AND SAD IS DOWN.I’m feeling up. I fell into a depression.FORESEEABLE FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (and AHEAD)What’s up on the agenda? I’m afraid of what’s ahead of us.HIGH STATUS IS UP, LOW STATUS IS DOWNShe’ll rise to the top. He’s at the bottom of the hierarchy.MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWNThe GDP rose. My income fell.GOOD IS UP, BAD IS DOWNThings are looking up. Things are at an all time low.RATIONAL IS UP, EMOTIONAL IS DOWNHe couldn’t rise above his emotions. The discussion fell to the emotional level, but I raised it back up to the rational plane.Another metaphor their book highlights also runs deep in our culture:TIME IS MONEYYou’re wasting my time.I don’t have the time to give you.I’ve invested a lot of time in her.You’re running out of time.Is it worth your while?He’s living on borrowed time.You need to budget your time.Thank you for your time.The Bible is as riddled with these metaphors as Christianity is with our culture. The great sociologist and political economist, Max Weber, claims Protestantism is at the root of capitalism in his book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,"In these cases the choice of occupation and future career has undoubtedly been determined by the distinct mental characteristics which have been instilled into them and indeed by the influence on them of the religious atmosphere of their locality and home background."Here are some quotes from the bible that urge followers to work their butts off, or else.Through laziness, the rafters sag; because of idle hands, the house leaks.The diligent hand will rule, but laziness will lead to forced labor.Fools fold their idle hands, leading them to ruin.Here’s one from the King’s bible that lends insight into perhaps why the American workforce is overworked, has too few days off, and is led to shame should they loose their job.How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. Proverbs 6:6It may come as a surprise, but not every culture lives by these metaphors. The culture I was raised in certainly did. It’s also one that views the more innocuous concept of future as ahead, but another culture may view it as behind — or up, down, through, under, or over for that matter. Perhaps some cultures have no orientation metaphors at all, or use them differently than, say, the Bible does.When these two researchers came together to write their book, they “discovered that [these] certain assumptions of contemporary philosophy and linguistics have been taken for granted…since the Greeks.”Substantiating the role cultural metaphors play in shaping thought and action “meant rejecting the possibility of any objective or absolute truth.” Those absolutisms, including those found in the Bible, are assumed in so much of Western tradition and contemporary belief systems.The alternative, as outlined in their book, is to suggest the human lived experience plays a more central role than some religious, mythical, or universally constant human objective truth.Our current economic system relies heavily on a belief in rational choice theory. This idea, in keeping with the Western tradition Lakoff and Johnson sought to debunk, says that humans – also known among neoliberal economists as homo economicus – routinely conduct perfectly objective and absolute rational cost-benefit analysis before deciding how to spend money or accumulate wealth.If what Lakoff and Johnson suggest is true, and I’m inclined to believe it is, there is no such thing as objective or absolute truth in decision making. Our decisions are guided by our culturally engrained metaphors. The so-called invisible hand that neoliberal economists turn to as a self-interested magical motivational source of individual wealth and prosperity is actually the invisible mind; a mind influenced by embedded conceptual metaphors that guide our emotions which in turn trigger our thoughts and actions.IN EXCESS WILL END SUCCESSSocial psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, once said (and I’m paraphrasing) that if you want to find evidence of irrational behavior in self-reported rational people, study their entrenched dogmatic positions – it’s there you’ll find their irrational behavior. In our currently divided society, you don’t need to look far to see evidence of the myth of perfectly rational behavior in human decision making.“Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth.” Those are the words of British ecological economist, Tim Jackson. To illustrate the myth, he offers that “People are persuaded to spend money we don't have, on things we don't need, to create impressions that won't last, on people we don't care about.”Aristotle observed as much in the 4th century and wrote about it in a set of eight books on the philosophy of human affairs called, Politics. He wrote,“For, as their enjoyment is in excess, they seek an art which produces the excess of enjoyment; and, if they are not able to supply their pleasures by the art of getting wealth, they try other causes, using in turn every faculty in a manner contrary to nature…some men turn every quality or art into a means of getting wealth; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end they think all things must contribute.” There are ongoing debates about what Aristotle would think of today’s economy. Both capitalists and communists draw on Aristotle as the genesis of their philosophies. But suffice it to say, Aristotle was not a fan of individual wealth accumulation. Any accumulation should be shared back to the society in support of a healthy community.Some scholars believe Aristotle would say “the lending out of money to acquire more money is merely the most unnatural and corrupting way to employ money.” As corrupt, they claim, as using human sexuality to sell sex.They believe Aristotle would not have made it a “question of the market value of your gold.” But instead, “what kind of man your gold makes of you.”It also seems Aristotle would not have been very impressed with the damage we inflicted on the earth in our pursuit of wealth accumulation. He was aware of the negative aspects of “unintended consequences” due to human activity, but he also found them to be “generally bad and disappointing.” That, for sure, is a departure from our current neoliberal stance.It was Adam Smith, the father of the capitalist economic system that dominates the world today, who said,“[People are] led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of [their] intention.”By this logic, the plastics industry is led by an invisible hand to promote an end (for example, a path toward more plastic in the ocean than fish), which was no part of their intention. The oil industry is led by an invisible hand to promote an end (for example, climate collapse), but is not part of their intention. Even though they’ve known this for over 30 years.The aerosol industry was led by an invisible hand to promote an end, a hole in the ozone, which was not part of their intention; but the world rallied to curb its use. The tobacco industry was led by an invisible hand to promote an end, addiction to a cancer causing drug, which was not part of their intention; but the U.S cracked down on them anyway.British economist, John Maynard Keynes – an advocate of the free market, but also of instituting limits, put it best by issuing this sober warning,“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.”LEAKS AND PEAKS; GO WITH THE FLOWInfluential American economist Milton Friedman started to distance himself, and U.S. economic philosophy, from Keynesian ideas in the 70s. The country was in a recession and personal wealth accumulation had stagnated.This American ideal of wealth accumulation began in American economics in the late 1940s after two world wars and a depression. Personal and national wealth accumulation was as much a need as it was a desire. It only follows that the model of economics we have with us today puts personal and corporate wealth accumulation at the center, above all else. (note the orientation metaphors I inadvertently used: follows, center, above all else!)This economic model was drawn in a diagram by economist and Nobel prize winner, Paul Samuelson, for the canonical economic text book, Economics, in 1948. It has sold over four million copies and is still used by many schools today. That book became standard issue for Econ 101 in universities across the country that were flooded with men returning from WWII. It’s a simple diagram that shows Circular Flows of money being exchanged between households and businesses.Households flow labor into businesses which in turn crank out goods and services. Businesses flow wages to households that flow that money back to businesses through consumer spending on their goods and services.There are also leakages in this central flow from households; savings leak into banks, taxes to the government, and imports to trade. These leaks are converted into value and flowed back to the business side as injections into the economy; investments flow from banks, spending from government, and exports from trade.As economist Kate Raworth points out, missing from the diagram is the earth and the resources necessary to sustain this economic flow. But many advocates of this model believe resources are endless.In the 1980’s University of Maryland business professor and neoliberal, Julian Simon, believed that “Discoveries, like resources, may well be infinite: the more we discover, the more we are able to discover.” He imagined competitive market prices would keep resources from being over exploited and novel inventions would efficiently reuse and recycle any wasted matter and energy. That doesn’t appear to be working.Instead improvements in technology have accelerated the rate of extraction resulting in environmental degradation and collapse. Take the fishing industry. With improved sensing technologies, they’re able to fish small and sparsely populated schools of fish. It can lead to collapse and extinction. What’s more, these small populations are vulnerable to effects of climate change which challenges both their survival and ability to repopulate. And sure enough, if they do recover, the fishing industry pounces and the cycle of over exploitation begins again.Systems thinker, environmentalist and Dartmouth professor, Donella Meadows, states:“Nonrenewable resources are stock-limited. The entire stock is available at once, and can be extracted at any rate. But since the stock is not renewed, the faster the extraction rate, the shorter the lifetime of the resource.” In contrast,“Renewable resources are flow-limited. They can support extraction or harvest indefinitely, but only at a finite flow rate equal to their regeneration rate. If they are extracted faster than they regenerate, they may eventually be driven below a critical threshold and become, for all practical purposes, nonrenewable.”Indigenous cultures have known this for millennia. That’s why they leave harvestable crops behind. If they didn’t, they know there would not be any seeds for next season.We have been led to believe, and our current economic systems substantiates, nonrenewable resources are limitless. We’re taught that even though our self-interest in accumulating wealth may come with unintended consequences, those negative effects are a matter of “value judgement.”For example, valuing profit over the health of the planet and it’s occupants is a matter of judgement. It’s a line of thinking that values capitalism and corporate and individual wealth accumulation over all else – even the prospect of the collapse of entire species; including humans. Will capitalism seek to out live human existence? You be the judge.We’re reminded every day that economic indicators can only go up because our culture evolved to associate up with good. If an economy can only be deemed good by a limitless line that goes up for eternity but relies on limited resources that require periods of flattening of that curve to be renewed, we need to extend the metaphor for good to include flat and even declining.  Up is good. Growth is good. And we don’t have time to waste. But even though the Bible tells us otherwise, we might want to sit down and take a breather sometimes and call it good.  My aging body reminds me, there are limits to up. I struggle with accepting this fact. Most do. It also shows there are exceptions to metaphors. Just because our age goes up, that doesn’t necessarily mean it feels good.My body is a renewable resource but with a limited and declining life span. It can’t support the extraction of resources indefinitely, but it can maintain a finite flow of energy equal to my body’s, albeit declining, regeneration rate.But if I push too hard and exploit my resources; and equate increased pullup reps or faster running speed with good, I’ll drive my resources below a critical threshold and they’ll become nonrenewable.So now when I’m feeling up for a run. I don’t let myself get too depressed when my energy starts to fall. Instead of digging deep in a yearning for peak performance, I change my goal and shift my metaphor. I push that irrational ‘growth at all cost’ dogma to the side, bring the joy of a flat and slightly declining curve to the foreground, and feel my energy levels and my spirit rise.You see, I have a rational mind after all. Aristotle believed our ability to reason with our feelings is what makes us human. It’s what sets us apart from other animals. I have a rational choice to make when presented with a curve that flattens out or declines. I can succumb to the cultural belief and emotion that a line that curves flat or trends down is always bad, or I can shift my thinking that it is sometimes good and even necessary for survival.If I can do this with my fitness routine amidst a mid-life crisis, surely we can for an imbalanced economic regime amidst a climate crisis. Subscribe at interplace.io

David Mathis | Justification by faith alone marks the end of our work to secure God's favor — and the beginning of our work to secure others' good.

In this first part of this two-part episode focused on the expansion of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, we consider both the Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, as well as the various perspectives surrounding those two precedents of our country. We also consider the insights brought by historians Allen Greer, and Gordon S. Wood, as well as contemplate some thoughts from the famous work by Max Weber, "The Protestant Ethic, and the Spirit of Capitalism". I hope that you enjoy it and that it gives you much to ponder! Some authors and works highlighted in this episode: 1. Allen Greer, & Livia Gershon - https://daily.jstor.org/yes-americans-owned-land-before.../ 2. The Radicalism of the American Revolution, by Gordon S. Wood https://amzn.to/3x5Ei1f 3. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: and Other Writings (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics), by Max Weber https://amzn.to/3rFHW0q *This podcast receives a small commission for any purchases made from some of these links. Thank you for supporting this podcast and the work of these authors! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/historyrevisitedwr/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historyrevisitedwr/support

#Logos #LogosRising #Christianity In this stream I discuss and read from the very famous book by the German sociologist Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In it he makes the case that he saw the rise of Capitalism tied to various forms of Protestant theology. Very interesting insights for anyone. Make sure to check it out and let me know what you think. God bless

GrowthChat is a podcast on the social and cultural journey of humankind, hosted by Marco Lecci and Sascha O. Becker. In this episode we chat with Jeanet Bentzen about her paper​ "Pre-reformation roots of the protestant ethic”. Jeanet uses an earlier example, of the Cistercian Catholic Order, to show that religious values did influence productivity and economic performance in England and across Europe. The effect of this historic influence has persisted to today. Paper link: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12367Learn more about Jeanet: https://web2.econ.ku.dk/bentzen/Follow Jeanet Bentzen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeanetBentzenFollow Growth Chat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Growth_Chat

What are we really saying when we talk about the safety net as a "handout"? Some German guy thinks he knows the answer. Also, Amanda presents some original research! Send questions and topic suggestions to incomingpod@gmail.com! Amanda's methods and results write-up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1npn0ACkGCDnc-qkpjPyKK2WNH2a2k0Yc_kHM-ANCtRU/edit?usp=sharing Other references: Dunn, A. (2018). Partisans are divided over the fairness of the U.S. economy – and why people are rich or poor. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/04/partisans-are-divided-over-the-fairness-of-the-u-s-economy-and-why-people-are-rich-or-poor/ Economic Policy Institute. (2019). The Productivity-Pay Gap. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Igielnik, R. (2020). 70% of Americans say U.S. economic system unfairly favors the powerful. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/09/70-of-americans-say-u-s-economic-system-unfairly-favors-the-powerful/ King Jr., M. L. (1967). The Three Evils of Society. National Conference for New Politics. Obama, B. (2013). Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address. The White House Office of the Press Secretary. Weber, M. (1905). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Hosted by Amanda Hall Music by John Bartmann

Today, Jason and Juan Pablo discuss political theorist Evgeny Morozov’s article, “Digital Socialism? The Calculation Debate in the Age of Big Data” (NLR, 2019, https://newleftreview.org/issues/II116/articles/evgeny-morozov-digital-socialism). In this article, Morozov critiques the idea that technology will somehow reinvent capitalism. He argues that technology-enabled capitalism (technology within the logic of markets) is STILL capitalism and thus it does not escape challenges produced or compounded by capitalism. However, what if technology enablers could be applied beyond the realm of capitalism? Morozov posits that the public sphere could apply modern technologies (e.g. social media, knowledge management platforms, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, etc.) to efficiently coordinate and solve problems outside the markets. Fascinating! But Jason and Juan Pablo are skeptical. Maybe not for the reasons you expect... In this episode, we address: the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek’s successful theory of the relationships between knowledge, prices, and human behavior; markets vs. non-markets vs. new markets; existing technology enablers and how they map across the private and public spheres; challenges associated with technology ownership and maintaining a democratic process; and the problem of turning knowledge into meaningful action. We also harken back to our ongoing debate surrounding whether massive financial incentives are required to inspire innovation or make people want to solve the world’s most pressing social challenges. For more on this, listen to our previous “listener case study” episode called, “The Protestant Ethic, Instrumentalizing Everything, and Devotion to Work.” The views expressed on this podcast are our own. If you enjoy what you're hearing, please follow/support us through any of the below media: Twitter: twitter.com/Panopticpod
 Patreon: www.patreon.com/panopticpod
 Website: www.panopticpod.com/
 Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pan-…st/id1475726450 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/0edBN0huV1GkMFxSXErZIx

WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves — their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations — over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? To answer these questions Joseph Henrich draws on anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition — laying the foundation for the modern world. Shermer and Henrich discuss: psychology textbooks that “now purport to be about ‘Psychology’ or ‘Social Psychology’ need to be retitled something like ‘The Cultural Psychology of Late 20th Century Americans’,” Darwin’s Dictum: “How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observations must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.” What views Henrich is writing for and against, evolutionary psychology and the search for human universals in the context of his thesis that WEIRD cultures are so different, Max Weber’s book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and how his thesis holds up under modern studies, a 2×2 grid analysis of his thesis (what about the exceptions?): Cell 1: Catholic/Protestant Influence + WEIRD characteristics Cell 2: Catholic/Protestant Influence + non-WEIRD characteristics Cell 3: Non-Catholic/Protestant Influence + WEIRD characteristics Cell 4: Non-Catholic/Protestant Influence + non-WEIRD characteristics the problem of overdetermining the past (so many theories explaining history: Jared Diamond’s geographic models, Ian Morris’ War: What is it Good For?, Matt Ridley’s The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (ideas having sex), Robin Dunbar’s Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, economic historian Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms, Benjamin Friedman’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, normative vs. descriptive accounts of human behavior polygamy vs. monogamy, 1st cousin marriages? conformity, shame and guilt, illusions, loss aversion, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, superstitions, religion doesn’t have to be true to be useful, national differences in cultural psychology (for example: Italy a loose culture, Germany a tight culture), origin of writing and literacy rates, origin of religion and its purpose(s), the “Big Gods” theory of religion’s origin, the purpose of religious rituals and food taboos, families and kin, kin selection, group selection, meaning and happiness in non-WEIRD cultures, “Then you get Westerners who are like ‘I’m an individual ape on a pale blue dot in the middle of a giant black space” and “What does it all mean?’”, physical differences: “WEIRD people have flat feet, impoverished microbiomes, high rates of myopia and unnaturally low levels of exposure to parasites like helminths, which may increase their risk of heart disease and allergies.”, and When we colonize Mars and become a spacefaring species, what should we take with us from what we’ve learned about human history and psychology? Joseph Henrich is an anthropologist and the author of The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter, among other books. He is the chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, where his research focuses on evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making, and culture.

Trump's recent town hall, protests in Lancaster, organizing workers, the Protestant Ethic, and more.

Welcome to the first part of my introduction to Max Weber. This episode introduces and illustrates some of his most important concepts and gives a short and concise summary of his most famous work: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Where did capitalism come from? What produced the amazing wealth of the last 200 years especially in America? In 1904, Max Weber offered the theory that reformed theology was the deciding factor that produced the amazing wealth of capitalistic countries. there are three reasons that he says that.

Today’s episode is Pan-Optic’s first ever "personal case study" response, where we react to listener Sep’s account of working in big tech and grappling with feeling intellectually and morally limited by her work requirements and the logic of the firm. In reacting to Sep’s personal case study, we explore: Max Weber on the protestant work-oriented ethic; the tendency to justify something’s existence by instrumentalizing its purpose; Jason’s aversion to divine command theory; being socialized and acculturated within neoliberal and meritocratic structures; research on what motivates high-output performers; and who should be let on the plane first. Thank you Sep for an excellent submission. We hope we did you justice. Pan-Optic is always accepting personal case study submissions. Share your story by contacting us at panopticpod@gmail.com or through any of our social media platforms. We look forward to hearing from you and reacting to your story. Addendum: we are issuing a correction after failing to do our homework... Sep, who we addressed using he/him/his pronouns, goes by she/her/hers pronouns. HUGE apology to Sep! We really feel bad about this and won’t make the same mistake again. Thank you for going easy on us and for making our first personal case study reaction possible and so much fun. The views expressed on this podcast are our own. If you enjoy what you're hearing, please follow/support us through any of the below media: Twitter: twitter.com/Panopticpod Patreon: www.patreon.com/panopticpod Website: www.panopticpod.com/ Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pan-…st/id1475726450 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/0edBN0huV1GkMFxSXErZIx

It's been 100 years since the death of the great German intellectual, Max Weber. He was only fifty-six at the time, but left behind several landmark works and a whole new discipline — sociology — that still affects how we view religion now. In this episode, Meredith Lake chats with Sociology Professor Adam Possamai on Weber's legacy before speaking with Associate Professor of Sociology Anna Halafoff about her research into how Gen-Z relates to religion.

It's been 100 years since the death of the great German intellectual, Max Weber. He was only fifty-six at the time, but left behind several landmark works and a whole new discipline — sociology — that still affects how we view religion now. In this episode, Meredith Lake chats with Sociology Professor Adam Possamai on Weber's legacy before speaking with Associate Professor of Sociology Anna Halafoff about her research into how Gen-Z relates to religion.

In Re-enchanting Modernity: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity. Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Re-enchanting Modernity: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity. Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Re-enchanting Modernity: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity. Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Re-enchanting Modernity: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity. Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Re-enchanting Modernity: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity. Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Re-enchanting Modernity: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity. Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we will explore the motivations for the founding of colonies in British North America; how their corporate charters served as a template for the organization of their governments; the highly coercive legal system initiated in Jamestown to control the immigrants; the Massachusetts Bay Colony, its founding, leaders, religious beliefs, and governmental structure; a big-picture view of the court structure, and organization throughout the colonies; social services and business regulation throughout the colonies; and the Protestant Ethic and its impact on subsequent American legal history. 

S. Gurumurthy is one of India's foremost thinkers in economics, political and cultural philosophy. In this interview he explains his deep insights into the Western Model for Economic Development. Highlights: 1) Max Weber's thesis called Protestant Ethic is the foundation used by Western thinkers to explain the origins of modern capitalism. 2) This foundation is based on the Bible and uses some key Judeo-Christian metaphysical premises. 3) These Biblical ideas earlier also entered Marxism even though Marxism opposed religion. Hegel was the thought leader who crystalized such ideas for modern times. 4) In fact, though Communism and Capitalism fight each other, both share certain core ideas that are not in harmony with dharmic metaphysics. 5) This Western model of economics has permeated all modern theories, and has been championed by international agencies such as World Bank, United Nations, etc. 6) India's Constitution is also based on the same categories and assumptions, making it inconsistent with dharmic principles. 7) So by following this model India has been contradicting its cultural foundations. 8) However, in those areas where India has pursued development according to its own cultural model, it has done far better. 9) Recently, the global economic community has reversed its stand and concluded that the Western model is not suitable as a universal standard. 10) So India must develop and pursue its own development model. Those familiar with my book, BEING DIFFERENT, will appreciate that we are discussing here another example of Western Universalism that has harmed India's interests because it was blindly followed. Do check out our YouTube channel 'Rajiv Malhotra Official' and do follow us on Facebook '@RajivMalhotra.Official' and Twitter '@InfinityMessage' and '@RajivMessage'. To support this project: https://infinityfoundation.com/donate/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/kurukshetra/support

Bureaucracy was an innovation in the mid-1800s, as the world changed from a traditional society to one driven by a new sense of rational-legalism, largely driven by the Protestant ethic. Max Weber, a German sociologist, described the times in his book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904, in German; 1930, English translation). … Continue reading 101 – When bureaucracy was an innovation →

We cover the basic ideas from Max Weber's "The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" to set the foundation for the colonizing of New England and explore one theory for how modern capitalism came into being.

Summary of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism for BUS 1050

CAM (Goldhaber 2018) SPOILERS IN THIS EPISODE FOR CAM (2018) “Horror films are our collective nightmares.” SPOILERS CAM (2018) Blade Runner (1982) SPOILERS BELOW TOPIC INDEX – CAM (Goldhaber 2018) 0:00 – Intro 1:27 – Introducing the film, spoilers 3:51 – Movie discussion begins 8:17 – Emotional tone of the film 20:30 – Weber’s Protestant Ethic … Continue reading "CAM 2018" The post CAM 2018 appeared first on Collective Nightmares.

I've been revisting one of the set texts from my degree (I read it nearly 30 years ago!) - Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - recently. I do this for you, by the way! I'm becoming increasingly aware of the deeply hardwired beliefs we have about work - work is what makes us valuable human beings, work is Godly, hard, mundane work has the greatest virtue. If skill comes too easily or if you enjoy your work too much it must not have as much value as work which is painful and hard fought for. In this week's podcast I explore the routes of these beliefs and question whether they have as much relevance today as they did in the Industrial Age. I'd love to know what you think too! Stay in touch with us on Instagram and Twitter (@brilliantgamble) and check out the new website www.abrilliantgamble.com!

Danny is joined by Coyle Neal (of the City of Man Podcast) and C. Derick Varn (of every other podcast in the world) for a discussion about Mark Noll's seminal book Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Rather than just discussing the book on its own terms though, the trio apply its analysis and conclusions to American Liberalism as well. The result is a sprawling, detail-rich episode, filled with plenty to consider as we think about the state of the American intellect in the Twenty-First Century. Topics: Derick in Mormon-landia CHRN back online The listener contest concludes! The Scandal, sacred and secular Atheism tasting Protestanty Jonathan Edwards as godfather Proto-populism The Scottish Enlightenment Cultural Panic and the Nashville Statement Activism, Biblicism, Intuition, Populism Dispensationalism Broad Brush! Evangelical College vs. Evangelical University Patterns of Thought versus Participation in American Culture Separation of church and state and “Religious Deregulation” Rhetorical Revivalism Missionaries Political power over religion The Joel Osteenification of Christianity Applying Noll's argument to the American Left and Right Manichaeism in Evangelicals and Liberals Ken Ham and “Thinking Correctly” through Intuition ugh Religion's importance for politics Evangelicals and the Alt-Right The Evangelical withdraw into their own media spaces Urbanization and the Republic Art rejecting didacticism Can Democracy work? City of Man on Marxism Do Marxists accept original sin? The problems of Enlightenment Links: Scandal of the Evangelical Mind https://www.amazon.com/Scandal-Evangelical-Mind-Mark-Noll/dp/0802841805 Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity https://www.amazon.com/Democratization-American-Christianity-Nathan-Hatch/dp/0300050607 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West https://www.amazon.com/God-Dead-Secularization-Steve-Bruce/dp/0631232753 Please go to iTunes and leave a review: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sectarian-review/id1031613670?mt=2 Also, visit and like our Facebook page to access more content: https://www.facebook.com/SectarianReview/

The central point here is that any communion or community has to be based on a moral commitment to a creed or a faith. It can't be metaphysical, based on some neutral characteristics like genetics, place of birth, economic status, IQ, or anything else. It has to be ethical/judicial;…There has to be a transcendent faith, and that faith has to have a transcendent moral law which would unite all the members of the communion into one body, without losing each one's identity. Without such selective communion with people of the same faith and the same moral status, any community will end up being a communion with evil. Assigned Reading: – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber

How does religion fit with the world of business? Perhaps more closely than you think. Narrated by Stephen Fry.

Hardworking families, alarm clock Britain, shirkers and strivers...there's no doubt that ideas about the moral power and value of hard work are embedded in our culture. But where did these ideas come from? The historian, Justin Champion, explores the ideas of the German thinker and father of sociology Max Weber. In his most famous book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber set out his idea that the roots of our beliefs about the value of hard work and material success are to be found in the religious thinking of Protestantism, the Puritans especially and Calvin in particular. For them finding a vocation, working hard and achieving material success were evidence that they were one of the elect: the people God had saved from eternal damnation. Those religious ideas have resonance today, albeit translated into a secular setting: Justin talks to Steve Finn, a former armed robber now involved in running, Blue Sky, a social enterprise that offers employment to ex-offenders so they can turn their lives around. He also hears from the entrepreneur Sara Murray for whom work and life are happily intermingled and whose sense of mission around the success of her company, Buddi, drives her. Justin also looks at the darker side. With the writer Madeleine Bunting, he explores how our culture's obsession with the "work ethic" can leave people unable to participate feeling deficient and judged. Producer: Natalie Steed.

Max Weber, the German-born sociologist and philosopher, is one of the canonical figures in the creation of social science. And like any canonical figure, his legacy lies in hands of his subsequent interpreters. Karl Emil Maximilian Weber’s current interpreter-in-chief, Oxford historian Max Ghosh, the Jean Duffield Fellow in Modern History at St. Anne’s College, insists that Weber remains his primacy -- definitely top of the hit parade, no two ways about it – whether or not his works have been read totally accurately or not. Not only does Weber, who died of the Spanish flu in his 50s shortly after the end of World War I, retain his foundational role, Ghosh argues in this latest Social Science Bites podcast, he’s still relevant in both the social sciences and in in the academic enterprise in general. Ghosh, the author of 2008’s A Historian Reads Max Weber: Essays on the Protestant Ethic, discusses Weber through the prism of the German academic and journal editor’s own bourgeois and religious upbringing. Those touchstones give Ghosh a unique insight into Weber’s seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1905, Weber's essay proposed that Protestantism had been a significant factor in the emergence of capitalism, making an explicit connection between religious ideas and economic systems. Weber suggested that Calvinism, with its emphasis on personal asceticism and the merits of hard work, had created an ethic which had enabled the success of capitalism in Protestant countries. Weber's essay has come in for some criticism since he published the work, but is still seen as one of the seminal texts of twentieth-century sociology. With: Peter Ghosh Fellow in History at St Anne's College, Oxford Sam Whimster Honorary Professor in Sociology at the University of New South Wales Linda Woodhead Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University. Producer: Thomas Morris.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1905, Weber's essay proposed that Protestantism had been a significant factor in the emergence of capitalism, making an explicit connection between religious ideas and economic systems. Weber suggested that Calvinism, with its emphasis on personal asceticism and the merits of hard work, had created an ethic which had enabled the success of capitalism in Protestant countries. Weber's essay has come in for some criticism since he published the work, but is still seen as one of the seminal texts of twentieth-century sociology. With: Peter Ghosh Fellow in History at St Anne's College, Oxford Sam Whimster Honorary Professor in Sociology at the University of New South Wales Linda Woodhead Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University. Producer: Thomas Morris.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1905, Weber's essay proposed that Protestantism had been a significant factor in the emergence of capitalism, making an explicit connection between religious ideas and economic systems. Weber suggested that Calvinism, with its emphasis on personal asceticism and the merits of hard work, had created an ethic which had enabled the success of capitalism in Protestant countries. Weber's essay has come in for some criticism since he published the work, but is still seen as one of the seminal texts of twentieth-century sociology. With: Peter Ghosh Fellow in History at St Anne's College, Oxford Sam Whimster Honorary Professor in Sociology at the University of New South Wales Linda Woodhead Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University. Producer: Thomas Morris.

Max Weber wrote his best-known work after he recovered from a period of serious mental illness near the turn of the twentieth century. After he recovered, his work transitioned from enthusiastically capitalist and liberal in the tradition of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill to much more skeptical of the down-sides of modernization, more similar to the thinking of Nietzsche and Freud. In his first major work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argues that the Protestant faith, especially Luther's notion of "calling" and the Calvinist belief in predestination set the stage for the emergence of the capitalist spirit. With his more complex understanding of the causes of capitalism, Weber accounts for the motivations of capitalists and the spirit of capitalism and rationalization in ways that Marx does not.

Max Weber wrote his best-known work after he recovered from a period of serious mental illness near the turn of the twentieth century. After he recovered, his work transitioned from enthusiastically capitalist and liberal in the tradition of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill to much more skeptical of the down-sides of modernization, more similar to the thinking of Nietzsche and Freud. In his first major work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argues that the Protestant faith, especially Luther's notion of "calling" and the Calvinist belief in predestination set the stage for the emergence of the capitalist spirit. With his more complex understanding of the causes of capitalism, Weber accounts for the motivations of capitalists and the spirit of capitalism and rationalization in ways that Marx does not.