In this episode, I'm joined by Zohar Atkins to discuss the future of Liberalism, hierarchy, AI, religion and a whole lot more.
Transcript:
William Jarvis 0:05
Hey folks, welcome to narratives. narratives is a podcast exploring the ways in which the world is better than in the past, the ways it is worse in the past, where it's a better, more definite vision of the future. I'm your host, William Jarvis. And I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this episode. I hope you enjoy it. You can find show notes, transcripts and videos at narratives podcast.com.
Will Jarvis 0:37
Sahar, how are you doing today?
Zohar 0:40
I'm doing great. Well, how are you?
Will Jarvis 0:42
Doing? Good. Thank you so much for taking the time to hop on today. I really appreciate it. Do you mind giving us a bio and some of the big ideas you're interested
Zohar 0:51
in? The short bio is that I'm a rabbi, an independent scholar and a poet. I am a coach. I do all of this. As a self employed roving intellectual on the internet, teaching in person and over zoom. And I'm, I'm passionate about art. I'm passionate about spirituality and faith and theology. I'm passionate about the history of ideas. And of course, how all of those very abstract and monumental issues touch the individual in this cultural moment, and how we personalize the great ideas by really bringing them back to the question of how should we live?
Will Jarvis 1:38
Got it. Got it. I, I'm curious. I want to zoom in. Like I'm gonna go off the outline. So I apologize. But you just said something that's really interesting. The individual, you know, the world seems to have gotten very collective, you know, in some sense, and less focused on the individual in the past, I don't know, you know, 50 years. It looks to me like I have that feeling. I remember Peter Thiel has this line recently, where he says there hasn't been a ticker tape parade for individual since the late 1990s. And even then, it was a couple of like, athletes and people that were not necessarily even American and, and all these interesting, you know, asterisks to put beside it? Do you have any sense as to why that is the case and why that has happened?
Zohar 2:24
Well, before I accept the premise and give a hypothesis, I gotta say just one quick word about the individual itself, right? The meaning of the word individual means not dividable. But from my understanding the arrival of this term in the history of ideas really came to be with Hobbes, who, in a sense, invented the individual, he invented this idea of something that can't really be divided anymore, because he was trying to deal with the real problem in his time of civil war. And the theoretical problem, that without giving the individual some basic integrity, we're just going to kill each other. So I agree or disagree with Hobbes, but like, it's worth casting a long view on this question of the individual and just realizing that for most of human history, there hasn't been an individual in the way that we've constructed it. So it wouldn't surprise me if the individual is in decline, it may or may not have the same lyndie attributes that we should expect, let's say from the from things like tribe or caste, or what have you. You know, as to is the individual in decline. I'm not quite sure about that. I think that if you sort of take the dialectical view, though, of, of history and culture, you'll see that there's always a backlash against whatever's culturally ascended in a generation earlier. So I can, you know, I can see the rise of individualism leading to atomization, leading to alienation. And then the question is what's going to fill that gap? One hypothesis proposed by Baudrillard is that consumerism is going to fill that gap, consumerism in the sense of like you are what you buy. And now social media helps you really brand yourself and identify with brands and create a pseudo community around that. So is that that's a bit of a horseshoe, right with the individual shopping at Urban Outfitters to express individualism, and then broadcasting that out to 1000s of other people who also share that same so called individualist aesthetic. And then there's, you know, I think there's new age religion, but be it in the form of yoga, be it in the form of sort of the cult of masculinity on the new right. There's a great book by Tara burden kind of on this called strange rights. She was on my podcast asked meditations was so high recently. So I see it as in a sense individualism and tribalism are in dialectical relationship with one another. They're not really opposites, bad tribalism leads to individualism bad into individualism leads back to tribalism.
Will Jarvis 5:18
Gotcha. So it's something like this kind of cycle through history where we we cycle between these two things. And, you know, right now, perhaps we're, you know, fairly atomized or, you know, it feels like people are quite lonely. And then but perhaps we'll find some way back to community. Or
Zohar 5:32
yeah, you know, it's interesting, the word loneliness. So, Arendt, Hannah Arendt, in, in many, many places, she identifies loneliness with fascism and totalitarianism, which is kind of fascinating because you would think that at least like in a totalitarian society, with one thing at answers is the problem of loneliness, right, or you can join a mass movement, you can be part of a march etc. But she, she defines totalitarianism as quote, unquote, organized loneliness. Because you're never, you never fear feel more lonely than when you're surrounded by people requiring conformity of you. So I think good individualism in the sense of a Cold War, liberalism is being able to differentiate yourself from the crowd. But that doesn't mean that you check out of society, I think that's a bastardization of the concept of the individual that somehow, like you're free on your boat, and you don't have a care in the world. I mean, you're always going to be a social animal. It's just a question of how conformist Are you. And unfortunately, or fortunately, we, we, we do seem hardwired for conformity. So maybe not everybody is really as up to the the individual task as is, as as good for them around thought that most people could not participate in what she called an inner dialogue. And she saw that as the root of a lot of modern evil, that in a sense, because we couldn't be still with our own thoughts, as philosophers could be, we would fill our minds with all kinds of propaganda or talking points from the outside, and we'd basically just pair it whatever is going on around us.
Will Jarvis 7:17
And just kind of copy the crowd and then, you know, you know, perhaps, you know, kill a scapegoat. And it's these things, keep going. What you just said, reminded me of this really interesting question I had for you. Liberalism, you know, this kind of cold war, liberal lism, we seem to be at the end of or something like that, you know, people seem to be fed up with it, they think it's not working at some level, you know, Neo liberals seem seen as this like a kind of a bad term to call someone. But what my my big question is, what comes next? Do you have any visions in the future that, you know, are solid alternatives to liberalism that seem preferable and are actually achievable?
Zohar 7:59
A lot of it has to do with how you define liberalism. I'm mostly of the view that a lot of people who are unhappy with liberalism are unhappy with one version of it, but they're not really unhappy with liberalism itself. Practically speaking, I think in other words, practically speaking, liberalism has on the whole increased. Many, it secured many basic civil rights, it's given us a lot of prosperity. Okay, sure. We're still unhappy because that's the human condition. And also liberalism is young. But even to be able to criticize liberalism on your substack is, is a confirmation of liberalism. It's like a cheap shot of a point, right? But uh, you're exercising your freedom of speech. So on a metaphysical level, I get why people would would be unhappy with liberalism. I mean, one could have 1000 objections, I think metaphysically it's rather thin. On what basis do you really justify it? I think the the more the most compelling arguments for liberalism are instrumental. It's like, well, we live in a diverse society. And we'd like to get along look at the history of Europe when we fought over religion that didn't, that wasn't so fun. So, you know, when I hear people saying what comes after liberalism, we need you know, we need to return to a theocracy, or if you will, sort of his one proposal from the Christian Christian Post liberals or if it's like, post liberal from sort of the economic left in the form of like, we need to be more aggressively redistributionist or whatever it is. I think it behooves us to remember the origins of liberalism. Were technological, there were social technology for managing diversity. And all those proposals amount to in my ears is something to the effect of like liberalism doesn't deliver justice. It doesn't deliver truth. And I think a conscientious liberal would have to agree that that's True. But that's that's not the point of liberalism liberalism is kind of saying we would rather have peace or some relative peace than, you know, fighting in the streets. Can we be more aspirational? Can we reform certain things? Absolutely. That's what liberalism is all about. It's about making things better from within the revolutionary mindset that oppose opposes liberalism. It's just making the it's basically just anti status quo ism. But I again, I don't know how much of it is really based in deep thought versus just a personalized cost benefit analysis of like, is this good for me and mine or not? You know, Fukuyama thought that liberalism decisively won the history of ideas, and that doesn't mean that every society will be liberal, or that liberal societies, once they become liberal will remain liberal. That's not really the point. The point is just that, on the whole, liberal democracies have come into prominence. And that sort of secular trend indicates that it's likely to continue. It doesn't mean that in a particular case, it's not fragile. And I kind of agree with Fukuyama. So for me personally, I don't, it's hard to imagine an alternative to liberalism, taking off and becoming the new orthodoxy. But that doesn't mean you're not going to have various experiments. And we do experiments in post liberalism. But you're terrific on Tyler Cowen on this point, like, if you look at the revealed preferences of global population where people moving and where are they leaving, they're moving to liberal societies, and they're leaving a liberal lens on the whole. So it's not to say, you know, some people in the Taliban would rather stay in Afghanistan, that's fine for them. But it's just to say, on the whole, like, the tide doesn't seem to be that. For all the people complain about America, they're not they're not actually moving to Russia and Afghanistan.
Will Jarvis 12:17
Right. So perhaps, perhaps, the reveal preferences, you know, liberalism, you know, actually works decently well. It's got holes, of course, but it's about as good as we can do. As for people,
Zohar 12:29
liberalism is not equally good for everyone, for sure. So I think that the criticisms of liberalism are really, you know, they're important as, as psalms of lament is voices of protest, and we should definitely open our hearts to, to the, to those laments, but again, liberalism is kind of about what's good for the whole. And there's always going to be winners and losers in any political arrangement. That's what politics is. And yeah, I think probably certain orthodox liberals are too dogmatic about the consensus that they think they have, when in fact, we're much more diverse than we are. So that's what we're seeing now is the internet, and the decentralization of media, giving people a voice who otherwise wouldn't be able to vocalize their protest, but that those poor voices of protest have always been around.
Will Jarvis 13:30
It makes sense to make sense. Some of it just kind of continues. This question is related. You know, it feels like we live in this world where there's just a ton of anxiety, depression, you know, people don't feel very well, at some level. Do you think we live in a time with an abnormal level of these things? And if so, like, you know, is there anything we can do about it?
Zohar 13:56
I don't have data to back me up on this. So anything I said should definitely be taken as just a regular rather than truthy. But I think we probably, in the West have more anxiety and depression than I can't say that we did have in previous eras in the West, but I kind of feel like they are. I'm willing to hypothesis that they're first world problems. If you're starving, you can't really you might be depressed about the fact that you're starving. But your survival instinct might also take over such that you don't have the bandwidth to worry about what life is all about because you're too busy feeding yourself. So I mean, not that that's an antidote to depression. Don't try this at home. You know, but I think that certainly anxiety seems to be a first world problem. Born of in at least one instance, hyper competitive cultures. That would be one point a second is just anxiety about the future like, which could correspond to actual, actual deceleration and growth or, you know, the fact that, or simply is the fact that society is changing so quickly, it's it's hard really to plan, it's hard to be a definite optimist. You know, if you grew up in a, in a world where you can work one job for 50 years, okay, that has a certain unfreedom to it, but there's also a certain security to it, if you're like, the norm is that every couple years, you're gonna have to change jobs. So I think that will be anxiety inducing for sure. So I think some of it is social, for sure. And some of it, and some of it is an economic and some of it is, I think, a symptom of a general malaise, a lostness, about purpose, because to go back to the dissatisfaction with liberalism, like capitalism gives people the ability to self define what they're striving for, what what they want to do with their money, but a lot of people in my view, and experience don't actually know what it is that they ought to strive for. And so if money become money, which is a means to an end becomes an end in itself, as Marx describes, ma'am and becomes God, I think that that definitely will lead to tremendous depression and anxiety, which is why you see, so many people have means quite depressed. Because if you don't know what you're trying to do with those means, well, then you're gonna feel aimless.
Will Jarvis 16:57
You're your religious leader? So I'm curious, how do you think about guiding people through these issues of you know, how to how to figure out what to shoot for, you know, what is good? And what what they should try to do with their life? Because I'm assuming that that has to come up, right people come to you with this question. I don't know.
Zohar 17:14
I'm a very reluctant God. Guide. I try really, to customize. My response is based upon what people are going through and mirror back to them the things they know, rather than sort of say like, Here's the menu, choose Option A, B, or C. And in that sense, I'm a symptom of my time like I am, I do, I do have some thoughts about like what a good life involves, but I just don't think it's effective. To calm top down and be like, you know, this is what the Lord requires. I'm more into like the existentialist hero's journey as the method and and you know, if, if the person is begging me to give you to give them some thoughts on, you know, what, what to aim for, I'm happy to oblige. But I definitely don't want to start that way. If that makes any sense,
Will Jarvis 18:09
though, that makes sense. And trying to be effective is important in this in this case? What I'm curious, you know, maybe it's difficult to give to those people. But like, just in the theoretical, you know, what do you think that looks like? What should we try to do? What should we try to shoot for?
Zohar 18:27
Well, on a psychological level, I think that having a sense of gratitude is incredibly important. I mean, most of what I'm going to say is going to be super banal, and the kinds of things that you can read in any self help book, but like, the more that you can appreciate your life, the more that you can be present in the moment, things that, you know, mindfulness describes the not only will you feel better, but I think you will also, you will also perform better for others, like you will, you will uplift the environment. In my view, I certainly don't think it's enough to just feel grateful. And there are times when, when this situation calls, not for gratitude, but for a negative emotion, like anger, whatever. That being said. I think just having a much more of a baseline of tranquility and serenity, to the extent that that's in your control, obviously, emotion is complicated. That's a good starting point. And, you know, traditional prayer is all about that traditional. I begin my day every morning by saying, modality, the Hebrew prayer for Thank you God for giving me a soul for allowing me to start this day with new life. So does it have to be framed theologically? No, it doesn't. But I think gratitude that you exist at all or like room on humility at the fact that you're here You have one life to live, it's just your life. What are you going to do with it? Make the most of it? How are you going make the most of it today? Okay, you have a routine, you have a lot of things that you're required to do not all of it is fun. Can you make time for some moments in your day to remember that you have a soul? And I guess if you don't believe in the soul, you know, that you have that you have agency, if you will, I think maybe agency is a good secular word for soul something in you that's distinct, something in you that that if you did not, if you did not do that no one would the one song that you can sing that no one else can sing. I think yeah, in that sense, cultivating character is something that I feel is underrated in our society, we are so quick to point to what's wrong with the outside world. And why it's responsible for our problems. I'm not saying pick yourself up by the bootstraps. I'm not saying like gratitude. solves any of these real problems, I've just think that we definitely do have more agency at the margin than we think. So that's, that's all I'm offering there. I think if you can cultivate, you know, a handful of very meaningful relationships, and invest deeply in them. That's certainly better than like being a social butterfly. And just living your life as a so called networker. Networking is fine, it's fine. It's good for the, you know, it's good. But commitment is definitely underrated in our generation, both at the level of friendships at the level of career at the level of romance. I mean, really, at every level, like so, come in a little bit more, I'm not gonna tell you what to commit to you. I just think in general commitment is good. I mean, I could go, I could go on and on. But like, I'm trying to think what other what other general advice would I give, you have to have a full cop in order to be able to give, so figure out how to fill up your cup. And then be generous. The goal, the goal is to get to a point where you are a giver, rather than a taker. And it takes time to get there. And obviously, we all have moments where we need to ask for help. It's not like you just accomplish, be it you know, you've finished finished, I don't need anything now I can give obviously. But I think moving from a taker mindset to a giver mindset is the highest way to be and it's how many of the saints and the heroes in in our imagination, live, they live for the sake of others they to be to be cliched about it, you know, the the what do you call it the the caricature of the of the venture capitalist with the with the Patagonia vest? Is their first words out of their mouth, or how can I help? How can I be helpful? You know, I think if you can actually live that way, genuinely.
Genuinely, that is a tremendous way to live, that will be that will not only bring you meaning but bring others meaning. And obviously, if you have a sense of a higher consciousness, be a god or whatever that does help with that. Because then you know, in every moment that you're here to serve, to serve the Creator. But even without that, I think so many, so much of the form of religion can still translate in a secular context.
Will Jarvis 23:41
Like that's my there's a lot of advice there. You did mention one thing, which I think is actually under discussed, but I think super, super useful. It's, you know, try and do something, something along the lines of You have to correct me something along along the lines of that you should should try to do something that if you don't do it, it won't happen. Try and do something unique. Do you think that's important? And I found in my life, that that's where I get a lot of meetings when I do something that meets that criteria, right? It's not like I'm just doing something replaceable, something competitive where someone could come in and do you know, essentially the same job maybe slightly worse, but it would still happen anyway.
Zohar 24:22
It's a tremendous privilege and blessing to be able to self Express. And not everyone gets to do it for work. But whether you can do it for work or not, you can definitely carve out some time in your day or your week to do it. And you should you should know yourself as Socrates tells us and you can't really know yourself just by looking in the mirror meditating. And in my view, you you have to know yourself by taking action and experimenting and getting feedback from the world and that could come in the form of producing art. It could come The perfect form of starting a company it could really any taking any chance, putting yourself out there taking more risks, exposing yourself to serendipity. It's so good. It's so nourishing. It's scary, for sure. But and yeah, I don't think everybody is cut out to do this all the time, we all have kind of different risk tolerances, and some of us are just kind of happier when we're out putting ourselves out there. And some of us are a little more shy, or you know, you know, maybe more analytical. And so we want to know how things work rather than sort of this potentially ego ego maniacal view that I'm offering, which is like, Well, what do I have to say? It's like, No, you know, I'm happy just to be a helper. I, that's fine. I'm not, I'm not saying my personality type is the best. I just think that within any personality type, there's probably definitely room for doing something singular. And in a Jewish context, I'd say like God created human beings in the divine image, the biblical context, in Genesis, and much, much ink has been spilled on what that even means that we're creating the divine image. Personally, I think it means that God is a creator. And so the human being is created to be a creator. God did something that nobody else did, or could do. And God created one being that also has that ability and that obligation, that responsibility to do something that none other can do.
Will Jarvis 26:39
I love that. That's really good. That's just a, it's a really good framing of you know, of people and just just thinking about, you know, the singularity of the individual, right, like each person is truly someone singular and special. And that that's something that comes up a lot in the rational community that I like to think about is like, well, you know, I think something that's under addressed is just how each person is totally unique and special, and how we should we should lift that up in some some extent, and just the specialness of people? And how do we cultivate each individual? It seems like an important thing thing to strive to do.
Zohar 27:21
What is What do you think the rationalist community's take on that issue? Is my and what why is it sort of underdeveloped in your view?
Will Jarvis 27:30
It's super interesting. I think it comes from if you read much about Effective Altruism, like utilitarianism, yeah. Well, I think that can, you know, unintentionally, sometimes smashed down the individual into, you know, everybody, it's just like, we're all just bundles of utility, and how do we maximize that. And, you know, I think the Effective Altruism movement is very important in the sense that you should try to do charity that is more effective, like on the margin, you know, like, we can do one thing that serves 22 people, and one that can do 20. And I'll everything's equal, of course, we should do the one that that helps more people. But I think when you start trying to calculate things out to a more granular level than that, you run into a lot of problems. And it feels like a lot of the bad things in the 20th century, you know, came from these things where you just smash the individual down and, you know, fascism and communism, and just these kind of totalizing. You know, sets of community where we're all going to just get jammed together. And and everyone's the same. I don't know. I don't know, I don't have well developed thoughts on that. But that's generally generally what I think.
Zohar 28:35
Yeah, I think it's definitely a tension that any philosopher political philosopher is gonna face, because between the system and the individual, because if you, if you just focus on the individual, you can, obviously you can have a lot of inefficiency and a lack of accountability, you end up, you potentially end up celebrating some individuals more than others. And so I definitely see utilitarianism and other philosophical movements as a rebellion against that sort of an attempt to say we're all the same, because they don't like the they don't like the idea of like, why should this person get all? All the glory and everybody else be serfs? Right?
Will Jarvis 29:21
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it's a it's a real tension. I, I'm curious, your take on this. And, you know, I don't have fully formed thought on this question, but I think could be interesting. You know, generally, what is your take on hierarchy? What is the kind of, you know, what's your reading of the Jewish take on on hierarchy? You know, we live in an age that seems to really, it's weird, some, in some ways, praise hierarchy, in some ways, be very against any any kind of hierarchy in the world. It's this weird like tension, which I can't quite get a grip on. So it's kind of a vague question, but I don't know if you have any thoughts there.
Zohar 30:01
I do have a lot of thoughts on it. I think hierarchy is inevitable. And I guess to the extent that it's inevitable, it's a kind of love both nature and human organization. It's good. Or at minimum, its neutral. You can have terrible hierarchies, you can have abuse and corruption within hierarchies. But that critique is more about who ought to be in power, rather than it is about process. Or actually, you can even have hierarchies that have good or bad processes. It's it's but um, so I think hierarchy as a term needs to be disambiguated. But, but let's just go back to the Bible for a second, like one of the core stories of the Hebrew Bible is the liberation of the Israelites slaves from Egypt. Now, it's bad that one people is enslaving another that is clearly terrible. In my view, the Bible connects that political reality, that social reality to a theological reality or that theological reality is that all the Egyptians worship their leader as God. So it follows from that it follows from the despotism of Pharaoh, that you're going to have a society arranged in a dehumanizing way. If the point of monotheism if the point of the Bible is that only God is God, no human being can claim to be God, there is a fundamental egalitarianism in that fundamental resistance to despotism in that. But that doesn't mean that when the Israelites leave Egypt, that they have a flat organization. And everybody has equal share. In the decision making process, there's still a Prophet Moses, who top down gives orders, and there's a court system with higher and lower court and so on and so forth. And of course, at the top of that hierarchy is God. So at least in a biblical context, it's not that we're anti hierarchy, it's that there's good and bad hierarchies. here's the here's the rub. If everybody is created in the divine image, then certain certain rights and certain obligations follow from that insight. And those are radical. We can reasonably disagree about what those are. But from that point of view, there is no hierarchy. No one person can claim to be better than another person, no one race can claim to be better than another race. God created all human beings as individuals equal to one another in dignity, if you will, in soulfulness, Plato, on the face of it does not share this view. He thinks there are golden souls, silver souls, copper souls, bronze souls. You know, the Israelite people are chosen for a specific mission. There is certainly within Jewish theology, a tendency to supremacism or what do you call it chauvinism to say, you know, the Jews are a better people than, than other peoples. But even within that view, I think it's not really a hierarchical view based in essence, it's a view based in being chosen for something as opposed to being born this way. So even that is kind of radical, that what would make you better than someone, if you will, if you want to put it in that and politically correct way, is what you do, not what you're born into. And you can't inherit greatness, you have to become great a person, the child of a hero can can squander that lineage and a nobody can rise in status. I think that that follows from the idea of the individual being creating the divine image, as opposed to a caste system, where you say, well, this priestly class are the descendants of the of the gods. And these, these lower classes descend from, you know, from Drak. So, so I'm absolutely against metaphysical hierarchy when it comes to comparing human beings to one another. And I think a lot of evil does, and megalomania does come from the temptation to say like this person is a better person than that person at the level of essence. But obviously, some people do good things, great things and some people don't and we should absolutely esteem and value those who exercise all kinds of heroism, including moral heroism over those who who squander it. Certainly, we need to take into account that Not
everybody has unique trials and tribulations and so it's always apples to oranges when you're comparing people. But I definitely am against the idea that we shouldn't have competition or we shouldn't afford unequal outcomes. You know, to two people who get the glory versus people who get less glory, it's just the the theological point about everyone being creative, the divine images that we're not assign, we're not attaching people's ultimate worth to any of that the fact that somebody can run the fastest mile in the universe doesn't make them like, inherently better than the person who walks in in the slowest. And the slowest way. And I think too often, the both extremes are wrong in the hierarchy debate, like the ones are like, yeah, you want amazing, that's what it's all about. Know, what it's all about is using your talent to serve. Not about like gloating about how great you are, that's Pharaoh ism. But just because you're a loser, in a particular race, doesn't mean you have to be a sore loser, loser, connect, connect to your own uniqueness, connect to your own glory, find a different race to run, and then it won't bother you as much that that you got bested.
Will Jarvis 36:21
It makes, it makes a lot of sense. And I'm always reminded, I've been reading this biography of Julius Caesar, and he walks by a statue of Alexander the Great, and he's just like, really torn up by the fact that, you know, he's like, 30, and he's not done anything near as, as great as Alexander had done by the time he was 30. You know? And so in some sense, these things just must never end, right. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't matter, you know how good you are, there's always gonna be someone who's, you know, slightly better than something better than you. And so you should get back to kind of your individual,
Zohar 36:51
I think, at the level of character, one should be in competition with oneself. That sort of connects back to what also What advice would I give is like, ignore the praise and ignore the blame, or don't Don't, don't let the praise and the blame get to you too much. Obviously, it does, it forms you, but get to a point where you're not relying upon it. Just use it, if a person says Wow, that's so smart, you know, maybe it is a smart relative to them, but relative to where you ought to be. It's actually not very smart. So, you know, not not all praise is equal. Right. Exactly.
Unknown Speaker 37:30
Exactly.
Will Jarvis 37:31
I love that. That's really good. Well, well, so hard. That just sparked a question in my mind. And it's very large question, and we're on like, a one hour podcast. So it may not be possible to answer this at all. But maybe you thought about it. You know, do you have a sense on what we're of what we're here to do, you know, as individuals as a community, you know, it could be any of these. But But yeah, and that's a very, very large question. But I don't know if you have any thoughts on it.
Zohar 38:00
If you if you take sort of a macro view of this individual question. We all have a lot in common with one another by virtue of being born in the 20th century. In a sense, we if you think of time or era as a kind of country we are in we are all nationals of modernity, modernity as a country or post modernity. And I think that what we're here to do has something to do with that because one of the calling one of one of the slogans of modernity from Ezra Pound, is make it new. There's really an emphasis I think, on invention and innovation in modernity. And corollary to that in post modernity, there's a sense of despair as to whether we can we can make anything new anymore. That's the the decadence thesis of Ross Douthat and to some extent, Tyler Collins, great stagnation thesis, this sense of like, well, all the greatness is behind us now, what can we do? What are we here to do? I think we are here to reckon with the fact that we are modern or postmodern and that we have more opportunities and more challenges than our ancient forebears. So we should I'm not going to say we should strive for progress, but I think we should, we should strive to appreciate this is how I put it theologically. We should strive to appreciate why did God put us in this historical moment and not in a previous one. You know, God gave us good dental care. And Uber Eats so that we could use it for something. I'm sorry if that sounded glib. No, we are having what you and I are having a much higher quality of life than a king in Europe who I'm in the 16th century. So what will we do with that? And at the same time, like, there's more, you know, mass death than ever. There's more complex ways that power can be wielded to oppress. So what are we doing about that? So I think it's sort of the the perennial questions resurface. And then they have a unique tint colored by history and culture. And then that's the paradox is sort of how does the historical and the eternal interrelate, but that's what I would say we're, we're here to figure out or to be district on, I think Taylor district on he said, we're, we're not human beings on a spiritual journey, we're spiritual beings on a human journey. So I would riff on that and say, like, we are eternal beings on a historical journey.
Will Jarvis 40:58
I like that. I like that. That's really good. I really liked that. I'm curious, you know, I've asked a couple people this, and I'd love to get your take. And you just brought this up, you know, to you, what's the distinction between the pre modern, the Modern and the Postmodern? Is it does it have to do with newness? Is, is it something else?
Zohar 41:19
Pre modern, modern and postmodern? Yeah, I think you can tell the story at the level of technology at the level of culture or the level of ideas, and they all interrelate for sure. I think, the pre pre modern in one telling, there's basically just before the Industrial Revolution, and after the Industrial Revolution, that's like kind of the easiest way to do it. Because for the, you know, the average person doesn't really care if Galileo or Nugent have a new view of the universe. Like, that's just fake news. You know, they're not listening, or anything. But, but obviously, the consequences of the scientific revolution are profound, not just for scientists, but for everyone. So I think that maybe I describe the pre modern era as one in which there's a certain order and naive elegance to the world. The modern is sort of one of inverting that. In particular, I think of Nietzsche, as anti metaphysical, as Nietzsche is sort of saying, it's all perspective. And in a sense, and modernity, really throwing everything on its head, right? You take take Marx as another example of Marx takes the concept of God and says, it's just a projection of society. It's just, it's just a cope. You have basically Freud doing that with every with every method, the individual tells itself, that's just your you know, that's just your Oedipus complex or whatever it is. So I think, you know, moderns kind of they, they reject, they invert, they they rebel, in the name of doing something new. The the rebel, the French revolutionaries, as Walter Benjamin describes them were shooting at the clock towers, because they sought revenge not just against the, the regime, the political regime, but against time itself against the way that time was organized. The mechanical clock, that's awesome. I think post modernity is, in a sense, a scaling back of that. hubris, a realization that, in fact, we can't achieve as much as we think when we just inverted Rebel, and subvert and transgress, that we end up being just as dogmatic and limited also, as that which we're rejecting. I think post modernism is less certain of itself than modern modernism and modernity. modernity is just like, yeah, we've got the truth. This was bad, we have the truth and post modernity is more like, we don't know, we don't know. It's complicated. So, and it's also a bit of a mixing and matching, you know, take some things from here, take some things from there. I think you have that in modernity to modernity as modern aesthetics. We're all about pastiche. TS Eliot, you know, is a good example of that the wasteland is like a poem composed of like, lots of random quotations, mixing like things he heard on the streets, with Dante. But I think post modernity takes it to like a wild extreme, because in modernity, there's still kind of a cannon that you're grappling with. And it's sort of this imposing like, sort of authoritarian father figure. And post modernity is. It's so it's sort of both indifferent and liberated from that, indifferent to and liberated from that, that gravi toss. It's more like a Uh nothing means anything anymore. So you just sort of do your own aesthetic. I think that's kind of how I describe post modernity, aesthetically. But I think that, yeah, just generally maybe modernism was skeptical of centralized power, like, it was skeptical of the king. But it wasn't skeptical of power. And post modernity is just skeptical. And skeptical that skeptics, that general skepticism, in my view, can lead to some interesting, counterintuitive places. Because skepticism is always a double edged sword, it can weirdly lead to a doubling down on or return to pre modernity. So for instance, if you say that, like we can't know anything, one response to that conundrum is to say, well, we might as well just go with this since you can't disprove it. So like Bertrand Russell, who's more modern as is gonna, like, look at these believers, they're so ridiculous, you know, I could just as well, I could just as well believe in like tiny teapots orbiting the Earth as I could believe in a God.
And postmodern isms are like, Yeah, but since it's all absurd, you might as well go to Mass.
You know what I mean? So they're not going to argue that you ought to go to mass from first principles, but they'll sort of argue for it from the fact that you can never prove that they're wrong.
Will Jarvis 46:38
That's good. That's good. And a weird place to find ourselves, I must say, Yeah, I
Zohar 46:44
think post modernity, right? There was a guy. Bruno Latour, he wrote a book called We have never been modern. He's. He was like a big environmentalist. But his views, his theories are quite postmodern. And so he there was a New York Times article about him some years ago, as he sort of realized that his own skepticism about science was being used by climate change deniers. And he was sort of both horrified. And as I recall, like, yeah, I guess I did allow for this. So I think that's post modernity is just living in in in a place of a complete disalignment of narratives where no single organization can claim that it has the answers, whereas modernity was like, this is canceled, but we have the new dogma, we have the new orthodoxy and outplacement journals, like everyone's canceled, at least, at least when it isn't my team, but then somebody cancels them. So yeah.
Will Jarvis 47:53
Well, you know, speaking of canceling, I, I don't want to get in the weeds of this. But, you know, with the current, you know, do you see the current culture war kind of subsiding, like going back? You know, we've got polarization that set the level that was, you know, pre Civil War. So it's pretty high, you know, like, really high. It has been higher before, but it's quite high. Do you think this is like just downstream of like, slower growth or something like that? And it's just kind of a mechanical problem? Or is it like, something in the water people just, you know, they want to have something to fight over? Do you have any, like, metal level thoughts about that?
Zohar 48:29
Yeah, I don't know. If we're more polarized than then. You know. It's it's hard to as I do have thoughts I think I I think a lot of it has to do with media. In general, I think like Facebook, poisoned our minds, I don't mean in the the normal way that people talk about it in terms of misinformation. I, I just mean, there's something really bad for people who spend like hours of their day scrolling through social media and posting, like, whatever their hottest take is on anything, and getting into stupid fights with like people that they, you know, with, with strangers, but even more just disheartening with friends and teachers and family members publicly. It's like utterly disgraceful. So I think as much as social media has done a lot of positives, and I I'm, you know, full disclosure, I enjoy using Twitter quite a bit, but I did delete my Facebook some years ago. I think that that media has empowered our worst habits in a clique. And that they there's like, sort of a new norm that a lot of people have to engage with everything all the time. And there's a never ending source of things to generate outrage. And so it's not that people weren't too Find it on hot button issues in every generation, it's just that now the thing that you first think about when you see that person at a party is what they posted. Instead of like meeting them with genuine curiosity and getting to know a side of them that would lead to connectivity and empathy, you're automatically putting them in some kind of box as to what, you know, what their values are. In a sense, we've all become walking algorithms, I think that's terrible. Just super
Will Jarvis 50:31
legible, like you just know, like, and that's all you identify with, because it's very, very vivid, you know, it's super compelling. I mean, like zohore believes X, you know, this is all I can think about.
Zohar 50:42
I mean, there's sort of much much ado is made about identity politics, but less ado, is made of what I would call political politics as identity. And I think that's in a sense, the root of identity politics is the forget the group, we're talking about just the general cultural trend to identify as having certain views on politics being the primary way that you want people to interact with you or that you interact with other people. And it's hard to know if that's because, you know, what, what's causing that, but I wonder if that's if that's been the case, before I think in. In religion, I do see that a tide changing, I think a generation earlier, people might have, what they might have had in common was living in the same neighborhood coming together for happy times, and sad times. And now what they have in common is whatever activist thing that they care about, what on either side of the the aisle, and if you don't share that, then you're not welcoming like community. Like you, you sort of, and what's strange is like, so in the liberal and liberal religion, it's it's sort of the activism is it replaces the traditional creed. But in, in more orthodox, or, I guess, pre liberal religion, if you will. You have the same phenomenon, like you would think that, that more culturally conservative religious people, in my estimation, would be focused on religion rather than politics. But in fact, I think everybody has been captured by a politicization of religion. And so that does beg the question of, well, what is religion? What is its relationship to politics, I don't want to like create too simplistic a picture. As if religion and politics have nothing to do with one another, but like, to put it very bluntly, we're all spin exists now. Because Spinoza defined religion as downstream of society, he, he basically says, you know, religion is just a tool for getting people to organize, and it has no inherent truth to it. It's, it's just the laws are just there to to bind you to one another. And I kind of feel like everybody has accepted that on some level. And like, it's just admitted. For me. That's sad. For me, that's sad. I'm not saying we should strive for a political spirituality. But I think we've definitely tilted too much towards the political, to the in a society that's already doing that. So like, if religion is supposed to be countercultural or interesting. What is it doing? That you can't just get from being on Facebook? If it's basically just another venue for for politicization? So that would be my critique?
Will Jarvis 53:53
Absolutely. Not. It? Well, I have the strong belief, you know, it should be above politics, right? I mean, it's some very basic level, but instead, it's just like, gets all intertwined with it now. And perhaps that's just a real preface to what people want nowadays, but it's not not very good. It seems like
Zohar 54:09
I don't think it's I don't think it's above politics. But I don't think that it's reducible to politics. Politics is inescapable. A politics, politics were political animals, as Aristotle says, and people are going to be happy or unhappy in any given room with who's holding the power so like, that's not going away. But I think if prayer for instance, is about connecting to higher consciousness, that's very different than like prayer as a script for simply stating what what you care about, and I don't I think maybe we've we've humanized religions During lunch, we've sanitized it too much. And it's become only about human values, when in fact if the the point of religion is to get us to see beyond the limitations of the short time horizon and prejudices of our given cultural moment, then, you know, we need to bring that, that sense of mystery and awe back I don't think you're, I don't associate mystery and awe with activism personally, some, some might pull it off, you know, you Dr. King pulled it off. But on the whole, I don't I think of I think of activism, mostly as imbued with a sense of certainty and confidence. And there's a time for that, but religion can't just be about that.
Will Jarvis 55:48
Definitely. I think that's really well put both the last couple of minutes I'd love to run through a quick round of overrated or underrated down. Sure. Alright, so I'll throw out a term just tell me whether or not it's overrated or underrated, maybe a sentence or two why? overrated or underrated Hegel?
Zohar 56:08
I think Hegel is underrated, because he writes pretty badly. But he's sort of overrated in the sense that a lot of his ideas are already mainstream. Even if people aren't reading him, the one the one thing from Hegel that I really do think is underrated is the master slave struggle, the struggle for recognition. It just never gets old. It's the fundamental point of it is just how being the underdog is the source of creativity and ambition, and moves history along and being the one who's achieved the highest status is actually a kind of complacency or death. So I think that is a really fascinating angle on both history and also on personal psychology. It's good,
Will Jarvis 57:02
Rawls, overrated or underrated.
Zohar 57:07
I think he's probably overrated by most people who know who he is. As to why that is the case. I mean, Rawls was a systematic thinker. One of the last but his ideas haven't really scaled beyond a very small segment of elites. And so I think if for Ross's project to succeed, he would have to be more persuasive. Beyond that. That segment,
Will Jarvis 57:44
like sets. One last one, it's an I might mispronounce your name is Jillian rose. Yep. Oh, yeah.
Zohar 57:53
It's Julian rose, overrated or underrated. She's underrated primarily because she's, she's not known or read. I also think she's, you're great thinkers, transcend. They transcend whatever views they might have taken on a particular issue. Like Heidegger, for instance, was a right winger, but somebody who's had tremendous influence on the left. And that's a testament. I mean, Hagel would be another example of somebody who's influenced basically everyone across the aisle. I think that Rose is under read. For a lot of reasons, but even though she's working on Adorno, primarily, she's not just an Adorno scholar. She's an original thinker. And I think, as such, like people, regardless of their views, on politics would would benefit a lot from thinking with her in particular. In her book, mourning becomes the law. She describes the project of being post postmodern as taking the she she She says that her project is to try to recover truth after it's been destroyed by the Holocaust and by post modernity. I think that's just a very compelling idea. And she doesn't she's not It's not nostalgic. She's not saying we need to go back to an earlier time instead of what she offers this through the lens of this motif of mourning. Is she she used the myth of faux Seon, who was exiled from the polis from the city. His wife after photos Yan died, ate his ashes, and then walked back into the city and brother brought his presence back into the city by swallowing his ashes. So she used that as a core metaphor for the philosopher's project to sign it, in a sense, swallow the ashes of reason Yeah, that that came from Reason being cancelled. After people are so disappointed with the 20th century, I find that very meaningful, it's harrowing, but I think it's a poetic image. And it's also we need more thinkers who think creatively about how to balance head and heart. And she's definitely someone who does that. That's really good. That's really good.
Will Jarvis 1:00:25
Well, Joe Hart, thank you so,
so much for taking the time to come on today. I really appreciated the conversation. Where can people find your work? Where should we send them?
Zohar 1:00:34
Thank you. Well, sounds great. So I have a podcast called meditations with Sohar. You can find it in all the places they recommended. Thank you. And I write two sub stacks. One is a philosophy newsletter. It's called what is called thinking what is called thinking God substack.com. And I do a Bible Commentary every week. Also at substack. It's a little harder to spell but@masada.substack.com. And you can just you can find all that information on my personal website. So our atkins.com or just find me on Twitter where I'm active and say hello. I saw her I can just my my handle.
Will Jarvis 1:01:16
Perfect. We'll put the put the links down there in the show notes. Appreciate it.
Zohar 1:01:19
Well, thanks so much. This is great. Thank you.
Will Jarvis 1:01:25
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121: Zohar Atkins - Liberalism, Hierarchy and AI