Thinking about changing the world

[Music] [Music] in our own small way we all want to change the world and in some sense every thought and every action really does each conversation with a friend each task at work each click each full stop contributes in some minor way to the grand sweep of history from the sparking of neurons to the contraction of a muscle to the picking up of a pen to the tap of a key each and every act is unique and most actions start off as thoughts and most thoughts start in the simplest of ways as a sentence is it the right thought the best thought is it the truest sentence the humble single thought is the most basic component of thinking the new of moving towards the radically different in fact the humble sentence is the only thing that's ever really changed the world a single sentence communicates someone's piercing hunger magnifies empathy organizes atomized workers gives a voice to the voiceless a sentence can take the chattering teeth of the deathly cold homeless woman and wrap it up into the broader hopes of justice and change and we're the only species that can make a sentence in fact so basic and foundational is the idea of a sentence that from it we might be able to unlock the most fundamental secrets of philosophy ontology and human life so here's a question anyone interested in radical change might ask how do i have an effective single radical thought how do i as hemingway put it think one true sentence [Music] a dictionary definition of radical might be a good place to start [Music] it means relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something far-reaching or thorough advocating or based on thoroughly or complete political or social change representing or supporting an extreme or progressive section of a political party how do we get from the currently existing concrete conditions of the status quo to thorough change how do we think about what that change might look like radical politics is almost always associated with theory and political philosophy with marx or kropotkin maybe radical politics is about the abstract because it's trying to draft a world that's not yet quite real a future world a fairer world a better world a different world [Music] but there's a problem with relying on theories concepts and abstractions in this way to abstract something means to represent it in thought abstraction pulls us away from the concrete from reality it ignores the lived experience of everyday lives the immediacy of aching limbs or the shock of pain or the void of alienation or the red-blooded anger of inequality or the strange memetic impulse to just keep up with the joneses abstracting dreaming imagining nothing is as important it creates the future but theory philosophy and progressivism in general often floats away into abstraction while neglecting the concrete [Music] take this quote from judith butler who was awarded a prize for bad writing in 1999. the move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition convergence and re-articulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure and marked a shift from a form of althuserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony is bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the re-articulation of power [Music] now anyone interested in philosophy especially post-structuralism will likely understand what this means will be able to decode it and butler is a theorist writing for other theorists to be completely fair but still there's five vague verbs in that sentence why does that matter because radicalism is about changing the world and verbs are about action theory is full of concepts like deconstruction governmentality capitalism structural racism or dependency theory however the dynamic movement of everyday life is often left out take a look at four of butler's five verbs thinking shift possibility re-articulation they tell a story about possible change but leave little indication of how it might happen who it affects what's happening right here right now in our felt immediate possibilities in contrast take this very different passage by thomas merton on reign think of it all that speech pouring down selling nothing judging nobody drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves soaking the trees filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside what a thing it is to sit absolutely alone in the forest at night cherished by this wonderful unintelligible perfectly innocent speech the most comforting speech in the world the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows nobody started it nobody is going to stop it it will take as long as it wants this rain as long as it talks i am going to listen the passage oozes with action movement that's felt heard smelt that places you there in the moment you empathize with it you want to be there the power of the concrete of action for radical thought is that it can position someone you the person you're talking to or debating with in the very real moments of human life the concrete empathizes dickens described oliver twist in this way he was badged and ticketed and fell into his place at once a parish child the orphan of a workhouse the humble half-starved drudge to be cuffed and buffeted through the world despised by all and pitied by none verbs despised pitied cuffed buffeted half-starved badged ticketed what quicker way to feel connected to a person or take this radical passage from jack london that needs no comment from the slimy spittled drenched sidewalk they were picking up bits of orange peel apple skin and grape stems and they were eating them the pits of green gauge plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels inside they picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas apple cores so black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores and these things these two men took into their mouths and chewed them and swallowed them and this between six and seven o'clock in the evening on august 20th year of our lord 1902 in the heart of the greatest wealthiest and most powerful empire the world has ever seen adolf eichmann was the architect of the holocaust during his trial hannah arendt noticed that the language he used did everything it could to dance around and ignore the concrete act of killing everything was emigration bureaucracy the various offices the holocaust was organized by train schedules gas deliveries prices and timings and bureaucracy it meant that even the perpetrators could avoid thinking about their actions reflecting upon what was really going on during the rwandan genocide the perpetrators referred to what they were doing as the work to avoid thinking about the difficulty of murder it wasn't the brutal exterminating of neighbours it wasn't the violent stabbing of one's kin it wasn't blood dripping down clothes that would never be worn again it was simply the work [Music] historian joe morin writes that when nouns rule over sentences all the air has been punched out of them emptied of life and humanity they have been refilled with inertia and nothingness verbs lift melt sprint weep beaten hoped embody the timeless universal rule that everything moves and all of life is about movement they chime with marx's observation that philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways the point however is to change it into be or not to be david borlard proposed getting rid of the verb to be because it fixes the world in place to be an intelligent person to be a shy person to be a labourer to be labels and turns people into slaves of their identities their jobs their personalities borland preferred thinking through ecology where the world is described in flux as rain and clouds and ecosystems and grazing and migration and growth and where else to look but to the greatest writer who ever lived shakespeare instead of describing the world with fixed adjectives like blue or small used verbs and nouns instead like heaven kissing hill earth treading stars lazy pacing clouds hot-blooded france and sharp toothed unkindness or take some of the most influential best-selling sentences of all time william tyndale's translation of the bible into english he relied on old english as much as possible because it contained more onomatopoeia than newer english it's closer to the felt rhythms and breathing of everyday life it's packed with old english words like ooze spit flea beckon bless chide chew pith words like this mimic the fact that speech is bodily it's made of jewel teeth tongue and lip movements snapping varying singing and dancing it places you where the action is ask and you shall obtain seek and ye shall find knock and the door will be open to you and there's another problem with relying on theory philosophy and the abstract over the concrete abstract ideas are defined in particular ways static transcendent ethereal but those very ideas if the world is going to change need to be fluid they need to flow from the intangible heights of the metaphysical down into people's real lives they need to be able to inspire motivate push and urge and then be adaptable themselves to respond to the change they contribute to they need to follow lines from the present to the future the anthropologist tim ingold has argued that lines are fundamental to the way humans think we are a line making species we follow lines often using them to think into the future the world would be chaos without lines lines help us to live coherent lives we use lines to weave to make ropes to thread and sew we use lines to navigate the seas using constellations we use lines to plot on grids and on plants and to sew and grow vegetables and wheat in the fields we make roads and paths we fly we draw we paint and of course we write symbols letters words and sentences and lines so lines point us somewhere but sometimes those lines are not free sometimes they're pinned down sometimes they imprison us can strain us more us keep us weighed down like anchors we do different things each day never repeating the same details twice always subtly changing yet we're also moored anchored and pinned down by repetitions routines and responsibilities some of these are useful and some are not these routines formulas habits or patterns play throughout the day rhythmically and the notes of these routines washing going to work using a machine or an app putting the bins out talking about the latest television show they'll help or hinder our lives throughout history we've lived by religious moral moorings codes of ethics church routines prayers but the decline of religion the death of god does nietzsche put it has led to an unmooring of our attitudes for nietzsche this could only be replaced by creative power some of these moorings throughout history these accepted ways of doing things like women not voting segregation a lack of health care tied people down in ways that stopped them reaching out for food for leisure time for meaning for shelter for connection philosophers have sometimes untied moorings too [Music] shook language loosened it deconstructed it so that meaning could be changed reinterpreted opened to re-evaluation from person to person we must mold create and fashion things out of the raw material of everyday stuff we must encourage and inspire movement and creativity compassion and change out of a focus on the rawness of the problems that need addressing a long line of philosophers have sought to discover the metaphysical laws the personal ontologies or the linguistic rules that govern ourselves and the universe they've attempted to uncover to describe and to interpret but the point now is to learn how to create philosophy as jill's delus told us it's the art of forming inventing and fabricating concepts he said creation comes from a mixing of those raw everyday materials combining them with grand aspirations of theory and philosophy audrey lorde wrote that advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism it's a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives difference must be not merely tolerated but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening only within that interdependency of different strengths acknowledged and equal can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate and simone de beauvoir said that it's in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting what both are talking about is how the differences in everyday lives the particular conditions can be used to create new ways of living new worlds new reasons for acting thinking abstractly and theoretically often leaves people thinking that those theories and abstractions are transcendental absolute that they have undeniable solutions as philosopher todd may has written transcendence freezes living makes it coagulate and lose its flow it seeks to capture the vital difference that outruns all thought and submit it to the judgment of a single perspective we're not searching for perfect ideals but striking a match starting a conversation tapping a key pointing a lens making a pencil mark so think verbs think action think movement inject a bit of difference into your thought [Music] thank you as always for watching and a huge thanks of course as always to my patreons without which this just wouldn't be possible so if you want to see scripts if you want to chat in the discord server if you want your name in the credits but most of all if you just want to help support make this content then click the link in the description below if not you can like you can share you can leave a comment all those things that help the algorithm thank you so much and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 40,156

Keywords: how to write an essay, writing better prose, joe moran, audre lorde, poststructuralism, better writing, critical thinking, critical thinking exercises, critical thinking skills, critical thinking questions

Id: cEiXkhe8hsg

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022