What would it mean to gain a sense of the world if it was nothing more than a series of geometric patterns? What if there were a few simple shapes that could describe the complex dynamics of our byzantine world and provide solutions to intractable global problems? Would this instantly recognizable geometry unlock long-obscured fundamental truths? Gilded upon the artwork accompanying these humble conversations between comrades sit three defining shapes: a triangle, a square, and a circle. So for this episode, Jesse & Matt will map out the contours of these three fundamental Idea-Shapes: The Poison Pyramid, The Golden Square and The Utopian Sphere. This simple arrangement of basic shapes illuminates an emancipatory trajectory: a systemic diagnosis of our dystopian world; a necessary and practical new social contract that extends dignity and freedom to all; and finally, visions of our utopian potential and the flourishing, post-scarcity future we all deserve. This triptych of Idea-Shapes outlines a comprehensive “No-Bullshit Theory” about the double-down shitty myths that ceaselessly gaslight us, the shared abundance that we must claim in the here-and-now, and ultimately, how the joyful promise of our utopian horizon should be a central cause for collective motivation. These radical essentializations of the world offer a framework for dealing with the chaos of the social order, and clarify how we can erode the compounding systems of hierarchy that poison everything with unending violence, despair, and disorder. As a condensed syllabus for this “Grad School for Radicals,” these three shapes unlock a critical deep-systems curriculum that provides transformational engagement without the typically mystifying pretense of intellectual knowledge-hoarding. And so these conversations seek to give unmistakable clarity in contrast to the shouting hordes of bad-faith actors who needlessly complicate things–both for their own fame-seeking vanity and to further the ruling-class drive to keep the masses from winning a deep democracy. So if we wish to reverse the apocalypse, we must answer these three deceptively simple questions: Where are we? Where are we going? And what should we be aiming for? The ruling elite never hesitate to assault our modest aims for meaningful lives with their garish distractions of consumer-glitter, privatized-pleasure, and the ritualized-worship of their god-awful ideas. Despite eons of bad myths blocking our potential, this certainty remains: we all live in a delicate interdependence upon this beautiful spaceship called Earth. There is no Planet B. It will take everyone one of us—not just the lone, logical Spock—to repair our ship’s precious and damaged Warp Drive. Once fixed by our many hands, all of the stars, both seen and unseen, will beckon to us with open smiles.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Reason and Persuasion: Three Dialogues By Plato: Euthyphro, Meno, Republic Book. Edited by John Holbo. Translated by Belle Waring.
How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century by Erik Olin Wright. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 026: How to Erode Capitalism in the 21st Century
Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias. Published in 2010 by Verso Books. For free digital access, you can go to Wright’s old university page with an index of the book.
Thad Williams’ Article: “Emancipatory Politics, Emancipatory Political Science: On Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias”
Erik Olin Wright’s The Real Utopias Project
Verso Books Series: The Real Utopias Project
Alexander The Great: The World’s First Celebrity: As Explored in Influencers: How Democracy Created a Monster by Wisecrack.
The Infographics Show on YouTube: Why Alexander The Great Is the Single Most Important Man in History
CrashCourse on YouTube: “Alexander the Great and the Situation . . . the Great”
Murray Bookchin’s Ecology of Freedom (1982)
“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” From Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. Published in 2009 by Zero Books. PDF Found Here
The Overton Window: A Wikipedia Definition
Maggie Astor in The New York Times: “How the Politically Unthinkable Can Become Mainstream”
The Future Is A Mixtape: Episode 021: The North Star of Human Decency
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867). PDF of Volume 1 Found Here
The Combahee River Collective Statement (Full Text)
Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor’s Article in The New Yorker on Barbara Smith and the Black Feminist Visionaries in the Combahee River Collective: “Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free.”
Merrill Perlman in Columbia Journalism Review: “The Origin of the Term Intersectionality”
Jane Coaston in Vox: “The Intersectionality Wars”
Katy Steinmetz Interviews Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in Time Magazine: “She Coined the Term ‘Intersectionality’ Over 30 Years Ago. Here’s What It Means to Her Today”
Murray Bookchin: A Wikipedia Biography
SRSLY Wrong Podcast: “Ep 96 – Google Murray Bookchin”
Murray Bookchin: “What Is Social Ecology?”
The Social Ecological Model as Defined by The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention
“The Big Fish Eats The Little Ones” - A Lyric from Radiohead’s Song “Optimistic” Wrought from Their Radical Reinvention of the ‘Rock Album’ with Kid A.
FDR’s “The New Deal” Was Inspired by Teddy Roosevelt’s “The Square Deal” as Explored by John Avlon’s Cross-Analysis in The Daily Beast: “From The Square Deal to The New Deal: The Overlapping Political Identities of TR and FDR”
The Future Is A Mixtape 030: A Green New Deal to Build The Golden Square
William F Buckley’s Transgressive Assertion that “Freedom requires inequality”– As Seen in His Legendary Debate with James Baldwin.
Gabrielle Bellot in The Atlantic: “The Famous Baldwin-Buckley Debate Still Matters Today”
Adele Peters in Fast Company: “It Would Cost Just $330 Billion to End Global Hunger by 2030”
If billionaires donated just 0.34% of their pandemic earnings, they could cover the World Food Programme's $6.8 billion request to save millions of lives; As Reported by Joe McCarthy in Global Citizen: “World Food Programme Asks Billionaires for a 'Few Billion' to Save Millions of Lives From Famine”
Amy Goodman Interviews Oxfam’s Paul O’Brien in Democracy Now: “Inequality Virus: Pandemic Widens Wealth Gap for Women, People of Color as Billionaire Profits Soar”
Andrew Van Dam in The Washington Post: “The U.S. Has Thrown More Than $6 Trillion at the Coronavirus Crisis. That Number Could Grow.” {The article was published on April 15, 2020, and does not count the second Covid stimulus (1.13 trillion) before the November 2020 election or Joe Biden’s planned stimulus of 1.9 trillion.}
Benjamin Kail in MassLive: “65% of Americans Support Monthly $2,000 COVID Stimulus Payments, New Poll Shows”
Harris Meyer in Modern Healthcare: “Healthcare Spending Will Hit 19.4% of GDP in the Next Decade, CMS Projects”
The Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” The idea can be traced back to as early as Confucian times from 551-479 BC and appears in most ethical traditions as either positive or negative injunctions.
On “Baseline Communism” – from David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years:
“In fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible.”
“I will call this "baseline communism": the understanding that, unless people consider themselves enemies, if the need is considered great enough, or the cost considered reasonable enough, the principle of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" will be assumed to apply.
“Baseline communism might be considered the raw material of sociality, a recognition of our ultimate interdependence that is the ultimate substance of social peace.”
The Socialist Slogan Popularized by Marx: “From Each According to Ability, To Each According to Needs.”
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 031: The No-Bullshit Blueprint for Socialism
The Freedom From Want – From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union Address: “The Four Freedoms”
A "freedom budget" for all Americans; budgeting our resources, 1966-1975, to achieve "freedom from want." by A. Philip Randolph Institute.
Vernor Vinge: A Wikipedia Biography
Vernor Vinge’s Famous 1993 Essay: “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era”
The Long Now Foundation: “Vernor Vinge: What If the Singularity Does Not Happen?”
William Morris’ utopian novel, News from Nowhere (1890), is about an ideal socialist pastoral society in England during the year 2102.
The Open Source Ecology Movement
Marcin Jabukowski’s Open Source Philosophy Video that Documents How We Can Have a 15-Hour Work Week in a World of Post-Scarcity.
CrimethInc’s To Change Everything: An Anarchist Appeal
Marisa Iata and Joel Achenback in The Washington Post: “Scientists Spot Potential Sign of Life in Venus Atmosphere”
Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing: “Kim Stanley Robinson Says Elon Musk's Mars Plan Is a "1920s Science-Fiction Cliché"”
The Intercept’s Deconstructed Podcast: “Is Elon Musk a Fraud?”
Sigal Samuel in Conversation with Cornel West on the Future Perfect podcast from Vox: “Why Why Cornel West Is Hopeful (but Not Optimistic)”
“Hope is not the same thing as optimism... Hope cuts against the grain. Hope is participatory... Optimism looks at the evidence [to] see whether it allows us to infer that we can do ‘x’ or ‘y.’ Hope says ‘I don’t give a damn, I’m gon do it anyway...’” – Cornel West
Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump. Second Edition Published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.
The Future Is A Mixtape - Episode 038: Democracy or Death
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Published in 2020 by Liveright Publishing.
Behind the News: Doug Henwood’s Interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Ralph Miliband’s Notion of Dual Power, which Originally Appeared in The Socialist Register: “Constitutionalism and Revolution”
Biden Was Pressured Left Three Times Prior to Inauguration:
Biden’s Nomination of Michael Regan for the Environmental Protection Agency
Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age. Published in 2018 by Oxford University Press.
The Future Is A Mixtape - Episode 029: The Anticapitalist Compass