Podcast Episode Analysis

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Episode Title: What does it mean to be a moral parent? Words: ● Didactic ● Teleological - focus on ends. ● Abrogation ● Acquiescent ● Nihilistic ● Virtuosity Themes: Family, Parenting, Childhood ● More Task B oriented Notions: ● Imposing of moral convictions from parent to child ● Teleological nature of moral education ● The importance of preserving the carefree nature of a child Questions: ● E.g. religion? Insights: ● Role of education in moral, democratic emotional formation of the child ● Differentiated responsibility of well run educational institutions and the child’s parent ● What does it mean to be a moral parent? Is being a moral parent different to being a good parent? ● If childhood runs from 3-14, during that time, to what extent should and can a parent urge (some element of coerciveness) their moral convictions on a child? They go beyond the basic fundamental duty of care e.g. not being with strangers, not going out late at night. ● E.g. going to school on time, truth telling, doing their homework, self sacrifice to the benefit of others, empathy ● E.g. veganism - by watching documentaries, moral conviction, imposing practice, talking about it at the table. ● Ralph Waldo Emerson: the neutrality of children ○ Not the same as children are free of sin or age before children can be culpable of wrongdoing or evil ○ He means free from stress and anxiety and is equal to the wildness of the world ○ Incubatory stage of childhood: freedom from responsibility ○ Is it a bad form of parenting to fill them with fears of the world to make them live in a self doubting way ● Emotional relationship between parent and child can lead to imposition and domination e.g. moral heavy handedness and corrections. When does it become morally counterproductive?

● Answer is contingent on the nature of the child. ● There are teloi - ends - in morality. If there is an agenda driven interaction it can lead to suspension. ● Interaction being carefree is the primary good - more important when they are adolescents ● Witkinsteins philosophical investigations: one tries to give justifications for why one does what one does. E.g. asking why? Constantly. You reach a point where you can just say it is just what I do. ● As a parent you reach a point where you realize that you reach bedrock. Send an invitation - let me know if you want to know more. ● Strategic ways of sharing moral conviction e.g. linking with specific peers, providing them with resources, make the end appealing to the child ● Socratic parenting doesn’t work ○ Not as much authority ○ Steady drawing out of questioning when parent is involved is emotionally inflected ● Luara Ferracioli - associate professor in political philosophy at Sydney University ○ Personality of child is important for moral education ○ For some children reverse psychology, whereas others idolize their parents ○ When does the imposition of moral convictions become morally impermissible? ■ When it makes it difficult for children to enjoy childhood and their ability to be carefree ■ Deprives child of skills they need to become autonomous - they should reserve the right to later on analyze these moral convictions are things they want to retain ■ Critical thinking, imagination and creativity to make decisions later in life ■ Carefree way to share your convictions e.g. funnel children toward vegetarian options at a restaurant ■ Child-driven curiosity should be supported by childhood ○ Acquiescent child is desperate for parental approval and will do anything ■ Pascalian point that moral convictions will follow ■ But this can result in resentment - their parents affection may be contingent on the child's conviction ■ Parents should empower the child to make their own decisions ○ Montanya: not sure if he was a virtuous person because he knew he was just a good person without any evil intentions ■ Defiance in some amounts and a certain degree of non-conformism in a parent-child relationship can be important if a parent cares about autonomy. This needs to be tethered to some sort of conviction that a child shares. (principle defiance) ■ Defiance for defiance sake is nihilistic ■ Some parents don’t care about autonomy but this does not make them back ■ A good parent is not necessarily a liberal parent

○ Each parent will have a different answer to what does it mean to live a good life ○ Religious schools and even homeschooling limit the development of autonomy - public, compulsory, secular schools are more appropriate ○ Religious parents should not get in the way of children being able to make their own decisions in adulthood ○ Religious education on the side, on the weekend is okay Paragraph:

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Episode Title: Bonus episode The 2022 Simone Weil Lecture on Human Value Words: ● Fraternal Recognition. ● Tabloidization. ● Graceful distance. Themes: Social media, Political Discourse, Democracy, Black Lives Matter, Civility, Air, Poetry - More Task A oriented Notions: ● Democracy and commonness. ● Poetry, human value and commonness. ● Contempt as eroding democracy. ● Technology and communication. ● Commercialisation/ commodification of news. ● Social media and discourse. ● Consumption and conspiracy. ● Distance as facilitating underserved moral absolution. ● Reduction of human value. ● Life as sacred ground. ● Common language is essential to democracy. ● Democracy is fragile and vulnerable to contempt. ● Symbols are important. Questions: ● What does proper objects of love mean? Insights: ● Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air - Walt Whitman Poet and philosopher. - The idea that the air, that is common to all of us, that we all inhabit is an embodiment of democracy. - We do not breathe well, there is infamy in the air - Ralph Waldo Emerson (American essayist). The air as a witness to a conspiracy. This idea is contextualized in the idea that the North is a co-conspirator in slavery, through consumption. “The sugar they raised was excellent, no-body tasted blood in it”. This idea could be connected to the modern day example of sweat-shops and fast fashion, and how our ‘graceful distance’ allows us to separate ourselves from the greedy corporations but we are co-conspirators. ● The poet is a joiner, who sees how things join - Walt Whitman in the leaves of Grass. - Not referring to poets as we typically mean them but those that work and cultivate words so that the spaces in between people can be fertile soil that allows people to remain morally intelligible to one another. The poet stands between people and places all beings on a common level despite all other properties. By his address the poet calls for both the president and the slave to be seen as worthy of one’s regard - he transforms both parties into proper objects of love. - The poet is a parable of humanities commonness - Stanley Cavell American Philosopher.

- Language itself is therefore a necessary prerequisite of democracy. ● Contempt is a virus - Zadie Smith. - Contempt is worse than hate. Hate requires a full recognition of a person’s moral reality. Contempt is far more common, and allows for the reduction of a person to a thing. It makes people into things, tools, calculated losses to whom respect, dignity or justice need not apply. This excludes you from the structures, communities and essentially turns you into nothing. - The murder of George Floyd as an act of contempt. ● Technology was predicted to increase empathy and fraternal recognition. Technology was expected to be a peacemaker and civiliser → This was Walt Whitman’s response to the Trans-Atlantic cable. - BBC motto: Nation shall speak unto nation. ● Commodification of news leads to spreading hate and hostility by the newspapers in order to increase traction and secure commercial gain. ● Words without the goal of meaningful human communication can suffocate the air, and render real human communication just as superfluous as machines made workers. The idea is taken from Soren Kierkegaard. ● The reduction of a human to a mere thing. A person becomes a corpse before anybody or anything touches them because their life is meaningless in the eyes of another. ‘The most insidious is the force that does not kill just yet’ - Simone Weil in her essay on the Iliad. ‘Soul blindness’ because a person killing another without hesitation does not recognise the other as a fellow human being. ● John Dewey 'democracy is neither a form of governance nor a social expediency but is a metaphysic of the relation of humanity and their experience in nature'. The practices that maintain democracy are those that allow for recognition of the commonness between men, this is what brings democracy to life. - Dewey wrote that anything that ferments intolerance and mutual suspicion, anything that bars freedom and fullness of communication, anything that sets up barriers that divide human beings into sets and cliques should be regarded as treason to the democratic way of life. ● There is nothing outside of democracy that guarantees it. - Contempt is the enemy of democracy. It separates the citizens of a nation into separate fractions, this degrades the relations between the people until they are morally intelligible to each other. If they enter into such a state, then democracy cannot be continued. This reduces people to a caricature, a stereotype and separates them from their humanity. - Attentiveness prevents the above and is the refusal of contempt. It requires the willingness to have our political goals redefined for the sake of mutual understanding and hope of mutual transformation. It requires seeing the other person not as an obstacle to our goals, or a means to an end. - This could be connected to the words of Jesus requiring us to love our enemies, because if you love your enemy you cannot wish for his destruction but rather yearn for your mutual salvation. This could be extended to the idea of loving your political enemies.

● Symbols do not guarantee anything, but that does not mean they are arbitrary. Symbols do not initiate the relationship nor do they guarantee its health. They cultivate the conditions of the relationship so that it and the symbols themselves acquire depth. This allows the relationship to grow like a plant. These are the views of Simon Weil. - The idea that symbols are important for democracy. ● Politics should be, in the philosophical tradition of Aristotle and Plato, about taking care of things and people, not just about order, and structure. - John Stewart Mill views politics as analogous to marriage. Two people bound together by nothing more substantial than reciprocal devotedness, discover through the peculiarity of their life together the ethical conditions that allow their life to persist. ● Weil insists that attentiveness, like consent, equality and justice itself is ultimately a work of love. ● Social media has made us unreal to one another. Leading us to despair or deny that we could have any real connection to those with whom we radically disagree, or share a shared future at all. ● Democracy is an aspiration that requires for its bringing to reality, a mutual understanding, attentiveness - the refusal to fall to contempt, and ultimately love. It requires a willingness to be transformed, and a moral recognition of another. It doesn’t lead to justice but necessitates it because ultimately love and justice are inseparable. Paragraph: - Paragraph on democracy as fragile. - Paragraph on democracy as requiring attentiveness, and refusal of contempt. - Paragraph on social media and its deleterious effects on democracy. - The importance of language to democracy.

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Happiness Lessons of The Ancients: Socrates and Self Knowledge Words: Themes: Notions: Questions: Insights: Paragraphs

Q&A: What offends you and referendums? Whose voice speaks loudest when we tell stories? Words: ● D ● D Themes: ● D ● F Notions: ● Questions: ● Insights: ● Editing books especially children books, deleting episodes of older shows because they are no longer seen as acceptable. What impact does this have on free speech? ○ The government, media, big business, religious institutions, arts and entertainment industries and sports organizations have become enemies of free speech. ■ Laurent Mitchel ● Free speech is not an unlimited human right. ○ Language is powerful and can have a negative impact on marginalized communities ○ Roald Dahl - the editing of books is tokenistic and performative and distract from systemic issues ○ Other alternatives: broader discussion of who is being represented in stories, forward, supplementary materials ○ Children can pick up biases from language ● Sponsors pulled out where more extreme views are being portrayed. Is there another way of dealing with diverse views without creating extremity. ○ Adelaide writer festival boycott ○ Palestinian voices - concern about cruelty of occupation ○ Israeli voices - concerned with the loss of civilian life ○ Limit censorship within the bounds of the law ○ More statues of dogs that children and indigenous people - ● Cancel culture ○ Do people on the fringes and those that are oppressed have a voice ○ We need to be aware of the past ○ History is written by those that are powerful ○ E.g. stifling conversations about monarchy vs republic following the queens death

● Inflation - gov is using taxpayer money to fund national listening tour on republic and another expensive referendum ○ Gov’s priority is focused on easing cost of living pressure ○ Long term vision involves discussion about recognising first nations Australians in constitution and another conversation about the republic ○ Current system is the antithesis of our democracy. Australian people were not consulted in who should be there head of state - despite being a democracy ● We’re a nation that doesn't like change e.g. shown by the few referendums that have passed so far. ○ Brexit referendum ● Changes to superannuation - supported by 64% of Australians ○ People that pay this most will be younger australians ○ Changes only affect those that have a balance of over 3 million dollars in the superannuation. Only effects 0.5% ○ Stage 3 tax cuts: windfall for the wealthy ● Robodebt royal commission ○ How can politicians be trusted if they say things they know not to be true? ○ This scheme was not a good way to fix the budget - need to show fiscal restraint ○ Political populism: ■ Lack of shame in public culture ■ Politicians weaponise issues that create ingroups and outgroups and politicize issues that become a rift in society and create fear. ● Loss of knowledge and language within indigenous communities ○ How can the voice referendum assist in this ○ Language reintroduced in the education system ○ Struggle to keep language alive, english still drowns out many voices ○ Try to expand the voices that we hear from ○ Shame of own language and how it was internalized in India ○ Ethnocentric Westernised society - people that write in english get more traction ○ We need to broaden our echochamber ● No veto power and not a service delivery model ○ More than just recognition - must be a voice with power ○ There will be political nature of these voices ○ Opposition to the voice within first nations communities: Paragraphs: ● Minefield: What is the point of political comedy?

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Words: ● Conditions of common life. ● Sacred cows. ● Taboo spaces. Themes: ● Comedy, Politics Notions: ● Political humor and its functions. ● Political discourse and political comedy intertwined. ● Punching up vs. Punching down vs. Punching around. ● Faux solidarity. ● Corruption of political language. Questions: ● How do political comedy and political commentary differ? ● Insights: ● There is a phenomenon with relation to this that gained popularity during the Trump presidency. There are a few reasons for this: - Internal - Cultural - Formal - Technological ● At the heart of the word conditions is the notion of speaking together. Conditions of our common life. - The spaces between us within the moral conditions we call democracy, can never be taken for granted. - Certain words elevated beyond their reasonable level can be a threat to these spaces. Words we speak are important. ● The way we cultivate the conditions of our common life should always be the front of our common concern. The way we speak to another shifts the way we see our common world, and our relationships within our shared political community. - Language, tone, tenor, adjectives are all central to the preservation or cultivation of a healthy democratic order. ● Humour is a distinguished and a significant form of speech within democracy that can be used to raise some people and lower others. Perhaps think of the way that humor can interact with already established power equilibriums, and shift them towards the powerful. The idea of ‘punching down’. ● The emergence of democracy as a political system coincides with some of the finest comedic writing such as the satire of Jonathan Swift, or Mark Twain. ● Democracy modulates the way we view the seriousness of issues. It can also lessen the impact of the barbed speech of some, and light speech of others is given proper importance.

● Misogynist humor during the Lewinsky Scandal - perhaps the inner logic of the merger of political comedy and political commentary to a degree that has corrupted our political language. ● The merging of political comedy and political commentary is accelerated by the fact that it is now made for social media: - Consider also how other issues may be accelerated by social media such as the tabloidization of news media. - The clipifcation of everything, everything must be shareable. ● We share things that reflect well on us. That makes us look cool, or cutting edge. What we try to make if we want something to be shareable is to make something that reflects well on the person doing the sharing in some way. - Perhaps think of the ways in which we craft our story, so that the best version of ourselves is presented not only to ourselves but also to society. - This is about picking the right person to deride so that you can communicate to your in-group that you are on the right side of history. ● Comedy is the perfect vehicle for a fashionable take down of something. This makes people who share it look cool, and people who see it enjoy it also. Therefore comedy is a perfect mode for political discourse on social media. ● Is comedy becoming more contemptuous? ● There is the politicization of everything in life. Think of the way instagram has evolved from merely an image sharing platform to now a platform of social justice. Same with tiktok, which was essentially a dancing platform. This is not to say these do not serve these functions anymore but that they are inherently also political now. ● Imperatives of comedy have shifted, you must be saying something that is preferably punching down. It is no longer sufficient to be a funny comedian. - Perhaps connected to the anti-PC transgressiveness of Ricky Gervais comedy that borders on the unspeakable. - Jerry Senfield as the defender of the jokes for joke movement, that basically is about just being funny without the necessary need for being political. This is only possible because of his already established position. ● Comey has corrupted political discourse, and political discourse has corrupted comedy. ● Politicization of comedy means that comedians have to say something political. This means that as soon as comedy identifies sacred cows or taboo spaces, the internal impulse of many comedians is to find whatever that sacred cow or space is and run over it as many times as possible. - Again the idea of transgressive comedy. ● Democracy is pinned on the notion of commonness, particularly the commonness towards the way in which we view democracy. For democracy to work, for the democratic process to work, both sides must believe that the other side is committed to democracy itself. If not then the process fails, because the party in power does not believe that the other side will play fair and therefore they may be tempted to falsify votes, and the incumbent party may not believe the other side and they may mount a coup. - Jeffrey Personal thoughts. These ideas are somewhat from political economics pretty sure so it's definitely backed up.

● The type of comedy that deals with satire can orient people together against a shared object of common derision, in contempt. This is opportunistic solidarity at the expense of somebody else. - The groups are coming together against something, and not for a shared purpose. - The object of derision cannot answer in turn. The only thing that a person who is the object of satire can do is be derided, and take it. Importance to keep in mind that this is typically aimed at those in power ‘punching up’ but can become ‘punching around’. ● Punching around the object of derision becomes those that are not necessarily above in the power equilibrium, but rather just ordinary citizens who vote differently or hold a different set of values. ● Comedy tends to reflect the values of those that are culturally empowered - Hollywood, popular culture etc. Power calculations are often ambiguous. ● Comedic interventions in political discourse, other things being equal, will have a positive outcome. Robert Simpson - University College London. Paragraphs:

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Q&A: What offends you and referendums? Whose voice speaks loudest when we tell stories? Words: ● ● D Themes: ● D ● F Notions: ● M Questions: ● J Insights: ● Cutting what to invest in defense? Moving money around in defense? ● 200 billion dollars over 30 years for nuclear subs. ● Cutting for other services such as the NDIS and aged care - is this ethical? ● Stage 3 tax cuts - increasing wealth gap ● Morality of investing in defense and nation security heavily and the importance of it? ● What does it say about sovereignty if you have to work with big powerful defense nations like the US? ● Journalism: need to be impartial but there are some issues that dont need that equivalence. ○ Some things are objectively wrong ○ FOX News ● Free speech comes with responsibilities ○ Canceling israel folau and margret court ○ Gary Liniker was stood down for criticizing UK government policy on refugees and asylum seekers ○ BBC has an impartiality clause in their social media clause and they were stood - obligation if you sign a contract with a social media clause

AI Q&A: What offends you and referendums? Whose voice speaks loudest when we tell stories? Words: ● D ● D Themes: ● D ● F Notions: ● Questions: Insights Inflation ● Treasurer says inflation has hit its highest point - ● however the reserve bank is an independent body and sets the interest rates ● Chinese air balloon - ● Building sovereign capabilities - creating more independent manufacturing within Aus ● Weakness is provocative - within the realm of defense ● Alliances enhance sovereignty as they protect you ● 5 eyes agreement - to share intelligence - this is valued by the US ● Cooperation has helped stop wars not start them ● It is not sentient it does not capture human emotions ● Future of warfare ● We cant trust what we see anymore ● Regulatory lead time is very long and delayed behind ChatGPT ● Meta spending 34 billion on AI and technologies ● AI that designed recognised nerve agents - algorithms can be used to have negative uses. We often cannot predict and this can have unintended consequences. ● Meta - social media that polarizes and changes political debate and can see how it changes the outcome of an election and a referendum ● Disadvantaged groups are going to be heightened in the evolution of AI in the future - this was seen with face recognition ● Drone warfare - distancing people ● Robot armies that are indefatigable and are not based on human judgement. ● 90% of civilian casualties were due to human error. The further away you are from the killing the more likely you are to make errors as you need human empathy ● If we have large language models that produce things - what happens to our creativity, individuality and sense of being human? Machine learning that decide for themselves.

Regulation has not been able to keep up with technological changes - legislators are left behind by this. ● Ethics of AI - responsibility of how people use it and privacy of peoples information ● We need to build technology with safeguards in place ● Nietzsche: who are we to erase the horizon and if we erase the horizon where does it leave us ● AI could be a tool that could provide disadvantaged children with education at much less of a cost ● Society changes technology as much as technology changes society ● BBC has global reach - strict impartiality. How does it need to change to maintain integrity. ● Impartiality: public service broadcasters get tied into knots with this. Brexit - most imminent economists agreed it would have a negative impact on the UK’s economy you had to search far and wide to find economists that said it would have positive effects ● Sometimes we give people a misleading impression by the news ● Impartiality needs to be a bit more aggressive sometimes because there is so much false information out there ● Need independent, impartial and well resourced information sent to communities ● Albanese is going to have a pamphlet go out with a yes and no case to all households ● We should be able to trust australians with both sides of the argument Democracy is the ability for all Australians to vote in every election ● Voting for values of a party but also an individual (teal candidates at each indication) ● People should see themselves reflected in their parliamentarians ● Lydia Thorpe: first nation sovereignty was her focus - she felt the party did not support this view. She has stayed in the party, but left the portfolio. ● If someone leaves the party should they stay in parliament or just become a cross bencher ● If you leave your party in the senate and sit in a cross bench or join another party then should you stay in parliament. ● In house of representatives you are the candidate because you are door knocking etc. ● Constitution doesn’t mention political parties ● Malcolm X

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Is woke media undermining journalism? ● Most engaged people are ● Overeducated elite class of journalist - they appeal to the same class of people and write information based on this ● Now people want targeted audience - and they know how to get them because they are uniquely situated to talk to those people ● Reawakening a dormant class - robust media class - that are not underrepresented or demonized ● Ethno Nationalist -> Trump, Modi, Brexit. understandings and forms of nationalism that regard ethnicity and ethnic ties as core components of conceptions and experiences of the “nation” ● Retroactive conservatism ● The nationalism we experience now is multiracial but there is a problem with migrants ●