Episode #161 - Transcript

So on September 1st, 1939 Hitler invaded Poland…notoriously marking the beginning of the second world war, and marking the beginning of an age where Fascism and Totalitarianism posed a new level of threat towards western liberal democracy. There were a lot of thinkers at the time that were worried about this whole state of affairs and they decided that the BEST thing to do would be to take up arms against it…NOT... to take up arms, in the actual war itself, but instead... in the war of ideas that was riding shotgun in the Panzer 4 tanks trying to take over the world at the time. Now the main objective, of these thinkers… was that they wanted to make people aware...of JUST how EASY it can BE to fall under the spell of the STORIES told by totalitarian and fascist regimes. They wanted to warn people of HOW these modes of government might come to pass...they wanted to point to specific examples, within society...MARKERS...of where you can find the seeds of totalitarianism ALREADY PLANTED in our institutions. They warned about populist uprisings...they warned about political dogma...they warned about utopian social engineering that we should ALL look at with a strong level of skepticism… or else we may find ourselves living to see the day when we look BACK on the days of ACTUAL democracy… and then write books and articles about what we can do to hopefully one day, get it back, or at least a VERSION of our democracy back. This was the project… of SO MANY thinkers from around this time. 

But when the philosopher Karl Popper sits down during the war and writes the first version of his work titled The Open Society and its Enemies...he was LESS interested in diagnosing symptoms of totalitarianism in the present...I mean you can understand WHY. When you got multiple mass murderers trying to take over the world...don’t really need a DOCTOR to tell you that you have a mild case of fascism going on. What Popper was MORE interested in doing was looking back at history…looking back and tracing the philosophical roots of this tendency TOWARDS totalitarian ideas IN western thought.

In other words the PROJECT of this book is to identify on WHAT grounds…do people intellectually justify fascism or totalitarianism? Because it’s not like anyone who has totalitarian leanings is… just a mean person or something. You know IF ONLY Stalin… woulda just meditated for five minutes, came back with a better attitude and THEN decided about the whole gulag thing…HUMAN HISTORY would be COMPLETELY different…if only he had a little chamomile tea to start the day…NO Karl Popper is going to say that what makes the SALES pitch of a totalitarian or fascist regime so easy to get on board with...is because it’s often ROOTED…in some of the oldest, most revered political theory in the HISTORY of the western canon...the kind of work, that couldn’t help but have an ENORMOUS influence on the political thought that came after it. 

And listen…I realize, hardcore listeners of the podcast are gonna be wondering WHY we need an episode on Totalitarianism…NOBODY wants to go that direction. And I get it. This isn’t about any of you listening. Honestly I’m writing this episode here today because I’m a little worried about my phone. My phone’s been sick for quite a while now…coming up on two years of my phone constantly sending me notifications about all the different ways the world’s gonna end in the next six month. It has gone FULL BLOWN doomsday prepper phone…and LATELY it’s been PARTICULARLY worried about the FUTURE of western democracy, where things have gone wrong and what we can do to try to preserve it. I realize I could just turn notifications off…but come on I’m not going to censor my phone. What kind of friend would I be…and then I’d have nothing to complain about anyway…so everybody wins here. 

The Open Society and its Enemies…begins with a pretty interesting claim about how we organize politically. To Karl Popper...human civilization is in a period of EXTREME political transformation...HAS BEEN for a while. We are transforming slowly, from what he calls the “closed societies” of the past...these are tribal societies, collectivist societies, ones ruled by an adherence to some sort of dogma...we’re transitioning from THIS type of society to what he calls the “open societies” that are much more common in our present day. We’ll explain more about his VISION for an open society a bit later...but for now, let’s start with what he spends the MAJORITY of the book explaining: where did… western philosophy go SO wrong in its treatment of political theory... that it landed us in a world where fascism and totalitarianism are ACTUALLY a legitimate threat to our modern democracies? 

To paint a picture of exactly how it first happened...Popper takes the reader back in time...to what HE sees as one of the first, if not THE FIRST open society that history had EVER seen...to Athens, Greece...right around the time of the birth of Plato. The culture of Athens at the time was unique in the sense that it was primarily made up of a collection of people who were TRULY individuals. Individuals immersed in a system of democracy… as a means of solving their social and political problems. 

More than that it was UNIQUE in the sense...that it was a culture that held its institutions, values, culture ALL OF THIS, they were willing to examine under a magnifying glass of scrutiny...they DID this…in an attempt to be OPEN, open society, to BETTER ways of governing that might slowly LEAD to a better society down the road. This was a UNIQUE way of doing things in the ancient world. 

Maybe one of the reasons it WAS so unique, Popper thinks, is because this level of openness, DEFINITELY COMES with a price. What popper calls “the price you have to pay for being a human being.” What he means is: for the individual...living in an OPEN society...is undeniably more complicated than living in a closed society. For one thing IN an open society you go through out your life carrying with you the CONSTANT burden… of TRULY being an individual. There’s no CLASS that you’re born into...there’s no cookie cutter ROLE that you’re ASSIGNED at birth…nobody is going to TELL you what it is you HAVE to DO that is going to hopefully benefit society as a whole. That is YOUR responsibility to figure out. 

ANOTHER reason it’s more complicated… is that you have to actually do the work to BE an INFORMED citizen. When you’re living in a democracy... you HAVE to be able to make educated decisions about how we should adjust things moving forward. That takes work…and if you’re going to take your role as a citizen seriously…that process is going to come with at least a certain level of doubt about where you stand on things…which leads to ANOTHER reason Popper thinks an open society is more complicated…the SHEER, instability… caused by a society that is willing to change its MIND about things. Not LIKE a fascist or totalitarian society. 

There’s a direct comparison here to the way you might conduct yourself as an individual person...you know, when you’re constantly OPEN... to being wrong, and improving your understanding about things...the instability of that attitude BREEDS a certain type of anxiety...whereas if you are more closed off, you’re more tribal, dogmatic in the way you see the world...much more easy to feel CONFIDENT there because you’re closed off from the reality of the true number of options that are available to you out there. 

This anxiety...and the burden, of being an open person, LIVING in an open society...Karl Popper called this “the strain of civilization”. Karl popper acknowledges that LIVING with the added pressure of the strain of civilization definitely is harder...it definitely requires more thought and more work…but it’s WORTH it. The work is worth it, because at LEAST you are SOMEWHAT in the drivers seat...as opposed to getting chauffeured around by whatever fascist or totalitarian narrative happens to rule the day. 

Now, BEING an open society...what happened to Athens next is entirely understandable. People like Socrates come along questioning values and institutions...instability creeps its way up through the ranks until eventually people like Socrates are put to death for “corrupting the youth” and Sparta is occupying Athens after defeating them in the Pelopennesian war...a young Plato would’ve SEEN this occupation. He would’ve SEEN the highly restrictive, closed society of Sparta. He would’ve viewed history in a cyclical way...seeing the history of civilization in terms of an ongoing cycle, between Golden Ages and periods of decay and corruption. Popper thinks ALL of this would’ve weighed HEAVILY on Plato’s mind when he set out to write one of the most well known and influential books on political philosophy ever written in The Republic. 

Popper gives a little more insight into the psychology of Plato and what problems he thought were the most PRESSING at the time, IN the realm of political philosophy. Remember.. a key component of Plato’s philosophy is that there is a hypothetical realm known as the world of forms...where there is an ideal form of everything that conceptually exists...these forms embody the ESSENCE of whatever the thing is that we’re talking about. Then OUTSIDE of this hypothetical realm in the EARTHLY realm where WE live...we see a bunch of flawed, imperfect shadows OF the ideal form of anything… a tree, or a moose, whatever it is. 

Now here’s the important part for Popper: these imperfect copies...in the sense that they are NOT the IDEAL VERSION of whatever essence they possess...these copies are ALWAYS SUBJECT to decay and corruption. We see this with our BODIES, EVENTUALLY they start to break down...we see this with ECONOMIES, depressions...we see this in basically every TV show that’s ever existed...season 47...Ross and Rachel find Tupac living in Jersey...chandler has an emotional breakdown...phoebe writes a song about it...just stop it already. Everything dies… to Plato. Everything in the earthly realm at least decays and corrodes INCLUDING…the city state...INCLUDING the system of government that tries to maintain it. 

Popper thinks STOPPING...this seemingly inevitable decay was a problem Plato thought was one of the most important to solve in the political philosophy of his time. So when asking the question AS HE did: when asking WHO should rule the state...and how should they rule? Popper thinks THIS is where a BIG MISTAKE was made that would later go on to reinforce totalitarian thought in the west. The MISTAKE, he thinks, is that Plato approached SOLVING the political problems of his day through the lens of what he calls “holism”. 

Holism is the approach towards an understanding of the world that says...that to truly and sufficiently understand something...it is NOT ENOUGH to just understand the constituent parts that make the thing up. To TRULY be able to understand SOME things...you have to have an understanding of the thing as a WHOLE. Now, SHOULD be said this is a totally reasonable expectation to HAVE when it comes to understanding SOME things...for example to have knowledge of an ECOSYSTEM, for example, requires a holistic understanding of how EVERYTHING works together in that ECOSYSTEM. Same thing with any multicellular ORGANISM you might want to understand. There are countless examples of this but Popper is going to say that looking at the STATE, THROUGH this holistic lens, and then post-hoc trying to design a government that prevents this natural process of decay and corruption...this way of thinking about the state practically GUARANTEES a fascist or totalitarian outcome— and just THINK of what Plato created for a second!

At the helm of the ship is a philosopher king. Cultivated since birth and educated to BE a philosopher king well versed in the ideal essences of things through Plato’s world of forms. Rigid class structures, societal roles, infanticide to keep the guardians pure taking a page RIGHT out of the book of Sparta...propaganda and censorship through his advocacy of noble lies.

One of the big problems here for Karl Popper is that to Plato...the stability of the state...TRANSCENDS ANY consideration of the individual person. The macro is more important than the micro. The collective whole is more important than any ONE individual having a problem.

With this way of thinking comes the attitude that some people are going to fall through the cracks...some people are going to suffer because of the structure of society, they may die, they may get ZERO political representation...but in the end their sacrifice was worth it BECAUSE...the whole of society was moving along in a stable way. The ends of long term stability… justify the means of momentary human suffering and if you feel bad about that DON’T WORRY...that’s a sacrifice that Plato...is willing to make. And all jokes aside Popper would want to point out that Plato is DESIGNING this system with the best intentions in mind! Once again, he’s trying to stop what SEEMS like one of the BIGGEST issues FACING the political philosophy of his time: this seemingly inevitable process of earthly, historical decay. 

Now, speaking of history. Let’s move FORWARD in history, and talk about a couple dudes that used to talk a LOT ABOUT history...Hegel and Marx. These are the next two targets in the book for Karl Popper…and if holism and essentialism were the problems when it came to Plato’s philosophy...then when it comes to Hegel and Marx...Historicism was the main thing that messed with THEIR work. 

You can at least understand WHERE people like Hegel and Marx are COMING from with their undying FAITH in historicism. Just to play devils advocate here...worth asking the question: IS collective human behavior WITHIN society, COMPLETELY random? Like when we read the history of different groups of people and the way their societies progressed...would you say that their behavior is SO chaotic and random that it CAN NOT be predicted whatsoever? Some people thought that it COULD. So if it can BE predicted in ANY way...can we look at a large sample size and identify certain patterns? Can those patterns be distilled down into trends? Can those TRENDS be further refined down into LAWS? Laws of historical development? Laws of human behavior? 

With ALL the success in the physical sciences...and with the EMERGENCE  at the time of the specialized fields of psychology and the social sciences...it was believed by a pretty substantial group of thinkers that it’s not CRAZY to think...that history can be studied like a science experiment...that FROM this, we can uncover LAWS of historical development...and EVEN, by extrapolating in the future...we can PREDICT WHERE history is inexorably going to end up and EVEN help coax it along in that direction by structuring our societies in the proper way. Where was...history going? 

Well that’s easy...the END of history...as it was called. These historicists believed that when you look back at it...history has been progressing through a series of STAGES...each generation doing a LITTLE better than the generation before IT...each new stage that’s brought about corrects SOME conflict in human affairs that existed in the LAST stage. This TYPE of historicist would say that it’s NOT that CRAZY to think...that eventually these negations and human conflicts will have generally RESOLVED themselves...this couple thousands years we’re currently living in will be seen as the unavoidable GROWING pains of the age of civilization...and at THAT point we will reach the END OF HISTORY...where we can all move on with our lives and transition into an age with an unprecedented level of peace and freedom available to EVERYONE. Just a matter of time before we GET there. 

Now if you believed this...wouldn’t it be tempting to feel an urge or even a MORAL OBLIGATION...to structure our societies in a way...that points towards the end of history and MOVES us in THAT direction in as painless a way as is possible? THIS is the attitude Karl Popper is going to have a problem with...and he’s got a LOT of ammunition against this one. 

First of all, Popper would say: what exactly are these people even referencing when they TALK about history? They say these blanket statements like: The History of Humankind...but what does that even mean? There is no HISTORY of humankind that’s available to us...HE actually says it beautifully...he says quote:

“What they mean, and what they have learned about in school, is the history of political power. There is no history of mankind; there is only an indefinite number of histories...And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this I hold is an offense against every decent conception of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history international crime and mass murder.”

What he’s saying is that looking at history through SUCH a narrow lens...and then PRETENDING, as though it’s the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup that can tell you the future of the entire species...this is OBVIOUSLY going to be problematic...and is FAR FROM using the scientific method to uncover some LAWS of historical development...FAR FROM, a scientific approach towards SOLVING social and political problems. Popper thinks that the key word we should be looking at in the field of the social sciences...is SCIENCE. Not prophecy. We’re not reading the chakras of the earth here...we’re trying to figure out how to live together...peacefully. 

One of the biggest problems here to Popper is that historicism SEVERELY LIMITS the number of potential solutions you have at your disposal AS a governing body. When a fascist or totalitarian government solves problems TRULY believing... that there is some sort of historical DESTINY that NEEDS to be fulfilled...then they can ONLY consider solutions that correspond with the false narrative they’ve already DECIDED on about where the country NEEDS to be going. But that’s too inflexible to be effective...imagine being a SCIENTIST...believing the universe has SOME sort of scientific destiny...and then ONLY running experiments that try to PROVE the validity of that story you already came up with. 

Historicism of THIS type...is a delusion to Karl Popper...and this delusion CRIPPLES the historicist in a number of different ways...not the LEAST of which is the complexity of how individual people ACTUALLY make decisions. He’d say CONSIDER THIS for a second: people MAKE decisions... BASED on the knowledge that they have available...that HUMANITY has available, at the time. Now ALSO consider the fact that the accumulation of knowledge... is a progressive endeavor. Meaning in other words, you don’t KNOW...what people 50 or 100 years from now will KNOW and be BASING their decisions on. How could you POSSIBLY claim to know how people will REACT to things that NOBODY KNOWS about yet in relation to KNOWLEDGE...that nobody HAS yet? This is a crippling delusion. Because EVEN IF their optimistic, utopian story about the end of history CONVINCES enough people to PUT them IN a position of power…Popper thinks the historicist approach makes them utterly incapable... of the humility that’s required for DEALING with the unintended consequences OF their public policy. 

Makes sense...these people THINK they KNOW the FUTURE! 

He says the GREATER the level of holistic change, forced upon a society...the greater the degree of unintended consequences that you can expect to see. To pack together the last COUPLE of criticisms popper has had...these historicists... essentially become what he calls utopian social engineers. So LOST in the haze of their crystal ball...so CONVINCED of the story that will LEAD us to the END OF HISTORY...that they can’t see what he calls the “human factor” that is right in front of their eyes. 

There may be TRENDS in human behavior, Karl Popper admits...but there can NEVER BE LAWS. Individuals are TOO unpredictable…TOO complex. People are not that little dog or that little thimble thing in some game of monopoly that you’re playing. 

BECAUSE of this...whenever you have a society made up of truly FREE individuals...it MAKES those individuals... a lot more difficult to control. So NOT a surprise that in so many totalitarian and fascist regimes the basic human rights of the individual go out the window in the NAME of the collective good...and then through various types social and legal coercion...through propaganda, through shame, people are molded to fit the whatever the totalitarian system dictates...rather than the SYSTEM being molded to fit the needs of the people. 

Now I know there must be a lot of totalitarian and fascist dictators out there listening...and DON’T WORRY I’m here to give you guys a voice as well. Who is this Karl Popper guy? Sure has a LOT to say about the problems with totalitarianism...but what do you have that’s better, buddy? Change my mind...about totalitarianism. If you can. 

Well like we said before he’s going to be an advocate for something he called an open society...but what does that even mean, really? Popper describes an open society at one point as being one that “sets free the critical powers of man” and one “in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions.” 

This is going to loosely resemble modern western liberal democracies...but make no mistake Popper thinks there’s STILL...a LOT of stuff we could be doing BETTER in our societies to make them more effectively open...and the FIRST STEP in that direction has NOTHING to do with some abstract political philosophy...the first step for us MAY be... to model our political strategy MORE in line... with the most refined process of trial and error that human beings have EVER had access to...that is, the scientific method. 

Let me explain because you MAY remember...WHILE ago in an earlier episode we talked briefly about Karl Popper and we learned back then...that he’s a guy whos MORE famous for his contributions to the fields of epistemology and philosophy of science than he EVER was for his contributions in the realm of political theory. He was a champion of what he called falsification or the IDEA that…you know, the classic example that teachers use when talking about this stuff is the statement “all swans are white.” Now, what is WRONG with that statement as a very rudimentary scientific theory? For hundreds of years...based on the evidence that was available for them to study...European thinkers took this statement that all swans are white to be more or less universally true. There was no reason to question it...THAT IS, until the 17th century when European explorers came across black swans for the first time,  at which point the universe put some baby powder on its left hand and smacked them across the face with one of the most beautiful examples ever of the problem of induction. 

In other words...the verifiability, of the statement “all swans are white”...is IMPOSSIBLE to prove...because there is no way we will EVER have access to every swan that exists, has existed or WILL exist. But the FALSIFIABILITY of that statement is just ONE, single piece of empirical evidence away. What makes a scientific theory a USEFUL one is NOT that it can be proven to be true...but that it can be proven to be false in the REAL WORLD where we’re actually conducting experiments. 

Put more generally...the GOAL of science...what makes science so great...is NOT that we are trying to be objectively RIGHT, with our theories...the goal of science is to be less wrong...to have a closer approximation of truth...than we had yesterday. Well, Karl Popper is going to say: similar situation going on in the political realm...the goal of political theory should NOT be...to come up with some utopian society...or the IDEAL state that will NEVER DECAY like Plato tried to do. No, there’s never gonna be a day where human conflicts are all resolved and you’re mowing your front lawn in cutoff shorts waving at all your neighbors. Maybe ONE guy will do that...but then Im gonna have a conflict with THAT guy.

Point is: we have millions of people that are all trying to coexist. Problems are going to arise. Solutions are going to be needed. Leaders, no matter how close they are to a philosopher king...leaders are gonna fail. And WHEN THEY DO...the more IMPORTANT question to Popper is HOW do we want that transition of power to go in our streets? How much social unrest does our system require for us to MOVE ON from a leader that is doing a bad job?

See Karl popper thinks Plato was asking the wrong questionall along. He says Plato is so interested in asking “who should rule?” And HOW should that person rule to maintain the stability of the state? The BETTER question, the more REALISTIC question Popper thinks we need to ask...is not who should rule...but instead: “how is the state to be constituted so that bad rulers can be got rid of without bloodshed, without violence?”

This changes, the entire feel of the question at hand. All of a sudden this ISN’T so much a question of political philosophy anymore...as Popper says this becomes more of a practical or a technical question to answer and the ANSWER, is that we need an open, democratic society with a strong focus on the individual and freedom. 

What people living in a democracy typically call Election Day...Popper thinks we can ALSO think of as judgment day...where millions of individuals can anonymously show their support or lack of support for whoever is in power at the time...something completely impossible in most fascist or totalitarian states where the Utopia is always JUST around the corner, whether the unwashed masses recognize it or not. 

So the citizens, engaged in the democratic process, become the safeguards against violent revolution when leaders are no longer serving the people. But how do we actually SOLVE problems in Popper’s open society? Because say what you want about totalitarian or fascist countries...but if they’re anything... they’re usually pretty efficient at making decisions. That’ll happen when you have a half dozen people that all agree on things making decisions for the rest of the population. They don’t really get slowed down by bipartisan gridlock or a spirited, lively debate that’s going on. They kinda just SHOOT for a utopia, ask questions later. 

But there’s a BIG problem Popper thinks when you try to use utopian social engineering to solve big problems. It’s NOT JUST... that Utopian social engineers think... that large scale, holistic overhauls are the way to fix social and political problems...what makes the situation EVEN WORSE...is the SCOPE of the goals that they aim for...which if you’re being realistic, to Popper... start to border on delusion.

How can you realistically come up with a plan to implement a utopia...of equality across the board? What does your plan look like to create a perfect, system of justice? Goes in the direction of Romanticism as well: “we need to go back to a TIME...when this country was a PARADISE... How...I mean what kinda GOALS are those? Someone told me one time their New Years Resolution was that they wanted to make a billion dollars and then find a way to transform into a leopard...its like slow down dude, we get it...but set some reasonable goals for yourself, something you can actually take deliberate action on RIGHT NOW. 

This is what Karl Popper is saying...just like falsification in our scientific theories...don’t aim for some utopian perfection that as far as we know may not even be attainable! Instead...why can’t we admit that we’re ALWAYS to SOME extent going to have conflicts and then ask ourselves, what are some concrete problems that we can see, right now in the REAL WORLD, that we can take small, deliberate actions towards correcting, and then charting our progress along the way? Things like poverty, national oppression, disease, unemployment, violence, environmental issues, war. All of these named explicitly by Popper. 

In contrast to utopian social engineering...Karl Popper called this Piecemeal Social Engineering...a system of trial and error, mediated by free individuals and the information available to them at the time, working towards ACTUALLY making progress...rather than just mistaking MOVEMENT for progress. He compares it to a physical engineer that’ll make adjustments to a machine and improve how it functions little by little over time...not unlike the refined system of trial and error we use in the sciences. 

So if the role, of the individual in a democracy is to vote out bad leaders without social unrest...and if piecemeal social engineering is the METHOD, that allows problems to get solved...ANOTHER question Popper has to answer about his vision of an open society...is how...if we don’t have a collective fascist or totalitarian VISION that we’re AIMING for...how are we supposed to decide where to focus our efforts? What social or political problems should we PRIORITIZE in an open society? To answer this question he introduces the idea of negative utilitarianism. 

Maybe the best place to start is here: someone could make the case...that a GOOD society...produces happy individuals that live within it. Someone could SAY that the better the SOCIETY...the HAPPIER the people are going to be. When a fascist or totalitarian regime tries to sell a population on their vision of a utopia...PART of that vision ALWAYS seems to be that the people are going to be HAPPIER than they have ever been before. 

But there’s a PROBLEM with this line of thinking. Not the least of which is that it requires the totalitarian or fascist group...to DECIDE for individual people WHAT is going to make them a happier person...but obviously...who is anyone to tell anyone ELSE what is going to make them happier, let alone force them to do it? At the VERY least...this is a totally ineffective way to quantify social progress. He says: 

“It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of ‘higher’ values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were to save their souls. It leads to Utopianism and Romanticism.”

Karl Popper has a solution to this though..he is going to say...that JUST like in the sciences...where the goal should NOT be to create theories that can be PROVEN true...we should instead create theories that can potentially be proven false empirically. In the political realm...the goal should NOT be to enact policy that makes the citizens happier...we should instead create policy that focuses on reducing suffering. Because, he says:

“In my opinion...human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, an appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway.”

What he’s getting at...is that you can sit around and wax poetic for the rest of your life about hypothetical worlds where every citizen of a country is gonna be 10% happier if we make it a reality. But pragmatically, why would you ever ACTUALLY want to DO that? Happiness is an elusive concept in general...and it only becomes even MORE elusive when you try to find a way to quantify and measure it. Whereas suffering, to Popper...suffering is evident. Unnecessary suffering is something MOST of us want people to experience as little as possible...and every citizen can understand why that is...and BECAUSE of that, the ADDED benefit POLITICALLY… is that policies that aim to reduce suffering are just FAR EASIER to get passed than ones that talk about theoretical forms of happiness. He describes it here:

“For new ways of happiness are theoretical, unreal things, about which it may be difficult to form an opinion. But misery is with us, here and now, and it will be with us for a long time to come. We all know it from experience.”

Negative Utilitarianism calls for us to focus on the stuff we CAN control. The suffering we see brazenly in our streets and the imminent problems that face our planet overall. 

Now...we’ve talked quite a bit on this show about the PROBLEMS with democracy. Who is the average citizen to be making decisions about who should be making decisions on behalf of everybody? I mean I’m a podcaster. I can barely figure out how to make a living...I’m a domesticated animal. You know when you plug in a usb, into something...how one way it doesn’t plug in and then you gotta flip it around so that it actually CAN plug in...I swear to CHRIST there has not been a SINGLE time in my ENTIRE LIFE I have ever plugged a usb the first time. I’m a cur-sed man...and I’m supposed to decide how to run the country?

Karl Popper would probably shake his head slowly. He would hear me. And he’d UNDERSTAND my frustration with democracy, and USBs. And he’d probably say that NO democracy, NOT EVEN his vision OF the open society can POSSIBLY exist for ANY length of time without some big mistakes. 

But I THINK he’d also say...that the reason democracy is so important to protect...is NOT because it avoids mistakes. The reason democracy is important to protect is that it avoids tyranny. This statement can seem somewhat annoying... because in certain times it comes off as remarkably obvious. But I think what Popper would say is that there are definitely moments in history where everything is fine and this kind of stuff doesn’t need to be said...but there are ALSO moments in history...like the beginning of the Second World War, like the fall of the Soviet Union, and even in less SEVERE times when your hypochondriac phone is constantly feeding you article after article about how democracy under seige...there are times like these... when we need to be reminded of what MAKES an open society so much more dynamic, so much more free, so much more considerate of the individual than a closed society EVER could be. And understanding the roots of fascist or totalitarian thought, often times buried in the most seemingly innocuous parts of western political philosophy...understanding where these things come from, might just help us avoid them moving forward. That there IS NO magic eight ball that we can shake up that will tell us the FUTURE of the human species, and THAT’S OKAY.

Falling under the spell of a utopian vision for the future may remove the strain of civilization...but it doesn’t remove the suffering of whatever people or groups fall on the wrong side of some historicist or holistic story.  To Karl Popper...we owe it to ourselves...and to the rest of our fellow human beings to not fall into lazy thinking and to TAKE ON the strain of civilization...or as HE puts it MUCH MORE beautifully than I ever could:

“Instead of posing as prophets we must become makers of our fate.” 

Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you next time.