You touched on something at the end of this pod that I would love to hear or read more of your thoughts on: the pursuit of pleasure as an intrinsic part of a Leftist/Social Democratic/liberal program for making the USA a better, more equitable- and I would add- a more LOVING, LESS violent (and less violence obsessed) society. Bread AND roses, right?
Hi, and thanks for listening! Yes, this absolutely has to be part of the equation, part of the program. It's honestly one of the most difficult areas to think-through comprehensively in part because we experience the human libido also as the libido dominandi, the will to dominate which (as you put it) implies a sort of violence. Prising the two apart and engaging in a critique of the social/material/gendered elements of the latter is necessary, but tough going in a culture deeply informed by currents of secularized puritanism.
You touched on something at the end of this pod that I would love to hear or read more of your thoughts on: the pursuit of pleasure as an intrinsic part of a Leftist/Social Democratic/liberal program for making the USA a better, more equitable- and I would add- a more LOVING, LESS violent (and less violence obsessed) society. Bread AND roses, right?
Hi, and thanks for listening! Yes, this absolutely has to be part of the equation, part of the program. It's honestly one of the most difficult areas to think-through comprehensively in part because we experience the human libido also as the libido dominandi, the will to dominate which (as you put it) implies a sort of violence. Prising the two apart and engaging in a critique of the social/material/gendered elements of the latter is necessary, but tough going in a culture deeply informed by currents of secularized puritanism.