Difference between revisions of "607 - Flight From Meaning 2 (Money=Competition=Psychosis)"

Revision as of 20:15, 8 June 2012

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Episode #607 - Flight From Meaning 2
(Money=Competition=Psychosis)

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⌚ Fri 8 June 2012 ☻Alfie Kohn, David Graeber (reading)

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Download Hour1 Download Hour2Although in the 'Flight From Meaning' series, a rather traditional show for my second anniversary show this week. In our first hour, a regular speaker, Alfie Kohn, speaking on why he believes that any competition is too much. In our second hour,

In our first hour, we hear a 2004 recording of Alfie Kohn speaking at a conference entitled 'Beyond Competition'. Alfie Kohn begins by clarifying that he thinks "human nature" should always be in quotation marks - to reflect their innate flexibility in behavioral patterns, something often overlooked by conservative forces who would stifle thinking about which changes are possible.

Kohn makes a remarkably simple but profound case, that the ideal amount of competition to promote excellence in any field is none at all. His characteristically vehement case is bristling with scientific findings and quotations from important thinkers.

He dismisses "Human Nature arguments [as] profoundly conservative arguments masquerading as realism", and cites the little known Seville Statement on Violence, adopted by a 1986 international meeting of scientists, convened by the Spanish National Commission for UNESCO, in Seville, Spain, who specifically refute "the notion that organized human violence is biologically determined". He quotes Template:Quote1

In our second hour, we continue our ongoing reading

. We hear how the introduction of coinage is associated across the world - in Greece, India and China - by materialistic thinking and especially the notion that decisions are framed according to conceptions of profit and loss. If it seems self-evident that people do things if the costs are 'outweighed' by the benefits, we could benefit from musing on whether it would have seemed so to our ancestors who did not have the ideas of equivalence which accompany the widespread use of money.
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