A Contracting Spirit: The Animating Spirit of Selfishness in Our Time (and in 18th-century England)

Today our topic is selfishness: how does selfishness manifest in our culture? Are there new ways to shed light on selfishness, new insights that can deepen our understanding of how selfishness operates in American society?

 

Part of the What In God’s Name mission is to create a cohort or community of people who see, as we do, the need to renew certain habits of feeling and being together in community, and ways of thinking about and understanding the fullness of human life and flourishing, that are grounded in the wisdoms of theological and moral philosophical tradition. We see these habits and ways of thinking as being pre-political, and foundational to a healthy and civil shared life in families, economies, and polities.

 

In short, we want to create a community that is grounded in curiosity, going deep, and shining light.

 

Let us know your thoughts and reflections on our Facebook Page: @whatingods.

 

Our email: whatingods@ribeye-media.com.

 

Learn more. Our website: www.whatingods.com.

 

Here are timecodes to help you navigate through today’s show:

 

02:38     Today’s show is NOT about climate change, but Shayna leads with this question: is selfishness at the heart of our environmental crisis? 

 

04:02     Chris offers another example of how selfishness is showing itself in our culture today: the decline of public apology. What characteristics of selfishness are present in the inability to express contrition?

 

07:57     Can people of different political outlook find common cause in standing for morality and virtue? Who would we be standing against? What would make finding common cause in this way difficult?

 

10:22     What is the public space that is pre-political? Where is it?

 

12:01     Joseph Butler was an 18th-century Anglican priest who preached on the selfishness of his time. How does realizing that people have for centuries decried the selfishness of their time? Is there something to be discovered here about human nature? Is Hobbes correct, that life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?

 

15:15     Civilization is an achievement, in that it overcomes the human propensity towards vandalism and destruction. Discuss.

 

17:02     Can we resist an animating spirit of the times, if the animating spirit is selfishness?

 

20:10     Does selfishness arise from the kind of thing a human being is, or does it come later, once we are part of society?