Anyway- thank you for Bernie Lown. He sounds much younger than his age and not the harsh voice of a radical some may expect but more the gentle loving spirit of one, truer.

Along with William Carlos Williams- can I add Walker Percy and Anton Chekhov- who went beyond their medical careers… and my cousin Stephen.

From the song Hotel California by the Eagles: “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.”

What has become of our culture? It is widely recognized that Washington, Wall St., and to a certain degree, “Main St.” is plagued by corruption. What is responsible? What is missing?

What is missing is Ar! You know, like the pirates say: Arrrrrr. No just kidding. Ar, as in the root of art, as in thou art; the present indicative. Ar as in art, like artist, more like techne; to do something well, to produce something of value.

But perhaps more importantly, Ar as in aristocracy, an endangered species, seemly very near extinction, that must be restored to its proper niche and population. “Our kingdom for a nobleman,” must be our war cry. A true, genuinely noble man (or woman). More than one would be a real boon.

Ar as in anarchy, not in the chaotic sense, but rather of the libertarian kind, but this only when our cultural norms depreciate the value of avarice and appreciate the value of virtue. This is the only means to cure our culture of the malignant effects presently manifesting as geo-political, economic and ecological crisis.

Then will man — and by extension society, civilization — find yet again our true source of vigor and integrity. Vir (“man”) requires virtue (“strength”) to thrive, in its absence we perish and society decays. The solution to our current problems lies not in the public sphere, with government or the financial system, the problem is entrenched in the secret recesses of our psyche (as the Greeks would say), our soul (as the Christians have it), our mind (as translated from the Sanskrit). This is the essential nature of the proposition imposing itself at present: humanity must choose between terror and dissolution, or virtue and integrity. The floggings will continue until morals improve!

However, the resolution to our conundrum is infused with paradox: what is plaguing us collectively must be resolved personally. The collective is an amplified personification of the dominants of the personal.

The resolution requires individual participation, an involvement, in the form of self-examination, and a certain measure of personal response-ability to issue forth that which is most noble, most virtuous in the human character to guide our collective evolvement, our evolution. If we prove incapable of transcending the corrosive nature and inherent limitations of our cultural conditioning, we will remain “prisoners here of own device.”

In the Age of Deregulation, the only re-regulation that will ultimately be effective against our current predicament is a regulation of human motivation. The only government that can correct the current dysfunction of critical systems, is the governance of values. It is true that pride goeth before a fall, it is also true that profuse avarice decomposes societal foundations. If we are to cure the current crisis plaguing our global socio-economic system, we must first make a radical examination of the culture responsible for producing it. We must see clearly that which nourishes the root of our problem. And the prescription must likewise be radical. We can ill-afford to deal only with symptoms at this critical juncture.

The discovery of the ability to destroy all life is both a nightmare and a blessing. While the former is obvious, the latter may not be so straightforward. Limits force changes in growth strategies. The fact of nuclear capabilities forces nations to come to agreements. The alternative is to keep going in the direction we are headed which increases the probability of hitting the reset button.

If life is somehow an exercise in self-creation — in making ourselves into something worth being — perhaps the nuclear dilemma is a necessary challenge in which we have the opportunity to transform the basis of international relationships in light of the possibility of annihilation. Our binding enemy in which we must overcome is not “them” but “ourselves.”

I am thinking about Søren Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling,” where he addresses the story of Isaac and Abraham. What I take from Kierkegaard is the idea that one’s lineage is not worth the sacrifice of one’s beliefs. That is, it is not worth going on if one gives up that which it is better to be.

And here we are. I am also reminded of Richard Rorty’s lecture “Anti-Terrorism and the National Security State” in which he eloquently proposes that the threat of terrorism is not that cities will be destroyed but that in order to protect cities democratic freedoms will be eroded. Cities can be rebuilt, but social justice is a more delicate matter.

Good show Chris.