Worshipping the Future Podcast #1

Helen & Lorenzo talk about the book they're writing

As promised to paid subscribers, Lorenzo & I are pleased to provide a pretty detailed discussion of Worshipping the Future—a series of essays now well on the way to being a published book.

In the podcast, we cover some of Lorenzo’s background & cancellation (also discussed here) as well as introducing new paid subscribers to three core ideas.

1. Lorenzo’s use of what he calls “the evolutionary lens” when thinking about the social sciences, especially economics.

2. The extent to which modern progressivism is wedded to the idea that it’s possible to get information from the future, which in turn explains why Lorenzo calls it “post-Enlightenment progressivism” rather than “woke”.

3. How post-Enlightenment progressivism represents an evolutionarily adaptive strategy—something that makes it more difficult to defeat in “the marketplace of ideas”.

Please don’t feel you have to watch the whole thing at once. We’ve structured it in such a way that you can listen to it in chunks, come back to bits of it later, and so on. It’s also somewhat tailored to a US and Canadian audience, as it’s our North American subscribers who’ve missed out most due to inconvenient time zones.

Meanwhile, both Lorenzo & I hope you all have excellent plans for both New Year celebrations and the coming new year.