Status Updates From Don't Talk About Politics: ...

"Current obsessions over the question of 'free speech' ignore the real challenges...Thinking freely isn't just about having access to ideas: we need to to be able to live our ideas in the world. It's therefore time to stop trying to 'teach critical thinking' by itself and to start literally building a world where people's lives and relationships consistently enable them to think."

The book in a nutshell.

"All of us who seek to build community should admit it: communities wield a double-edged sword, in reasoning and in so much else, as they grant us belonging...Communities meet our most fundamental needs and tell us who we are...They also police you, powerfully shame you and care about who you pair up with...This immense power, driven by our profound relational motivation, can be used for ill or good."

"It is our economic system that determines how isolated we are, and that in turn determines our level of social trust."

"Sometimes the one big demand is the only way through...It is wise to be risk-averse and avoid too much meddling with systems that serve us well; it is foolish not to be willing to uproot a system that is not working well at all."

"Thinking in terms of infrastructure [helps] account for, and work around, human error, exhaustion and laziness...Infrastructure-based approaches move us away from an inaccurate and unhelpfully romantic vision of what politics is...It helps us see the structures on which power really rests.

...The privatization of infrastructure means some of us are simply cut out. It is an exclusionary political vision."

Theories of embodied cognition show that the body is the locus of thinking for much of what we do...This idea fits into theories of 'extended cognition', which show that our thinking happens not only in our brain and our body but also through the tools we use in the world around us...Even structures such as the law...We think through our bodies, yes, but also through our social structures.

"We shouldn't approach politics via an ideal theory, a theory that starts with the ideal, just outcome and then works its way backward. Too often, this means we might imagine a path to our ideal outcome that does not exist, or ignore paths toward other interesting points of progress. We have to accept and understand the world as it is now and consider realistically what we should do about it."

"We cannot defeat each other with reasons; we are simply at odds...It is not in the obvious interests of those who run large companies to pay their employees more, nor is it in the interests of landlords to lower the rent. And no amount of reasoning is going to bring about more than the most moderate of compromises. Hence the historical need to struggle for power instead, from the strike to the guillotine."

"We need to stop thinking that talking about politics is the same thing as truly engaging in it, because all the evidence suggests that simply presenting one another with ideas changes very little. Instead, doing politics means taking new actions and building relationships."