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The Individual in the Modern World
Many of today’s most contentious political debates fundamentally come down to questions that concern the nature of the individual: When and to what extent should people be considered responsible for their actions? What does equality mean? How should freedom be defined? These four videos from Then & Now explore these questions. They show that the…
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Wokeism
Wokeism? What is it? Is it a force for good, for bad? Is it political correctness gone mad? Is it really everywhere? Or is it a red-herring? A New McCarthyism? Puritanical? Cancel Culture? Dogmatic? This idea of being woke – of wokeism – appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Does it have a history? What’s going…
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How the Internet was Stolen
This is a story of deceit, manipulation, lots of money, political lobbying, lawsuits, and, ultimately, covert theft. The history of the internet has been one of big capital pilfering from public investment and national infrastructure, the expropriation of academic research, of democratic open-source alternatives being forced illegally from the market, of devices to steal our…
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Why German History is Different
I’m in Germany, thinking about how Germany changed the course of history. No – it’s not what you’re thinking of. Germany gave us some of the most influential philosophers – Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Schopenhauer, Heidegger. Why? In fact, for good or for bad, many of the ideas and problems of modern life – a…
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The Big Problem with Stoicism
Stoicism is everywhere. Ted talks, Stoicons, stoicbros on Tiktok, Stoic quotes on Instagram, and across all platforms, the Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is seemingly dominated by one figure – Ryan Holiday and his Daily Stoic – 60 million Youtube views, 1.9 million Instagram followers, and several NYT bestsellers. But is Stoicism all it’s cracked…
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Our Consumer Society
We live in a consumer society. Our lives revolve around shops, supermarkets, new experiences, new stuff, a world surrounded by image, advertising, marketing, one-day delivery, product placement, gadgets and fast fashion. We are – supposedly – shallow, obsessed with the self, narcissistic and vein, building personal castles of consumption on the foundations of what we…
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The Invention of Individual Responsibility
Humans love to fix things, to find the cause of a problem, to probe, tinker, and mend. We ask, in many different ways, why does this happen? What’s the root cause? What’s the origin? What or who is at fault? What or who is responsible? But there are three subjects that have intertwined with the…
Then & Now
Human(itie)s, in context