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Episode 29 - An Interview with Daniel Dacombe and Todd May
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In today's episode, Humanist Canada's Daniel Dacombe sits down with Todd May, a political philosopher who writes on topics of anarchism, poststructuralism, and post-structural anarchism. More recently, he has published books on existentialism and moral philosophy.
Today, they discuss current events, philosophy, and Todd's role as a Philosophy Consultant on the TV show, "The Good Place".
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Transcript
Opening Humor and Introduction to Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
That's why we can't get into bookstores. We drive cabs because all you social scientists are taking our bookstore jobs. Well, what can I say? We're we're better at talking to people.
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to The Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the humanist lens.
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation. Hello everyone.
Introduction of Guest: Dr. Todd May
00:00:41
Speaker
My name is Daniel Dacombe and I'm one of the hosts of The Voice of Canadian Humanism podcast. On this podcast, we like to feature the voices that are involved in leading or important to humanism in Canada and beyond. I'm very pleased to be joined by today's guest, philosophy professor and author, Dr. Todd May.
00:00:59
Speaker
Todd is the Nielsen professor of the humanities at Warren Wilson College. He is the author of 18 books on philosophy, including A Significant Life, Human Meaning in a Silent Universe, A Decent Life, Morality for the Rest of Us,
00:01:11
Speaker
and Nonviolent Resistance, a Philosophical Introduction. Todd, welcome to our humble podcast. ah It's good to be with you, Daniel. Thanks for having me. ah Very glad
Communicating Philosophy to the Public
00:01:22
Speaker
to have you. And yeah I mentioned this when we were getting started, but normally the academics we've had on this show have been in the the social science of religion area, which is my area. And so to have someone come from the philip philosophy world and especially with things like ethics and political philosophy, all the things that you've written about over the years. It's a real treat. And I am i'm going to be doing my best to keep up with this conversation. It's something I've been looking forward to for a while, and I've read a couple of your books. ah But yes, i i am I'm hoping to to be able to to keep up with the things that you're bringing up.
00:02:04
Speaker
But I'm pretty sure that we're not going to have a problem with that because everything I've read from you has been so accessible and written for people who ah who don't come with graduate level education and philosophy that ah that I have not felt intimidated about this. I've just felt excited. So I'm really happy to be doing this. I should tell you, Daniel, that there's a lot of important stuff that gets said in philosophy. And unfortunately, there's an ethic. There is in a lot of academics, I think.
May's Personal and Academic Journey
00:02:33
Speaker
There's this ethic of philosophers just speaking to other philosophers.
00:02:37
Speaker
ah and and And I know that there are technical issues that can only be addressed in certain ways with certain jargon. But i think there's a lot less of it ah than people think, particularly people in philosophy.
00:02:51
Speaker
And if what you're talking about is really so integral to questions of life and meaning and the universe and everything, ah then it it should be something that can matter to everyone. And so obviously communicating it in ways that everyone can understand is is even more important. Absolutely.
00:03:10
Speaker
So one of the things that we like to do when we start these interviews is to ask our guests a bit about themselves, especially the cultural and religious background and environment they grew up in. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, sure. i And I grew up in in New York City. ah My mother was a non-practicing Jew. My father was a non-practicing wasp. ah okay Probably all my friends were Jewish. Almost all of my friends were Jewish growing up. ah And so I spent some time in college trying to sort myself out relative to religion.
00:03:41
Speaker
ah Came to think that religion was not something I could believe in, at least Western religions. And... um and Yet I was still troubled by questions of ethics, questions of how I should live, questions of justice, and eventually went on in philosophy. ah I started in psychology.
00:04:05
Speaker
I have most of a PhD in psychology. I was thrown out of grad school in psychology. When I started to study, yeah, I was starting to study the thinker, Michel Foucault, ah who had a critique of psychology.
00:04:17
Speaker
and i And I found critique compelling. If I could simplify the idea that I found compelling a little bit, ah He said, look, what psychology does, at least traditional psychology, is it puts people back into society and makes them obedient rather than questioning the kinds of structures that might've caused them not to flourish in the first place. And that was compelling to me.
00:04:41
Speaker
So I started raising that question in my psychology program and they said, that's great, ah you can do this somewhere else. And so I wound up in a philosophy program because you know philosophy will take anybody. And and kind of never never looked back. but I've been asking me those but asking myself those questions ever since.
Mental Health and Narrative Therapy
00:05:04
Speaker
It's interesting how at that time your questions about, hey, is making people you know well enough to be in an unwell society really in their best interests? Or is this the kind of thing we should be doing? um It got you into trouble. Whereas now, i in the field I work in, in public health for my day job, I spend a lot of time with therapists and social workers. And they say to me that currently their biggest issue is figuring out what to say to people who say things like, I have so much dread about the world and i have so much dread about society. And I think I'm really depressed. And, you know, having to tell people, i don't think you're depressed. I think you're just paying attention.
00:05:40
Speaker
ah and And it's kind of challenging right now. well Well, there is in fact a style of therapeutic practice, narrative therapy. I don't know if you know about narrative therapy. but yes Well, I'm kind of the unofficial philosopher for narrative therapy because they embraced Foucault. That's one of their founding thinkers. And Michael White, who is the founder of narrative therapy, read Foucault all the time.
00:06:03
Speaker
And so the thing that I got thrown out for is the thing that they focus on in in working with therapy. So I've tried to work with them on deepening the understanding of Foucault and the relationship between our inability to flourish at times and the kind of social political structures that make us unable to flourish.
00:06:24
Speaker
that That's really interesting that you bring that up because there's ah there's an overlap with narrative therapy and narrative identity theory, which you may be somewhat familiar with as well. Originally developed by Dan McAdams, um I can't remember when the original article came out, but he's you know he's republished several different iterations of it. And narrative identity theory talks about how we we understand ourselves and our lives and the meaning we make of our experiences ah by kind of telling ourselves this ongoing story and reinterpreting our lives in the light of that ongoing story. And ah i know narrative therapy and narrative identity theory have I've been having some some overlap and in more recent studies where, you know, unfortunately, clinical psych and the kind of psychotherapeutic psychology don't always play nice with the social psychology and the sociologists and the the unpractical people. But but I've been enjoying reading a lot about both of them. So I think it's really interesting you're getting involved in that.
00:07:26
Speaker
Oh, there's a a lot of debate about this. the it It goes from, I think, Maria Shekman, who wrote a book, The Constitution of Cells, whose argument is we construct ourselves narratively, to there's a great philosopher who died young, Peter Goldie, who wrote a book called The Mess Inside, which so we don't actually construct narratives, but there's bits and pieces of narratives but that that interweave in our lives and that we create ourselves in large part responding to these bits and pieces of narrative that's why he calls it the mess inside
00:08:01
Speaker
I like that a lot. I hadn't heard about the mess inside. I've just been jotting down some
May's Career Path and Influences
00:08:05
Speaker
some notes. This is another benefit of doing this podcast is I just get so many good recommendations for books and authors. And I hope there's some other nerds out there listening to us talk right now who are you know madly running things down. Hopefully not while they're driving.
00:08:18
Speaker
well they list um So you you were doing psychology, you were in psychology and you were asking the, you know, I'm doing big air quotes here for the podcast listeners, some ah the wrong questions. And then you found yourself in ah in philosophy. Now, I don't have any numbers to back up this assumption, but my guess is when you ask most kids what they want to be when they grow up, a philosopher is like a minority answer.
00:08:42
Speaker
um It's not top 10. It's not top 10. I would agree with that. Astronaut's in there, but not philosopher. Yeah. What led you to philosophy instead of a different kind of career, ah kind of adjacent in the social sciences? It sounds like the the questions are a big part of it, but what made you say, okay, no, this is actually, this is the direction I think I need to go for a career? Yeah.
00:09:05
Speaker
Well, that has roots back in high school. So I grew up in the ah late 60s to early mid 70s. Vietnam War was very big when I was in high school.
00:09:16
Speaker
ah And that led people to a lot of big questions. And we so we read ah we didn't read philosophy, but read a lot of literature, reading Dostoevsky and Faulkner and Tolstoy. And I was always approaching it with a philosophical mind.
00:09:29
Speaker
What are the big questions that they're asking here? So that was always with me. When I went to a so psych grad school, it was philosophically based, even though it wound up sort of being sort of internalist and apolitical.
00:09:45
Speaker
um ah And when I read Foucault, I was looking for a place that I could study Foucault more. So I have both the specific interest in Foucault and the general philosophical orientation.
00:09:59
Speaker
So I wound up looking at programs with specifically philosophy programs that where I could keep studying Foucault. Okay. So you had a you you had a favorite kind of approach or or series of ideas that you wanted to explore. And the most appropriate place and most open place to those was a career and in philosophy.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, or at least it was studying philosophy, whether it was going to be a career or not. that had the The market had a lot to do with that. Right. How does one transition into teaching philosophy from studying philosophy? I feel like there's there's probably quite the drop-off afterwards.
00:10:35
Speaker
Well, because i think the general view is that philosophers cannot navigate in the real world terribly well, there was at one time a publication.
00:10:47
Speaker
that listed all of the jobs that were available. Now this is online. So there's one place you could go. All you have to do is go to this place and they list the jobs and they list how to apply.
00:10:57
Speaker
So philosophers like me who have trouble getting around have a place to go and then you apply to whatever jobs you want to apply to. And then when they reject you, you go drive a cab.
00:11:10
Speaker
Right, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, well, it's the same general idea for the social sciences. Once you're done your degree, you ah you either find something non-academic ah in ah in ah like the public health field, or yeah, you you know you go work at a bookstore yeah and just ignore people forever. ah that's why we That's why we can't get into bookstores. We drive cabs because all you social scientists are taking our bookstore jobs.
00:11:34
Speaker
Well, what can I say? We're we're better at talking to people. So... i've I got nothing to say about that. That's true. Well, I...
00:11:44
Speaker
ah my you know My own field aside, I think that the the questions that get asked in the philosophy classes are the same questions that are getting asked a lot of other programs. They're just getting answered or maybe not even answered, maybe just explored in a greater depth. Now, I never had the opportunity to take a lot of philosophy in ah either in college or in in seminary, which I attended after college um during ah during the time of my life when I was religious. lot the philosophy classes were very
00:12:15
Speaker
linearly based on a particular worldview that was, ah you know, you have a you have an idea that there's a God and there's ah a text that kind of gives you the answers and you sort of work with that. um But you weren't just sticking with one text, even the favorite authors and questions you were asking, you you went into it and you explored all kinds of things. What were some other their favorites that you found along the way?
00:12:37
Speaker
Among the philosophers? Yeah. ah Well, I started, probably my first love was the French philosopher Maurice Merlepanty. okay And Merleau-Ponty wrote about our engagement with the world. And his idea was, and now peep that now this is just everybody, that we aren't some separate thing that gets dropped into the world, right? That our very being is caught up and engaged in the world and it's engaged in the world corporeally and often unconsciously. And not unconsciously in the we're asleep or in any Freudian way, ah but without our actually reflecting on it. So that we're already deeply tied up in the world before we even turn and and ask ourselves what we're what we're on about and what we're doing. So he was the first love. And then of course, Michel Foucault came.
00:13:31
Speaker
and his ah more political orientation, but still coming out of our corporeal relationship to the world. More recently, I've been reading a philosopher more recently, last eight or nine years, Susan Wolf, who is a philosopher at Chapel Hill.
00:13:49
Speaker
And she writes about ethics and she writes in some very everyday ways and says some very subtle things. And a lot of my work, particularly a Significant Life, has taken off from her work, A Decent Life, which I think you you've said you've read. I refer to her ah in in that book as well.
00:14:09
Speaker
Mm hmm. um Yes, I have read A Decent Life. I have not yet read a Significant Life. um Working full-time and university, mostly full-time, it's been a busy life for me. But when I when i get a chance to read something to relax, um or last year, your books have come up more than ah more than a few other
Philosophy and Media: 'The Good Place'
00:14:29
Speaker
authors. So, um yeah, i I will bring up A Decent Life again later if we've got some time, because I did really enjoy It it was a Christmas gift, I can't believe it. Nice. People don't generally give philosophy books as Christmas gifts, so i'm I'm pleased about this. Well, I'm glad. I'm not sure if they would give this next one at Christmas. ah A number of years ago, you wrote a book called Death, The Art of Living. And that was actually the first book of yours that I came across. And I came across it in the context of a television show I'd been watching with my wife. And um this show was called a Good Place. The Good Place. The Good Place, sorry. Yeah.
00:15:11
Speaker
And it was ah it was starring Kristen Bell and Ted Danson. And it was a a very interesting show. And your book is actually the it intrinsically tied to this show. And I was hoping to just briefly touch on that before we go on to your more recent books. Could you tell us a bit about the central premise of death?
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So ah the idea behind this series that death is one of the books in is talking about... large philosophical issues, often philosophical issues that took up ah ancient Greek and and Roman thought, and putting them in everyday ah more everyday terms, you you weren't allowed in this series to use footnotes. ah It was very non-academic.
00:15:58
Speaker
ah And so the premise of the book is that death is perhaps the most important fact about us, is that we're gonna die. And how do we think about that?
00:16:10
Speaker
ah And one of the things, and this is the the more controversial part of it is that, Death is something that is bad for us on the one hand, but on the other hand, immortality would also be bad for us. Immortality would make our lives eventually shapeless. And there are a lot of debates in philosophy about that. There's a very good philosopher, John Martin Fisher, who has argued that immortality would not be bad. He's actually called people like me immortality curmudgeons.
00:16:41
Speaker
And he and I had a chance actually to debate this out at one point. And i say he was a you know a very bright guy, a very kind guy, just happened to be mistaken about immortality. And so what the book tries to grapple with is that conundrum.
00:16:58
Speaker
um Death is bad for us. Immortality would be bad for us. And how do we think about that? And how do we navigate that? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's ah that's the central point of so many other authors who have tried to kind of grapple with the issue, like what like what does death mean to us as a species? um I've read a number of books by Irvin Yalom, who talks about this more from the the social science end of things, I believe he's a psychiatrist. And we've had a you know we've had a few conversations about death on this podcast already, but I thought that your point
00:17:36
Speaker
You're part of the discussion coming out and saying, hey, immortality would also be bad for us. That's a really challenging thing for a lot of people who um maybe have grown up with this idea that, oh, don't worry, when you die, you're still going to keep going. You're going to live on forever. And um my wife and i watched...
00:17:56
Speaker
the good place, want to call it a good place, but the good place, um during a time when both of us were in the middle of deconstructing our religious beliefs. And one of the things that I was most worried about was, oh gosh, like what if I deconstruct too far and then I'm going to stop believing in in an afterlife and then I'm going to really be screwed. I'm going to be miserable for the rest of my life.
00:18:20
Speaker
Basically, that was my my fear. And watching the good place and some of the philosophical conversations that come up, especially this idea that everybody knows all the time that they're going to die and we're always a little bit sad about it.
00:18:33
Speaker
but it's also, you know, that ending is what makes our life actually have meaning. um That was a very healing experience for both of us, which might sound like a weird thing to say about a TV show and a book that we're kind of married together, but it really was for us. Mike Schur, the showrunner, the ending of the show was in keeping with the book. He he was convinced that this was ultimately right. ah but ah I think part of your healing is not simply the view itself, but the beautiful way in which you put it together.
00:19:07
Speaker
Yes, he did. He had a in a ah stunning ah last episode. Yeah. And that I think, it it didn't just tell you, right? But it it it helps you feel, right? That the fact of our mortality is something ultimately to be embraced and utilized in trying to make our lives more urgent and meaningful.
00:19:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. The last episode was one that I loved and most of the people that I know loved, except for those who were still quite ah quite religious and very convinced that the afterlife is going to be quite different than that. And we've had some interesting conversations. And through your ah through your book and through the showrunner, said Mike Schuer, his reading of that book and his connection to you, you became a consultant on the television show.
00:20:01
Speaker
ah Is that correct? Yeah. What what happened was i got an email, a question from a TV producer. i didn't watch I hadn't watched network television in maybe years.
00:20:12
Speaker
ah So i I looked up Mike Schur and I found out that he was involved in and Parks and Rec and s Saturday Night Live and and that that he was a big deal ah and that they had just given him carte blanche with the show. So after researching him a little bit, I emailed him back and said, why don't we, well, that's not the time you we weren't Zooming, you Skype. why didn't Why don't we Skype together? So we Skyped for a couple of hours and and hit it off.
00:20:39
Speaker
And after that, there were the questions back and forth happened. i I got my first and only philosophical emergency when I was teaching. I was teaching a group in Denmark, and I got an email that we're ah getting ready to shoot some episode, and we're not sure about this one philosophy, ethical particularism. We need to we need to talk as soon as possible so we can get this right. okay So I had that. And then ah eventually they started sending me bits of scripts to make sure that the the scripts were on point. and the last Before the third and fourth season, the last two seasons, I i went to the writer's room as they were constructing the ah the the program and then talk with them about whatever philosophical issues were.
00:21:31
Speaker
they were thinking about and thinking about bringing in. And then finally, of course, I i got this a call a week before they started shooting the last episode. Todd, would you like to have a cameo on the last episode? I know it's last minute and my viewers, it's not that damn last minute. Yeah.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, i thought so i I thought when I watched the last episode that there was some people in that room that maybe were people that I i would recognize if I knew what some of the authors I've been reading looked like. And when I looked you up, like thought, oh, yeah, i I do recognize you from the last episode. Yeah.
00:22:07
Speaker
I think that's so that's so interesting that you, um first of all, that you responded to kind of that cold call. You know, in a way that maybe so nowadays we'd say, oh, watch out, you don't want to get catfished. But who says I'm a television producer and I want to ask you questions about philosophy? Probably a pretty safe bet that that's on the level. um Yeah. And and you also had a a philosophy emergency, which I feel is, you know, that how many people get to say that, that they had to respond to a philosophy emergency? No, it it it I mean, aside from it was it was a great experience for me. One of my one of my best experiences in and academics. ah had
00:22:46
Speaker
Had the Phil Saka emergency been the only thing, it would still have been worth it. ah Well, the the philosophical emergency reminds me of that, of a joke where someone's on a, people are on a plane and an announcement comes out saying, ah is there a doctor on a plane? And somebody runs up to the front and says, I'm a doctor. And they said, okay, well, this, like this was a medical emergency. says, well, I'm a doctor in philosophy. And they said, why'd you come over here? This man's going to die. And the doctor replies, well, we're all going to die. And that's the that's the joke. so i don't know if you've probably heard that one before, but... I don't think I have, Daniel. All right. Well, there you go. Worth your time already. You can use that in your classes now.
00:23:26
Speaker
But...
May's Involvement in 'How to Be Perfect'
00:23:27
Speaker
um Michael Schur has been, i've listened to him on a number of podcasts and seen some and ah you have seen some interviews. And I also read ah most of his book, which he wrote after he finished the show, yeah um which I think he also consulted with you about. um He's been very open about how beneficial your involvement was and how much he learned from you and your conversations.
00:23:51
Speaker
ah What did you learn from the show besides things about like the catering on television sets and and so on? Right. Well, I would say a couple of things. ah One of them ah is he's very good at creating ah what philosophers would call thought experiments, scenarios to help us think about what we ought to be doing.
00:24:16
Speaker
ah ah So the the book, How to Be Perfect. ah yeah I mean, ah yeah, I was involved, guys, every step away in that book. I think I read the Aristotle chapter like six times, but I marveled at his ability to create scenarios that were at once philosophical and entertaining.
00:24:34
Speaker
ah So ah that that was that was something I learned. ah um as As well, he's obviously he's very funny. And i I watched his humor really closely and and just saw various details. And the book I wrote actually after How to Be Perfect was a little book called Care.
00:24:59
Speaker
And it is to quote David Hume, it fell stillborn from the press. But i ah I used a lot of humor in it and was trying to figure out ways to channel ah his humor, not simply to be funny, but because it helps with style, it it helps with with with flow.
00:25:21
Speaker
ah And I Aside from the things that I learned from him about how to do one thing or another, ah he i mean, aside from being brilliant, more important, he's a very generous and caring person. And to have a friendship, even though the friendship was more or less time limited, because he's super busy, yeah ah is itself something I'm going to carry with me.
00:25:50
Speaker
and I've heard that about him, that he's a very kind and open person and is just inviting all kinds of ah discussion and ideas. And the humor, of course, is um is so critical. I don't think I would have been able to ah go through The Good Place and come out the other side changed if it hadn't been for those bits of laughter with tears in your eyes yeah along the way.
00:26:14
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. um Speaking of your other books, the the book that kind of inspired me to reach out is your most
Human Extinction as a Philosophical Dilemma
00:26:23
Speaker
recent book. why I believe it's your most recent book. It came out in 2024. I don't think you have a current one ah that just popped out. But um your most recent book has ah has a real heck of a title, ah which is Should We Go Extinct?
00:26:39
Speaker
A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times. And... um i I hadn't read any news about it coming out, but I was wandering through a bookstore and and ah saw its title and stopped me in my tracks quite quite thoroughly ah because that is that is a ah very serious question and I hadn't been thinking about it until I saw the title and then i and I've had a really hard time thinking about other things. since then, whenever it pops up. um You originally, and I did a bit of reading about this before the interview, you originally ah published an article, I think in the New York Times, asking that kind of general question. um
00:27:20
Speaker
And I don't know what the, so you published the article, and I think in 2018. I don't know what the usual response when philosophy professors publish articles New York Times is, but this one seemed to create quite stir.
00:27:34
Speaker
quite a stir What was the response to that article like? That that would be fair, Dan. Yeah. So it was published. And about two hours later, I got an invitation to be on the Laura Ingraham show.
00:27:48
Speaker
OK. And a couple hours after that, I got an invitation to be on Infowars. OK. And a couple hours after that, ah Ben Shapiro came out with an article that said Todd May said we should all kill ourselves.
00:28:00
Speaker
And that's when the hate mail started. ah So for some days after that, I got a lot of hate mail. And Daniel, if you're going to spend the time finding out a guy's email, reading, obviously not the article, but something that somebody has said about it, you ought to come up with something a little bit better than maybe you should go extinct, which is basically 95% of the emails that I got.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's I had some predictive ah thoughts about what the response would be or what the content of the emails would be. So I'm glad that I'm right on the money there. Yeah, no, I mean, I got some some stuff that people were were thinking about this and turning this over, but there was sort of yeah a bit of, um um um I would call it a minor campaign. So I never went on Longerham, I never responded to her or to Infowars, basically because I'd been happy to debate this, but you'd never debate somebody holding the mic. right yeah So i just let those things go. ah But it you know it it kept me thinking and I just kept germinating. and And finally I said to myself, look, I'm gonna sit down and sort this out for myself as best I can. And when I say that, right
00:29:13
Speaker
what the should we go extinct is about is it's not the attempt to to answer finally a very deep and troubling question but to but to open it up and to open it up both by looking at all the some of the things that we bring to the world some of the things we take from the world. And then course, at the end, talking about here are things we could do to make our continuous kind of continued existence here more justifiable. So I see it more as a conversation opener um because what little I had read about this earlier,
00:29:50
Speaker
Either people were like, human extinction would be a tragedy without effort actually ever really going deeply into that. Or there's a small group people said, we should all go extinct without really thinking ah thinking through what the implications of that would be, what the meaning of that would be, what the losses would be.
00:30:10
Speaker
Yeah, that was one of the things that surprised me the most when I picked your book up and started getting into it. ah Because... You know, i'd I'd done some... I'd also had, I think you described like the 3 a.m. m you know thoughts, like ah what like, should we even be here? Like, are we... We're causing so much harm to the planet. Like, you know, I've had those thoughts. I've had a lot of thoughts at 3 a.m. And that was just kind of one of them. It didn't really occur to me that there was a whole area of philosophy where this was actually, as you put it in your book, a live question. We are actually having this conversation. Should we even... be here anymore. um and And what struck me so much is that I've ive done a lot of reading about you know climate crisis and the you know if we're going to go extinct, which is a scientific kind of question with scientific approaches, right? so and And a lot of what people will mostly be reading these days ah around human extinction or the end of the world's
00:31:07
Speaker
I guess you can put that in all capitals, the end of the world, um is ah the conversations about here's the threats we face. here's Here's the problems. And then here's how we solve them with with science. We're going to do carbon capture. We're going to 3D print our stakes. We're going to you know do these other things. and And that's going to fix things. Then we can just kind of keep going. But you don't frame this as a scientific discussion about practically are we all going to die? You frame human existence as an ethical question. And that one really, really floored me.
00:31:41
Speaker
Yeah, no, that' that's exactly it. And in the reading that I had done, and you captured this, Daniel, with proof in what you just said, the the problem was, or the problem is, ah we might go extinct.
00:31:58
Speaker
And the question is, what's the solution to that? So the ethical assumption is already that it would be a bad thing for us to go extinct. There's nothing on the other side of the ledger.
00:32:11
Speaker
And therefore, or at least not enough on the other side of the ledger. And and therefore, ah we have to solve this problem. And oddly, some of the ways we talk about solving the problem seems to continue the of distancing of ourselves
Ethical Challenges of Humanism
00:32:28
Speaker
from nature.
00:32:28
Speaker
ah And I'm reading a book right now, The Arrogant Ape. ah whose author is escaping me just for the moment. But her claim is that we we we think of ourselves as as exceptional, as outside of nature, above nature. And one of her critiques is that the kind of geoengineering that that we're on about, it's just a continuation of this project. yeah And that what we need to do is actually think,
00:32:58
Speaker
and And the opposite way of how we can better insert ourselves ah into nature, right? Rather than doing something ah that that's that would be taking hold of nature and manipulating it.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, and the the responses to some of the, I think, philosophical conundrums that we bring up in in all lot of the books that you write, ethics about, ah and we'll get into this later, ethics about animals, ethics about deforestation, ethics about politics and about human rights, um they all kind of have that baseline of assumption of, but we should solve this so we can keep going.
00:33:37
Speaker
Right, exactly. And that was that that was what, when I picked up your book, was the big eye-opener to me, is that there are philosophers who are making a serious case that actually maybe we shouldn't. You bring up in...
00:33:50
Speaker
i can't remember I think it was mostly in chapter one and two, ah you bring up David Benatar as one example, who's kind of making these arguments, who wants us to go, just he wants us to know that suffering outweighs happiness. Therefore, we should probably all be not here anymore. And for the listener's benefit, David Benatar is not to be confused with Pat Benatar, who wants us to hit her with our best shot. ah But I was actually really like,
00:34:16
Speaker
I think I had to like put it down and go for a walk and like Benatar really kind of threw me with this argument of suffering and and happiness and outweighing and you you bring up and you mentioned it a minute ago, ah you bring up this idea of a ledger um regarding the ethics of our continued survival. And on the one side of the ledger are the many good things that exist. And you go into this in your book a bit more, you say things like art and science and meaning and, you know, all the good things that we put into the world or just are able to observe about the world like a know, as far as we know, ah birds can't really appreciate sunsets. And and we do. And it adds a lot of this meaning. And it reminded me of British ah physicist Brian Cox, who says, as far as we know, humans are the only meaning-making beings in the universe. And it would be a loss of meaning if we weren't here anymore. But on the other side of the ledger, as your very astute in pointing out, ah are the many harms that humans are causing to the world. And you don't shy away from taking the readers through a really good, long, hard look at those harms. um Without making anybody listening to this podcast want to drive off the road, could you give us an overview what some of those red marks on Humanities Ledger are?
00:35:31
Speaker
Sure, sure. let And let me say one thing also about about Benatar before I go there, because Benatar's view is also in some ways human-centered. Not even in some ways, because the ledger for him is the happiness in human life versus the suffering in human life. So he doesn't ask the ethical question that I'm trying to ask, ah which is the the good that we bring versus the harm right that we bring. but But that harm happens on ah a number of fronts. I focus a lot on factory farming because it yeah affects its you know not just millions, but billions of animals. ah And many of your listeners are going to know these billions and billions of animals have fairly horrendous lives. And ah they they're...
00:36:18
Speaker
that theyre put in cramped quarters, ah they're fed unnatural foods, ah they're separated from their young, they are killed before they've before but they've had a chance really to live ah a decent life. um and In some ways though, mean given the lives they live, that they're forced to lead, probably killing them earlier rather than later is even is you even better.
00:36:44
Speaker
ah For them, for I think many of them, death would be death is a relief. So there's there's that. and ah And I spent a lot of time on that.
00:36:56
Speaker
There's also our ecological devastation ah through deforestation and the climate crisis, which changes and often limits the habitats of our fellow creatures.
00:37:10
Speaker
And there's i spend less time on this, but there's scientific testing. Scientific testing, it's gotten it's gotten better. ah They're not testing as much around issues of of perfume and makeup as they used to. ah But all of these...
00:37:25
Speaker
All of these things cause enormous amounts of suffering. And one of the ah when I'm talking about humans and the creation of art and the existence of art in the world, i use an example.
00:37:42
Speaker
I said, okay, suppose that you you have a museum like the Louvre, right? And there's a fire and you can you can either save the people or you can save the art.
00:37:54
Speaker
And I think most people, except maybe people who work at Sotheby's, would say you save the people. right and so i And it seems obvious, right? And I switched that up. sorry i said Like, suppose you had millions of animals and you could save the art or you could save these millions of animals.
00:38:14
Speaker
I think at some point you start tilting toward the animals. And as you tilt toward the animals, what that means is that the art itself that's in the Louvre may not be as valuable, as worth saving as the animals. Now you can push this and and then people's instincts will change. and You know, would we sacrifice all of Shakespeare, right? I think I mentioned in the book that ah I could sacrifice a good bit. when When it came down to King Lear, I would start having yeah more more difficulties. um But
00:38:47
Speaker
it It means it's a live, the question of our contributions, and I'm using art here as an example, in relation to the suffering we cause, seems to me a live question.
Expanding Ethical Frameworks
00:38:59
Speaker
And by a live question, I mean I don't have an ultimate answer for that, but I think it's it's worth our pondering.
00:39:06
Speaker
And the question, The criticism that you brought about Benatar being too human focused, I think also applies to how we um how we in the humanist community can sometimes be approaching these ethical issues because humanist, I mean, it's right there in the name.
00:39:22
Speaker
It's human focused. ah are humanists can Can a good humanist also be someone who ah ethically supports factory farming? Can a good humanist be someone who thinks that the deforestation and the elimination of environments in which animals live and thrive is appropriate if it benefits humanity?
00:39:42
Speaker
i I don't feel that way. I think humanism has some ways to go in how we need to ah adapt and expand our our ethical frameworks to include the the rest of the things that live here with us.
00:39:56
Speaker
Well, and and isn't it interesting that we we have this term humanism, which is in part about decent inter-human relationships.
00:40:07
Speaker
ah And we don't have a word, at least I don't have a word, for ah our relationships to our fellow creatures in a larger whole, right? It's not animism, that's different, it's not animalism, right? yeah ah And yet and still, ah humanism is ah a commonly recognized term. And yet we should have a term that encompasses our relationship to our fellow creatures in a larger whole.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think that if we can workshop that term a little bit, that it can be the title of another book. ah that's That's my suggestion. I think it's a good idea. um i I know a lot of humanists and who I've met throughout the years and and worked with here at Humanist Canada who have said, yeah, we really got to like do better about this. We got to to figure this out.
00:41:00
Speaker
um I've also known others who, ah in more of the religious end of the spectrum, will say things like, well, you know, God gave us dominion over nature. So we're, you know we're allowed to kind of do ah do what we want with it. And this is what we, you know, we should probably do better and probably shouldn't set the whole planet on fire. But we, you know, we we're still, we're still responsible for, or at least ah there's a level of ownership of the natural world that gets kind of discussed there. And I i feel like um you're your book really captures the ah the incredible level of suffering across the board caused by that kind of perspective, which I think has been the dominant perspective of colonial and capitalist powers for generations oh absolutely and right it's it it it it isn't simply in the the judeo-christian tradition right right it's it's been in philosophy uh decartes thought that ah non-human animals were simply machines that they didn't suffer pain uh the philosopher manuel kant who nobody would accuse of not being a good humanist right uh thought that if if you had a cat
00:42:07
Speaker
And I set your cat on fire just for my pleasure. That was the only harm was to you because it was your cat. Right, right. Yeah, I think that we, and and you you bring up not just ah not just examples like that in the book. I remember the cat one vividly, by the way, um and the King Lear one. I was surprised King Lear was your favorite because I don't hear that from a lot of people. ah Usually I hear things like Erases Macbeth or Tempest or something, but King Lear was quite good. Yeah, overrated.
00:42:37
Speaker
Oh, the Tempest was overrated? ah well Well, we'll get into that later. But... um i I really appreciated in your book how you tried to bring people down to a very granular level about some of these questions of animal suffering or human suffering and say, listen, we're like bringing it down to a very, very small number of people.
00:42:59
Speaker
Is this amount of suffering acceptable if everybody else gets, gets to flourish is a, is like a small group of people living in, in ah in, terrible conditions. Okay. If the rest get to get to flourish and then you kind of, ah expand that you're going blow it up and and read it write it right at large and and show up but this is this is the society we live in. We are living in in the West in relative comfort.
00:43:25
Speaker
Some might say shrinking comfort in the middle and lower middle classes ah at the expense of the global south. ah the the places that have been colonized. And you mentioned Brazil as one example, the the lungs of the planet that is ah deforesting itself at a rapid rate to to try and keep up with the Western powers. And you you make the point of saying we maybe want to consider ah paying Brazil to not do that. The countries that have benefited for generations from ah from the the mobilization of wealth out of the global south into the
00:44:01
Speaker
you know, and into the wealthy. And I thought that those examples and the way you kind of broke things down very small and then ah blew them up to sort of sort of show like this is relative to our discussion and our plan in our lives because it's actually happening. um That was a very um from a pedagogical perspective, that was ah a very well done approach to teaching everybody who reading the book, why these are real questions that we have to grapple with, because it's all happening right now. And ah i wanted to start by saying i I really admired that and your ability to to do that.
00:44:36
Speaker
ah But it also created a great deal of alarm for me, because gosh, this is the situation we're in. um youve You mentioned at the beginning of the book that it it was not your most cheerful book.
00:44:50
Speaker
And I'll agree with that. It wasn't nearly as cheerful as your book on death. and You say it's not, ah as emotionally speaking, an easy read. And I agree with that. um But you also say, and i've I've got a little quote here, which I hope it's okay if I read. You say, but we need not become hostages of our alarm.
00:45:11
Speaker
We can use it to mobilize ourselves to make the world better to end or at least minimize the suffering we caused to other animals. We might ask ourselves what lessons we can draw for molding our future existence in order to make it more or at least more nearly justifiable.
00:45:27
Speaker
um I had to take a walk after that point too, but because it was a breath of fresh air now okay maybe we can, maybe we can do this now, and you have some thoughts in the book about specific areas where our species might be able to make so that headway, but could you walk us through some of that.
Addressing Ethical Progress Collectively
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah, and what I try to do in that section of the book is make some suggestions, that that i'm i'm and I'm hardly the first to make these. These have been made many times before, but also look at some of the complications associated with them. So we don't just say, okay, we'll go and do this and this will be fine.
00:46:04
Speaker
yeah ah So for instance, obviously a place to to to make changes would be around factory farming. And yet and still, ah but if we were to end factory farming tomorrow,
00:46:21
Speaker
there are people who can't afford to buy the kinds of meat that say I can afford to buy because I'm privileged. and yeah Actually, I don't eat meat, but if I did, that would be the kind I would buy. ah And so they're going to be, in because they're in food deserts, they're going to be put in a terrible situation. So at the same time that we should think about doing something about factory farm, we also have to think about doing something about poverty.
00:46:48
Speaker
yeah that they that That these two go together.
00:46:53
Speaker
There's another issue and in terms of overpopulation. now Now there are lots of articles coming out about what the the the perils of underpopulation, ah but so we as far as our fellow creatures go, the perils are not with our underpopulation. right there with our overpopulation. And the only thing that's ever been shown really to make ah a significant difference, it's not birth control, it's not educating people about how to have sex, right? yeah It's giving access to women
00:47:24
Speaker
to go to for more education and to get jobs. That's what does it, right? And you can see it in country after country after country. but and That has its own complications, right? Because you want to be able to do that in a way that also respects other cultures ah ah that...
00:47:41
Speaker
may not b ah ah may not be treating women in the same ways that, say, we at least in the West, nominally or ideologically, right, treat women. So there has to be a certain amount of respect in making that go forward. ah One way, ah one example of how that happened at one point was that ah in southern Mexico, there was a revolutionary move with the Zapatistas. Right.
00:48:11
Speaker
And the Zapatistas were seeking to help the indigenous groups in southern Mexico. ah And they started off as sort of more Marxist revolutionaries, but then they were learning from the people there ah different ways of being and different ways of interacting, and it changed their fundamental structure.
00:48:32
Speaker
But one of the things that a number of these indigenous groups were doing was relegating women to second class citizenship. So what they were trying to do was work alongside them, learning from them, but also working with them in the and the context of ah of being able to empower women more. And it it became known as the revolution within the revolution. But that emerged out of an initial respect for the culture ah that they were that they were operating in. So it allowed them to do it. All of it, which is to say all of this stuff is complicated, right? It isn't as simply as simple as saying, okay, let's stop overpopulation. let's um ah Let's just give women access to education and jobs. Let's stop factory farming, right? We have to think about...
00:49:21
Speaker
what all this entails, not to not to forego doing it, but to do it in a more nuanced and self-reflective way.
00:49:32
Speaker
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And I remember when in reading your book, you you did identify not just what the interventions were, but also what some of the challenges were going to be, what the barriers were going to be, ah both on a a small level and and systemically. Yeah. And um I remember, I'm kind of paraphrasing how you discussed that the the barriers to us justifying our continued existence are so often intrinsically tied to capitalist colonial structures. Sure. um My own kind of ah my kind of thinking after reading that was how the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet benefit from so many of these things and benefit from us deferring the costs of the climate crisis and deforestation to future generations. and These are also the people who happen to have doomsday bunkers for them and their loved ones in places like New Zealand.
00:50:23
Speaker
um you know i I can't help but notice that so many of these changes are contingent on on if those people are going to allow them or be made to allow them. That's a more complicated discussion.
00:50:38
Speaker
18th century France comes to mind, but I don't want to get us demonetized, so I'm going to leave the specifics there. to the side, but um because so many of these things rely on things like wealth distribution, you mentioned in terms of poverty, and and policy changes, and wielding political power to try and counter some of the ah the effects of and and the structures of these colonial capitalist structures, it does seem like quite a large job for all of us to do. But you make the point that it's something that collectively we have a great deal of ah power to try to make those things happen.
00:51:14
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. went Think in my country, the US, right? Fundamental changes that have been made, right? The ah ah the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement wasn't a matter of a bunch of Congress people sitting around saying, hey, you know, black folks, we should probably give them the same rights as everybody else, right? They were forced to do it, right, by collective action on the ground. Same thing for women's rights in terms of ah the suffrage act movement. Same thing for LGBTQ rights. These were...
00:51:45
Speaker
basically the powers that be were the last to figure this out, right? It came from below and and it forced powers to think about this, right? And that has happened a bit with the climate crisis. It's it's sort of moved ah moved somewhat backwards as some momentum has been lost, but for a while,
00:52:04
Speaker
ah These movements on the ground all right were were movements that were forcing companies to develop different policies, ah forcing ah ah the Congress, say, to pass was the Inflation Reduction Act with all of its ah ah all of its investments in ah clean energy.
00:52:23
Speaker
ah So these things come about as they always have. but through people on the ground organizing together and forcing the powers to recognize the issue.
00:52:34
Speaker
Yeah. In fact, it's it's one of the only things that ever has. yeah And I think if you look at even the history of unions and the history of even the history of democracy, ah we've got lots of examples where collective action and collective power brought people together to force the powers that be to say, okay, will move. Yep. And, and there are more of us than there are of them. So it's something to remember that we have a great deal of buying power and voting power.
Hope, Action, and Education for the Future
00:53:07
Speaker
And, um you know, I know we're coming up on the end of our time. And I was I was debating whether or not to ask this question, because I think, you know, is this ah a fair question to ask after we've been discussing this book, but but here it is. ah
00:53:20
Speaker
How hopeful are you about our future and our continued existence on planet Earth?
00:53:28
Speaker
Okay, so you're asking me to make a prediction. um I'm not sure I'm asking about a prediction or if I'm asking about your state of devv ah ah of being around our future. Okay, okay. I'm not sure which is more unfair. You can choose. Well, ah let me just say something about prediction first, right? Okay. Just to tell you how truly bad I am at it. All right. So when I was a freshman in college, I was at a place that used to get...
00:54:00
Speaker
um bands right before they broke. ah And so this band came through. It this it was such a small venue, 150 of us maybe. It was so small that the band had to come through the door while we were standing. So I opened the door for the band and and and and let them all in and closed the door and said to a friend of mine, well, that's the best I'll ever do, some small-time band from New Jersey. So that was Bruce Springsteen.
00:54:26
Speaker
Right? so that's that's those are my predictive powers. Right. All right. With that caveat in mind. I mean, in terms of hope, and in some sense, a if you become hopeless, right, then there's no point in in acting.
00:54:46
Speaker
So you you know you soldier on. I teach almost every semester. I teach environment ethics and I teach it as a climate crisis course. I teach animal rights. I teach the philosophy of war. I teach courses to get people to think about what the right thing is to do.
00:55:05
Speaker
ah ah And do i you know do I think this will be a change? i hope it will be. be a change. And in that sense of hope, I suppose I have it. ah But I, you know, i I am also sober about what's likely to happen.
00:55:26
Speaker
Yeah. And in some cases, too much hope or being too optimistic can also lead to inaction because I go, oh I'm sure it's going to be fine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. yeah i have work good i i have I have friends who say, we we don't have to wear the climate crisis. geo Geoengineering is going to take care of it.
00:55:43
Speaker
Well, that'd be nice. I wonder if this geoengineering is in the room with us right now. like ah we're We're taking the Star Trek approach. We're going to eventually invent the technology that will fix the problems until then, you know, keep ordering on Amazon Prime. That's the exactly that's the approach that so that attitude brings. And I'm not i'm not here for it. Well, um before we wrap up, one thing that I've been asking all of our guests lately is, What is one book in one band that you've been enjoying and that you'd like to recommend to our listeners?
00:56:14
Speaker
Okay. ah So the book that I am reading now, The Arrogant Ape, and as I talk, you can probably find the author. Okay. Slipping my mind. Yes, I will that. ah ah it's It's a book about the idea that we are exceptional as human beings. ah ah And she is she's very perceptive at in the little ways in which we do this. She's been studying, I guess, ah ah but ah baboons, apes for for decades. And...
00:56:51
Speaker
So that's a book that, ah let me put this way, I've got 20 pages left, unless it completely falls apart in the last 20 pages. The Arrogant Ape is the one I read. Do you have the author? It is Christine Webb, and that is a great recommendation. It is now on my on my list, not on my Amazon list, but on a on a local bookstore list. So I'm ah i'm excited to give that a try. Thank you. Yeah, so that's that's the book. um As far as band goes, you know I should probably name some band that is not, or singer, that's not going to be that well known. So there is a very good lyricist that most people would never have heard of. a German background, but she lives in the US in the Northeast, Ancha Duvacat.
00:57:35
Speaker
A-N-T-J-E, first name. Duvukot, D-U-V-E-K-O-T. So she's a voice folk singer. Sometimes she sings with other people, but mostly sings by herself. She's a lyricist, a a brilliant lyricist. And she writes you know not just not just the love songs. She has a one of her songs, Dylan Thomas, about standing in front of a grave of A person who died at two years old, not knowing the grave, not knowing the person and what this makes her think about.
00:58:10
Speaker
So she goes in some into some very interesting places. ah Another of her songs is called The Ballad of Fred Noonan. Apparently, Fred Noonan was ah the co-pilot with ah Amelia Earhart.
00:58:26
Speaker
and died in the crash. Nobody knows him. ah This is a song about him and his relationship as she imagines it with Amelia Earhart. So she she writes about fascinating things and in interesting ways. And she has a beautiful voice.
00:58:40
Speaker
Okay, well, I've got that queued up on my ah on my list to listen to. Thank you so much for those recommendations. um Well, so we're at about our time for this episode. And as we're wrapping up, I want to give everybody not only a blank recommendation for your books, Todd, but also a specific recommendation.
00:58:59
Speaker
um In 2019, you published A Decent Life, which is an open and fresh exploration of morality and the expectations we place on ourselves and on each other. And in the context of our discussion today, i think books like A Decent Life are also incredibly important. And for our listeners who might be leaving this conversation feeling a little less sure about the future of our species, I think A Decent Life is a good place to start becoming the kind of person that can contribute to our world.
00:59:29
Speaker
becoming more of a good place. ah So Todd, I wanted to thank you so much for being here and for writing such accessible books filled with a balance of wisdom and humor for folks like me. And I am grateful for your contribution to the human race. I think you have definitely put some lines on the positive side of the ledger. And I know that you have and will continue to inspire others to do so as well.
00:59:56
Speaker
Well, that's really, it's kind of you to say, and I really appreciate your having me on the podcast. These podcasts are important. There's a lot of dreck out there. And having podcasts that are reflective and thoughtful of the kind that you're creating, that also adds a dimension to the world.
01:00:15
Speaker
Well, thank you. I guess no you've said that, I can't ask you to hawk some of our supplements now, but that's okay. Next step. I am kidding. We do not sell supplements. Please don't ask. Todd, thank you so much.
01:00:27
Speaker
Thank you.
01:00:31
Speaker
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01:00:51
Speaker
You can also like and subscribe to us on social media at Humanist Canada. We'll see you next time.