Jeremy Lent on the Pandemic as a Catalyst for Deep Societal and Value Transformation

This podcast episode features Rob Johnson and Jeremy Lent discussing the profound, long-term societal transformations anticipated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lent argues that while immediate concerns are critical, the pandemic's ultimate impact will be on a scale not seen since World War II, blowing open the 'Overton window' and making previously unthinkable concepts like universal basic income or increased state surveillance mainstream. He emphasizes that this transformation presents both significant risks, such as the rise of surveillance states, and opportunities for positive systemic change, urging a focus on 'fractal wedges' that can drive long-term shifts.\n\nA central theme is the critique of neoliberalism and the prevailing economic paradigm, which Lent, echoing Kate Raworth's 'Donut Economics,' likens to fire: powerful and useful, but destructive if unrestrained. He contends that markets have been elevated to a 'deity' rather than being seen as a tool, leading to the corrosion of human values and institutions that serve the common good. The conversation highlights the historical shift from moral and ethical discourse in public policy, exemplified by Adam Smith and David Hume, to a 'dry, antiseptic, technocratic, value-free' approach that has obscured fundamental human needs and justified cruelty under the guise of 'economic justice' or the 'Horatio Alger myth.'\n\nLent asserts that a fundamental shift in values is required, challenging the foundational worldview inherited from the 17th-18th century Scientific Revolution, which falsely portrays nature as a machine and humans as separate, rational maximizers of individual benefit. Modern science, he argues, has debunked these notions, revealing humans as inherently communal beings driven by 'moral emotions' like fairness, compassion, and altruism. He introduces his concept of the 'patterning instinct,' explaining how culture, often implicitly through mass media and corporate influence, shapes our values from a young age, instilling 'false values' of consumerism, status, and competition that lead to anxiety and societal dysfunction.\n\nThe discussion concludes with a call to action for offering coherent, meaningful alternatives to the current system, moving beyond the outdated dichotomy of capitalism vs. state socialism. Lent, referencing Slavoj Žižek, notes the difficulty many have in imagining an end to capitalism, underscoring the need to deconstruct deeply ingrained value systems. He and Johnson draw on thinkers like Rene Girard, Stephen Toulmin, and Muriel Rukeyser to illustrate how people seek truth and meaning, and how fear can lead societies to 'lurch back to the familiar' during crises, emphasizing the critical role of vision and faith in navigating towards a more just, community-centric, and ecologically harmonious future." "concepts": [ "Overton window

"the long-term impacts are going to be huge and quite potentially they're way way bigger than many of us realize"

"the overton window is blown wide open"

"markets are a tool they're a tool to facilitate something that are the ends that philosophers theologians and humanists talk about markets are not a deity"

"we need ultimately to look at our value system and that has to be where the change has to take place"

"the concepts and ideas that many leading thinkers...just take for granted are these ideas from hundreds of years ago that have actually been shown to be completely wrong by modern science"

"this concept of a human as a ultimately being identified as a individual and then not just as an individual but as a rational maximizer of a benefit as an individual and each of those elements have been shown by modern science in many different disciplines to be just wrong"

"if the marginal productivity which is a metaphor is such that you cannot afford a reasonable life for you or your family it doesn't feel anything like justice"

"for humans to flourish we have to begin to re-discover what is actually our natural way of identifying which is a different layers of community"

"our values and our ways of making meaning our ways of making sense of the world they are not...pre-wired in our...brains when we're formed"

"your job is to be a consumer your status is based on how much material prestige you have over other people you you need to compete against others in order to get more of something so you can like win according to these values"

"it's easier really to visualize the the end of civilization as a whole than to and visualize the end of capitalism from many people"

"it is the characteristic of society to become indoctrinated and familiar with a certain mindset and then when the fault lines become apparent the pain gets so extreme that people essentially become frightened and lurch back to the familiar rather than driving forward"