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Since the widespread acceptance of the scientific method emerged in the 19th century, most people like to think of their ideas as based on sound reasoning and rational principles. But it’s also the case that many of us also want to believe that there are things that people in olden times figured out. Depending on whom you ask, ancient people had the answers about what a moral life looks like, how to avoid stress, or even how to cure diseases and illnesses.
In some cases, old ideas have merit and are worth considering, but in many cases, they are simply old ideas. The age of a concept should have no bearing on its truthfulness. But that’s not a concept that some people are willing to consider.
Where people think about science in their own life, and how they want society to be structured with regard to it, is in fact one of the core questions of this political moment in this country and around the world, how do we deal with people who refuse to believe in science? And is it possible to go too far in that regard as well?
How those questions are resolved are kind of mixing and mashing political ideologies on both the left and the right. And we're especially seeing that in the person of Marianne Williamson, who is basically a yoga self help guru who is now running for the presidential nomination in the Democratic Party for the second time and has a lot of very strange and bizarre ideas.
But is she a leftist? It's a question worth considering. And joining the show to talk about that, among many other things in this regard, is Matthew Remski.
He is the co host of the Conspirituality podcast and also is the co author of a book that he and his co hosts have put out, called Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.
One of the topics discussed in this episode (at 19:40) is how political ideologies overlap with each other and should not be understood on a simple left-to-right line. Visit the article version of this episode to view the graphs mentioned or watch the program on video. If you're a subscriber, you'll also be able to read the full transcript as well.
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Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.
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Theory of Change #072: Matthew Remski on Marianne Williamson and the strange hybrid worldview of self-help