Hi Andrew, I think in order to reach a larger audience perhaps you can build some name recognition for yourself. One way to do it would be to write a piece for a left magazine such as Jacobin or Current Affairs etc. You have a lot of great material already on this substack. You could even re-use and expand some of it to write a really nice article (or articles) which I am sure would have a good chance of being published. And in your byline there, your substack can be mentioned. Thus, you would attract more eyeballs to this substack. Its a slow process but I think getting published in a left outlet could be a good start! All the best!
Reluctantly side-stepping the more difficult question about the left, to comment on expanding your audience: I went through your back catalogue and you have a really impressive range of interviews. These are really interesting and you've put a lot of thought into them. I wonder if you might consider making video versions of some of them, drawing out their main conclusions and ideas, i.e., the Gallistel and Levin ones.
This would not be cannibalizing your Substack so much as promoting it, since there is a real appetite for digestible interviews on interesting scientific and philosophical topics on YT, not to mention the boost by the discovery algorithm. Perhaps think of it like taking out an ad for the main gig.
I think the left is getting too caught up in definitions and labels and assigning a moral ranking system to those labels. There's probably many geniuses on the left, but you can't hear about them because they don't pass the positive hashtag threshold for you to see them. The old dudes you mentioned were educated before cultural self criticism became the main intellectual thrust of liberal education. It's difficult to talk about systems of power and economic inequality when your audience is going to attack you for not saying things the right way, being an ethnicity or identity associated with oppression, or not brandishing the correct hashtag. There's way too much recreational outrage muddying the waters out there.
The right has it easy in some ways. Whatever the message is, the goal is the same, and they have an easier time allying with people they disagree with on some things in order to achieve their goals. The left seems to need a more complete agreement to all positions to consider other people allies. For example, If person A is LGBTQ and 'Green', and person B is anti-choice Christian and 'Green' do you think they will see eye-to-eye enough to agree on legislation for 'Green' technologies and tax incentives? I don't.
The "left" is a term Chomsky dislikes, and there is by now even better reason for than in the 80ies or 90ies when he coined this (mentioned in Understanding Power, if I'm not mistaken). Climate breakdown is imminent if we don't manage to talk to people in their own terms in order to organize massive and popular civil resistance.
I've worked within Extinction Rebellion NL for the past few years and I noticed the same identitarian activist tropes taking foothold - trying to appeal through "justice" language that only appeals to a tiny sliver of the same online left, putting massive amounts of energy in workshops that only they themselves are interested in, putting out solidarity statements for issues that are none of ours to do something with, not accepting fair strategic criticism in the name of the same justice arguments and "choosing the side of the oppressed"
It is really not that hard actually if a group of committed people have a good and convincing story and are willing to do the hard work of talking, talking and keeping on talking to people to organize effective material resistance. Also doing the hard work of going to community centers to reach out to those who don't read these kind of blogs. Doing door to door campaigns. It's the idea XR started with but largely abandoned in the name of creating safe spaces and social justice.
The left and the right are both part of the global philosophy known as "Western civilization". Although it seems like the entire world, it's actually only one of many completely different ways of thinking about the world. Neither you nor I nor anyone we know knows any of the others, but it's obvious whom to ask to find some. I suggest you go to your local indigenous tribe, and arrange a meeting with a keeper of ancient wisdom.
Hi Andrew, I think in order to reach a larger audience perhaps you can build some name recognition for yourself. One way to do it would be to write a piece for a left magazine such as Jacobin or Current Affairs etc. You have a lot of great material already on this substack. You could even re-use and expand some of it to write a really nice article (or articles) which I am sure would have a good chance of being published. And in your byline there, your substack can be mentioned. Thus, you would attract more eyeballs to this substack. Its a slow process but I think getting published in a left outlet could be a good start! All the best!
Reluctantly side-stepping the more difficult question about the left, to comment on expanding your audience: I went through your back catalogue and you have a really impressive range of interviews. These are really interesting and you've put a lot of thought into them. I wonder if you might consider making video versions of some of them, drawing out their main conclusions and ideas, i.e., the Gallistel and Levin ones.
This would not be cannibalizing your Substack so much as promoting it, since there is a real appetite for digestible interviews on interesting scientific and philosophical topics on YT, not to mention the boost by the discovery algorithm. Perhaps think of it like taking out an ad for the main gig.
I think the left is getting too caught up in definitions and labels and assigning a moral ranking system to those labels. There's probably many geniuses on the left, but you can't hear about them because they don't pass the positive hashtag threshold for you to see them. The old dudes you mentioned were educated before cultural self criticism became the main intellectual thrust of liberal education. It's difficult to talk about systems of power and economic inequality when your audience is going to attack you for not saying things the right way, being an ethnicity or identity associated with oppression, or not brandishing the correct hashtag. There's way too much recreational outrage muddying the waters out there.
The right has it easy in some ways. Whatever the message is, the goal is the same, and they have an easier time allying with people they disagree with on some things in order to achieve their goals. The left seems to need a more complete agreement to all positions to consider other people allies. For example, If person A is LGBTQ and 'Green', and person B is anti-choice Christian and 'Green' do you think they will see eye-to-eye enough to agree on legislation for 'Green' technologies and tax incentives? I don't.
Hey Andrew,
The "left" is a term Chomsky dislikes, and there is by now even better reason for than in the 80ies or 90ies when he coined this (mentioned in Understanding Power, if I'm not mistaken). Climate breakdown is imminent if we don't manage to talk to people in their own terms in order to organize massive and popular civil resistance.
I've worked within Extinction Rebellion NL for the past few years and I noticed the same identitarian activist tropes taking foothold - trying to appeal through "justice" language that only appeals to a tiny sliver of the same online left, putting massive amounts of energy in workshops that only they themselves are interested in, putting out solidarity statements for issues that are none of ours to do something with, not accepting fair strategic criticism in the name of the same justice arguments and "choosing the side of the oppressed"
It is really not that hard actually if a group of committed people have a good and convincing story and are willing to do the hard work of talking, talking and keeping on talking to people to organize effective material resistance. Also doing the hard work of going to community centers to reach out to those who don't read these kind of blogs. Doing door to door campaigns. It's the idea XR started with but largely abandoned in the name of creating safe spaces and social justice.
See also this interview with Roger Hallam: https://metacpc.org/en/hallam/
Let me know if you want to have a zoom call sometime on this throwaway email address: mlclm@protonmail.com
The left and the right are both part of the global philosophy known as "Western civilization". Although it seems like the entire world, it's actually only one of many completely different ways of thinking about the world. Neither you nor I nor anyone we know knows any of the others, but it's obvious whom to ask to find some. I suggest you go to your local indigenous tribe, and arrange a meeting with a keeper of ancient wisdom.