Thursday, September 13, 2012

Episode 1: Dr. Roderick Hart

Each of our interviews will be made available as a podcast. You can subscribe to our In Search of the Common Podcast here.


In this episode:



*The significance of China bashing over the years
*The beauty of hate's dialectic
*A modest proposal for changing Olympic swimming
*Extremism as attacking for the sake of attacking
*Why Presidents can't fix economies
*The importance of having a sharp knife to cut the meat
*How the internet has made us third graders
*How speed hurts
*On the significance of staying empirical
*Love as an investment in the other

Below the jump...








2 comments:

  1. One of my absolute favorite parts of our interview with Dr. Hart was his "proposal for changing Olympic swimming." With his comparison of Olympic swimming to the concept of hate he was able to take a usually very complex subject and make it sound so simple. At first, I didn't think much of it and thought of it as more of a joke, but then as we continued with our discussion Dr. Hart continued to refer back his original analogy. The more he referred to this analogy, the clearer the idea became. Dr. Hart explains the Olympic swimmers diving in the pool and then turning around by pushing of the wall is much more exciting to watch than his version of not being able to push of the wall. This is because the power exhibited by the swimmers pushing off the wall is what spectators want to watch. Dr. Hart also explains that the swimmers do not "hate" the wall, but are merely using the wall for propulsion in the water. This can be viewed as analogous to the concept of hate. People may not truly hate the others but rather are using them to propel themselves or their cause further. People or groups using hate to advance are treating the other people/groups as the "wall." I found this concept very intriguing and I am thankful for Dr. Hart's powerful insight.

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  2. I, also, really enjoyed his analogy of pushing off the wall. I thought his point of China being the wall that presidential nominee's push off of was incredibly true. Every nominee talks about how he will handle China better than the current one and put China in its place, instilling a sense of Americanism. However, once in office, every president realizes that China must be dealt with diplomatically. I felt this was a perfect example of the hate that Dr. Hart describes in his article. As campaigners, nominees must polarize themselves and therefore use hate of something, in this case China, to push themselves forward. However, once elected they become more moderate to try and get the best for their nation, thus dealing with China in a moderate and compromising way.

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