Encounter #5 — COVID-19 and Systems-Level Thinking, the Classroom as Polity, and an Army of Socrateses

The Bullshit Artists

After some housekeeping and a brief revisit of police violence, Rory and Jack begin this episode with a consideration of COVID-19, especially focusing on its possible origins and the widespread resistance in the US to vaccination. This topic then segues into a larger discussion of systems-level thinking, including particularly the absence of that capacity among the general public and the subsequent failure to act on or even to perceive various systems-level problems in society. Next, the conversation turns to the education system's utter inability to facilitate the development of such thinking skills among students—a shortcoming that Rory suggests is a deliberate one operating in service of the schooling system's sociological function of replicating and perpetuating capitalist social arrangements. Finally, Jack asks Rory a series of questions about his beliefs regarding political revolution in the United States, which the pair examine in light of the looming climate crisis.