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SCP#2
Welcome to our second episode of Sensible Centrist Podcast. Today’s guest is Laura London, an American writer who has a particular interest in water and land management, and has also talked about changes in American culture, Orthodox Christianity, and the works of Carl Jung and Jordan Peterson.
She certainly knows her areas of expertise well, and I thoroughly enjoyed having her on the show. Make sure to subscribe to her Substack and support her work!
Timestamps
- Introduction – 00:00 – 03:15
- Laura’s understanding of the relationship between equality and abundance (Laura’s article here) – 03:16 – 04:45
- How Laura’s hair being damaged by plumbing water led her down the path of research – 04:46 – 06:42
- Decline of California, and bad environmental policies – 06:43 – 08:20
- Laura explains why America stopped building – 08:21 – 09:20
- I discuss the difference between Teddy Roosevelt-style conservationism and NIMBY, modern red tape environmentalism – 09:21 – 10:38
- Why Laura disapproved of Trump’s policies regarding L.A fires – 10:39 – 12:08
- What are Laura’s partisan affiliations? – 12:09 – 12:35
- Is Florida today like California yesterday? – 12:36 – 13:40
- Does Laura think the American frontier spirit has died, or can it be revitalised? – 13:41 – 14:46
- My take on the American Homestead Acts (I incorrectly said 10 million families, it was 1.6 million families which amounted 10% of the area of the United States) – 14:47 – 15:40
- Does Laura think the US can revive homesteading? – 15:41 – 16:34
- Are Trump’s ‘Freedom Cities’ going to happen, or are they akin to ‘Trump Gaza’? – 16:35 – 18:00
- I ask if Mars can replicate the American Western frontier – 18:01 – 19:28
- I mention how it’s disappointing that, compared how Mars and Venus were imagined by science fiction writers in the early and mid 20th centuries, the real Mars and Venus are so inhospitable – 19:29 – 20:49
- I ask Laura whether the film ‘Mulholland Drive’ is related to William Mulholland (link to her article on him) – 20:49 – 21:26
- How environmentalists, by opposing innovation, can be their own worst enemy (such as with nuclear), and how environmentalism became Woke-coded – 21:27 – 23:37
- I argue that nuclear regulations that radiation be ‘as low as possible’ has obstructed progress, even when new innovations could reduce such exposure – 23:38 – 25:14
- Laura relates this sentiment back to water policy – 25:15 – 26:24
- Can the GOP outflank the Democrats on an ‘effective environmentalism’ – 26:25 – 27:55
- Laura majored in neurology but decided college wasn’t for her, has the university become redundant? – 27:56 – 30:13
- Laura’s journey towards Orthodox Christianity? – 30:14 – 31:13
- My period of interest in Orthodox Christianity – 31:14 – 32:24
- Why Laura sees Orthodoxy as distinct from Jungianism and Petersonianism – 32:25 – 33:04
- My deep appreciation for Orthodox aesthetics – 33:04 – 33:44
- Laura continues her comparison between Orthodox Christianity and the work of Carl Jung and Jordan Peterson – 33:45 – 34:12
- I suggest my confusion is stupidly confusing Orthodox Christianity with Gnostic elements. Laura suggests there is no link between Orthodoxy and Gnosticism whatsoever – 34:13 – 36:20
- I argue lots of men love Orthodoxy because it is ‘based’ and ‘macho’, and perhaps being drawn in more for the aesthetics than genuinely believing its the One True Church – 36:21 – 37:19
- Laura understands the appeal of the aesthetics, but doesn’t think it is ‘the heart of what Orthodoxy truly is’ – 37:20 – 37:38
- Laura’s article ‘Art, Propaganda, and the Tyranny of Ideology’ and my objections to it – 37:39 – 43:20
- Laura believes in order for something to be art, it needs to ‘express what it means to be human’, but I respond by posing the question that, ‘isn’t that just another ideology?’ Is modern art infected by the emphasis on ‘the artist’s authenticity and message’ at the expense of visual beauty? – 43:21 – 44:35
- I praise how articulate and intelligent Laura comes across – 44:36 – 44:53
- Has AI art cheapened art, or made creative expression more accessible to those without specialist skills? – 44:54 – 46:58
- What does Laura think about using AI as a tool, with humans synthesising the generations together? – 46:59 – 48:22
- Will the ease of AI image creation lead to a similar movement to the Victorian ‘Arts and Crafts’? – 48:23 – 49:38
- What is artistic genius? Is it possible in the modern age? – 49:39 – 52:10
- Is AI art just a sped up demonstration of the fact that most art is derivative, and if AI wouldn’t have copied it, human beings would have done so, even if slower? – 52:11 – 53:06
- Going back to the environment, I compare Laura’s article ‘How Nuclear Fear Drove Stagnation’ and her mention of Paul Elrich’s 1969 book ‘The Population Bomb’, and my article on the film Blade Runner. Great works of science fiction reflect the anxieties of the time period in which they are written in, which in the late 20th century was overpopulation. But whilst those fears turned out to be overblown, will population bust be far more of a challenge? 53:07 – 54:49
- After Laura talks about people having less children because they want more wealth for themselves, I ask whether the libertarian and traditional conservative critiques of the welfare state echo the same concerns, that it reduces the dependence on the family? The individualistic society is dependent on a welfare state that, because it has propped up this artificially hedonistic lifestyle, will be the source of its own demise due to demographic collapse – 54:50 – 55:46
- Laura emphasises housing costs as a major factor in fertility collapse, but wants to have children one day – 55:47 – 56:31
- Closing – 56:32 – 57:12
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