Podcast Benomtad

We discuss the temptation and even sick comfort of a fantasy of an artificial immortality in the movie Solaris. And AI as a complementary You. Plato, health, and maturity. The greedy beast within. 
For the full episode, please click: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9343e-176b04c

I ask my friend what motivates her and she points to the eye of conscience or God. “Conscience,” after all, is constituted partially by knowledge.
 
For the full episode, please click: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9343e-176b04c

After reading Diotima’s speech on how states are made from the renown people want, LL comments that that’s not altruism, and we transition to discussing justice.  It is hard to make the case of being perfectly just even if it costs you your reputation.  The Sophist Thrasymachus would rather gain the fruits of injustice and the benefits of the reputation for justice.  A dilemma in speech… 
 
For the full episode, please click: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9343e-176b04c

Part of a speech in Plato’s Symposium on immortality of the body and the soul, preferring the latter’s progeny as more beautiful.  A paean of philosophical dialogue and friendship. 
For the full episode, please click: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9343e-176b04c

We go off of Plato’s idea in The Symposium of living beings striving for immortality and talk of the Hindu/Buddhist idea of Nirvana, or liberation from this endless cycle.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts, and for the full episode, please click: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9343e-176b04c
And please like, share, and subscribe! Thank you kindly.

It seems that being natural is a key to happiness is almost a cliche, but doesn’t that often conflict with being good as we conceive the two? I believe that being natural and being good (or truthful or beautiful) simultaneously is challenging and requires wisdom.  
What do you think? Please share your thoughts, and for the full episode, please click: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9343e-176b04c
And please like, share, and subscribe! Thank you kindly.

My friend LL and I discuss the idea of impermanence – that everything changes, and that this change includes death – and our thoughts on that ultimate change at the end of life. We mention the Buddhist idea of impermanence and the Thich Nhat Hanh book, The Zen Keys. My friend discusses her attachment to family, but those relationships do eventually end.  Psychological importance of accepting truth.

I read from Plato’s Symposium Diotima’s beautiful recollected speech to Socrates. All living beings have a desire for immortality, but they preserve themselves not by staying the same, but by constant renewal.  This is true not only for our hair, skin, and blood but also for our knowledge. 
 
I’ve never thought of knowledge as a kind of living thing.  What do you think? 
 
For the full episode, please click: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9343e-176b04c
And please like, share, and subscribe! Thank you kindly.

We talk about living in a world without Harold Bloom’s idea of shared myths and how people try to fill holes in the soul with extreme focus on bodily perfection.  Advertising surrounds us with a mist of feeling and takes us outside ourselves.  
Please share your thoughts, and for the full episode, click here:https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/rousseau-happiness-the-difficulty-of-being-content-in-the-modern-world/

In a clip from the Happiness and Natural Goodness episode, my friend LL and I talk about a trend she’s seen on social media to cut off family.  There are acronyms for this and people seem to do it for rather insignificant reasons.  Isn’t difficulty part of having familial and really any relations?
Please share your thoughts, and for the full episode, click here:https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/rousseau-happiness-the-difficulty-of-being-content-in-the-modern-world/