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Mar 30, 2022Liked by Michael David Cobb Bowen

I want to listen, but I don’t want to download another app to do so. Is it anywhere else besides podbean?

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Here's the original website. You can directly download: https://www.politicsandreligion.us/e/michaeldcbowen_freeblackthought/

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Fantastic! Listening to it now. Will review and advise.

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Mar 31, 2022·edited Mar 31, 2022

I enjoyed it a great deal. You said that, with regards to the university and society being less open, or hostile, to seeking the truth via free inquiry conducted with respect and humor, that it’s not as bad as the 70’s.

Could you expand on that?

Also, please correct me if my summary of your thoughts is incorrect.

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In the 1970s we had double digit inflation, our immediate memories were of deadly race riots, and our most popular films were disaster movies. The Cold War was in full effect and the culture of reform was not. I think today there is a great deal of hype that America is broken, in the 1970s we were resigned to the fact that it was. It was a much more hopeless time. Air pollution was real. Underground nuclear tests were real. Murderous motorcycle gangs were real. Racial segregation was solid. I remember the 70s as Establishment vs Rebel Hippies with no moderation between. Essentially no room for alternatives and no imagination.

I think about it this way. Everyone who ever said that they 'experimented with drugs' did so because they honestly believed that it was impossible to think your way out of the Establishment - that America was at an intellectual / logical dead end and that the only way to escape was to alter your brain chemistry and try to recall something from an acid trip that painted a new way into the future.

Go look at the Apple 1984 commercial again. It was revolutionary because nobody had any alternative vision of the future. That's the shortest way to explain. Maybe I'll write something further.

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