1280: Inside the Liberal Arts: Fascism, Politics, and Critical Thinking with Independent Writer Jeff Scheuer

Robert Plank 0:00 Music. We're here with Mr. Jeff Scheuer, and he's a writer and independent scholar. He's the author of inside the liberal arts, critical thinking and citizenship. Mr. Jeff has that book on Amazon. It accomplishes two ambitious goals at once. It explains the nature and purpose of liberal learning, and it offers a probing, accessible, guided tour of critical thinking. So we're going to find out today about how we can become better thinkers. We'll find out about Mr. Jeff Scheuer and his beliefs, ideas, opinions, knowledge and so much else. So Mr. Jeff, how are you today? I'm great. Thanks, Robert. How are you doing? I am fabulous. I'm excited to talk to you. I still think, even today, months later, about there was something in your book, and maybe you can tell me what I'm talking about here. There was something about, like, when you have an idea, there's like, five levels of depth to it. And that was just one random thought in your book out of many. And I think about that so much, right? That there's you have some concept, and there's like, what a beginner might ask, or what an expert might ask, or different things in between. And so your book kind of danced around all these ways of, like, thinking better. So I mean, you tell me, like, what has you hot and bothered? What has you excited? What are you working on?

Jeff Scheuer 1:23 What am I working on right now is something quite different. Robert, I just completed an essay on terrorism in a moral context, terrorism, which I was asked to write by a journal that's that I wrote a book, sorry, wrote an essay about terrorism for them 35 years ago, if you can believe I was actually alive in writing at that time, and they came back to me to reassess it. It's called the Fletcher forum of world affairs. And so I really was trying to head in a different direction. After writing about the liberal arts, I wanted to get into lighter and less academic things, but I couldn't turn down this opportunity to kind of bookend something I'd written, written so long ago. And it was a really interesting exercise not to get too too diverted by this, but it was a very interesting exercise in re examining my own thoughts about a particular topic that's not kind of on my front burner now, it wasn't even really on my front burner then, but I had some ideas about how to look at it through a moral lens, at the question of terrorism, which was very much alive in the late 80s and early 90s as it is today, and to reassess it, and what I found was, in a way that relates to my book inside the liberal arts, is that my views on international terrorism were more nuanced. I stand by some basic ideas that I had in that essay. I don't think it was wrong, but I I find now that in spite of being older and creakier, I do have new I knew ways of looking at it that are much more inflected by or informed by critical thinking and by the focus on language itself as as the medium in which Critical Thinking swim, so to speak. So in a way, it's very much influenced by the having written the book inside the liberal arts that I take a very different and more expansive and interconnected view of terrorism and other kinds of violence than I did 35 years ago. So it's kind of it was kind of an interesting mirror on my own evolution thought wise. And now I'm going to do an essay on fascism, which I think is very pertinent to our situation in the world and in the United States right now, also looking at it in terms of language, in terms of critical thinking, how we analyze a concept like fascism, how do we how we apply it to what we're seeing, and so forth. So that's what gets me hot and bothered under the collar, as you put it right now. And I'm just about to start on that, on that essay, and then continue to talk about the liberal arts,

Robert Plank 4:25 wonderful. So it seems like in these many contexts, you are a thinker, you're a speaker and you're a writer. And there's just been so many times when I would read some random newspaper article or blog posts and I would be like, hey, that gets me thinking, or that kind of helps articulate, like, sometimes my some, I would have beliefs that are kind of scattered around, and I would be like, hey, you know that kind of, like, encapsulates a lot of what I'm saying. And so as far as like, the the value you provide, right, would you say, like, Are you a deep thinker? Or, like, kind of like, what would you say? A you do compared to other professions?

Jeff Scheuer 5:03 Yeah, well, my background is in philosophy, so I can't really run away from the label of deep thinker. It's just not possible. So I'm not going to pretend I'm a shallow thinker, and deep thinking doesn't it's abstract. Yes, even in the book, there's some abstraction, but abstraction is what we do all the time. When we think and use language, we just aren't aware of it so much. And it's looking it's looking at the world in more general ways. It's not looking at a different direction from the world as people sometimes imply. It's not irrelevant, it's not esoteric. It's just a different way of thinking that takes, takes things in, in in larger measure, so to speak. So I'm a I'm, you could say, a fan of abstraction, and I try to demystify it and and one of my core themes in the book is we are all philosophers. We are all abstract thinkers. Just because we use language, that's what we're doing. We're we're speaking in generalities, even when we talk about objects or events. That's the nature of language, and that's the nature of thought. So yeah, the whole idea of critical thinking is not to turn us into philosophers, but to say you're already a philosopher, whether you like it or not, this will make you a better one. This will make you a clearer thinker, a deeper, a broader, a more efficient thinker. That's kind of one of my main underlying messages. And then going back to what you said about the media, no, we tend to think of philosophy as in a totally different category, or critical thinking, which is really a kind of philosophy on the fly, so to speak, it's philosophy in a context. It's not something else, but I see it very much connected with media. Both are ways to access the truth. Both are dealing with reality and not with something else. Higher education is learning and picking up a newspaper or reading a blog on the internet is learning. So it's all on the learning and knowledge spectrum. It's just maybe different parts of the spectrum, but very much connected and very, very much connected in terms of the ultimate sort of purpose of it all, which is what it's to be a better citizen. It's to be a more of higher functionality as a thinker about the world, to be more aware of how you fit in the world, so to speak. And like I said, to realize you're already a thinker. But if you're a conscious, conscious human being, you can't do anything about that. Deal with it. Deal with the world. Relate to it. See how you fit in, see see how you want the world to be. Have intelligent opinions. And that's by I. I've been a media theorist for a number of years, I've written two books on politics and media, and I see it very much on the spectrum with the kind of philosophical thinking or critical thinking that I do in the book on the liberal arts. It's very much on the same spectrum and not a different universe.

Robert Plank 8:42 Well, we could definitely use your help in thinking better and to be more solid and clear on our beliefs and more informed and what's going on around us without being needlessly stressed out. And I like what you're saying here about being a more informed citizen and knowing what you want for the future, because it seems, seems like the the truth has always been under attack, but especially the last decade or so. You just you see so much of like the like catchy phrases, or you see like a like a civil rights issue being turned into a political issue. Or you see multiple anecdotes, sort of cherry picked and collected, as if that's that's data, and that's the truth. And there's just all these different ways that it just seems like the the truth seems to be under attack, at least it seems to me. And so how do we combat this? How do we think better and and kind of pursue this goal that you're mentioning here of being a better citizen, wanting a better future?

Jeff Scheuer 9:40 Yeah. Great question. There's an old saying that a lie can go halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on. Meaning lies especially on on the internet, where algorithms, you know, propagate them. Um. Are very hard to combat, which means we have to be more critical thinkers than we needed to be 30 years ago, 40 years ago, when all you had to do was open a newspaper or watch Walter Cronkite on the news. It's it's a tougher environment. Now it's more challenging, and that's a problem, because that's an obstacle to citizenship. My first book was called the soundbite society, which is exactly what you're talking about. It's how and that was in the very dawn of the Internet age. That book was published in 1999 I had probably had an email account for seven or eight years by then, but a website for maybe one or two years, and there was no social media at the time. So in a way, it was still an age of innocence. But I was talking in terms of electronic media. But I was talking about television as it was then, and radio as the primary electronic media of that time. And I think what I said then still applies now. It was a it was a somewhat controversial take on electronic media and how they impact politics, but I haven't retreated from it. I still think my core message in that book was that by atomizing information and simplifying information in a way and breaking it down, electronic media favor the right and hurt the left, because the left has a much more integrated, complex world View. And I think electronic media war and still are barriers to seeing the world in that way, structural barriers, not intentionally or maliciously, but structurally, a bigger hurdle for progressive ideas and values than they are for conservative ideas and values. I'm not even sure we have any conservatism left in this country, but people have told me I should write the book, or I should update the book for our times, and I wish I could, but I'm on to other things now, and I'd love to find a younger person to do that. For me, that was the argument of the first book. And then I evolved. My attention drifted into the questions of journalistic excellence and democracy. That democracy, that was the second book. It was called, the big picture why democracies need journalistic excellence. And then I needed to get out of media theory for a while and try something a little new, although a lot of the ideas carried over. And that's how I got into thinking about the liberal arts, which is where I started, where my education started, with philosophy. And I'd always been interested in the relation of critical thinking to, for example, media literacy, civic literacy, things like that. So in a way, it was a natural progression to inside the liberal arts, even if it seems like a different focus than the media oriented focus of my first two books, and I absolutely loved writing this book. It allowed me to explore things that are deeply important to me, about thinking about civics and democracy, all of that about higher education and where it is right now and where it needs to be. And the problems are huge, especially right now. The problems are huge in terms of bringing us back to or forward to a place where I'd like this country to be, where we're not all in agreement, but we all tolerate disagreement. We all value democracy. That's been a problem. And, you know, that's why I'm now writing about fascism. But that's kind of where, where, where I'm going and getting, getting our culture and our system back to a healthy democracy, I think will take many years this point, I think we're in real trouble.

Robert Plank 14:33 Yes, we are, and a lot of work to be done and a lot of things to think and do differently. And I love just hearing about your different accomplishments and ideas and kind of your writing adventures, right and figure and getting a good a better hold on what it is that you believe and exploring your own ideas through this kind of expression. It's great to hear about your enthusiasm in that way. And so as far as getting people excited. About this book inside the liberal arts, like, who should dive into it and what will they learn in it?

Jeff Scheuer 15:08 Anyone who's really curious, anyone who really wants to be civically engaged in an intelligent way, I would say that it would span from particularly motivated high school students, to many college undergrads, many, many graduate students, Junior Scholars. I think if you're, if you're been in academics a while, you're probably going to be familiar with my ideas. But if you're coming into it, or if you're a person who's into lifelong learning, or, you know, being active, being engaged, being curious, it'll make you, I have to just say this, it'll make you a better thinker. I guarantee that.

Robert Plank 16:00 Wonderful. So if you want to be a better thinker, you want to check out inside the liberal arts. And then as far as what you have coming up, like this book on fascism, like you said, it's a real timely subject, and you sort of see the scariness happen, right? You see the admiration of the strong man. You see the attacking the marginalized groups that are simultaneously weak and strong, it starts to sometimes check off the bullet point items. And so as far as getting us awareness and this book you're working on, like, what should we know? And what are you writing that's unique, that's new,

Jeff Scheuer 16:37 good question. Again, Robert, it's not yet a book. It's an essay at this point that I haven't finished, but it was prompted by two things, first of all, the current political situation, and secondly, reading a brilliant essay on fascism by Umberto Eco, the Italian writer, which was written 30 years ago, but it applies across the board right now. It was an essay called ur fascism, u r, hyphen fascism, and it was in the New York Review of Books in 1995 I came across it recently, and it completely reflected and clarified my own ideas about what's going on right now. So my plan at the moment is simply to kind of plug that into the current situation and show how his approach, which breaks it down to different fascism to different definitional components, and shows that historically, he grew up under Mussolini, by the way, in Italy, so he knows what he's talking about. Shows the different elements of fascism and different historical incidents and incidents and different types. They're not all the same, but they all have certain common elements, like what you mentioned, like the desire for a strong man, one of the, I think, one of the most interesting aspects of it, and this is getting away a little from the liberal arts, but we're, we're Talking analytically here, so nothing totally escapes the liberal arts. One of the most interesting parts of it, to me is the realization that that I think applies in America right now, which is, fascism is not an ideology. It's not a belief system or a thought system. It's a, it's a way of harnessing human emotions, and almost by put passing thought, it's, it's, it's a way of using rage and resentment and prejudice, bringing out, really the worst in people, as Hitler did, as Mussolini did, as Franco did in Spain, as as, in some ways, Putin in Russia. I mean, all over the place. Each each incident is different, as I said, but there's, there's common bedrock, and that's, that's what echo talks about in his in his essay, and that's what I hope to do in mine. You know, I wouldn't presume to update what he says, but I think I will. I will expand on a little and try to show how it's working right now in the American context, I think we're seeing a lot of fascism in our paradoxically in our still somewhat democratic government. That's one of the paradoxes of fascism, but that's what I'll be writing about in the next couple of months. And I have a translator who who will help me place it in a French journal, hopefully, and then we'll see if the English version can come out here. That's that's the plan. I wasn't really planning to write about politics as we enter this dark period, but I feel like I have to get this out. I have more escapist feelings that I have to battle against, to stay in areas that are more comforting and to write about. But I feel like this is needed.

Robert Plank 20:35 And so, yeah, sometimes you get pulled into a project and it just it speaks to you, and you have no choice but to do it. And I love some of these themes that we're mentioning here right? There's this idea of of taking something from decades ago and then and seeing like how it applies today. There's looking at kind of different stories that are like similar but not identical, and looking at the Compare and contrast. And it sometimes is a playful way for us to understand a complex situation or understand a paradox, or understand, well here, here's what these things are, and here's what, what your approach is. It's it's just interesting to think about some of these big ideas. And so as far as getting attention to what you have going on and what you do, my understanding is that you teach and you have a sub stack and you have many other resources. So if someone was super impressed by these kind of concepts that you laid out here, Mr. Jeff Scheuer, what are some next steps here? What's the call to action?

Jeff Scheuer 21:36 Read my blog. It's not all about politics. Most of it isn't but it started out as a way to promote the book, and I kind of to regurgitate the book, so to speak, when I first started it about two years ago, but I very quickly learned, happily, that that wasn't going to happen and that wasn't going to be very interesting for people to read. So what it ended up being was taking little bits and pieces and points of light within the liberal arts on any subject, from philosophy to history to art to whatever baseball and kind of plug my ideas into it. And so it expands on the book in a way that I think is much more accessible to to readers than parts of the book are, and parts of it are, are challenging. They're worth the challenge, but they're challenging, whereas the blog posts are fairly short and on point and a little more concrete, so to speak. So so that's been a very happy evolution, and I'm hoping, in fact, maybe, that some of those blog posts will ultimately become a book of their own. But we'll see. We'll see. I've done about 50 of them. I've got at least another 30 or 40 in the pipeline, so it comes out every two weeks, and it's not a long read. So I would urge people to look that up. You can get it on my website, jeffreyScheuer.com or on sub stack and what to do, whatever you're prompted to do, protest, March, vote, send postcards to voters, no matter what your politics are. I'm tolerant of the entire political spectrum, but we're now in a very weird period where the spectrum has shrunk, and then there's a huge anti democratic component in our politics, which is really off the spectrum, because it's against the spectrum, so to speak, it's anti democratic, and that's that's a big problem. But as far as traditional left right are concerned, I have my views. One can find them out by reading but, but I'm tolerant and respectful of everything from pretty far left to pretty far right, as long as they subscribe to basic democratic values.

Robert Plank 24:11 Well, okay, and so it's so important for us to be informed about all these things that way we know what we believe and we can take appropriate citizen positive action and and not just be passive, and not just life or not let, not let fascism or whatever take over. We need to take control and do our part. So some of those resources, we mentioned that sub stack com, slash at Jeffrey five three, and you mentioned that website, Jeffrey Scheuer.com and that last name is spelled S, C, H, E, U, E, R, and then the book is called inside the liberal arts, critical thinking and citizenship. And as we're wrapping up here, Mr. Jeffrey, well, one I usually don't like to like sneak in a question near the end here, but you do all this blogging, and you. Old is writing and writing consistently and having it be good takes discipline, and so do you have any like secret to your success? On that front, do you think is there a reason why you're so prolific?

Jeff Scheuer 25:15 Well, thanks for saying that, Robert. I wish I had written 30 books and not three, but I've, I've written a lot else. And as far as discipline goes, I'm not very, a very disciplined person, but I'm a very driven person to get my ideas out and to and to formulate my ideas and to have them evolve, and that's what gets me up in the morning, even if it's the late morning. Sometimes I tend to work better afternoons and evenings, but but that's what drives me, is my curiosity, which is the curiosity of an, I would say, an engaged but philosophical mind, very politically engaged, very much follower of the news. It would, it would be a whole other discussion. But you raised earlier the question of how to get engaged and the issue of how to find what's true is very complex and problematic. We don't have time to go into it, but that's part of what, part of what preoccupies me. And no, I don't have lessons for how to write. Okay, no. Good writer probably does have good lessons, because it's such a highly individual thing. And in my case, all I can say is, if I'm a good writer, it's because I care. It's because it's matters to me almost as much as my family. And I just try really hard when I'm writing to do it well that that, that's really all I can tell you. As far as that goes, I don't have a schedule. I don't have someone beating me over the head to get it done. I don't I seldom have deadlines. I've had a couple recently, but like on the terrorism project, but, but it's just caring enough and being driven enough that this is what I feel like I was called upon to do. And this book inside the liberal arts was was the sort of apex of my career, as far as doing what I felt was my calling,

Robert Plank 27:29 and that is helpful, that you're saying that we are all unique. So we need to figure out what motivates us, what drives us, what gets us excited.

Jeff Scheuer 27:38 Learn what you love. Don't learn what you think will guarantee you an income. Learn what you love. Is my advice to any student that will make you better at what you do. And it doesn't matter what you're good at, do your best at what you love and what you're good at, they tend to be the same thing. That's really the bottom line for me, and that works for me.

Robert Plank 28:06 Don't live someone else's life. And you mentioned about being curious and evolving, and the first step to doing that, to thinking better and to exploring these ideas about advanced critical thinking, which makes us better philosophers, better learners, better citizens. You check out this book inside the liberal arts by Mr. Jeffrey Scheuer. That last name, again, is S, C, H, E, U, E, R. He's on sub stack. He has a website. He has a LinkedIn address. So check out his book, plus his three best selling books, plus that upcoming essay on fascism, and anything else he has coming out soon. He's a great writer, great thinker. Jeffrey Scheuer, wonderful seeing you.

Jeff Scheuer 28:47 Great to be with you, Robert and thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Robert Plank 28:53 Thank you for tuning in to the marketer of the day. Podcast. Marketer of the day is managed by dfy podcast. Claim your 12 podcast boosters at dfy podcast.com/free you.