Episode
Ep. 49 Flagg Taylor, Ph.D: The Parallel Polis
- Podcast
- The Moral Imagination
- Published
- Dec 22, 2022
- Duration seconds
- 6226
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Summary
In this episode I speak with Flagg Taylor about the life and writing of Vaclav Benda, and his idea of the parallel polis, decentralization, and creating space in society for culture, the family, charity, education, and human flourishing. Though he was writing under communist regimes, Benda’s writings are very relevant today in light democratic pressures to conformity, de-platforming, and especially as a new ontology of the person is being written into law — and dignity is used as weapon against religious and cultural liberty. Benda’s idea of the parallel polis was not a siege mentality, nor so much a reform existing structures that had ossified or were corrupted, but a call to build new, innovative, and better structures and social institutions that would activate people’s participation in civil, cultural, and commercial life, and give people a sense of purpose and agency. Examples today include decentralized technologies or classical education - which is not running away, but creating better alternatives to mediocre state run schools. We discuss Benda’s ideas in the context of Czech communism and also in contemporary America, especially the overlap with Alexis de Tocqueville’s warnings about individualism, centralization, and soft-despotism. We examine his engagement with various thinkers including Roger Scruton and J.R.R. Tolkien, and talk about contemporary movements towards decentralization including The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan and its relation to the idea of a parallel polis. We discuss the need for social and commercial alternatives built on a rich understanding of the human person and the family including healthcare, mutual aid societies, banking, payment, insurance and more. Benda’s idea of the parallel polis demonstrates that the solution to totalit…