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Vexed
- Ethics Beyond Political Tribes
- Narrated by: James Mumford
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Bloomsbury presents Vexed by James Mumford, read by James Mumford.
Across the democratic West, politics has become deeply polarised and profoundly personal. Challenge someone’s political views and increasingly you challenge their very being.
And yet, do our political tribes even make sense? Look carefully, and on the most important ethical issues of the age - assisted dying, social welfare, sexual liberation, abortion, gun control, the environment, technology, justice - the instinctive positions of both the Left and the Right are riven with contradictions.
In this refreshing and eye-opening book, James Mumford, a public thinker and independent commentator, questions the basic assumptions of our political groups. His challenge is simple: ‘Why should believing strongly about one topic mean the automatic adoption of so many others?’
Vexed is an essential and provocative account that will appeal to anyone of independent thought and a welcome call for new reflection on the moral issues most relevant to our modern way of life.
Critic Reviews
"James Mumford has written the most intriguing and original reflection on political tribalism that I have ever read. Vexed is an intellectual page-turner." (David Goodhart, author of The Road to Somewhere: The New Tribes Shaping British Politics)
"An important contribution to understanding the polarization of our global politics from one of the most exciting young ethicists working today." (James Davison Hunter, Labrosse-Levenson Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia and author of Culture Wars)
What listeners say about Vexed
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Steve D
- 07-11-21
Thanks
Really enjoyed this book and hearing different perspective to arguments. I felt the author was balanced in his approach, and very thoughtful, as well as thought provoking. .
1 person found this helpful
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- wes dodge
- 05-29-20
I was hoping for more guidance to address issues.
like the premise. Do not regret digesting the book. Like the idea of using morality rather than party "packages".
1 person found this helpful
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- A Milligan
- 03-10-20
Challenge your political assumptions - must read
Really engaging style (I listened to the audio book). James has very outlined some typical “package” political deals (“if I think x about y then I should also think a about b”), but he helpfully pulls these apart to indicate inherent inconsistencies and draw out the best of multiple political starting points.
I thoroughly enjoyed this as a popular level book. It’s well structured, engaging and not inaccessibly academic.
If you have a set of political ideologies (left or right), then this is worth reading with an open mind, preparing to be challenged.
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- J. Colman
- 03-03-20
Timely and helpful
This book is an excellent and timely contribution to the vital conversation at this cultural moment. It offers helpful and challenging insights which remind us all to asses our values and central principles root and branch.
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- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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"You are your own, and you belong to yourself." This is the fundamental assumption of modern life. And if we are our own, then it's up to us to forge our own identities and to make our lives significant. But while that may sound empowering, it turns out to be a crushing responsibility - one that never actually delivers on its promise of a free and fulfilled life, but instead leaves us burned out, depressed, anxious, and alone. This phenomenon is mapped out onto the very structures of our society, and helps explain our society's underlying disorder.
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Thought provoking
- By Hobswife on 12-13-22
By: Alan Noble
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Out on a Limb
- Selected Writing, 1989-2020
- By: Andrew Sullivan
- Narrated by: Andrew Sullivan
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Sullivan, “one of the most influential journalists of the last three decades” (The New York Times) and founding editor of The Daily Dish presents a collection of 60 his most iconic and powerful essays of social and political commentary from The New Republic, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, and more.
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A conservative I can trust to tell the truth.
- By Anonymous User on 09-21-21
By: Andrew Sullivan
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On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
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Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
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Hollowed Out
- A Warning About America's Next Generation
- By: Jeremy S. Adams
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Do teachers have a front-row seat to America’s decline? Jeremy S. Adams, a teacher at both the high school and college levels, thinks so. Adams has spent decades trying to instill wisdom, ambition, and a love of learning in his students. And yet, as he notes, when teachers get together, they often share an arresting conclusion: Something has gone terribly wrong. Something essential is missing in our young people. Their curiosity seems stunted, their reason undeveloped, their values uninformed, their knowledge lacking, and, most worrying of all, their humanity diminished.
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A view from the classroom
- By Mike Russo on 08-04-21
By: Jeremy S. Adams
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The Sane Society
- By: Erich Fromm
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The Sane Society is a continuation and extension of the brilliant psychiatric concepts Erich Fromm first formulated in Escape from Freedom; it is also, in many ways, an answer to Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Fromm examines man’s escape into over conformity and the danger of robotism in contemporary industrial society: Modern humanity has, he maintains, been alienated from the world of their own creation. Here Fromm offers a complete and systematic exploration of his “humanistic psychoanalysis.”
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Stimulating and insightful
- By Householder on 04-07-16
By: Erich Fromm
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The Marketing of Evil
- How Radicals, Elitists and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom
- By: David Kupelian
- Narrated by: David Kupelian
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans have come to tolerate, embrace, and even champion many things that would have horrified their parents' generation - from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion on demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade schoolers. Does that mean today's Americans are inherently more morally confused and depraved than previous generations? Of course not, says veteran journalist David Kupelian.
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This should be recommended reading.
- By E. Giuetti on 08-01-17
By: David Kupelian
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Suicide of the West
- How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Jonah Goldberg
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle.
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Put some gratitude in your attitude
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-18
By: Jonah Goldberg
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America's Real War
- By: Rabbi Daniel Lapin
- Narrated by: Rabbi Daniel Lapin
- Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins
- Abridged
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There is a tug of war going on for the future of America. At one end of the rope are those who think America is a secular nation; at the other end are those who believe religion is at the root of our country's foundation. In this audio release of the thought-provoking America's Real War, renowned leader and speaker Rabbi Daniel Lapin encourages America to reembrace the Judeo-Christian values on which our nation was founded and logically demonstrates why those values are crucial to America's strength in the new millennium.
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I really enjoyed the thoughts and information.
- By Anonymous User on 05-28-19
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Slouching Towards Gomorrah
- Modern Liberalism and American Decline
- By: Robert H. Bork
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In Slouching Towards Gomorrah, one of our nation's most distinguished conservative scholars offers a prophetic view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling. The root of our decline, Bork argues, is the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism and radical individualism.
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Unbelievably perceptive!!!
- By Elena on 03-05-15
By: Robert H. Bork
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Like a Thief in Broad Daylight
- Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism
- By: Slavoj Žižek
- Narrated by: Jamie East
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Urgent as ever, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminates the new dangers as well as the radical possibilities thrown up by today's technological and scientific advances and their electrifying implications for us all.
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Audible needs more Slavoj Zizek books
- By Nicholas on 06-27-20
By: Slavoj Žižek