The Power of Cooperative Living

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and welcome to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

In season one of HBO's The Newsroom, Jeff Daniel's character, Will McAvoy, launches into a wild tirade when prompted by a student's question at a college debate. The student asks the panelists to say in a sentence why America is the greatest country in the world, and McAvoy is off on a rant reminiscent of Howard Beale in the movie, Network, from the '70s.And you'll be struck if you're at all cognizant of what's going on, how right on McAvoy is.

OK, it's a TV show. But modern art, as Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist, Norberto Keppe says, should be about denouncing social errors. This Newsroom excerpt does that.

But it's interesting to watch the reaction. Audience members are shocked, fellow panelists are horrified. But why are we so taken aback in North America when we see any problems in ourselves? The world is in big trouble. And this monster that is our First World-imposed economic social structure is making us sick. Let's take some steps to healing this.

The Power of Cooperative Living, this week on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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