FAVE RAVE - Rutger Bregman - The 2025 Reith Lectures

"Immorality and unseriousness 

are the two defining traits of today's leaders.
They are not accidental flaws,
but the logical outcomes of what I call
the survival of the shameless"*

This years Reith Lectures by historian  Rutger Bregman focused on how the reemergence of a moral revolution can happen. He gives examples from history when this sort of moral resurgence has happened, and how it has usually arisen out of a small group of ernest and committed campaigning individuals. If this needs to happen if we are to remotely stand a chance of avoiding democracy being totally subsumed by the corruption of techno-fascism - in our present situation where does it start? 

In his talks he made reference to how news media and cultural institutions are already being cowed into uncritical tugging of the forelock to Trump's authoritarianism. In the talk as originally broadcast by the BBC in the UK, he stated how Trump was 'the most openly corrupt president in US history'. This has since been edited out of the talk before being posted on the internet. As if to demonstrate one of his points with even greater transparency. 

These four twenty five minute lectures, neatly encapsulate our current situation, what needs to happen right now, and where we might be heading if we do nothing to arrest our current state of moral and political decline.

First Reith Lecture - Are we Living Through The Fall Of Civilisation?

Second Reith Lecture - The Collapse of Trust

Third Reith Lecture - How Utopian Dreams Became Reality

Fourth Reith Lecture - Can Humanism Survive the Age of AI?

* Taken from the First Reith Lecture