O My Friends, There is No Friend: a conversation with Am Johal

Dr. Ellie Anderson interviews Am Johal, director of the Vancity Office of Community Engagement and co-director of the Community Engaged Research Initiative at Simon Fraser University. They discuss his recent book O My Friends, There is No Friend: The Politics of Friendship at the End of Ecology (Columbia UP, 2024). How should we read the (often misattributed) quote "O my friends, there is no friend", particularly in conversation with the tradition of the philosophy of friendship? How can friendship and activism shape the process of writing and reading theory and philosophy? Finally, how can "the sweetness of life" be found in capitalism's unceasing political and ecological crises?
You can check out Johal's book here: www.transcript...
Graphics and editing by Aaron Morgan
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[@BillyMcBride]

It is a wonderful interview between you both! I am grateful that you are bringing up our care for ecology this way, and as I look around at the objects in my room, I just now noticed a stack of papers which I love, and I am now thinking of what Am Johal just said about how “trees can speak” and I see that in the paper, how paper contains, or you might say holds the words in its soft hands, the way I hold the paper in my soft hands. I feel a friendship even with that tree which became the paper that I use everyday with love, that helps me carry on and survive as my own person as a reader and writer. Viva Dr. Anderson and Am Johal and friendship!

[@TobEOrN0t2bE]

Talk about Robinson crusoe and Faust someday plz. Robinson crusoe left me devastated. I am about to hear this interview ❤❤

[@NostraDumass]

i didnt expect to get misty eyed at the end of this

[@robertalenrichter]

I spent the first ten years of my life in Vancouver, have a couple of siblings who went to SFU. Anyway, I'm an advocate of a universal basic income, set at a modest level, so as to maintain incentives, nevertheless provide a degree of security which would enable people to escape fear and have more space for a meaningful life. It would be possible to subvert and modify capitalism while retaining a market system. Capitalism would work better if everybody had some. On the other hand, attempting to somehow "do away with it" would only engender resistance and make things worse. UBI would actually liberate a lot of energy; people would become more, rather than less, productive. I am convinced of that. It's interesting to observe how commonplace the assumption that the natural human state is laziness. Which, of course, implies that pressure upon the individual should be the societal norm.

[@illiakailli]

People massively leaving their BS jobs may wreak havoc on society and destabilize it for some time, no?

[@robertalenrichter]

@@illiakailli People wouldn't massively leave their bullshit jobs. Why? Because every cent that they earn will be on top of what they already have. Human needs and desires are infinite. A modest guaranteed income wouldn't satisfy many people for very long. The difference is that they wouldn't be living in fear or the sense of being trapped. They would have options. This would release a tremendous amount of creative energy. The whole paradigm is wrong and betrays a superficial understanding of human nature. It would indeed subvert the fear economy, but I don't believe at detriment to prosperity.

[@Tom-xc8ff]

"What men have called friendship is merely social contract, consideration for one another's interests, and exchange of favours; in fact, it is simply a transaction in which self-love always expects to gain something" -La Rochefoucauld. Any thoughts?

[@BillyMcBride]

I wonder why La Rochefoucauld would define friendship that way. It does not seem to get far. I wrote a play here on KZbin called Stayfriends which relates friendship between Angels and people in a friendly way, and one that, from their own perspective, is useful for our human purposes because they love us and want to help.

[@trixiesilver4030]

Great interview! I love seeing how philosophy & community activism strengthen each other. (Btw, Hasan Piker/Hasanabi would likely be another strong interviewee in this vein!)

[@henrykjaronowski8023]

We are all going to be bean farmers in the Mad Max world.

[@jsteegz]

Eric wareheim?

[@webmasterultra3487]

Authoritarian populism is such a funny term, how are we supposed to counter it with unpopular authoritarianism? I mean, maybe there is a shadow form of authoritarianism after all.