The title of this week’s J. P. Linstroth Epochal Reckonings Podcast borrows from the rock band, U2’s song, “Pride (In the Name of Love)”, commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the resounding lyrics: “One man come in the name of love…what more in the name of love? In the name of love…” Indeed, these words resonate with me in more than one way and echo in my mind. So too, I hear King himself stating the prophetic words: “…Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Perhaps we need some Promethean light for an expansive examination of these very human thoughts on “LOVE”. As such, there are two primary directions for this essay. In one direction, I wish to emphasize the necessity for politicians and others to be “love” directed in their thinking in order to adopt policies of “empathy” and “empathic politics” which in turn inform how to overcome some of our worst social problems. Secondly, I wish to explore ideas of “love” from Buddhist and Christian points of view, thereby allowing us to contemplate where we go from here.

The J. P. Linstroth Epochal Reckonings Podcast reviews the controversial issues surrounding the history of racism in the United States. The issues of ‘race’ and ‘racism’ have been with us since the founding of our august republic. Unfortunately, they are perniciously still with us today. They were the reason we fought the Civil War (1861-1865) and have mired our history throughout. There is no period in our history, the history of the United States, when ‘race’ has not been significant in some profound way. For many reasons too, the American Civil War is still with us today. It is still with us in every racial conflict we have had since. It is still being fought, perhaps unknowingly by many African-Americans, who have experienced ‘structural violence’ in some way, whether in terms of wanting better education, better housing, or a better job, or even rights for a normal life. Racism is an American story, even though it is everywhere in the world. American racism has its own malignant history. But we have to rid ourselves of this sickness called “racism” once and for all in America. We need a sea change, the type of civil rights legislation we saw in the 1960s under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Maybe like the President LBJ Administration not only do we need a new “War on Poverty”, but we need a “War on Racism as well?” Coming to terms with our social divisions, especially over racism, means understanding our long history of racial discrimination and our long history of racial violence.

In a recent Op-Ed article, J. P. Linstroth, discusses how late philosopher, Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil" may be applied to society today. He argues the banality of evil is not inevitable. In fact, group conforming violence may be avoided. We do not have to succumb to the mob but we know group violence exists on many levels and for many reasons. The My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, was halted for example by an American helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr. and his two-crewmen, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn. “Hugh Thompson landed his helicopter between the villagers and the soldiers, and with his machine guns oriented toward his fellow Americans, ordered his crew to mow them down if they attempted to further harm the villagers” (from Robert Sapolsky, 2017 book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worse, p. 658). Many Vietnamese villagers at My Lai were subsequently airlifted to American field hospitals and further search and destroy missions by the U.S. military were halted as a result. So, in sum, we need to understand for example how someone like Tyre Nichols may be beaten to death by some policemen in Memphis, or how someone like George Floyd may have their life taken away by some policemen in Minneapolis. As I have tried to do here, by asking what questions may we raise from these murders beyond the norm—in other words, what does science say? How may violence become banal? So too, we need to understand how “social conformity” allows for such violence. After all, some social conformity may lead to genocide. Some social conformity may lead to a Reign of Terror (La Terreur, 1793-1794) as happened during the French Revolution. Some social conformity allowed for the Nazis to rise to power and the Holocaust. If we understand the institutionalization of violence or how it is brought about, perhaps we may overcome the banality of our evil.

When this article was written (2020), Dr. J. P. Linstroth wrote, “When I was growing up, DC Comics and comic heroes like ‘Batman’, and ‘Superman’, and ‘Wonder Woman’, were ubiquitous at local convenient store stands. I remember eagerly reading about the so-called comic book, ‘Justice League’ and how these fictional heroes gathered forces and jointly fought off evil foes. The heroic exploits extended to Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s to 1980s with the ‘Super Friends’. In grade school, I too had learned about Greek myths and Greek mythological heroes. So, there were overlaps in my readings about fictional heroes. Today I look back on these years and wonder how much such readings have shaped my current worldview. I know now the world is a much more complex place than comic books and Greek myths allude to. Even so, these past fictional heroes are still etched in my mind. Such monikers for these ‘everyday people’, may seem unusual for those who actually work in peace studies, but I think not. Most are unsung heroes like teachers working in lower socio-economic public schools; or psychiatrists working in mental health clinics; or nurses in hospitals and different health settings; or medical doctors in emergency rooms; or social workers; or psychologists; or many governmental workers; or firemen; or policemen; or public defenders; or clergy who defend migrants; or clergy working with the poor; or those who work with the homeless; and all those who spend their careers in mediation and working in conflict resolution and peace studies. Some of these unsung heroes may find it strange, I call them ‘peace workers’, but I think it can be argued they are indeed such people for making our own existence more peaceable. And while we have made so many notable technological advancements, we hardly think how we have socially advanced toward better living.”

This podcast about J. P. Linstroth’s poetry explores two of his recent poems. One poem, “Little Blue Rabbit” published in Dissident Voice (March 1st, 2026), and the second, “Emperatori Pars Ve Gharb (The Persian Empire and The West)” in The New Verse News (March 6th, 2026). Both poems examine different aspects of American society, the former concerning our failed immigration policies and the vulnerabilities of the innocent by focusing on a young Hispanic boy taken into custody by ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) and the latter poem dedicated to our armed forces in the Unted States, making historical comparisons to the Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC) and the modern war with Iran. In essence, the latter poem, “Emperatori”, is a warning in regard to our own civil strife and internal divisions in the United States, which anyone familiar knows that the Greco-Persian War then followed a Greek civil war between Athenians and Spartans, known as the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) and as such, we as a country need to be mindful of our own civil discord dividing the United States at the present time. Even so, for many reasons, the present-day US-Israeli-Iran War is justified because of the evil theocratic regime in Iran for killing by some estimates as many as 30,000 of its own citizens in the past year alone. What the author, J. P. Linstroth wants to emphasize is understanding how history repeats itself, especially if historical lessons are not learned and perhaps to remind ourselves of the reasons why.

This is our 20th Podcast Episode, in this article, "Primates Are Us", Dr. J. P. Linstroth explains various ideas related to our natural selves but also to the cultural origins of many concepts we take for granted. Who we are has as much to do with what we inherit as it does with our social environments. From analyzing the origins of our monotheistic religions, we know they arose in desert environments where other animals are scarce. Polytheistic religions are common where life is abundant. Our Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions developed in isolation from other non-human primates and thus also influenced our views about nature and it in relation to us. Significant here is this interplay between the biological and the social–the exclusion of either in our analysis being a significant omission. As the eminent cognitive anthropologist Maurice Bloch elucidates, we may think of interactive exchanges between people as the “transactional social,” in contrast to conscious and overt social symbols perpetuated by rituals and ritualistic behavior, which is the “transcendental social.” Our social life is so complex that the prefrontal cortex, the brain part responsible for controlling our sociality, most likely developed last in our evolution. Enormous strides have been made in the neurosciences since the 1970s. Only in the last few years have we begun to understand the many and varied nuances of cognition and neurology associated with human conduct. Some of the more interesting questions about human behavior in recent years have been raised by primatologists like Frans de Waal and Robert Sapolsky. While we are told we diverged on the evolutionary tree from other primates perhaps five million years ago, we are much like non-human primates, especially in our tendency to bond and share.

It may sound patently absurd to discuss a “re-Indigenization” of society. Yet, I (J. P. Linstroth) argue not only is it practical but necessary if humanity is to survive into this century and beyond. Humans, for most of their history, lived as hunter-gatherers, for about the first 290,000 years or so. It is only in the last ten to fifteen thousand years from the “Agricultural Revolution or Neolithic Revolution”, did we begin domesticating animals and plants, and thus began so-called “civilization” with writing, hierarchies, state systems, endemic warfare, and worst of all, slavery. In fact, most of us do not even think about this pre-history. We simply “are” in the world today—a globe we inherited from our collective human shift of moving away from hunting and gathering to a world of domesticating the natural environment. If we are to legitimately address a history of these inequalities and their historical consequences, “environmental destruction”, “genocide”, “racism”, “systemic warfare”, “human exploitation”, and “state system oppression”, we must begin by examining if progress means a continuation on our present path toward self-destruction. In part, I address some of the effects of these colossal man-made calamities in my new book, Epochal Reckonings (2020, Co-Winner of the Proverse Prize)—a poetic guide to some of our 21st century crises. As a society we need to think beyond technological progress and using the planet as an unending natural resource. Here is how in my humble opinion. 1) Accept human beings as part of Earth, and not apart from it, and by this acceptance, accept our dependence upon it; 2) Accept Earth as a living being, the Gaia theory. And if we are to take care of ourselves, we need to take care of the Earth too and become its guardians. We need to love the Earth and respect it as much as indigenous peoples everywhere do; 3) Being grateful for our being on this planet and not endlessly destroying it and polluting it is a good beginning which has been around for a while in ecological consciousness circles; 4) Instead of putting resources into warfare, put resources into renewable energies and into solving malnutrition and poverty in sustainable ways. Make farming more sustainable too instead of a form of factory production and endless soil depletion; 5) Allow indigenous peoples to have “more voice” with first-world nations (Europe, United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and powerful states as China and Russia) in United Nations forums and such environmental decision-making as the Paris Agreement of 2015; 6) Protect indigenous peoples and their rights and allow for indigenous parks and reserves to remain and to be expanded upon by protecting larger tracts of land, instead of developing and exploiting natural resources on indigenous lands for industrial farming, mining interests, oil extraction, electric dams, lumbering, and ranching; 7) Make the “re-indigenization” project official in international law and international treaties, and along with other international laws concerning indigenous peoples (e.g. ILO Convention Number 169 of 1989 and the 2007 UNDRIP, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). Make all nation states adhere to such a project if possible; 8) Create more public awareness through more education programs through universities, and above all, create an ecological consciousness understood from indigenous perspectives and in their own voices; 9) Remember scientists believe we are entering the sixth extinction phase on the planet and we must prevent this by all productive means necessary; 10) And finally, allow more indigenous peoples to be spokespeople and to become planetary ambassadors for realizing such a re-indigenization project before it is too late.

This podcast is based upon the poetry of my two published books, Epochal Reckonings (2019 Winner of International Proverse Prize, Proverse Hong Kong, 2020) and Swimming in Blue Shadows: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems (2022 Winner of Supplementary Book Publication Prize, Proverse Hong Kong). AI Podcasters, Alice and Bob, analyze my poems and examine common themes expressing the zeitgeist of the 21st century. In Epochal Reckonings, the author (J. P. Linstroth) wants his poetry to cause concern, discussion, and surprise as well as evoke the emotions of anger, empathy, and sadness. In other words, I want the reader to have an experience by reading my poetry and taking away with something memorable. Moreover, and even if the reader has never been a fan of poetry, or really, never reads it, perhaps from reading such poetry of the times, they will change their mind about the power of poetry as an artistic genre. In Epochal Reckonings (2020), J. P. Linstroth portrays the great human migrations of the 21st century in the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, and those hoping for safety and a better life. Likewise, he covers the human condition through astonishing acts of violence: the 9/11 destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York; Hurricane Katrina of 2005; the Haitian earthquake of 2010. In all, Linstroth reveals man’s inhumanity against man, whether callous, careless, mistaken, or deliberate. Such unspeakable violence extends to the police killings of African American youths; the genocide of Brazilian Amerindian peoples; the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison; mass school shootings in the United States; homelessness; and the Yemeni civil war. According to Linstroth his poetry is emergent, much like Michaelangelo’s prigioni (slaves) sculptures with his words outlining the struggles and sufferings of various groups during major crises in the 21st century, embodied by racism, extremism, violence, and tragedies too many to be told. Poems in Epochal Reckonings capture such calamities by defining their symbolic significance for many of those who have experienced these disasters o four times across the globe. In Linstroth’s book, Swimming in Blue Shadows, he portrays such poetic themes about Artificial Intelligence (AI), the war in Afghanistan, COVID-19 (Coronavirus), Native American boarding schools, love, depression, death, loss, and youthful exuberance. As the title suggests, the collection uses a phrase from the first story, suggesting the nearness of death in its innumerable and nebulous guises, pinpointing especially how various protagonists face death, as if swimming in death’s blue shadows, hidden yet there.