Thomas Sowell - A Conflict of Visions - Animated Book Review

Dr. Thomas Sowells book, A Conflict of Visions, discusses the ideological roots of modern day political battles. He argues that many of modern day political battles are merely a distant reflections on what we believe human nature is capable of.

The Constrained Vision believes that human nature is unchanging, that we can try all we want to make humans inherently smarter or better, more moral people, but that is doomed.

The Unconstrained Vision believes human nature is capable of continuous improvement. That if we simply put enough effort into ourselves, we’d be ables to make a perfect world.

Its important to note that Constrained & Unconstrained are not the same as Conservative & Liberal.

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Book Summaries & Commentary:
I read a lot of only summaries and commentary of A Conflict of Visions books to make this video, here are some of the more useful ones I found.

[dorukdenkel]

There is a misrepresentation at the core of this review: The constrained vision does not take human nature as a failure. It takes human nature as fixed. Yet that fixed nature has potential to be good or bad through every individual's choices and efforts. The key difference against the unconstrained vision is this cannot be changed. The unconstrained vision assumes human nature can be changed by policy or other factors, and even without the human consent.

[fortusvictus]

This book contains so many bits of insight to provide clarity as to what is actually going on in public argument and social unrest, yet it is above most high-schoolers reading level.
I really do think there is an opportunity to break these elements down to a middle or secondary school level where the understanding is probably most useful. Once kids get locked into their worldviews around late teen years it is near impossible to get them to even bother considering other viewpoints under the omnipresent pressure of mass media.

[sagebias]

I call him tom swoll. Because his brain is so huge.

[mitchellseeman]

This book is the best I’ve ever read, just changed my thought process completely

[davidgaskin]

Just finished this book and I found it absolutely astounding! I’m considering doing a video series breaking down the book into bite sized videos.

[xvcommander]

The problem is that the reality is overall much more complex than we can imagine, this is why the uncostrained vision looks like a child's fantasy.

[JohnLawtonJeffcoat]

Sowell is a great author in the field of economic and political and philosophical analysis. His books are certainly worth reading.
You've done a great job of explaining the concepts here in a graphic manner that makes it easy to quickly grasp and digest.
The only key concept that is not discussed here is where the dominant religious view of American society (Christianity) enters
into the "Constrained" versus "Unconstrained" paradigm, particularly in regard to how the individual can cross-over from one
side to the other.
The Bible teaches very clearly that the "Constrained" view is absolutely the correct view of human nature. It teaches that
we are "desperately wicked" and sinful and selfish and without hope in our own "natural man" status of human nature.
It further teaches that crossing over to the "Unconstrained" enlightenment DOES NOT come from any internal, intellectual,
humanistic, self-improvement behaviors. Rather, becoming enlightened such that your base nature is not ultimately selfish,
but instead one that regards the needs of others, is something that can only be imparted unto the individual by God and
through faith and a personal relationship with one's Creator (in the case of Christianity, this occurs via Jesus Christ, as
the one mediator between God and Man, offering the path of salvation and the promise of eternal life).
Whether we believe in Christian theology or not... if we understand Christian theology, then we can understand why the
conservative Christian community sees the "Unconstrained" adherents, or "liberal secular humanists" as they are called, as being
not merely wrong, but actually being heretics whose teaching contradicts God's Word and whose teaching elevate Man to the
level of God, (eventually), and thereby eliminate any need for any God and any need for salvation.
This is why Christians who actually understand what the Bible says are not "Unconstrained" secular humanists, and why they
tend to side with the more conservative end of American Politics rather than the more liberal end of American Politics.
This does not in any way mean that conservative or Republican political platforms reflect Christianity... indeed, they generally do not,
particularly in the arena of "war-mongering" and aggressive foreign policy and political polytheism.
These conservative political groups, however, are seen by the Christian Community as being the "lesser of two evils" when compared to
liberal, secular humanist, socialist, ungodly, political platforms of the Democrats, in most cases where the two are compared.
Indeed, many of the Christian Community are coming to embrace a modified form of Libertarianism as the political and
economic structure that is most compatible with their own world-and-life-view.... or "vision" as Sowell would call it.
Where this gets really interesting is when these theories are applied not just to morality and charity... but to monetary policy.
- John Jeffcoat
GREATSITE.COM

[fexurbis]

Thomas Sowell is the kind of roots philosophical conservative I can relate to.

[SirCharles]

Excellent job! Love the visuals as you explain. My personal favorite book is Sowell's, "Vision of the Anointed", but will add this one to my list. I'm really intrigued, because I've heard it is the Authors personal favorite book of the 30+ books he's written!

[jessehndz]

Can you do a video of Thomas Sowell’s “Visions of the Anointed”? Please and thank you!

[beauty]

This was an excellent survey sociology lesson. Keep up the great work.

[FrancisRoyCA]

This was an excellent summary. Thank you.

[mathman]

Excellent video -- thanks for the added creativity -- nicely done. I read the book recently, which is why I came to video to see what others might be saying about it. I appreciate this video renaming constrained/unconstrained to limited/unlimited, but I would one more step and go with Hadfields/McCoys. It is very interesting that the same word can connote very different and sometimes opposite ideas -- not surprised the Pinker would find these ideas triggering. I was just getting to the point of sketching out my own version of the simple spectra presented in this book/video. If you label each dimensions, such as: Quality of Human Nature, Complexity of the World, Knowledge (systemic experiences and tradition to fully articulated logic), Sincerity of Intentions etc (might be five or six more dimensions). Then think of them as rated from 0 to 1, and you get the picture that the Hadfields and McCoys are at opposite corners of the hypercube. Are there people who are "balanced"? their views sit right in the middle of these dimensions? What would that look like?

[joshzeringue]

Thank you for making this video. An excellent summary indeed!

[arthistoryguy]

Very well done. I just finished the book and watched this to really nail the broad argument of the book into my head. Definitely great to watch along with the Hoover Institute interview with Peter Robinson. Great work.

[billydee]

I’d enthusiastically pay $199 for a pay-per-view debate with Thomas Sowell vs. Al Sharpton...if only to watch Al Sharpton struggle to correctly conjugation the verb: to be.

[thurstoncochrane]

Well done. I’m ordering this book and look forward to reading it

[nyuki]

you need more subs, i love thomas sowell and i have to start reading his books, not just watching videos online. thank you. placed an order. long time overdue on reading his books.

[BoB-thwm]

I love how this is animated. Thomas specifically didn’t put drawings or diagrams in his book because he wanted people to Read it.

[yinonelbaz]

This was an excellent survey sociology lesson, Massive respect