I recently had a great time discussing the problem of “grumpy moralism” in a radio interview with Jerry Bowyer. A partial transcript of the interview is now up on the Forbes website:

DR. FORSTER:  I would connect it to what we were saying before about many people having overinvested in rationalism.  Because when arguments fail to work, people don’t know what to do.  If you can’t argue with somebody, you begin to see them as subhuman.  And so this sort of grumpy moralism arises from a sense of impotence — powerlessness — that ‘our argument is clearly right, but why is nobody seeing it? Look how terrible the world is becoming (when it goes the wrong way) yet why is nobody seeing it?’There’s an anger and frustration I think that –

JERRY:  I know, I’ll yell louder.

DR. FORSTER:  Yeah, yeah, that will do it.

He had some very kind words about my book:

JERRY:  Your book is “Joy for the World.”  It’s interesting, when I read it, if you were here with me, I would show you that I wrote a two-word summary of the book in the inside cover.  Two-word summary was “More singing!” with an explanation point.

DR. FORSTER:  I love it.

JERRY:  And I’m going to stick with that.