By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 8 Feb 25
Chasing the Whisper of Telos in a Cosmic ImprovThe Discourse, it seems, is a never-ending tango between meaning and meaninglessness — between those who suspect the Universe has a grand, ineffable plan and those who figure it’s just riding a cosmic breeze of chance. Look back on the world’s labyrinthine timeline, and you hit the big question: is there a single, shining Ultimate Telos — a bold guiding star steering every twist and turn — or is life just a sprawling, branching road map, each fork nudged by “local teloses” cooked up by circumstance? Two stories, two choices. And so far, not a single microscope, radio telescope,
Chasing the Whisper of Telos in a Cosmic ImprovThe Discourse, it seems, is a never-ending tango between meaning and meaninglessness — between those who suspect the Universe has a grand, ineffable plan and those who figure it’s just riding a cosmic breeze of chance. Look back on the world’s labyrinthine timeline, and you hit the big question: is there a single, shining Ultimate
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 1 Aug 24
OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Episode 137 Book Club Series, Episode 5 This episode is available exclusively for New Discourses contributors on the following platforms: Facebook Locals Odysee Patreon Subscribestar Substack YouTube Members Welcome back to another episode of my James Lindsay OnlySubs Book Club! I’m still reading Frank Dikotter’s “People’s Trilogy,” specifically in this case The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957. In this vignette I want to share with you from the book, near the end, Dikotter explains the appeal of Communism, at least to the Chinese in the 1950s, even though all around them was failure, starvation,
OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Episode 137 Book Club Series, Episode 5 This episode is available exclusively for New Discourses contributors on the following platforms: Facebook Locals Odysee Patreon Subscribestar Substack YouTube Members Welcome back to another episode of my James Lindsay OnlySubs Book Club! I’m still reading Frank Dikotter’s “People’s Trilogy,” specifically in this case The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 20 Jul 21
Unless this is the first time you have stumbled across this blog by accident, you might have come across the idea of “the Wiki”. This usually does not refer to The Big Wiki but to the Cynefin one, which is a labour of love by many in the community and an attempt to ensure openness, authenticity, and rigour for the Cynefin framework and the methods that are associated with it. Today, my mental journey started on this wiki, specifically the “Glossary” section, where translations for critical terms are crowdsourced in several languages (ten and counting at the time of writing). The Greek language
Unless this is the first time you have stumbled across this blog by accident, you might have come across the idea of “the Wiki”. This usually does not refer to The Big Wiki but to the Cynefin one, which is a labour of love by many in the community and an attempt to ensure openness, authenticity, and rigour for the Cynefin framework and
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 11 Feb 21
The opening quote in the title is one of the best-known of Homer’s epithets, although in this case the picture does not include the wine dark sea but was instead is taken from our bedroom window early this morning. Maybe it is rising through the bible black trees in this case, and in tribute to Dylan Thomas who was a master of the techniques. That is from the opening line of Under Milk Wood which I quote in full: It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and- rabbits’ wood limping invisible
The opening quote in the title is one of the best-known of Homer’s epithets, although in this case the picture does not include the wine dark sea but was instead is taken from our bedroom window early this morning. Maybe it is rising through the bible black trees in this case, and in tribute to Dylan Thomas who was a master of the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 20 Apr 20
Right after my dissertation was accepted, one of my professors, the delightful and brilliant psychometrician, Paul Holland, invited me to lunch to “discuss something important.” Later that day, intrigued—and a little nervous—I picked at an avocado salad while we chatted about recent events in the Graduate School of Education. It wasn’t until he had asked the waiter to bring our check that he finally got to the point.“I have one piece of important advice that I’d like to offer you at this point in your career,” he said with exaggerated seriousness. “Be careful how you name things.”Amused and bewildered, I thanked Paul
Right after my dissertation was accepted, one of my professors, the delightful and brilliant psychometrician, Paul Holland, invited me to lunch to “discuss something important.” Later that day, intrigued—and a little nervous—I picked at an avocado salad while we chatted about recent events in the Graduate School of Education. It wasn’t until he had asked the waiter to bring our
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 13 Mar 20
Chapter 1: Embodied Cognition, Living Systems and the Culture WarsWe are lost in the woods. It is 2020, and the mist grows thick and full of desperate voices. As we wander blindly, we hear growls that might mean the end of us. The decade began with images of hell fire; the burning bush in Australia flickering to the charred husk of Soleimani’s car. We are running out of time, and so we run. The voices cry out paths to freedom, but we don’t know which ones to trust or which way to turn.We have been lost for some time now. Many of
Chapter 1: Embodied Cognition, Living Systems and the Culture WarsWe are lost in the woods. It is 2020, and the mist grows thick and full of desperate voices. As we wander blindly, we hear growls that might mean the end of us. The decade began with images of hell fire; the burning bush in Australia flickering to the charred husk of
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 13 Mar 20
Chapter 1: Embodied Cognition, Living Systems and the Culture WarsWe are lost in the woods. It is 2020, and the mist grows thick and full of desperate voices. As we wander blindly, we hear growls that might mean the end of us. The decade began with images of hell fire; the burning bush in Australia flickering to the charred husk of Soleimani’s car. We are running out of time, and so we run. The voices cry out paths to freedom, but we don’t know which ones to trust or which way to turn.We have been lost for some time now. Many of
Chapter 1: Embodied Cognition, Living Systems and the Culture WarsWe are lost in the woods. It is 2020, and the mist grows thick and full of desperate voices. As we wander blindly, we hear growls that might mean the end of us. The decade began with images of hell fire; the burning bush in Australia flickering to the charred husk of
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 15 Feb 19
Photo by Martin AdamsIf I say, “The reason the hawk circled over me nine times and headed East was to tell me to begin my return journey,” does that sound scientific to you? Or am I projecting meaning onto a world that is essentially random?Do the events of our lives have any meaning, or do they just happen to us? Do we create the reality we experience, or is reality something already out there, that we move through? Which answer seems more “scientific”? The difference between these two belief systems is more than a mere matter of philosophical opinion. Each actually
Photo by Martin AdamsIf I say, “The reason the hawk circled over me nine times and headed East was to tell me to begin my return journey,” does that sound scientific to you? Or am I projecting meaning onto a world that is essentially random?Do the events of our lives have any meaning, or do they just happen to us? Do