By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 13 Mar 20
A Story to Bind Us: The Intellectual Deep Web and a New Meta-NarrativeWe know ourselves through stories, and we know each other through the stories we share. But for all the beauty of stories, we are drowning in them. This is, after all, the promise of postmodernism; the grand narratives that bound us together have been stripped away and instead the world is fragmented into an infinity of individual perspectives, weaving into a tapestry so thick we can no longer see through it. Wherever we look now, either online or at our institutions and ideologies, we find no single story
A Story to Bind Us: The Intellectual Deep Web and a New Meta-NarrativeWe know ourselves through stories, and we know each other through the stories we share. But for all the beauty of stories, we are drowning in them. This is, after all, the promise of postmodernism; the grand narratives that bound us together have been stripped away and instead
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 9 Mar 20
A short commentary on John Vervaeke’s Awakening from The Meaning Crisis (Episodes 43, 44, and 45)In the present meaning crisis, according to John Vervaeke, we tend to ‘conflate the having mode with the being mode‘—or mistake the ‘product’ for the ‘process’—the shallow representation for the real. Wisdom means to know and love what matters deeply. But wisdom, like love, is not something we can have or acquire — it is deeply existential, complex, and about being in the world.Vervaeke points out that while there are many valid scientific or psychological theories of wisdom, they too often focus on the product of wisdom—rather than the
A short commentary on John Vervaeke’s Awakening from The Meaning Crisis (Episodes 43, 44, and 45)In the present meaning crisis, according to John Vervaeke, we tend to ‘conflate the having mode with the being mode‘—or mistake the ‘product’ for the ‘process’—the shallow representation for the real. Wisdom means to know and love what matters deeply. But wisdom, like love, is not
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 5 Mar 20
RationalityA short commentary on John Vervaeke’s Awakening from The Meaning Crisis (Episodes 40, 41, and 42)To be rational usually means to be good at logical games, to be able to see through cognitive bias, to make empirical arguments, to score high on an IQ test. However, John Vervaeke tells us that this common view of rationality is narrow; it has, over time, been divorced from relevance or depth. But rationality can’t be reduced to logical or propositional knowing, just as wisdom can’t be reduced to mere intelligence. Rationality has more to do with ‘relevance realisation’ and wisdom than mere logic.Aristotle’s rationality included
RationalityA short commentary on John Vervaeke’s Awakening from The Meaning Crisis (Episodes 40, 41, and 42)To be rational usually means to be good at logical games, to be able to see through cognitive bias, to make empirical arguments, to score high on an IQ test. However, John Vervaeke tells us that this common view of rationality is narrow; it has, over
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 2 Mar 20
Image via http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2014/05/think-tanks-influence-public-policy-influence/In a busy world where people feel the need to place you before you have time to describe yourself, “define or be defined” is a useful motto.But it’s a tough challenge.I am the Director of an organization, Perspectiva, which is often described as ‘a think tank’; that’s not what I think and feel we are, and this post is about explaining why, and beginning to articulate an alternative.Imagine a straightforward conversation:Q: “What do you do?”A: “I work in a think tank.”Q: “What does that mean?”A: “It means I go into a tank and think.”It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. I’ve never been
Image via http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2014/05/think-tanks-influence-public-policy-influence/In a busy world where people feel the need to place you before you have time to describe yourself, “define or be defined” is a useful motto.But it’s a tough challenge.I am the Director of an organization, Perspectiva, which is often described as ‘a think tank’; that’s not what I think and feel we are, and this post is
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 15 Feb 20
The emergency is about the urgency to act. The crisis is about the need to transform. The meta-crisis is the tenacity of our inertia.Continue reading on Medium »
The emergency is about the urgency to act. The crisis is about the need to transform. The meta-crisis is the tenacity of our inertia.Continue reading on Medium »
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 14 Feb 20
The emergency is about the urgency to act. The crisis is about the need to transform. The meta-crisis is the tenacity of our inertia.Continue reading on Medium »
The emergency is about the urgency to act. The crisis is about the need to transform. The meta-crisis is the tenacity of our inertia.Continue reading on Medium »
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 5 Feb 20
A commentary on Venkatesh Rao’s article: The Internet of BeefsI’d like take a crack at a neologism invented by Venkatesh Rao called The Internet of beefs in his article of the same title. I’d also like to balance his idea of a beef only player, with a salad only player—to contrast the aggressive vs the passive aggressive type.Rao’s hilarious, creative, scary, and forensic social commentary is brilliant and exhaustive—and at best I can only direct readers to his essay, and hopefully add a footnote. However, my only critique is that he makes too much of the beef only who is really
A commentary on Venkatesh Rao’s article: The Internet of BeefsI’d like take a crack at a neologism invented by Venkatesh Rao called The Internet of beefs in his article of the same title. I’d also like to balance his idea of a beef only player, with a salad only player—to contrast the aggressive vs the passive aggressive type.Rao’s hilarious, creative, scary,
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 27 Jan 20
Hadot’s historical work includes treatments of pre-Socratic philosophy, Platonism and Aristotelianism, the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the modern era. I have selected only a handful of examples from these periods in order to give the reader a sense for the varieties of ascetic practice present within each tradition, and to show how these practices tend to transform from one period to another, often adopting a new set of metaphysical commitments in so doing. Where relevant I draw on other philosophers and historians to add detail to Hadot’s account of askēsis and its instantiations.I start by noting
Hadot’s historical work includes treatments of pre-Socratic philosophy, Platonism and Aristotelianism, the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the modern era. I have selected only a handful of examples from these periods in order to give the reader a sense for the varieties of ascetic practice present within each tradition, and to show how these practices tend to
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 21 Jan 20
I noted earlier that Platonic askēsis, as seen in the beholding of the vision of beauty described in the Symposium, is a kind of aesthetic askēsis, which is also capable of transfiguring the self in unique ways. This kind of askēsis figures strongly in the work of Gabriel Trop. Trop positions art as a way of life, as an askēsis “that continually modifies, often imperceptibly, the manifold patterns of being — whether they are perceptual, behavioral, or affective of the person who undertakes it.”[1] Art and aesthetics for Trop exist in a dual sense, both in the mode of existing art objects
I noted earlier that Platonic askēsis, as seen in the beholding of the vision of beauty described in the Symposium, is a kind of aesthetic askēsis, which is also capable of transfiguring the self in unique ways. This kind of askēsis figures strongly in the work of Gabriel Trop. Trop positions art as a way of life, as an askēsis
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 16 Jan 20
The notion that askēsis is as much additive as privative is central to Foucault’s larger discussion of the term. Readers will recognize a connection with Hadot when Foucault writes, “This is a work of the self on the self, an elaboration of the self by the self, a progressive transformation of the self by the self for which one takes responsibility in a long labor of ascesis (askēsis).”[1] Foucault also speaks of askēsis as “converting to oneself” through abstinence, meditations on death, trials of endurance, and self-examination, and as a question that asks, “What working practice is entailed by conversion
The notion that askēsis is as much additive as privative is central to Foucault’s larger discussion of the term. Readers will recognize a connection with Hadot when Foucault writes, “This is a work of the self on the self, an elaboration of the self by the self, a progressive transformation of the self by the self for which one takes