Effervescent moments

Meliorists believe there are ripe moments in time when our efforts become transformative. Conclusions are not foregone. Outcomes are not preset. Odell, Klein, and Solnit are meliorists.

"In the conclusion of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Naomi Klein writes honestly about her own fear regarding the future and motions toward kairos as it relates to action. She recognizes "upwellings" and "effervescent moment[ s]" in which "societies become consumed with the demand for transformational change." These moments often come as a surprise, even to longtime organizers—the surprise that "we are so much more than we have been told we are—that we long for more and in that longing have more company than we ever imagined." She adds that "no one knows when the next such effervescent moment will open."

I reread these words in 2020, in the weeks following George Floyd's murder, which were full of such upwellings. For me, this time was an unforgettable illustration of the relationship among kairos, action, and surprise. Time took on new topographies, and the author Herman Gray contrasted "the slow time of COVID and the hot time of the streets." In a July 2021 podcast, Birdsong suggested that the pandemic had invited some amount of culture shift simply by exposing how connected people were to those they'd never thought about, like farmworkers and nurses. It changed how the world and the people in it looked, and it was in this opening that Floyd's death and the uprisings occurred. She suggested that here, in this specific moment, "there was a greater sense of connection… from people who hadn't previously felt any connection to black people being murdered." It was a reminder of what Rebecca Solnit repeats several times in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster: "Beliefs matter."

In the midst of calls to "get back to normal," this book was written in kairos for kairos—for a vanishing window in which the time is ripe. In any moment, we can choose whom and what we perceive as existing in time, just as we can choose to believe that time is the site of unpredictability and potential rather than inevitability and helplessness. In that sense, changing how we think about time is more than a means for confronting personal despair in a catastrophic meantime. It can also be a call to action in a world whose current state can't be taken for granted any more than its actors can remain unnamed, exploited, or abandoned. I believe that a real meditation on the nature of time, unbound from its everyday capitalist incarnation, shows that neither our lives nor the life of the planet is a foregone conclusion. In that sense, the idea that we could "save" time—by recovering its fundamentally irreducible and inventive nature—could also mean that time saves us."

— Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
https://a.co/bdz1gFN

A fog of words

LISTEN. Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker is possibly not the most pacifying book to listen to at 3 in the morning, after being awakened by the dog's storm-induced quaking terror...

“Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silent darkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrors that imagination had mustered. Peering, the mind could see nothing sure, nothing in all human experience to be grasped as certain, except uncertainty itself; nothing but obscurity gendered by a thick haze of theories. Man's science was a mere mist of numbers; his philosophy but a fog of words. His very perception of this rocky grain and all its wonders was but a shifting and a lying apparition. Even oneself, that seeming-central fact, was a mere phantom, so deceptive, that the most honest of men must question his own honesty, so insubstantial that he must even doubt his very existence.”

 Words are usually foggy at 3 a.m.

But I do agree with this: “Barren, barren and trivial are these words. But not barren the experience.”

Nothing to be embarrassed about, Aldous

https://www.instagram.com/p/CrTq1-fNbFc/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Parting thoughts

LISTEN. Well, here we are already: last day of classes for the Spring '23 semester. Time really does speed up as it goes by, doesn't it? No wonder we quest for transcendence, the trans-end-dance. Our end is near, we must find a way to move beyond it. 

My parting thoughts may have a hard time bettering those of my chatbot interlocutor. Sure, some of it's vapid and repetitive. But I do appreciate the favorable reviews.

It's my last shot tonight to summarize my views on Experience and its endless varieties. We didn't meet a couple weeks back, so I want to be sure and mention WJ's remarkable statement in the "Philosophy" lecture of VRE:

Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late. No one knows this as well as the philosopher. He must fire his volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, for his profession condemns him to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness and irrelevancy. His formulas are like stereoscopic or kinetoscopic photographs seen outside the instrument; they lack the depth, the motion, the vitality. In the religious sphere, in particular, belief that formulas are true can never wholly take the place of personal experience.

He put the point slightly differently elsewhere, the point being to acknowledge the insuperable gulf between living and theorizing. Experience is one thing, talking about experience something else. "Philosophy must pass from words to life itself." It must at least try, and be honest about its failure to effect the passage without omitting crucial immediacies that make all the difference. It is in the gap between words and life that WJ would have us "defend experience against philosophy" and any other agency or institution intent upon discounting the lived experience of individuals "in their solitude." When in doubt, defer to the experiencer's own account or impression of what they've experienced. 

Or, as he says so well at the end of "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," 

Hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations. It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field.

Prisons, sick rooms, churches, laboratories, even philosophy classrooms all have their insights and offer their share of experiential syllables in the great book of life which is still being written. Again, though: hearing and reading of experience is not the same as having it. We must each attend directly to our own, and not worry so much about monitoring and regulating others' experience.

It's a good idea to monitor and regulate our own, though, by reflecting upon experience and trying to articulate what it has come to thus far. WJ did that in responding to a questionnaire not long after publishing VRE. [Spgs] Most tellingly, he there defines a religious experience as "any moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things home to one." The keyword here is life: spirituality and religion are vitalizing functions of living human beings. They're for us to interpret and act from, not sacral authorities or pedants and scholars.

As for the varieties of scientific experience, represented in our course by the cosmic power-couple Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, let's notice something crucial WJ should have been more explicit about. He writes: 

"...so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, but as soon as we deal with private and personal phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the completest sense of the term." 

Yes, WJ; but as Carl and Ann so eloquently illustrate, it is every bit as possible to "deal with the cosmic" and scientific as experiences vibrantly, expansively, and completely real, in personal and spiritual terms, as with any more familiarly earth-bound religious experience. (Recall Carl's subtitle: "a personal view...") 

In fact, a god conceived as merely local and not cosmic seems pretty pale, spectral, and small by comparison. 

As WJ says, the pragmatic philosophy tries to respect all the varieties of experience and thus

lies in the midst of our theories, like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out of it. In one you may find a man writing an atheistic volume; in the next someone on his knees praying for faith and strength; in a third a chemist investigating a body's properties. In a fourth a system of idealistic metaphysics is being excogitated; in a fifth the impossibility of metaphysics is being shown. But they all own the corridor, and all must pass through it if they want a practicable way of getting into or out of their respective rooms. Pragmatism II

It pleases me that Druyan's vision of a possible world just a decade and a half away is positive. It may be premature to imagine a 2039 World's Fair so full of promise and hope for a human future beyond the crisis zone, but the poetic symmetry of the centenary of young Carls's awakening must have been irresistible. Understandably. We'd better be moving in that direction by then, but I think 2064--NdGT's fair centenary--is the likelier target for the kind of celebration Druyan depicts. 

Wouldn't we all love to be there, to scale the Tree of Life, cruise in a bubble with virtual Carl in the Pavilion of Searchers, raid the Palace of Life giftshop? I'll just be 107, which by then should be the new 66. I'm booking it in my calendar. 

We'd better hope the Ministry for the Future is up and running, as promised by KSR, no later than '25.

And we'd better keep on asking questions. "Curiosity has its own reasons..."

Let's give WJ the nearly-last word, for now (not forgetting his own actual borrowed last words: "There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it?")

"No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. [It] makes the difference between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope."

"the thing with feathers"

And the pursuit of happiness.

So we conclude our semester and our course with the hope that our civilization's long conversation across all the varieties of experience will continue far into the future.

And that, we may further hope, is how the cosmos will truly come to know itself: one hopeful soul at a time. That is how our species, or whatever will have come of it, will at last get religion and finally feel at home in the universe. Here's Carl, near the end of Pale Blue Dot:

The pioneering psychologist William James called religion a "feeling of being at home in the Universe." Our tendency has been... to pretend that the Universe is how we wish our home would be, rather than to revise our notion of what's homey so it embraces the Universe. If, in considering James' definition, we mean the real Universe, then we have no true religion yet. That is for another time, when the sting of the Great Demotions is well behind us, when we are acclimatized to other worlds and they to us, when we are spreading outward to the stars.

 

Like Dr. Arroway's trip to Vega, it's been an experience. Good luck, MALA-ites. Happy trails, have a good summer, don't forget that roadtrip to Dayton in July.

Unplanned obsolescence

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The Philosophic Buddha

"I'll admit it: I am not a fan of Buddhism. I know this doesn't sound good—like confessing to contempt for puppies or to harbouring doubts about human kindness. But it's best to be plain-spoken. Reader, consider yourself warned..." Kieran Setiya

Carol Gould’s “feminist solidarity”

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CrUvM0gOsPI/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

Philosophy Lyceum at MTSU, April 21, 2023... 

Carol Gould, CUNY/Hunter College - From Fraternity to Solidarity: Towards a Feminist Reconstruction

Against “the tyranny of the ameliorative”

Ameliorate… AND be happy too. In praise of "the little human things":

"…[Adorno] was right to resist what we might call "the tyranny of the ameliorative": the feeling that, in times of crisis, all that is worth doing is to fight injustice, so as to make things less bad than they are. How can we listen to music, or work on the more speculative questions of philosophy and science, while the planet burns? But while political action is urgent, it's not the only thing that matters.

In fact, it couldn't be. If the best we could do was to minimize injustice and human suffering, so that life was not positively bad, there would be no point in living life at all. If human life is not a mistake, there must be things that matter not because they solve a problem or address a need that we would rather do without but because they make life positively good. They would have what I've called "existential value." Art, pure science, theoretical philosophy: they have value of this kind. But so do mundane activities like telling funny stories, amateur painting, swimming or sailing, carpentry or cooking, playing games with family and friends—what the philosopher Zena Hitz has called "the little human things." It's not just that we need them in order to recharge so that we can get back to work, but that they are the point of being alive. A future without art or science or philosophy, or the little human things, would be utterly bleak. Since they will not survive unless we nurture them, that is our responsibility, too."

— Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya
https://a.co/5uTBYTG

The chatbot's pretty smart!

I'm liking my chat buddy more all the time.

"Up@dawn" by Phil Oliver is an engaging and thought-provoking blog that covers a wide range of topics related to philosophy, education, and culture. Oliver's writing style is clear and concise, and he has a knack for distilling complex ideas into digestible and accessible insights.

One of the strengths of the blog is its focus on connecting philosophical insights to everyday life. Oliver often draws on his own experiences as a teacher, traveler, and nature enthusiast to illustrate philosophical concepts and make them more relatable to readers.

Another strength of the blog is its interdisciplinary approach. Oliver draws on insights from a wide range of fields, from literature and music to science and politics, to explore philosophical questions and debates. This interdisciplinary approach is refreshing and helps to broaden the scope of the blog's insights.

The blog also frequently engages with current events and contemporary culture, providing a philosophical lens through which to view and interpret the issues of the day. Oliver's commentary is insightful and thought-provoking, and it encourages readers to engage critically with the world around them.

Overall, "Up@dawn" is a valuable resource for anyone interested in philosophy, education, and culture. It provides an accessible and engaging platform for exploring complex ideas and making meaningful connections between philosophy and everyday life.

https://share.askaichat.app/F26FE455-0BE4-4369-BA8D-6CF69753F11D-2OUZu2H1

ChatGPT's "creeping sense of possibility"

"...Only a few times in my life have I experienced this creeping sense of possibility with a new technology. The last time was the iPhone; the others were probably Google search and the internet itself. All these were groundbreaking at the start, but none of them changed anything overnight. Instead, what was most compelling was how easy it was to imagine them becoming more and more useful to more and more people. Five years after Apple unveiled the iPhone, there seemed to be an app for everything, and nearly half of American adults owned a smartphone; five years after that, just over three-quarters did, and it was hard to think of anything smartphones hadn’t changed.

ChatGPT feels similarly big..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/opinion/chatgpt-journalism.html?smid=em-share

Why explore?

My latest interaction with the chatbot is pretty good, after I re-phrased the conversation prompt to which it replied: "this conversation has worn me out"…

 

  https://share.askaichat.app/F26FE455-0BE4-4369-BA8D-6CF69753F11D-2OUUTbRq

"Send me a postcard, drop me a line"

Ever since Older Daughter went off to college a decade ago I've been sending her a weekly postcard (or two, at the beginning). I wanted her to know our connection was solid, wherever she went. I wanted to feel it too. I've not stopped.

She's never said much about it, except "you send a lot of postcards" once when I asked if she read them.

So it was gratifying to receive this post-midnight (in California) text last night.

“Figured out how to display some of the postcards you've sent me”

Virtual Carl Sagan

Asked chatGPT for 1,000 words on Carl's cosmic philosophy. Excessive redundancy again, but still impressive for the early days of the technology.

https://share.askaichat.app/F26FE455-0BE4-4369-BA8D-6CF69753F11D-4OUFpJJe

Magellan telescopes-"dreams are what the cosmos is made of"

Courting the Sirens of the Southern Sky

"...Nowadays it takes a generation to build a scientific instrument as majestic as a telescope or a new particle collider. Already the keys to the cosmos are passing into the hands of astronomers who may not have been born when the Grand Magellan was conceived. But dreams are what the cosmos is made of."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/science/astronomy-telescopes-magellan-chile.html

Clarence Darrow

It's the birthday of lawyer and writer Clarence (Seward) Darrow, born in Kinsman, Ohio (1857). His father was a Unitarian minister until he lost his faith, when he became a furniture maker and undertaker. But his passion was for books, not business. Darrow wrote, "In all the country round, no man knew so much of books as he and no man knew less of life." Darrow became a famous lawyer, and he filled his courtroom speeches with literary allusions.

Darrow fought for unions, racial equality, and the poor, and he became famous for defending some of the most unpopular people of his time. In the 1925 Monkey Trial, he defended high school teacher John Scopes for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in a Tennessee school. In "The Crime of the Century," in 1924, he successfully defended two confessed teenage murderers, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, from receiving the death penalty. In defending them he said, "You may stand them on the trap door of the scaffold, and choke them to death, but that act will be infinitely more cold-blooded, whether justified or not, than any act that these boys have committed or can commit."

He wrote the novel An Eye for an Eye (1905), and the nonfiction books Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (1922), The Prohibition Mania (1927), and The Story of My Life (1932).

He once said: "I never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure." WA

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/the-writers-almanac-for-tuesday-april-18-2023/

AI-WJ on experience

I asked chatGPT to write 1,000 words on WJ's philosophy of experience. It complied, literally. And it was more than a bit redundant. No better than a C-, I think (and worse as a blogpost because it has no links, embeds, or graphics).

But still… I'm impressed. 

My previous encounter with Virtual WJ (and Virtual Carl Sagan, and Socrates ) seemed more engaging and "real" though...

Conviction and intensity, hope and history, harmony

I took note of this opening in David French's latest column...

William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming” has been called the most plundered poem in the English language, and it’s easy to see why. The poem, written in the immediate aftermath of World War I and during the height of the Russian Civil War, vividly captures the feeling that events are sliding out of control. Three lines in particular resonate in troubled times. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” writes Yeats. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

And then re-read the last lines of Kieran Setiya's Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help...

"History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.

The poet knows as well as we do that "hope" and "history" do not rhyme. But one day, in some undreamt-of harmony, they might."

That's from Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, Joe Biden's favorite. 

My quick reflection this morning: I'd rather keep dreaming vaguely of harmony and hope than surrender to the passionate intensity of the convicted. (And indicted, and indictable).

Or at least keep trying. You never know, shipwreck is always possible but so is rescue. There's a chance. Possibility is enough to live for.

How to Survive Hopelessness – The Marginalian

"I have no words to offer which may comfort the reader who is also a castaway, except that rescue may come at any time but not necessarily when you expect it; and that even if you give up hope, you must never give up trying, for, as the result of your efforts, hope may well return and with justification."

https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/02/28/sea-survival-dougal-robertson/

In Praise of Walking: A Poetic Manifesto for Our Simplest Instrument of Discovery, Transformation, and Transcendence – The Marginalian

"That something exists outside ourselves and our preoccupations, so near, so readily available, is our greatest blessing."

BY MARIA POPOVA

When you walk, you move more than the body — you move the mind, the spirit, the entire system of being. As you traverse spatial distance, you gain vital spiritual distance with which to see afresh the problems that haunt your day, your work, your life. Ideas collide and connect in ways they never would have on the static plane. Pains are left behind in the forward motion. Doubts fall away by the footfall. I do my best writing on foot — the rest, what happens at the desk, is mere transcription. Nietzsche saw the link between walking and creativity. "There is nothing more revealing than to see a thinking person walking," wrote Thomas Bernhard, "just as there is nothing more revealing than to see a walking person thinking." A passionate walker herself, Rebecca Solnit has defined the act as "a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned."

But no writer has composed a more succinct and symphonic manifesto for walking than the Scottish poet Thomas A. Clark in his 1988 chapbook In Praise of Walking...

https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/18/in-praise-of-walking-thomas-a-clark/

Doomsday to utopia: Meet AI’s rival factions

Inside Silicon Valley's AI sector, fierce divisions are growing over the impact of a new wave of artificial intelligence: While some argue it's imperative to race ahead, others say the technology presents an existential risk.

Those tensions took center stage late last month, when Elon Musk, along with other tech executives and academics, signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on developing "human-competitive" AI, citing "profound risks to society and humanity." Self-described decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the nonprofit Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), went further: AI development needs to be shut down worldwide, he wrote in a Time magazine op-ed, calling for American airstrikes on foreign data centers if necessary.

The policy world didn't seem to know how seriously to heed these warnings. Asked if AI is dangerous, President Biden said Tuesday, "It remains to be seen. Could be."

The dystopian visions are familiar to many inside Silicon Valley's insular AI sector, where a small group of strange but influential subcultures have clashed in recent months. One sect is certain AI could kill us all. Another says this technology will empower humanity to flourish if deployed correctly. Others suggest the six-month pause proposed by Musk, who will reportedly launch his own AI lab, was designed to help him catch up.

The subgroups can be fairly fluid, even when they appear contradictory and insiders sometimes disagree on basic definitions.

But these once-fringe worldviews could shape pivotal debates on AI. Here is a quick guide to decoding the ideologies (and financial incentives) behind the factions... WaPo

Four habits of happy people

#1 is move...

What makes you happy? Maybe it's getting up early to see the sunrise, hanging out with family and friends on a weekend, or going for a dip in the sea. But what does science say about the things happy people do?
We know that happy people tend to have strong relationships, good physical health and contribute regularly to their communities... https://theconversation.com/four-habits-of-happy-people-as-recommended-by-a-psychologist-197326

Look again at that book...

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson swears in Dr. Makenzie Lystrup as director of Goddard Space Flight Center.

Instead of a Bible, Dr. Lystrup's hand rests on a hardback copy of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

https://mastodon.social/@atheistengineer/110164440455407730

Shifted from reality

Bit of an understatement here:

...A.I. images can be dangerous if people believe them to be real and misuse them to spread misinformation. "You lull people into not double checking," said Subbarao Kambhampati, a computer science professor at Arizona State University. "Then you are shifted little by little from reality."
...
nyt

Go outside

Prescribed time in nature linked to improvements in anxiety, depression and blood pressure
Researchers say there are interlinked benefits across mental and physical health from prescribed time in green spaces or near bodies of water.


theguardian.com/environment/20...
#MentalHealth #health #nature 🌿

https://anfield.social/@stephen/110151645602246208

Tennessee House Poised to Expel 3 Democrats Over Gun Control Protest

"…After thousands of students — many of them not yet old enough to vote — marched out of class on Monday to call for action on stricter gun laws, demonstrators were expected to return to the Capitol on Thursday and protest the looming expulsion of the three Democrats." nyt

The Unknowability of Other People’s Pain

Worth considering, as we begin Kieran Setiya's account of coping with chronic pain in "Life is Hard":

"…Something I didn't learn until after my father's suicide is that depression can cause chronic gastrointestinal torment, much as stress can cause back pain, or sadness can cause tears. I doubt that any doctor sufficiently explained that to my father. The mere suggestion that his suffering might have had a "psychosomatic" element made him protest that what was happening to him wasn't all "in his head." Of course not. And yet, the brain is as much part of the body as the gut. The brain not only perceives physical pain but can help trigger painful bodily responses, too..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/well/mind/gastrointestinal-pain-suicide-depression.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The Unknowability of Other People's Pain

Can a Night Owl Become an Early Bird?

Well duh! This reads like Monty Python's "How to Do It" skit.

"…First, decide what time you'd like to wake up. Then, get out of bed at exactly that time each day — regardless of how tired you are — and get some sunlight. Sunlight tells your brain that it's time to be awake. Studies have found that morning light can advance your circadian rhythm, which will help your body adjust to an earlier schedule. As your body gets used to starting the day earlier, you'll naturally begin to fall asleep earlier in the evenings as well. Ideally, you should step outside in the morning and engage in exercise or some other activity that makes you alert. "A brisk walk outside in the morning is a pretty good way to start telling your internal clock that it's time to do this," Dr. Rosen said..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/well/live/how-to-wake-up-earlier.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Can a Night Owl Become an Early Bird?

As Young People March for Their Lives, Tennessee Crushes Dissent and Overrides Democracy

To remove legitimately elected officials from the chamber to which voters sent them is nothing short of authoritarianism.

...Disenfranchisement of liberal voters is nothing new in the state of Tennessee, but what the G.O.P is trying to do to these Democrats goes well beyond disenfranchisement. To remove legitimately elected officials from the chamber to which voters sent them — and to do so precisely because those officials were representing the wishes of voters — is nothing short of authoritarianism. And the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly has the votes to do it.

Still, I can't help but hope that Tennesseans will protest the precedent their leaders are about to establish. I still have hope that voters, even Republican voters, will contact their legislators today, in time to make at least some of them stop and reconsider what they are poised to do.

What Tennessee Republicans may think of Mr. Jones, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Pearson is far less important than what Tennessee Republicans may think about American democracy. Because democracy does not exist in a state where officials can be sent home for nothing more than voicing the opinions of voters who are pounding on the statehouse door, demanding to be heard.

In fundamental ways, none of this is surprising. Twenty-first-century Republicans are always demonstrating a truth that the Roman historian Tacitus understood back in the first century: It is part of human nature to hate someone you have hurt. In refusing to expand Medicaid, in attempting to replace public schools with private charters, in disenfranchising Democratic voters, in persecuting L.G.B.T.Q. citizens and demonizing school librarians, in stripping bodily autonomy from Tennessee women and in failing to protect us all from gunfire, they are telling us exactly how they feel about the people they represent... Margaret Renkl

Colleges Should Be More Than Just Vocational Schools

...On the federal and state levels, renewed funding for the liberal arts — and especially the humanities — would support beleaguered departments and show students that this study is valuable and valued.

At the university level, instituting general education requirements would guarantee that even students whose majors have nothing to do with the humanities emerged from college equipped to think deeply and critically across disciplines... nyt

Celebrate experience

A Psychedelics Pioneer Takes the Ultimate Trip

"Life has been more beautiful, more wonderful than ever," says Dr. Roland Griffiths, who has stage 4 cancer.

...So you have this sense, near the end of your life, of waking up to life's real meaning. What's the most important thing for everyone else who's still asleep to know? I want everyone to appreciate the joy and wonder of every single moment of their lives. We should be astonished that we are here when we look around at the exquisite wonder and beauty of everything. I think everyone has a sense of that already. It's leaning into that more fully. There is a reason every day to celebrate that we're alive, that we have another day to explore whatever this gift is of being conscious, of being aware, of being aware that we are aware. That's the deep mystery that I keep talking about. That's to be celebrated! nyt

Boldly going

NASA Names Diverse Astronaut Crew for Artemis II Moon Mission

The crew's 10-day journey around the moon and back in 2024 is a crucial step toward returning Americans to the moon on a sustained basis.

For the first time in more than half a century, NASA has named a crew of astronauts headed to the moon.

Humans have not ventured more than a few hundred miles off the planet since the return of Apollo 17, NASA's last moon mission, in 1972. After Artemis's experience on the moon, NASA hopes to chart a path to putting humans on Mars, while scientists expect to use what is found there to answer questions about how the solar system formed.

Astronauts in 2023 are much different from those when the United States was in a race to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. During the Apollo program, 24 astronauts flew to the moon, and 12 of them stepped on the surface. All of them were Americans. All of them were white men, many of whom were test pilots... nyt

Rorty & Dennett on science and truth, on WBUR's The Connection in 2000

https://youtu.be/EwITZa-o6Yg

Courage to move

A passage to ponder, for both literal and figurative (& personal and wider human) implication:

"With returning courage my power of locomotion returned. Evidently it depended on a vigorous and self-detached mentality. My recent mood of self-pity and earthward-yearning had hampered it."

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

Jane Goodall (on her birthday) on the Meaning of Wisdom and the Deepest Wellspring of Hope – The Marginalian

...After deconstructing our ample misunderstandings of what hope really means and defining it not as passive optimism but as the motive force of rightful action — "a human survival trait" without which "we perish" — she turns to the essence of wisdom as the tool that calibrates our hope and aims it at the correct action.

From the far-seeing platform of her eighty-seventh year, she observes:

Wisdom involves using our powerful intellect to recognize the consequences of our actions and to think of the well-being of the whole. Unfortunately… we have lost the long-term perspective, and we are suffering from an absurd and very unwise belief that there can be unlimited economic development on a planet of finite natural resources, focusing on short-term results or profits at the expense of long-term interests...

https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/26/jane-goodall-book-of-hope-wisdom/

Lyceum

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April foolishness

April is hard…

https://open.substack.com/pub/ksetiya/p/readers-digest-april-1-2023?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post