68 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2023
    1. romantic view of the enlightenment
      • for: Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now - critique - violence during Enlightenment, violence during Industrial Revolution
    2. i look at pinker's books his latest one enlightenment now and i read very carefully his section on climate change he takes climate change seriously but for me this is a litmus test
      • for: Steven Pinker - critique - climate change - Enlightenment Now
  2. Nov 2023
    1. We're in the time of the French Revolution now, a time where revolutionaries break with superstitions from the past. They will only be guided by reason. You have this extremely decorated French historian and geographer that's on a mission. A mission to fight the church. 00:07:15 He published this book on the cosmographical opinions of the Church Fathers, and he really goes for it. He writes how until recently, all science has had to be based on the Bible, and geographers were forced to believe Earth was a flat surface. According to him, this was all because of three irresistible arguments persecution, prison and the stake. I
      • for Jean-Antoine Letronne, myth - flat earth, book - The Cosographical opinions of the Church Fathers
    1. I avoid the terms ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘enlightened’ due to their association with a final permanent state and morally perfect individuals.5 Unfortunately, as we know from experience, there have been a significant number of ‘enlightened’ masters in Western Buddhist centres engaging in sexual misconduct. For those who have faith in enlightenment this is an uncomfortable mystery (Domyo 2019).
      • for: comparison - awakening - enlightenment, Kensho

      • comment

        • the author makes an astute observation and articulates an uncomfortable reality about the association of the word enlightenment with so called enlightened masters who have behaved quite immorally.
        • this is a good reason to choose v one word v over they other, although in my experience, both these words have been used at times to describe individuals who have behaved immorally, that is, to bring suffering instead of ease it. I don't if Kensho is a word that is a description of a very specific experience that is decoupled from model behaviour?
        • in the end, it may be different to simply add a caveat when using both terms .
    1. Husserl was affected by the application of the epoche in ways that may seem odd when one contemplates the epoche in the usual way, as only an intellectual game. Towards the end of his life, Husserl described the epoche as a `complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion' [The Crisis of European Sciences, 1970, Northwestern Univ. Pr., p. 137].
      • for: adjacency - epoche - enlightenment - awareness

      • comment

        • it is this deeper sense of the epoche which is salient to use potential as a tool for deep transformation in Deep Humanity or other open transformation praxis'.
  3. Oct 2023
    1. I have been working on my brain. Years of therapy, meditation, lucid dreaming, vision work; I’ve been an explorer for most of my life… but recently, I’ve taken a deep dive into a different kind of therapy that I’m going to call non-plant-based-medicine, because the organisms aren’t plants, and the folks who know, will know, and if you don’t know but you’re really curious, please talk to me privately after class. It’s an adventure in non-ordinary consciousness, and the results have been PHENOMENAL. The changes are seismic, and they have radically altered the way I’m interacting with the world. If you see me, and you think, “What got into HIM?” feel free to ask. Later on, I’ll probably be a little more frank about it, but for the moment, I’ve got to be just a bit circumspect. This morning, I had a surprising realization. These little satoris, these moments of sudden awareness, have been rising to the surface and bursting like bubbles in fizzy water; they keep catching me by surprise, and I am living in a constant state of wonder and delight. I have had a slight psychological stammer for the past couple of decades. It hasn’t been terribly noticeable; it shows up when I’m nervous mostly, but it’s been a constant companion. Things like strings of complicated words are difficult for me to get out, and particularly difficult to get out QUICKLY. My mouth would fight with my brain, and I would often end up either making some nonsense sound, or just shutting up. I made myself smaller, I backed away, I hushed myself. I know where it came from, and I’ve talked with my therapists about it, and I’ve worked on it… but it’s been a Thing. It has diminished my shine.

      Waking up is happening to more and more people

    1. Softer than the flower where kindness is concerned,Stronger than the thunder where principles are at stake.VEDIC DESCRIPTION OF THE ENLIGHTENED
  4. Sep 2023
    1. In fact, it's very easy to perform the epoche
      • for epoche - enlightenment, epoche - ease of performing
      • comment
        • the epoche is easy to perform
        • whereas it appears from the philosophical considerations difficult to perform
        • is it analogous to enlightenment, where the perception of it's difficulty is what makes it difficult?
    2. according to Husserl, the epoche is dramatic. It's something that changes suddenly your state of consciousness. It's not something cheap. He says, phenomenology implies a complete 00:17:02 self-transformation which can be compared to a religious conversion. You see things completely differently when you have performed an epoche. This epoche is radical. It's immediate and so on.
      • for: adjacency, adjacency - epoche - enlightenment, epoche, question, question - epoche and enlightenment

      • adjacency between

        • epoche
        • enlightenment
      • adjacency statment:
      • question
        • Is epoche the same as an enlightenment experience?
        • Did Husserl develop any techniques or trainings in epoche?
    1. Defined in this way, “stress” turns out to be a compelling translation of the Sanskrit term duḥkha (otherwise often rendered as “suffering”), which describes a treacherous world inhabited by restlessly craving beings.
      • for: bio-buddhism - stress, bio-buddhism, duhkha, question, question - enlightenment and stress, bio-buddhism - suffering, bio-buddhism - enlightenment
      • question
        • If enlightenment is defined as the ultimate awareness that penetrates the self-illusion, and therefore subject / object dualism is what brings peace, and the cessation of suffering due to the cessation of seeking, then how does this relate to the idea of goal-seeking, homeostatic efforts to attain a specific setpoint?
          • Do we attain the setpoint by awareness that stops the suffering in a unique way?
  5. Aug 2023
    1. This Western devotion to the liberal arts and liberal educa-tion must have been largely responsible for the emergence ofdemocracy as an ideal.

      Graeber and Wengrow seem to indicate otherwise.

  6. Mar 2023
    1. Graeber, David. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

      annotation target: url: urn:x-pdf:5a3fb6ca3c4ae2face96d0cb615518fe

  7. Jan 2023
    1. contemporary radical thinkersare more likely to see Enlightenment thought as the ultimate inreceived authority, as an intellectual movement whose mainachievement was to lay the foundations of a peculiarly modern formof rational individualism that became the basis of “scientific” racism,modern imperialism, exploitation, and genocide

      second and third order effects of the Enlightenment movement...

    2. This anyway would explain the apparent paradox of theBetsimisaraka: supposedly created by a failed philosopher king but,in fact, remaining as a stubbornly egalitarian people to this day,notorious, in fact, for their refusal to accept the authority of overlordsof any sort.

      The modern day culture of the Betsimisaraka which displays both egalitarian and stubborn people who refuse the authority of any overlords is some of the evidence that their culture through pirate stories into Europe were the beginnings of the Enlightenment.

    3. first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought

      David Graeber argues that the Betsimisaraka Confederation of Madagascar represents the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought which influenced political philosophers who fueled revolutionary regimes a century later.

    4. But the blanketcondemnation of Enlightenment thought is in its own way rather odd,when one considers that this was perhaps the first historically knownintellectual movement organized largely by women, outside of officialinstitutions like universities, with the express aim of undermining allexisting structures of authority.
    5. Enlightenment thinkers were often quiteexplicit that the sources of their ideas lay outside what we now call“the Western tradition” entirely
    6. the Enlightenment project, one now seen inrevolutionary quarters as a false dream of liberation that has insteadunleashed unspeakable cruelty upon the world

      Was the Enlightenment a false dream of liberation which has really unleashed an unspeakable cruelty upon the world?

  8. Jul 2022
    1. Not only is such thought beyond representation (and therefore beyond personware) possible,Weaver suggests but its occurrence constitutes a fundamental encounter which brings forth into existenceboth the world and the thinker. As such, thought sans image is deeply disturbing the stability andcontinuity of whatever personware the individual thinker may have been led to identify with andopens wide horizons of cognitive development and transformation ([13]: p. 35).

      !- similar to : Gyuri Lajos idea of tacit awareness !- implications : thought sans image !- refer : Gyuri Lajos https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343523812_Augmenting_Tacit_Awareness_Accepting_our_responsibility_for_how_we_shape_our_tools When one becomes cognizant of thought sans image, then one realizes the relative construction of one's social identity and that offers a freedom to take on another one * therefore, realization of thought sans image opens the door to authentic transformation

      !- question : thought sans image * If, as Weaver suggests, thought sans image is a primordial encounter which brings forth both the thinker and the world thought by the thinker, then this has strong similiarities to a spiritual awakening or enlightenment experience.

    2. though personwareis intrinsic to being a complete person it can be continuously modified, evolve or otherwise developed([5 ]: p. 201). More importantly, it can, to a significant extent, at least theoretically, be dynamicallygoverned and authored by the human individual. Hence, the human takeover.

      !- definition : human takeover * The ability for an individual to dynamically govern and author one's own personware. * The takeover gives us agency, rather than victimhood * the takeover can be triggered through realization of the difference between the thought sans image state and the conditioning into the symbolosphere

      !- question : spiritual enlightenment and personware * An interesting question is: "How does enlightenment impact the personware? " * Obviously, enlightenment cannot be an act of removing the personware. Language once learned cannot simply be meditated away. * Does the act of enlightenment then make the personware dramatically known to the individual as if it were indeed like a suit that we are wearing and not our fundamental nature? * Does enlightenment allow us to get more in contact with the prelinguistic and prepersonal

  9. May 2022
    1. is one of the solid East's who's you know all the Enlightenment salons have had sort of women facilitators who of course it's been forgotten and and marginalized in the history but she was one of those and she wrote a book which

      Enlightenment-era salons were led by women facilitators, but they have largely been marginalized since for their contributions.

      (reference?)

    2. pretty much all the arguments that we would be making too if we've met a bunch of Jesuits fear right of kings and reveal the faith and it's actually it's 00:41:37 the indigenous sort of looking rationally

      Perhaps summarizing Graeber and Wengrow too much here, but..

      The Enlightenment came to us courtesy of discussions with Indigenous Peoples from the Americas.

    1. Whig history (or Whig historiography), often appearing as whig history, is an approach to historiography that presents history as a journey from an oppressive and benighted past to a "glorious present".[1] The present described is generally one with modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy: it was originally a satirical term for the patriotic grand narratives praising Britain's adoption of constitutional monarchy and the historical development of the Westminster system.[2] The term has also been applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history (e.g. in the history of science) to describe "any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the historical process".[3] When the term is used in contexts other than British history, "whig history" (lowercase) is preferred.[3]

      Stemming from British history, but often applied in other areas including the history of science, whig history is a historiography that presents history as a path from an oppressive, backward, and wretched past to a glorious present. The term was coined by British Historian Herbert Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). It stems from the British Whig party that advocated for the power of Parliament as opposed to the Tories who favored the power of the King.


      It would seem to be an unfortunate twist of fate for indigenous science and knowledge that it was almost completely dismissed when the West began to dominate indigenous cultures during the Enlightenment which was still heavily imbued with the influence of scholasticism. Had religion not played such a heavy role in science, we may have had more respect and patience to see and understand the value of indigenous ways of knowing.

      Link this to notes from The Dawn of Everything.

  10. Jan 2022
    1. The Renaissance ob-session for order

      The Renaissance was obsessed with creating hierarchies and imposing order. The Enlightenment was focused on examining and questioning these hierarchies and breaking many of them down.

    1. It was largely the speakers of Iroquoian languages such as theWendat, or the five Haudenosaunee nations to their south, whoappear to have placed such weight on reasoned debate – evenfinding it a form of pleasurable entertainment in own right. This factalone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears tohave been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical,conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified withthe European Enlightenment as well. And, just like the Jesuits,Enlightenment thinkers and democratic revolutionaries saw it asintrinsically connected with the rejection of arbitrary authority,particularly that which had long been assumed by the clergy.

      The forms of rational, skeptical, empirical and conversational forms of debate popularized by the Enlightenment which saw the rejection of arbitrary authority were influenced by the Haudenosaunee nations of Americans.


      Interesting to see the reflexive political fallout of this reoccurring with the political right in America beginning in the early 2000s through the 2020s. It's almost as if the Republican party and religious right never experienced the Enlightenment and are still living in the 1700s.


      Curious that in modern culture I think of the Jesuits as the embodiment of rationalist, skeptical argumentation and thought now. Apparently they were dramatically transformed since that time.

    2. Enlightenment texts took the form of dialogues; mostcultivated an easy, transparent, conversational style clearly inspiredby the salon. (It was the Germans, back then, who tended to write inthe obscure style for which French intellectuals have since becomefamous.)

      Through the Enlightenment texts took the form of dialogues and it was the Germans of the time who began writing in a more obscure argumentative style which changed the form of the discourse.

    1. in Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” which has a chapter called “How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Interest Rightly Understood.” Despite our ambient certainty that it is natural, Tocqueville describes individualism as a newfangled phenomenon. The word “individualism” itself entered the English language largely through translations of his work. Somehow, our leaders are educated into the error of dangerously discounting this “enlightened self-interest” (also a term Tocqueville invented). 

      Alexis de Tocqueville coined the ideas/phrases "individualism" and enlightened self-interest.

  11. Dec 2021
    1. We will suggest that there isa reason why so many key Enlightenment thinkers insisted that theirideals of individual liberty and political equality were inspired byNative American sources and examples. Because it was true.
    2. For Europeanaudiences, the indigenous critique would come as a shock to thesystem, revealing possibilities for human emancipation that, oncedisclosed, could hardly be ignored.

      Indigenous peoples of the Americas critiqued European institutions for their structures and lack of freedom. In turn, while some Europeans listened, they created an evolutionary political spectrum of increasing human complexity to combat this indigenous critique.

    1. The unwritten rule of Cybernetics seems to be - Maintain the homeostasis until you break it for the better. #Cybernetics #Ashby

      This is a good rule of thumb for political science as well. Some of our issue in America right now is that we're seeing systemic racism and many want to change it, but we're not sure yet what to replace it with.

      The renaissance created scholasticism which created a new system, but too tightly wound religion into the humanist movement. Similarly Englightement Europe and America subsumed the indigenous critique, which opened up ideas about equality and freedom which hadn't existed, but they still kept the structures of hierarchy which have caused immeasurable issues. These movements are worth studying to see how the new systems were created, but with an eye toward more careful development so as not to make things even worse generations later.

    1. This post is mainly about the book’s attempt to dismantle the myth of “agriculture as the source of social inequality.” The next post will be about Graeber’s and Wengrow’s startling claim that European Enlightenment can be seen, to a large extent, as the result of a conversation with Indigenous, non-western intellectuals and societies – indeed, as inspired by them.

      David Graeber and David Wengrow's book can be seen as having two broad arguments:

      1. Dismantling the myth of "agriculture as the source of social inequality"
      2. The Eurpoean Englightenment can be seen as being inspired by conversations with Indigenous, non-Western intellectuals and societies.

      Open question: Were we englightened only just a little bit, but not enough? How do we get the other part of the transmitted package?

  12. Jul 2021
    1. This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences be­tween being able to remember something and being able to explain it.

      This quote is similar and generally related to the Feynman Technique. (see: https://fs.blog/2021/02/feynman-learning-technique/) It's based apparently on quotes attributed to Feynman which include:

      • "I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it."
      • "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't really understand it."
    2. To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.

      The distinctions between being informed and enlightened.

      Learning might be defined as the pathway from being informed as a preliminary base on the way to full enlightenment. Pedagogy is the teacher's plan for how to take this path.

      How would these definitions and distinctions fit into Bloom's taxonomy?

      Note that properly annotating and taking notes into a commonplace book can be a serious (necessary?) step one might take on the way towards enlightenment.

    1. Critical theory upends the universal values of the Enlightenment: objectivity, rationality, science, equality, freedom of the individual. These liberal values are an ideology by which one dominant group subjugates another. All relations are power relations, everything is political, and claims of reason and truth are social constructs that maintain those in power.

      Critical theory versus Englightenment

  13. Jun 2021
    1. To Mrs. SAVILLE, England. St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17--. YOU will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings

      "Frankenstein" does not begin in the way we expect. This seems pedestrian and boring. What you might not realize is just how clever this ruse is and how much information is packed into the very beginning.

      The epistolary aspect introduces a frame narrative. The letters belonging to Margaret Walton Saville give us the story of her brother Robert Walton. Walton conveys to her (and us) the story of Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein's narrative yields the story of the Creature. The Creature's story includes the story of Safie and the De Lacey family.

      The outer "frame" belongs to Margaret Walton Saville -- notice that these are the same letters, or "initials," (M. W. S.) as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

      Notice as well the place and the date. You may not know it but St. Petersburgh is like Las Vegas, Brasilia, or Dubai. It is an out of the way place, not particularly hospitable to humans, where a major city was artificially created. It was originally a swamp but the leaders decided to create a major, new city as an exemplary modern metropolis (and center of culture).

      Founded in 1703 in the westernmost corner of Russia’s territory, St. Petersburg was laid out according to the urban planning ideals of Western European enlightenment.

      This is a leading theme of the Enlightenment and the book: the dream of the artificial and planned, which is entirely new.

      Notice also that the book is squarely set in the eighteenth century, in the Enlightenment.

      Note, as well, that December 11 should strike one as a time of winter darkness and not at all propitious for an arctic expedition.

      Lastly, we have the first intimation of the lively controversy (in this book and elsewhere) between men and women: female domesticity (and due caution) versus male ambition and the drive for adventure.

      To me this shows just how artfully constructed this text actually is, right from the start. Which reveals it to be not boring.

  14. Nov 2020
    1. yet each tree was touched here and there with vivid snatches of the brightest red; the smaller twigs close to the trunk forming brilliant crison tufts, like knots of ribbon. One might have fancied them a band of young knights, wearing their ladies’ colors over their hearts. A pretty flowering dogwood close at hand, with delicate shaft and airy branches, flushed with its own peculiar tint of richest lake, was perchance the lady of the grove, the beauty whose colors were fluttering on the breasts of the knightly oaks on either side.

      This writing is an absolute perfect example of romanticized and even heroic themed literature. The personification of the trees as characters who complement each other paired with the reoccurring theme of the application of femininity to nature both contribute to American pastoral romanticism. The careful, detailed, and delicate descriptions of nature within this excerpt are key signs of its romantic qualities, which results in the reader consuming nature more poetically and intellectually. This influence creates and supports a relationship with nature that is characterized by inspiration, awe, and observance. This personified narrative supports pastoral leaning tones by emphasizing a courted relationship between the trees and describes the dogwood as this desired beauty of many. This leads one to further question what American pastoralism exactly means. Here Gordon M. Sayre points out the oxymoron of the idea. “In Marx’s formulation American pastoralism is an ideology that has mediated conflicting desires for technological progress and bucolic retreat, “a desire, in the face of the growing power and complexity of organized society, to disengage from the dominant culture and to seek out the basis for a simpler, more satisfying mode of life in a realm ‘closer,’ as we say, to nature”” (1). This definition understands American pastoralism as a progressive search for technological advance, but also as a desire to live a simpler life more in touch with nature. I think Cooper’s A Dissolving View leans heavily into an emotional connection with nature, but not so much in a simple way. This poetic comprehension of nature provides a deep appreciation and admiration of nature which submits to the gratuity motifs of pastoralism, but more so aligns with a romantic enlightening idea of nature.

      Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, Volume 69, Number 4, Winter 2013, pp. 1-23 (Article)

  15. Sep 2020
    1. itis necessary for the sovereign to conduct his business himself, because he will, if he is wise, pursue only the public interest, which is his own

      Here, Frederick seems to be touching on a key concept of absolutist thought: that the sovereign is the state. In some ways, this seems a natural evolution from the earlier concept of divine right (the sovereign as chosen by God). If the sovereign really is divinely chosen, who else is better qualified to dictate policy or to know what is best for their people?

      Today, Frederick is considered an enlightened absolutist (a position he shares with Catherine the Great of Russia and Maria Theresa of Austria). These rulers were absolute monarchs who tried to apply the principles of the Enlightenment in their rule for the betterment of their subjects.

  16. Aug 2020
    1. In such a manner, then, the three universal institutions instantiate the three temporal ecstasies which, properly speaking, define humanity’s abode on the earth. Religion, matrimony, and burial of the dead embody the linear openness of time. Religion is born of the idea of providence. It implies an awareness of the future. Burial of the dead is grounded in reverence for the past, for the ancestral, in short for what we call tradition. Tradition comes to us from the domain of the dead. Both religion and burial, in turn, serve to consolidate the contract of matrimony, which mantains the genealogical line in the present.

      Contextualize: This passage is about the beginnings of Humanism and the forest as a subject or element that caused the appearance of what we know as civilization. The scene takes place in the West, in a landscape abundant with forests in all directions, in which the people who inhabited it were lonely, without parents, or responsibilities, nothing. They lived a life without rules or restrictions, what the author describes as "bestial freedom." They visualized the space in a horizontal sense, because the density of the forests did not let them see more. The forest respresented the unknown.

      As everything in nature is part of a cycle, forests dry up and between darkness, light passes through and creating the idea that there is something else than the forest, that's when the giants become aware of the sky and visualize the space vertically. Thus was born the first act of human enlightenment: forest clearing and the appropiation of it for the creation of the three human institutions: religion, matrimony and buried of the dead. The forest becomes the obstacle and threat to the progress of the human being.

  17. Dec 2019
    1. Volney’s Ruins of Empires

      Of the books the Creature learns in the forest, Volney's The Ruins of Empires was most closely associated with Europe's radical Enlightenment. While the Creature learns a powerful critique of power, imperialism, and exploitation from hearing Volney read aloud, he also absorbs some of the Enlightenment's prejudices and ethnic stereotypes ("slothful Asiatics"). However, the effect on the Creature is to give him a sense of the structural and not merely a personal framework for understanding virtue and suffering. See Ian Balfour, "Allegories of Origins: Frankenstein after the Enlightenment," SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 56.4 (2016): 777-98.

    2. university of Ingolstadt

      Founded in 1472 in Bavaria, about 400 miles northeast of Geneva, this university became a leading center of scientific learning in the eighteenth century; the emergence of the Illuminati in 1776 also identified the university with the radical enlightenment.

    3. eternal light

      Compare John 8:12: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (KJV).

      The concept of "eternal light" also resonates with the myth of Prometheus and the principles of Enlightenment as the simultaneous literal and figurative 'enlightening' brought by education, adventure, and discovery.

    1. Sir Isaac Newton

      Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a natural philosopher and is widely considered one of the most prominent figures of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution.

  18. Oct 2019
    1. What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

      Interesting that he's comparing this to slavery since the institution would remain even after the colonies received their independence and the discrimination would continue beyond the establishment of the 13th Amendment. This quote is famous but in some ways problematic.

    2. The war is inevitable²and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

      Henry seems to be motivated to fight for independence. Similarly, Thomas Paine says, "that there are three different ways, by which an independancy may hereafter be effected... By the legal voice of the people in Congress; by a military power; or by a mob." Like Henry, Paine agreed that war and military forces would be a method through which independence might be secured.

  19. Feb 2019
    1. creating obscurities through disputation,

      lol @ this.

      "creating obscurities through disputation" sounds an awful lot like "broadening the knowledge base of humanity." Arguing toward ever more precise ideas and their articulations is the driving force of the Enlightenment.

  20. Jan 2019
    1. enforce some kind of coherence

      This is where the Enlightenment, which thinks of divisions and categories as things discovered by the rational mind, is in trouble, because those rational minds start turning inward on themselves.

  21. Apr 2017
    1. If “humans”refers to phenomena, not independent entities with inherent propertiesbut rather beings in their differential becoming, particular material(re)configurings of the world with shifting boundaries and properties thatstabilize and destabilize along with specific material changes in what itmeans to be human

      This concept stands much more in line with Hume's take on human consciousness as another bundle of sensory impressions instead of Descartes' cogito (with this video as a refresher). If a "human" is the phenomena of collision and configuring of boundaries, there isn't a core "you" that exists outside these interactions between the human and nonhuman.

    1. The implication of this \\l"Ould be that a differ-ent understanding of rhetoric would likely lead to a quite different story about the history of rhetoric and about rhetoric's place in our world today

      Or that, for example, we might not have a humanist view of rhetoric if not for the Enlightenment?

  22. Feb 2017
    1. Specialization and departmentalization in the modem university dispersed the many traditional intellectual concerns of rhetoric to other disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and literary studies.

      As we discussed in class (2.21), this is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment in many respects. Well, that combined with the Industrial Revolution.

  23. Jan 2017
  24. Jan 2016
    1. You must become aware that the Enlightenment you experience is a process inherent in Your Being. It is part of the dynamics—the “stuff”—of You
  25. Nov 2015
    1. The degree of enlightenment/belief each one is at will govern the degree to which Maitreya will have followers or co-workers. Those who are enlightened will continue to pursue their own inner, unfolding Self-discovery. As that growth takes place, they will become co-facilitators in one form or another, working shoulder to shoulder with Maitreya. They will not be blinded by what He is, because they will recognize that He is what They are, and that They are what He is to some degree.

      Raj seems to be alerting Paul to the fact that we are all Christ, that One....

    1. but the simple fact is that your Being Evolves whether you’re “with it” or not.
    2. It is time to become aware of the “physiology” or anatomy of your mentality. Be attentive to the process of what you call inspiration, intuition, psychic awareness, enlightenment. It is not something happening to you at all. Rather, it is You happening as You.

      I am the inspirations, intuition, psychic awareness and enlightenment.

    3. You see, it is a primary function of Being—and that means You—to evolve Itself out of Itself

      Enlightenment is inherent and the primary function of our being.

  26. Oct 2015
    1. The conclusion to processes of reasoning and thinking has never, ever been Enlightenment. No matter who it has been, the enlightenment they have experienced has occurred only when their three-dimensional consciousness has been totally silent, or it has broken through in spite of their thinking. Thus, it has illustrated that the thinking process is never responsible for growth.

      Paul wants to accomplish something but Raj asks him to drop that idea - they are going to simply be.

      Paul has a belief that he can figure it out.

    1. Growth, unfoldment, Evolution—whatever you want to call it—is what constitutes your Being. You need to experience that activity or function as yours. You are ready to be consciously aware that it is occurring, rather than just observing that it has occurred because you recognize you are in a new place.

      Be aware of the 'unfoldment' in the 'here and now' is what makes up my Being. I reflect upon.....God is the ceaseless unfoldment, the great Mystery as/is all things and I am an aspect of that.

    1. Now, these powers which He will apparently bring with Him will be experienced as a general worldwide spiritualization of thought, or inner Enlightenment. But, the fact will remain that it will not move everybody into the position of being a totally enlightened individuality. Their growth will need to be internalized, just as yours has.
    1. Paul, I keep saying that Being, Enlightenment, Growth, the rising of the Phoenix from its own ashes, is perfectly natural and normal, that it is always something that we are capable of doing. It will probably be some time before you realize the full impact of that fact and relax at the living of Life. But be aware of it now, to whatever degree you are able.

      Growth is natural and normal - hmmm

    1. This is exactly what is going on now, both in your individual experience and in the experience of the World. it will be the same World it has always been. But, you will have an enlightened view of it.

      Enlightenment = a change is perception of something that has not changed. The perception has changed.

  27. Sep 2015
    1. IV. Pursuing Political, Religious and Individual Freedom

      Week 7 Video Lecture

      Study Questions for this section:

      What were the three different colonial political structures and how did they function?

      How did the elected assemblies differ from Parliament in England?

      How did changes in marriage, print and religion affect the colonists ideas about their obligations to authority?

  28. Aug 2015
  29. classicliberal.tripod.com classicliberal.tripod.com
    1. Chapter 9

      This is a difficult reading. Try your best.

      Study Questions:

      According to Locke, why is “man” willing to give up the natural condition of freedom?

      Why does “man” enter into a condition of society and law?

  30. Oct 2013
    1. true eloquence consists, not in making people like what they disliked, nor in making them do what they shrank from, but in making clear what was obscure

      Rhetoric is to enlighten men, not manipulate