for - question - clarification - the outer world is collective consciousness - John Churchill

question - clarification - the outer world is collective consciousness - John Churchill - This is an obvious statement on the surface that - the inner world is individual consciousness and - the outer world is collective consciousness - What does he mean by "it's literally matter and it's like the shadow is literally out there"?

Erstmals wurde genau erfasst, welcher Teil der von Waldbränden betroffenen Gebiete sich auf die menschlich verursachte Erhitzung zurückführen lässt. Er wächst seit 20 Jahren deutlich an. Insgesamt kompensieren die auf die Erhitzung zurückgehenden Waldbrände den Rückgang an Bränden durch Entwaldung. Der von Menschen verursachte – und für die Berechnung von Schadensansprüchen relevante – Anteil der CO2-Emissione ist damit deutlich höher als bisher angenommen https://www.carbonbrief.org/climate-change-almost-wipes-out-decline-in-global-area-burned-by-wildfires/

Finnland hatte sich beim Ziel der CO2-Neutralität 2035 darauf verlassen, dass große Mengen von CO2 von Wäldern, Böden und Feuchtgebieten absorbiert werden. Inzwischen ist das Land dort keine Kohlenstoffsenke mehr. Dazu trägt die globale Erhitzung selbst bei, durch die viele Bäume sterben, aber auch die Abholzung des Waldes. Finnland ist ein Beispiel für die Schwächung der ländlichen Kohlenstoffsenken, von der viele Länder betroffen sind. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/15/finland-emissions-target-forests-peatlands-sinks-absorbing-carbon-aoe

2023 haben Böden und Landpflanzen fast kein CO2 absorbiert. Dieser Kollaps der Landsenken vor allem durch Dürren und Waldbrände wurde in diesem Ausmaß kaum vorausgesehen, und es ist nicht klar, ob auf ihn eine Regeneration folgt. Er stellt Klimamodelle ebenso in Frage wie die meisten nationalen Pläne zum Erreichen von CO2-Neutralität, weil sie auf natürlichen Senken an Land beruhen. Es gibt Anzeichen dafür, dass die steigenden Temperaturen inzwischen auch die CO2-Aufnahmefähigkeit der Meere schwächen. Überblicksartikel mit Links zu Studien https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-carbon-sink-collapse-global-heating-models-emissions-targets-evidence-aoe

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/climate/water-shortages-global-food-supply.html?searchResultPosition=2

for - adjacency - the largest companies in the world have more capital than many countries - the society of the spectacle - lobby industry

adjacency - between - the largest multi-national companies in the world have more capital than many countries - the society of the spectacle - adjacency relationship - It is a well publicized fact that the world's largest multi-national companies have more capital than many countries - This fact is a prime example of the conclusions of the society of the spectacle, - Governments are coopted to serve the needs of the multi-nationals through corporate lobbyists - In fact, multi-national corporations are called "multi-national" precisely because they are so large that they exceed the boundaries of nation states, they are LARGER than nation states - Advertising, movies and products all flow trans-nationally across political boundaries - Military weapons developed by the military industrial complex and sold to nation states make modern warefare between them exponentially more harmful - In the end, the elites within such corporations benefit from the most from the consumption - The diversion is towards maximizing their profits at the expense of all else: - people - the environment - life on earth

Globetrotting Boy Detective by [[Jerry Michalski]]

Also in this pantheon, though later, are Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego and Wild Kratts.

The Mad Scientists' Club was in the genre, but with less globetrotting.

for - The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability - Camilo Mora et al. - 6th mass extinction - biodiversity loss - question - 2024 - Sept 13 - how do we reconcile climate departure with quantification of earth system boundary biodiversity safe and just limit? - to - climate departure map - map of major cities - 2013 - to - researchgate paper - The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability - 2013 - Camilo Mora et al

paper details - title: The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability - author: - Camilo Mora, - Abby G. Frazier, - Ryan J. Longman, - Rachel S. Dacks, - Maya M. Walton, - Eric J. Tong, - Joseph J. Sanchez, - Lauren R. Kaiser, - Yuko O. Stender, - James M. Anderson, - Christine M. Ambrosino, - Iria Fernandez-Silva, - Louise M. Giuseffi, - Thomas W. Giambelluca - date - 9 October, 2013 - publication Nature 502, 183-187 (2013) - https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12540 - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12540

to - https://hyp.is/0BdCglsHEe-2CteEQbOBfw/www.researchgate.net/publication/257598710_The_projected_timing_of_climate_departure_from_recent_variability

Summary - This is an extremely important paper with a startling conclusion of the magnitude of the social and economic impacts of the biodiversity disruption coming down the pipeline - It is likely that very few governments are prepared to adapt to these levels of ecosystemic disruption - Climate departure is defined as an index of the year when: - The projected mean climate of a given location moves to a state that is - continuously outside the bounds of historical variability - Climate departure is projected to happen regardless of how aggressive our climate mitigation pathway - The business-as-usual (BAU) scenario in the study is RCP85 and leads to a global climate departure mean of 2047 (+/- 14 years s.d.) while - The more aggressive RCP45 scenario (which we are currently far from) leads to a global climate departure mean of 2069 (+/- 18 years s.d.) - So regardless of how aggressive we mitigate, we cannot avoid climate departure. - What consequences will this have on economies around the world? How will we adapt? - The world is not prepared for the vast ecosystem changes, which will reshape our entire economy all around the globe.

question - 2024 - Sept 13 - how do we reconcile climate departure with quantification of earth system boundary biodiversity safe and just limit? - Annotating the Sept 11, 2024 published Earth Commission paper in Lancet, the question arises: - How do we reconcile climate departure dates with the earth system boundary quantification of safe limits for biodiversity? - There, it is claimed that: - 50 to 60 % of intact nature is required<br /> - https://hyp.is/Mt8ocnIEEe-C0dNSJFTjyQ/www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00042-1/fulltext - a minimum of 20 to 25% of human modified ecosystems is required - https://hyp.is/AKwa4nIHEe-U1oNQDdFqlA/www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00042-1/fulltext - in order to mitigate major species extinction and social disruption crisis - And yet, Mora et al.'s research and subsequent climate departure map shows climate departure is likely to take place everywhere on the globe, with - aggressive RCP decarbonization pathway only delaying climate departure from - Business-As-Usual RCP pathway - by a few decades at most - And this was a 2011 result. 13 years later in 2024, I expect climate departure dates have likely gotten worse and moved closer to the present

from - Gupta, Joyeeta et al.(2024). A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations. The Lancet Planetary Health, Volume 0, Issue 0 - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelancet.com%2Fjournals%2Flanplh%2Farticle%2FPIIS2542-5196(24)00042-1%2Ffulltext&group=world

to - climate departure map - of major cities of the world - 2013 - https://hyp.is/tV1UOFsKEe-HFQ-jL-6-cw/www.hawaii.edu/news/2013/10/09/study-in-nature-reveals-urgent-new-time-frame-for-climate-change/ - full research paper - researchgate

for - The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability - Camilo Mora et al. - 6th mass extinction - biodiversity loss - to - climate departure map - of major cities around the world - 2013

Summary - This is an extremely important paper with a startling conclusion of the magnitude of the social and economic impacts of the biodiversity disruption coming down the pipeline - It is likely that very few governments are prepared to adapt to these levels of ecosystemic disruption - Climate departure is defined as an index of the year when: - The projected mean climate of a given location moves to a state that is - continuously outside the bounds of historical variability - Climate departure is projected to happen regardless of how aggressive our climate mitigation pathway - The business-as-usual (BAU) scenario in the study is RCP85 and leads to a global climate departure mean of 2047 (+/- 14 years s.d.) while - The more aggressive RCP45 scenario (which we are currently far from) leads to a global climate departure mean of 2069 (+/- 18 years s.d.) - So regardless of how aggressive we mitigate, we cannot avoid climate departure. - What consequences will this have on economies around the world? How will we adapt? - The world is not prepared for the vast ecosystem changes, which will reshape our entire economy all around the globe.

from - Nature publication - https://hyp.is/3wZrokX9Ee-XrSvMGWEN2g/www.nature.com/articles/nature12540

to - climate departure map - of major cities around the globe - 2013 - https://hyp.is/tV1UOFsKEe-HFQ-jL-6-cw/www.hawaii.edu/news/2013/10/09/study-in-nature-reveals-urgent-new-time-frame-for-climate-change/

Interesante esta mezcla de digital a análogo y las herramientas que en el domino digital continúan usando (drives, Notion, etc). Por supuesto, el grupo está enfocado en la segunda parte y sus innovaciones (Realtak, etc) y no en las innovaciones en la primera (drive, Notion). Dado que nosotros sí nos enfocamos en esta gestión alterna de conocimiento en lo digital, usando infraestructuras de bolsillo, metaherramientas y programación intersticial, cómo esto podría tener una contraparte y puente en análogo, lowtech, similar a Hypertalk in the world

for - unpack - key insight - with the postulate of consciousness as the foundation, it makes sense that this is - an inner reality made of qualia - and an outer reality made of shareable symbols we call matter - Federico Faggin - question - about Federico Faggin's ideas - in what way is matter a symbol? - adjacency - poverty mentality - I am the universe who wants to know itself question - in what way is matter a symbol? - Matter is a symbol in the sense that it - we describe reality using language, both - ordinary words as well as - mathematics - It is those symbolic descriptions that DIRECT US to jump from one phenomena to another related phenomena. - After all, WHO is the knower of the symbolic descriptions? - WHAT is it that knows? Is it not, as FF points out, the universe itself - as expressed uniquely through all the MEs of the world, that knows? - Hence, the true nature of all authentic spiritual practices is that - the reality outside of us is intrinsically the same as - the reality within us - our lebenswelt of qualia

for - participatory knowing - mutual conformity - mind and the world partcipate - John Vervaeke - responding to Michael Levin

for - question - does the world have agency? <br /> - answer - don't know - but it's not philosophical - it's scientific - do experiments to determine answer - Michael Levin

for - question - does the World have agency? - Michael Levin

for - Call for world action on multiple threats - Roundtable on the Human Future

for - planetary emergency - top priority task - get world leaders to meet and develop a plan to return to the safe operating space

for - climate crisis - psychology - wrong approach

summary - Climate scientist professor Mojib Latif explores why our best efforts at rapid intervention to deal with the climate crisis are failing - Near the end of the program, he interviews professor Henning Beck, a neuroscientist who suggests that human brains have evolved to be rewarded for securing more. - Dopamine is released when we get more and we have not designed our intervention strategies aligned with this basic property of our brains

for - perspectival knowing - example - age of the world - number of galaxies

perspectival knowing - example - age of the world - number of galaxies - This may be truth for one person, but not another - Our writing reveals our perspectives, and also determines who will or will not resonate with it

relationship to Eric Hoffer's The True Believer and modern politics?

relationship to the Great Books idea in 1942-1952 and beyond?

repeating history...

for - agriculture was invented in at least a dozen places around the world

Kurutz, Steven. “Now You Can Read the Classics With A.I.-Powered Expert Guides.” The New York Times, June 13, 2024, sec. Style. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/style/now-you-can-read-the-classics-with-ai-powered-expert-guides.html.

Compare this with the ideas of intelligence and eugenics of the time as well as that of class in Isenberg's White Trash.

Presumably this anonymous author would have been seeing things from a more dominant eugenics viewpoint at this time period of 1940.

See also: The Eugenics War (American Experience) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eugenics-crusade/

How, if at all, did the great books idea contribute to the idea of Manufacturing Consent for the 20th century?

Jacques Barzun wrote a review of of the Great Books when they came out in 1952.

Barzun, Jacques. “The Great Books.” The Atlantic, December 1952. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1952/12/the-great-books/642341/.

See notes at: https://hypothes.is/a/8o-z3DHLEe6_PMtDOvwCmg

for - answer - why is the world in crisis?

answer - why is the world in crisis? - We're disconnected from the physical world at the same time as - being intricately and desperately connected - We take resources away and - produce a lot of waste very rapidly - due to our capacities through science and technology

for - question - why is the world in crisis? - Planet Critical

for - adjacency - Entangled World host comment - Gerald Edelman observation - neonates do not separate the world

adjacency - between - Entangled World podcast host comment - Gerald Edelman observation - neonates do not separate the world - adjacency relationship - Entangled World podcast host commented that - neonates do not separate the world using language - This is similar to the observation the late neuroscientist Gerald Edelman made when he said - when a baby is first born into the world, the biggest puzzle is how that baby begins to separate the world when there was no separation to begin with

The complexity of the topic is determined by the content of the discussion the topic is about.

To me, it seems that Adler et al., are arguing that a topic should be stated as a phrase with varying degrees of complexity, determined by ?

Some examples of topics that are formulated and used in the original syntopicon.

It seems as though an idea is very broad and a "sub-topic" is more granular, though also determined based on the overall content and related to the primary idea.

It seems that most of the ideas were chosen based on scope and significance.

Adler et al. operated from a state of efficiency in the sense that they did not want the book to become too long (even though, or maybe because of, the fact that the end result became already two volumes each more than a thousand pages)

Adler explains the distinctive factor determining which authors and works were included in the list of the Great Books of the Western World.

Basically, they were works that were influential, written excellently, and had applicability to a considerable amount of ideas processed by the whole.

The ideas were chosen on the basis of coverage within the Great Works.

for - key insight - Putin is trying to create autocratic governments all over the world - geopolitics - Putin's influence in Georgia

Lacy, Tim. The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. https://amzn.to/3R2rCox.

Seit 1970 ist der Bestand an Fischen, die zu wandernde Arten gehören, um 80% gesunken, wie ein neuer Bericht zur Aktualisierung des Living Planet Index zeigt. Verantwortlich ist vor allem die Zerstörung von Fluss- und anderen Wasserökosystemen durch Staudämme, Bergwerke und Schadstoffe. Der Populationsrückgang ist weltweit am deutlichsten ist der in Südamerika und der Karibik. Ein Viertel der Süßwasser Fischarten ist vom Aussterben bedroht.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/21/living-planet-index-migratory-freshwater-fish-populations-decline-dams-weirs-mining-water-abstraction-pollution-threat-aoe

Die Weltbank hat 2022 3,7 Milliarden Dollar für fossile Investitionen zur Verfügung gestellt, obwohl sie offiziell eine Dekarbonisierungs-Politik vertritt. Das Geld floss als sogenannte „trade finance“, wie ein neuer Bericht von Urgewald zeigt. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/12/world-bank-spent-billions-of-dollars-backing-fossil-fuels-in-2022-study-finds

Urgewald-Studie: https://www.urgewald.org/node/1773

Gut recherchierter Überblicksartikel zur zunehmenden Ausbeutung von Erdgas im Senegal und Ländern. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/31/senegal-natural-gas-climate-change/

https://taz.de/Regen-auf-der-arabischen-Halbinsel/!6003672/

Der Amazonas-Regenwald kommt dem Kipppunkt, an dem er mehr CO2 abgibt als aufnimmt, immer näher. Eine neue Studie sagt vorraus, dass bis 2050 47% des Gebietes geschädigt sein könnten. Von Juni bis Dezember 2023 herrschte dort eine externe Dürre, die einer Attributionsstudie zufolge durch die globale Erhitzung 30mal wahrscheinlicher wurde. https://taz.de/Klimawandel/!5990314/

Studie: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06970-0

Attributionsstudie: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-not-el-nino-main-driver-of-exceptional-drought-in-highly-vulnerable-amazon-river-basin/

Perhaps the letting go of one's responsibilities, one's expectations and civility (as a woman) leads to her death, meaning that all life shallowly is, is the battle between ourselves and society's imposing constructs, and once this conflict is overcome, we are at peace -- we can ascend into heaven. This alignment between our inner clarity and our actions is what leads her to die "peacefully".

It's no wonder that Mortimer J. Adler was able to write such a deep analysis of reading in How to Read a Book after having spent so much time indexing the ideas behind The Great Books of the Western World.

Indexing requires a solid inspectional read at minimum, but will often go deeper into contexts which require at least some analytical reading. To produce the Syntopicon, one must go even further into analytical reading to provide the proper indexing of ideas so that they may be sub-categorized and used for deeper analysis for things such as comparison and contrast of those ideas.

https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Democratic-Culture-Mortimer-Intellectual/dp/0230337465

The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History) by Tim Lacy

Die Selbstverpflichtungen der Regierungen zur Dekarbonisierung reichen bei weitem nicht aus. Ein Bericht, der von den Vereinten Nationen als Grundlage für die kommende COP28 publiziert wurde, ergibt, dass 2030 etwa 20 bis 23 Gigatonnen mehr CO₂ emittiert werden sollen, als mit dem 1,5 °-Ziel verträglich wäre. Zum ersten Mal wird in einem offiziellen UN-Dokument das Ende der Nutzung fossiler Brennstoffe gefordert. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/un-report-calls-for-phasing-out-of-fossil-fuels-as-paris-climate-goals-being-missed

Bericht: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/EMBARGOED_DRAFT_Sythesis-report-of-the-technical-dialogue-of-the-first-global-stocktake.pdf

Bericht: https://unfccc.int/documents/631600

To what extent in this process is the client reconfiguring and refocusing on their relationship with those around them? Does the past have absolute process (in the Zulu incarnation)? It obviously may not in the Western practice, but perhaps the client may more easily come to terms with those around them as a result, and this is more beneficial than a "truer" outcome?

Zwei der Reports, die zum Weltwirtschaftsforum 2024 publiziert wurden, betonen die Bedeutung von Risiken, die mit der globalen Erhitzung, der Zerstörung der Biodiversität und der lebenserhaltenden Systeme des Planeten verbunden sind. Der Artikel der Repubblica zählt klimapolitisch wichtige Ereignisse des Jahres 2024 auf.https://www.repubblica.it/green-and-blue/2024/01/17/news/world_economic_forum_2024_cambiamento_climatico-421899576/

for - Rainbow body - Deep Humanity - superorganism - multi-level communication - adjacency between - contemplative practice - direct experience of body's cellular activity

summary - Father Tiso and his catholic lineage combined with scholarship in Tibetan studies places him in a unique position for interfaith dialogue - His research interest in investigating the extraordinary and unexplained Tibetan meditation phenomena of Rainbow Body manifested by the greatest practitioners at the time of death (including contemporary ones) sheds light on the Rainbow Body phenomena in many spiritual traditions and challenges the scientific community to come up with an explanation for it. - If scientifically proven true, it offers an extraordinary possibility of human potential - Contemplation could be the practice technique that could directly bridge normal human consciousness with the microscopic world around us, which to date, is only accessible through scientific instrumentation.

question - Does deep contemplative practice offers a direct access to the microscopic reality? - If so, how does it accomplish this direct communication with human cells, and indeed, even the universe itself? - Father Tiso shares centuries old recorded visual drawings of experiences reported by Rainbow Body practitioners and speculates whether these drawings represent direct experience of the cellular scale of our human form - Indeed, could it even be at the quantum level of experience, since rainbows are an optical phenomenal?

Interview mit Hannah Ritchie zu ihrem Buch "Not the End of the World". Richie betont, das technische Lösungen vorhanden sind, um die globale Erhitzung zu stoppen. Wissen um diese Lösungen und bereits erzielte Erfolge erleichtere das Engagement, während Pessimismus lähmend sei. https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000202689/klimaexpertin-ritchie-vieles-bewegt-sich-in-die-richtige-richtung

Syntopical Construction by [[Dan Allosso]]

https://www.amazon.com/GREAT-BOOKS-David-Denby/dp/0684835339

Adler & Hutchinson's Great Books of the Western World was an encyclopedia-based attempt to focus society on a shared history as their common ground. H. G. Wells in his World Encyclopedia thesis attempts to forge a new "moving" common ground based on newly evolving knowledge based on distilling truth out of science. Shared history is obviously much easier to dispense and spread about compared to constantly keeping a growing population up to date with the forefront of science.

How could one carefully compose and juxtapose the two to have a stronger combined effect?

How could one distribute the effects evenly?

What does the statistical mechanics for knowledge management look like at the level of societies and nations?

link to https://hypothes.is/a/abTT1KPDEe6nqxPx4fXggw

Compare this with Hutchins and Adler's solution undertaken just a few years following this beginning in the early 1940s and finally published in 1952: The Great Books of the Western World.

These books speak toward the idea of living well and understanding mankind, but don't have the same deeply edited and critical synthesis viewpoint.

• for: architectural plan - redesign the world, BIG architecture

Will artificial intelligence create useless class of people? - Yuval Noah Harari

1:00 "bring the latest findings of science of the public", otherwise the public space "gets filled with conspiracy theories and fake news and whatever".<br /> he fails to mention that ALL his beautiful "scientists" are financially dependent on corporations, who dictate the expected results, and who sabotage "unwanted research".<br /> for example, the pharma industry will NEVER pay money for research of natural cancer cures, or "alternative" covid cures like ivermectin / zinc / vitamin C, because these cures have no patent, so there is no profit motive, and also because the "militant pacifists" want to fix overpopulation this way.<br /> a "scientist" should be someone, who has all freedom to propose hypotheses, which then are tested in experiments (peer review), and compared to real placebo control groups. because that is science, or "the scientific method". everything else is lobbying for "shekel shekel".

https://lifelonglearn.substack.com/p/second-unboxing

https://lifelonglearn.substack.com/p/unboxing-the-great-books

• for: book - Rethinking the World

• book: Rethinking the World

• author: Peter Pogany

The Syntopicon Vault by Dan Allosso

• for: what is the world made of, paradigm shift - scientific ontology

• question

  • what off the world made of?
• answer ( Phenomenological)
  • experience!

reply to u/Paddy48ob at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17jscyk/comment/k80z1nn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Thanks for this pointer. As a note, when I compare my 1954 version against the photo of the 1990 edition (which has fewer pages), it's obvious that the "1. The ends of education" section in the 1954 edition is significantly more thorough with more references (and supplementary data) which don't exist in the 1990 edition. The 1990 edition presumably removes the references for the books which they may have removed from that edition (though it may have actually been even more--I didn't check this carefully).

Just comparing the two pages that I can see, I don't see any references to the added texts of the 1990 edition appearing in that version of the Syntopicon at all.

I took a quick look at the Syntopicon V1 (1990) via the Internet Archive and of the added texts that year I sampled searches for Voltaire, Erasmus, and John Calvin and the only appearances of them to be found are in the Addition Bibliography sections which is also where they appeared in the 1952 editions. My small sampling/search found no added references of any of these three to the primary portions of the main References sections, so they obviously didn't do the additional editorial work to find and insert those.

As a result, it appears that the 1952 (and reprint editions following it) have a measurably better and more valuable version of the Syntopicon. The 1990 (2nd Edition) is a watered down and less useful version of the original. It is definitely not the dramatically improved version one might have hoped for given the intervening 38 years.

Is it really incumbent on the author to translate every word he's using with respect to the language in which he's writing. He's already doing us a service by translating the Hebrew. Are modern readers somehow with out a dictionary? I might believe they've not been classically educated to capture all the allusions, but the dictionary portion is a simple fix that is difficult to call him out on from a critical perspective, especially in a publication like "Law & Liberty" whose audience is specifically the liberally educated!?!

Our Journey, Day 83 by Dan Allosso

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/our-journey-day-68

• comment
  • Sadhguru is making the point that there is so many competing perspectives, many highly polarized that you cannot achieve harmony between all of them
  • Ironically, this is even true at the national level
  • One can, however, appeal to a global subset of people who believe in the same thing

A stark statement that lays bare the original sin of Western thought.

The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education. 27th Printing. Vol. 1. 54 vols. The Great Books of the Western World. 1952. Reprint, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1984.

I read the first edition.

Hutchins, Robert M. The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education. Edited by Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. 1st ed. Vol. 1. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

urn:x-pdf:0ce8391ed9f9f1cfc78c28b6c923abac<br /> Annotation search: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A0ce8391ed9f9f1cfc78c28b6c923abac

Wills, Garry. “After 54 Great Books, 102 Great Ideas, Now—Count Them !—Three Revolutions.” The New York Times, June 13, 1971, sec. BR. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/13/archives/the-common-sense-of-politics-by-mortimer-j-adler-265-pp-new-york.html

It's not super obvious from the digitized context (text), but this review is in relation to The Common Sense of Politics (1971) by Mortimer J. Adler.

Wills criticizes Adler and his take in the book as well as the general enterprise of the Great Books of the Western World.

There seem to be interesting sparks here in the turn of the Republican party in the early 70s moving into the coming Reagan era.

• for: doppleganger, conflict resolution, deep humanity, common denominators, CHD, Douglas Rushkoff, Naomi Klein, Into the Mirror World, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories, conspiracy culture, nonduality, self-other, human interbeing, polycrisis, othering, storytelling, myth-making, social media amplifier -summary
  • This conversation was insightful on so many dimensions salient to the polycrisis humanity is moving through.
  • It makes me think of the old cliches:
    • "The more things change, the more they remain the same"
    • "What's old is new" ' "History repeats"
  • the conversation explores Naomi's latest book (as of this podcast), Into the Mirror World, in which Naomi adopts a different style of writing to explicate, articulate and give voice to
    • implicit and tacit discomforting ideas and feelings she experienced during covid and earlier, and
    • became a focal point through a personal comparative analysis with another female author and thought leader, Naomi Wolf,
      • a feminist writer who ended up being rejected by mainstream media and turned to right wing media.
  • The conversation explores the process of:
    • othering,
    • coopting and
    • abandoning
  • of ideas important for personal and social wellbeing.
  • and speaks to the need to identify what is going on and to reclaim those ideas for the sake of humanity
  • In this context, the doppleganger is the people who are mirror-like imiages of ourselves, but on the other side of polarized issues.
  • Charismatic leaders who are bad actors often are good at identifying the suffering of the masses, and coopt the ideas of good actors to serve their own ends of self-enrichment.
  • There are real world conspiracies that have caused significant societal harm, and still do,
  • however, when there ithere are phenomena which we have no direct sense experience of, the mixture of
    • a sense of helplessness,
    • anger emerging from injustice
  • a charismatic leader proposing a concrete, possible but explanatory theory
  • is a powerful story whose mythology can be reified by many people believing it
  • Another cliche springs to mind
    • A lie told a hundred times becomes a truth
    • hence the amplifying role of social media
  • When we think about where this phenomena manifests, we find it everywhere:

Compare this list to what ultimately became the Great Books of the Western World in 1952. Lots more 20th century writing on it to begin...

This book was published originally in 1940 and apparently the Great Books of the Western World was hatched in 1943, so this book isn't necessarily a stepping stone to pitching/selling those, though obviously it informs the ideas which led up to its creation.

Note that it is roughly contemporaneous to his article a year later:

Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1941.<br /> https://stevenson.ucsc.edu/academics/stevenson-college-core-courses/how-to-mark-a-book-1.pdf

via https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/phyllis-diller-raucous-comic-famous-for-her-withering-oneliners-8069891.html

Hutchins indicates that part of the fall of the humanities was the result of the rise of the scientific method and experimental science. In wanting fields from the humanities—like social sciences and history—to be a part of this new scientific paradigm, professors completely reframed their paradigms in a more scientific mode and thereby erased the progenitors and ideas in these fields for newer material which replaced the old which was now viewed as "less than" in the new paradigms. This same sort of erasure of Indigenous knowledges was also similarly effected as they were also seen as "less than" from the perspective of the new scientific regime.

One might also suggest that some of it was the result of the acceleration of life brought on by the invention of writing, literacy, and the spread of the printing press making for larger swaths of knowledge to be more immediately available.

Purpose of the Great Books of the Western World

Barzun, Jacques. “The Great Books.” The Atlantic, December 1952. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1952/12/the-great-books/642341/.

Barzun heaps praise on Great Books of the Western World with some criticism of what it is also missing. He finds more than a few superlative words for the majesty of the Syntopicon.

According to Jacques Barzun (and possibly written in the volumes itself), while the Syntopicon has 102 ideas, there are "some three thousand subheadings."

the five-foot shelf reference is to the Harvard Classics competitor

I like their simplicity and cloth texture, but family members seem to think that my 1952 set of The Great Books of the Western World are a bit on the "dreary looking side" compared with the more colorful books in our home library. (It says something that the 12 year old thinks my yellow Springer graduate math texts are more inviting...) Has anyone else had this problem and solved it with custom printed dust jackets?

• Has anyone seen them for sale?
• Made their own?
• Interested in commissioning some as a bigger group?
• Used a third-party company to design and print something?

In doing something like this for fun, I might hope that the younger kids in the house might show more interest in some more lively/colorful custom covers.

I'm partially tempted to use a classical painting as a display across the spines (a la Juniper Books collections) perhaps using:

• The School of Athens by Raphael
• The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David

Other thoughts? suggestions?

Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicalEducation/comments/15gv2cz/custom_dust_jackets_for_the_great_books_of_the/

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  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 03 Delay
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  • BBC

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  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 02 Doubt
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  • Big Oil v the World Series 1 01 Denial
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There are 443 works by 74 authors in the Great Books of the Western World. All of them are printed in their entirety except for Aquinas, Kepler and Fourier.

Robert Hutchins takes sole responsibility for the final decision on the selection for the books which appear in The Great Books of the Western World series.

One wonders what sort of advice he may have sought out or received with respect to a much broader diversity of topics and writers with respect to his own time. I reminded a bit of the article The 102 Great Ideas (Life, 1948) which highlights a more progressive stance with respect to women and feminism in the examples used.

See: LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. Https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

It feels odd that people wouldn't understand their own traditions, but it obviously happens. Information overload can obviously heavily afflict societies toward forgetting their traditions and the formation of new traditions, particularly in non-oral traditions which focus more on written texts which can more easily be ignored (not read) and then later replaced with seemingly newer traditions.

Take for example the resurgence of note taking ideas circa 2014-2020 which completely disregarded the prior histories, particularly in lieu of new technologies for doing them.

As a means of focusing on Western Culture, the editors here have highlighted some of the most important thoughts for encapsulating and influencing their current and future cultures.

How do oral traditions embrace the idea of the "Great Conversation"?

Two of the driving reasons behind the Great Books project were improvement of both education and democracy.

The democracy portion was likely prompted by the second Red Scare from ~1947-1957 which had profound effects on America. Published in 1952, this series would have considered it closely and it's interesting they included Marx in the thinkers at the end of the series.

A great admission to make upfront in such a massive endeavor which one hopes to shape the future.

What does this mean for ars excerpendi writ large? Particularly when it may apply to hundreds of thousands?

One) Successful men realize that the most important decision in their life is the woman they choose, because outside of work, this is what they'll be spending most time on. The woman must understand the man's grand ambition, and support them with it. (Cf. Flow & The Intellectual Life as well). Women should be chosen on personality, not looks. Looks fade (attraction as well), personality "stays".

Two) Everyone deserves an opinion but not everyone deserves a say. Charlie Munger sums this up right: "I don't ever allow myself to have [express] an opinion about anything that I don't know the opponent side's argument better than they do." Or Marcus Aurelius, who says: "The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject." In short: Only state your opinion when you can back it up!; knowledge and experience. The same goes for judging opinion (and advice) from others.

Three) Successful people buy assets when the money is enough. Assets > Luxury. (See also: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki). Only buy glamor and other "interests" once your assets are there to secure your financial success.

Four) Be pragmatic. Do what's practical, not what is "sexy". Notice inefficiencies and solve them. The entrepreneurial mindset.

Five) The morning sets the tone for the rest of the days. Time is subjective, waking up early doesn't matter as much as waking up later. It depends on the person. Someone who wakes up at 10am can be as successful as someone who wakes up at 6am. Instead, what defines success, is a highly effective morning routine.

Six) The less you talk, the more you listen. Talking less means less mistakes. In addition, the less you talk, the more people will listen when you do speak. It puts extra weight on your message. Listening means analysis and learning.

Seven) Pick the right opportunity at the right time. Pick the right vehicle. Do the right things in the right order! The advice "don't do what someone says, do what they do" is bullshit, as you can't do what someone is able to do after ten years of experience.

Eight) Discipline > Motivation. Motivation, like Dr. Sung says, fluctuates and is multifactorial dependent... When you are lead by motivation you will not be as productive. Don't rely on chance. Rely on what is stable.

Nine) Once a good career has been made, buy A1 assets and hold on to them to secure a financially successful future.

Ten) Just because you won, you are not a winner. Being a winner is a continuous process, it means always learning and reflecting as well as introspecting. Don't overvalue individual wins but do celebrate them when appropriate.

Eleven) Build good relationships with the banks early on. At times you need loans to fund certain ventures, when having a good relation with them, this will be significantly easier. Understand finance as early as possible. Read finance books.

Twelve) Keep the circle small. Acquintances can be many, but real close relationships should be kept small. Choose your friends wisely. "You become the average of the five people you spend most time with." Privacy is important. Only tell the most deep secrets to the Inner Circle, to avoid overcomplication.

Thirteen) Assume that everything is your fault. Responsibility. It leads to learning. It requires reflection and introspection. It leads to Dr. Benjamin Hardy's statement: "Nothing happens to you, everything happens for you."

Fourteen) Work like new money, but act like your old money. Combine the hunger of the new with the wisdom of the old.

Fifteen) Assume that you can't change the world, but slightly influence it. It prevents disappointments and gives a right mindset. Do everything (that has your ambition) with an insane drive. Aim to hit the stars. To become the best of the best.

Sixteen) Private victories lead to public victories. The solid maxim is the following: "The bigger the public victory, the more private victories went into it." Work in private. Social media doesn't need to known the struggle. Let your results talk for you. This is also why you should never compare yourself to others, but rather to your own past self.

Seventeen) After extreme experience, the most complicated task will look elegant and effortless. Unconscious competence.

so this passage explicitly mentions "external beauty", BUT if we're to consider beauty in its truest essence, then i wonder if this statement is a bad thing. after all, beauty is essentially harmony and balance (which explains why individuals with symmetrical features are considered attractive). all of us strive for beauty, but in doing so, we may lose what makes us unique because beauty favors uniformity.

this is fascinating to me because uniformity adheres to a standard, which is important for regulating randomness (opposite of this is pattern and we LOVE patterns because it is discernible which means it is safer), and fostering a shared understanding of the world. and this shared understanding of our world is really important to us as humanity. this is how we evolve together. this collective perception only happens through that concept of beauty (or form and structure, harmony and balance).

nowadays, we shifted and value individualism more. this excessive individualism has promoted different perspectives on the world which contributes to conflicts. ultimately, extremes on both ends of the spectrum (uniformity or individualism) are detrimental, so striking this balance between them is crucial for progress and unity among people.

Die World Weather Attribution Group hat in einer Studie nachgewiesen, dass die große Dürre an Horn von Afrika ein Ergebnis der Erhitzung der Erde durch Treibhausgase ist. Von der Dürre sind 50 Millionen Menschen direkt und weitere 100 Millionen indirekt betroffen. Ohne die Erhöhung der Temperaturen hätten dieselben Regenverhältnisse nicht zu einer Dürre geführt. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/27/human-driven-climate-crisis-fuelling-horn-of-africa-drought-study

Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume II, Man to World. 1st ed. Vol. 3. 54 vols. The Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume I, Angel to Love. 1st ed. Vol. 2. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

Provides an small example of "the great conversation" on the equality of men and women.

Amidst a number of very gendered advertisements in issue 4 of volume 24 of LIFE magazine from 1948 is a short piece on the pending release of The Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World.

The piece starts out talking about the 432 classical works written by 71 men and highlights the fact that "Woman, not a main idea, is included [with] in [the topical category] Family Man and Love." The piece goes on by way of example of the work to excerpt portions on Idea number 51: "Man". To show the flexibility of the included Syntopicon categorization they elaborate with 15 excerpted passages from authors from Plato to Freud on Idea 51, subdivision 6b: "Men and Women: their equality or inequality".

It provides a fantastic mini-study on the emerging conversation on gender studies as seen in a mainstream magazine in 1948.

Were there any follow up letters to the editor on this topic in subsequent issues? How was this broader piece received with respect to the idea of gender at the time?

A staff of at least 26 created the underlying index that would lay at the heart of the Great Books of the Western World which was prepared in a rented old fraternity house on the University of Chicago campus. (p. 93)

How did Michael Oakeshott's philosophy overlap with the idea of the 'Great Conversation' or 20th century movement of Adler's Great Books of the Western World.

How does it influence the idea of "having conversations with the text" in the annotation space?

Annotate this report

The AdlerNet Guide, Part III<br /> by Amy Hunt

https://archive.org/details/encyclopaediabritannicagreatbooksofthewesternworld/Encyclop%C3%A6dia%20Britannica%20-%20Great%20Books%20of%20the%20Western%20World%2C%20Volume%201%20-%20The%20Great%20Conversation/

Lubbock's List: http://www.greaterbooks.com/lubbock.html

http://www.greaterbooks.com/

Center for the Study of the Great Ideas

https://web.archive.org/web/20190806154724/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/literature/gbww/index.html

University of Adelaide digital collection of the Great Books of the Western World using public domain sources within their collection.

https://www.logos.com/product/55052/great-books-of-the-western-world

A digital (app?) version of The Great Books of the Western World with cross references.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ebooks/comments/eao9c8/great_books_of_the_western_world_ebook_collection/

Someone's collected digital copies of most of the Great Books of the Western World collection here.

https://standardebooks.org/collections/encyclopaedia-britannicas-great-books-of-the-western-world

the phrase "intellectual furniture" is sort of painful here...