for - problem with humanity - lack of understanding of sacred friendship and sacred humanism - John Church

Peterson criticises Eckhart Tolle in one of his videos, mistaking him to be a humanist (he is more of a mystic, though...). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEnQ78FkdaE

Funnily enough, Eckhart did mention the humanist movement, in one of his videos. He related this to a period of more awareness and awakening that was brought to the masses.

We have Renaissance humanism from the 1500s. We need to have a dose of Digital humanism in the 2000s.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231121081108/https://www.humanwordsproject.com/

Found via Richard Polt's blog.

Site no longer exists in 2024

What besides work in behavioral economics has focused on the humanist side of the sciences as a means of helping humanity beyond the basic black and white?

How to create a "religion of science" which helps to displace the psychological problems, theological hate, etc?

It would seem that people who spend too much time online experience more anxiety. Could it be that we've evolved to only be able to manage so many inputs and amounts of variety of those inputs? The experiencing of too much variety in our environments and the resultant anxiety may be a result of the limits of Ross Ashby's law of requisite variety within human systems.

This may also be why chaos machines like Donald Trump are effective at creating anxiety in a populace whose social systems are not designed to handle so many crazy ideas at once.

Implications for measurements of resilience?

blah. this surveillance system is one big personality test.<br /> the problem is, they do not want a balance of all personality types or "natural order",<br /> but they do a one-sided selection by personality type.<br /> aka socialdarwinism, socialism, survival of the social, social credit score, civilization, high culture, progress, "made order", human laws, human rights, humanism, ...

Jeff Jarvis specifically points out the shift in technology which is now injecting more humanity into the process.

All Tech Is Human

Is this the same sort of shift in work noticed by Barak Obama in his four part documentary series Working: What We Do All Day which aired on Netflix in 2023?

Politicians should focus here especially.

The human--animal - the Darwinian, rather than Hobbesian, social animal endowed with ‘social instincts’ and ‘moral sense’ - is surely the anthropological substratum of the ‘study of certain aspects of the human mind’ that Levi carries out in SQ. However, these verses from canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno seem to contravene such evolutionary--anthropological assumptions, instead claiming the humanist identification of humanity with reason.

This apparent ‘conceptual anomaly’ has led interpreters to diverge, between those who see in this chapter a patent affirmation of Levi’s humanist creed (Farrell, Patruno) and those who remind us that these pages should always be read along with Levi’s naturalistic essays from the 1960s and the 1970s (Benvegnù, Ross), or indeed through the ‘Fascist’ Ulysses of the liceo (Druker). Of course, Levi’s reflection on the human mind is not immune from contradictions or unsolved questions.

However, we might propose that ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ can be read as an expression of Levi’s mindset as a man of science who does not conceive any rift between the so-called ‘two cultures’. Levi can pair Darwin and Dante without perceiving any contradiction; a mutual reinforcement that does not entail the lack of spirit in the former and the lack of matter in the latter. Put simply, for Levi, in certain moments, the Scholastic Dante (or the Catholic Manzoni) could say more about human experience than the materialists Darwin and Lorenz, but this is no escape from our finitude.

SG

The human--animal - the Darwinian, rather than Hobbesian, social animal endowed with ‘social instincts’ and ‘moral sense’ - is surely the anthropological substratum of the ‘study of certain aspects of the human mind’ that Levi carries out in SQ. However, these verses from canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno seem to contravene such evolutionary--anthropological assumptions, instead claiming the humanist identification of humanity with reason.

This apparent ‘conceptual anomaly’ has led interpreters to diverge, between those who see in this chapter a patent affirmation of Levi’s humanist creed (Farrell, Patruno) and those who remind us that these pages should always be read along with Levi’s naturalistic essays from the 1960s and the 1970s (Benvegnù, Ross), or indeed through the ‘Fascist’ Ulysses of the liceo (Druker). Of course, Levi’s reflection on the human mind is not immune from contradictions or unsolved questions.

However, we might propose that ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ can be read as an expression of Levi’s mindset as a man of science who does not conceive any rift between the so-called ‘two cultures’. Levi can pair Darwin and Dante without perceiving any contradiction; a mutual reinforcement that does not entail the lack of spirit in the former and the lack of matter in the latter. Put simply, for Levi, in certain moments, the Scholastic Dante (or the Catholic Manzoni) could say more about human experience than the materialists Darwin and Lorenz, but this is no escape from our finitude.

SG

Question - What is meant by "higher power"? - a belief in God, religion?

We definitely need more focus on digital humanism.

!- Comment : Bruce Jennings - Jennings addresses precisely these mechanisms in his essay "Entangling Humanism - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhumansandnature.org%2Fentangling-humanism%2F&group=world

!- Title : Entangling Humanism !- Author : Bruce Jennings !- Website : Humans and Nature - https://humansandnature.org/entangling-humanism/

Social media should be comprised of people from end to end. Corporate interests inserted into the process can only serve to dehumanize the system.

Robin Sloan is in the same camp as Greg McVerry and I.

https://www.levenger.com/reading-1140/bookends-and-bookstands-23025/tree-of-knowledge-book-stand-17300.aspx

Interesting piece of material culture hearkening back to an older analog era, but compatible with new digital technology (note the cut out for a power cord with use of a tablet or other digital reading/display device.)

Pliny's work had been the standard text for natural history since antiquity. The early humanist movement including critiques by Ermolao Barbaro and Niccolò Leoniceno in the mid 1400s began to erode his stature in the area. Interestingly however, it wasn't new discoveries or science that was displacing Pliny so much as comparison of Pliny with even earlier Greek texts.

Amen. This resonates with my concern about systems that want to govern human relations without humans at the center. It's not like I believe having humans at the center of our relations guarantees good practices and outcomes (we have ample proof it does not), but rather that NOT centering humans in human relations may cast aside what's good about humanity along with what's bad.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html

A former Redditor's perspective on Musk's purchase offer of Twitter. Sounds like he gets many parts right, but doesn't address the specific toxicity of social media's part in amplifying it all using metrics and algorighms which encourage the fringes to fight. Simply turning off algorithms and tamping down on amplifying marginal content would make it all vastly more human.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTSEr0cRJY8

Starts out with four and a half minutes of anti-crypto and Web3 material. Presumably most of her audience is in the web3 space.

http://youvegotkat.neocities.org

Neocities: http://neocities.org

The Yesterweb: http://yesterweb.org

Marginalia Search: https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random

It [the IndieWeb] is so so queer. Like it's super gay, super trans, super good.

The indie web also questions tech solutionism which often attempts to solve human problems by removing the human element. But easily the most remarkable and powerful thing about the internet is the ability it has to connect us with one another.

Highlights of some important humanist problems that haven't had nearly enough work on the internet. Instead we allow rampant capitalism of certain areas without forcing companies to spend time working at the harder problems.

It's depressing to see that this fundamental problem of the early web seemingly has seen almost no progress in almost a quarter of a century.

Nice that he takes a more humanistic viewpoint here rather than indicating that it will all be artificial intelligence in the future.

The author's specist position projecting humans as the only animals able to utilize memory signals a common humanist ontological position. The dichotomous statement separating humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is reinforced when a few sentences later he suggest that human intelligence (which we can already tell is being praised as the superior intelligence) is "the root, the fountain of human intelligence."

The issue is we have a plethora of research into the cognitive cognition in other species, for instance corvids, not to mention our own anecdotes, i.e. having the memory of an elephant.

All this demonstrates is the amorality of capitalism. Ham is richer, but also an immoral propagandist for a demented worldview.

https://write.as/matt/what-would-a-real-web3-look-like

This roughly reflects my own thoughts about the "next web".

Perhaps we need more songlines in our instructional design?

This is also a plea for a more humanistic approach to technology in general.

Technology fears definitely repeat themselves. This pattern also repeated with social media, television, radio, etc.

The key may be to worry about the thing that gets lost or changes, and come up with a way to exercise and utilize it despite the newest technology?

How might we prevent ourselves from repeating this cyclic history with the next major change?

Strasburgh, or more commonly Strasbourg, is the capital of the Grand Est region of France, the official seat of the European Parliament. It is located close to the border with Germany in the historic region of Alsace. In Shelley's day, Strasburgh was a well-known center of humanism, at the crossroads of French and German intellectual traditions.

Was interesting to note that some humanists referred to the golden rule as the basis for their morality. I wonder if they realise that came from the New Testament?

This is still humanism, but perhaps a humbler humanism. Descartes still looms large. The objective capital T truth is still out there somewhere, and we can tell that it is perceived because of the universal rules, but the human is fundamentally not the kind of thing that can perfectly perceive objective reality because the organs of internal sensation don't work well enough, or reliably enough.

What if we called it neo-humanism?

This kinda sounds like a posthuman critique of humanism.

Plato: "You can't give long answers or talk funny. Just give it to me straight, without all the obfuscation."

HU clap MA clap NI clap SM clap

"this shit sucks. There is certainly some ideal way it ought to work, so lets make it better and better because we can and we know how things work and how they ought to and we're smart and in control!!!"

What's the posthuman approach to language, in short? Maybe we can substitute words to come up with a different way of seeing it, like "one task of rhetoric is to invigorate language."

<big>评：</big><br/><br/>战争，灾害，外来星体撞击——人类对未知的恐惧迫使科技在人文主义的荫蔽下谨小慎微地拓展边界，如履薄冰。假设最糟糕的情况下，地球上所有节点同时离线，所有无线沟通渠道中断，届时比特币网络会荡然无存吗？<br/><br/>发射卫星来同步比特币网络的做法在许多人看来是不可理喻的，甚至有点病入膏肓的可笑，但这艘「诺亚方舟」所承载的纯朴愿景，足以破封我们现世所面临的诸多困境。没有什么是永垂不朽的，如果有，那将是太阳系最后一个比特币区块，以射线的形态在浩瀚银河里砥砺前行。

This is such a powerful and remarkable statement. As much as we believe in the humanistic aspect and that "we have control over our own thoughts and destinies," perhaps this is not the case. Maybe, as humans we learn to control others and by controlling others this helps regulate our own beliefs and values. ---WOW! Reverse psychology much?!?

Framing a post-humanist question for architecture. What would this mean in service design?

If I'm reading this correctly, this is saying that to live in a world of ideal forms would be the less limiting option here. However, I usually consider ideal forms to be quite limiting as I generally understand idealism to be so closely aligned with essentialism. For example, when students are introduced to an "ideal argument," their notions of argument become more and more restricted. While this can be good (because it provides models for those beginning), it limits the possibilities of all of the divergent notions of argument.

In the next paragraph, when Lanham says "when rhetoric empowers literature, it is unredeemable. That is what rhetorical literature, I am tempted to say Western literature, is all about," I jump back up here, and then back down there, and then back up here. I wonder if Lanham is suggesting something here about the essentialist notions of humanity... In other words, as long as advocacy for rhetoric carries the baggage of essentialism (like literature as always being boiled down to saying something about the human condition), it will never get beyond the weak defense?