Topic: education

For two thousand years, we have read the Greek classics. We have done so in a peculiar fashion. Their gods were central to their worldview. We discarded their gods, which we despised as mere idols. In doing so, we’ve lost much of the deeper meaning that attached to the gods. We have misread the Greeks. What did the Greeks mean with this ongoing interference of the gods from on high?

(Yamashita will die)

In January-February 1945, acting against General Yamashita’s express orders (then commanding the Japanese Army forces in the Philippines) 15’000 Japanese mainly Navy troops holed up within Manila to fight the American advance to the last. Obliteration of civilians and buildings in the town was comparable to that of...

Pity, in a way, China’s Emperor Qianlong[1]. The “Lord of the Civilized Word” (this was his title) personally supervised an extensive bureaucracy reporting to him either by the “open” or the “confidential” channel. He read all correspondence and marked it: “Noted”, “What’s all this stuff?” or roundly abused the mandarin: “...

More than specific technologies it is our “habits of thought” – our “mentality” – which allows societies to advance in understanding reality of a broad front. Around 1250 such a change in mentality took hold in Europe. We never looked back. What happened?

One view is that: “Western Europeans evolved a new way, more purely visual and quantitative than the old, of perceiving...

This post is a conversation with Jovan after his post on compromises. His argument closely tracks a book by Avishai MARGALIT, where a case is made forcefully for the need to reflect on compromises – and “rotten” compromises[1].

To set out my position from the outset, this is my Amazon.com review of MARGALIT’s book at the end...

The great merit of LoG was to have exploded the whiggish myth that humanity’s doings always improves on “nature” and is inherently benign. This myth presided over many a massive transformation of the landscape, all done without any thought to the consequences, or even awareness that feedback loops might emerge.

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I’ve read somewhere – but I can’t find the exact quote of Simone WEIL – that “civilization is paying attention”. This is both right and wrong.

“Civilization (…) has been used primarily to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally hierarchical and urbanized....

It’s time to introduce a new element: creativity.

I’ve tried to find an example of “pure” creativity: the invention of something we use or consume that did not exist before we thought of it. At the same time, it must not be an “enabler” – a good that allows us to do things we had not intended originally. It has proven more difficult than I imagined.

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“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

(Sir Ken Robinson)

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(The Case for Space – Why We Should Keep Reaching for the Stars By Neil deGrasse Tyson – Foreign Affairs III/IV- 2012)

This article by former Astronaut Neil deGrasse Tyson is calling for a concerted effort to go to Mars. Here is the summary of the...

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

William SHAKESPEARE...

Pamela MAR has posted this comment on her Fung Global Institute blog[1]:

“Our collective challenge is to look beyond the current economic model, to an economy in which people count for more than what they consume, and in which they consume according to need instead of according to...