META

Tomorrow's encyclopedia:

"Experience machine: see META." https://t.co/9ZQz6ijyqG
(https://twitter.com/EthicsInBricks/status/1454868312802873351?s=02)

Memento mori

...Memento mori is Latin for “Remember death.” The phrase is believed to originate from an ancient Roman tradition in which a servant would be tasked with standing behind a victorious general as he paraded though town. As the general basked in the glory of the cheering crowds, the servant would whisper in the general’s ear: “Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento! Memento mori!” = “Look behind you! Remember that you are but a man! Remember that you will die!”

Memento mori. Remember that you will die.

Us moderns don’t like to think too much about death. It’s a bit too depressing and morbid for our think-positive sensibilities. Our culture is devoted to perpetuating the lie that you can stay young forever and your life will go on and on.

But for men living in antiquity all the way up until the beginning of the 20th century, rather than being a downer, death was seen as a motivator to live a good, meaningful, and virtuous life...

https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/knowledge-of-men/memento-mori-art/

Happy Halloween

"Today is Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, a day in which the dead are traditionally believed to walk among the living. Communities all across the country throw Halloween parties and parades, but Salem, Massachusetts, goes all out...trying to make everyone happy.” WA

Bring your extra candy to class, if you want.

 

Montaigne's Tower

Who wants to go with me?!!! https://wordscene.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/looking-at-the-world-from-the-tower-visiting-montaigne/

The Afterlife of Rachel Held Evans

I followed her on Twitter, before her death in 2019 at just age 37. She was the thinking person's evangelical. Pride of Dayton TN.

"With humility and openness, Held Evans helped reintroduce a mode of spiritual inquiry in America that was based in seeking mystery, not certainty. "She made Christianity seem like a decent place to be while you asked questions, rather than something you had to abandon to be free," Kathryn Lofton, a professor of religious studies at Yale, said. Held Evans quickly became a major spiritual figure, appearing on television shows and serving as one of President Obama's faith advisers. "I think Rachel would be the first person to scoff at any attempt to beatify her," Sarah Bessey, her friend, told me. "She's one of the few spiritual teachers I've known who had the humility to regularly ask herself, 'What if I'm wrong?' "

https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/the-afterlife-of-rachel-held-evans

Questions Nov 2

NOV 2 Kaag, Sick Souls (K) Prologue; William James (WJ), Is Life Worth Living? (Link to full text below... or you can order the Library of America's terrific William James : Writings 1878-1899... vol.2 is William James : Writings 1902-1910).

Post your comments.

1. Young William James's problem, as he felt "pulled in too many directions" and worried that we might be nothing but cogs in a machine, was ____.

2. What is distinctive about "our age" that makes James particularly relevant?

3.  What happened on Feb. 6, 2014 that prompted Kaag to write this book?

4. "Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead" to what?

5. Human history is "one long commentary on" what?

6. A "wider world... unseen by us" may exist, just as our world does for ___.

7. The "deepest thing in our nature," which deals with possibilities rather than finished facts, is a "dumb region of the heart" called  (in German) ___.

Discussion questions:

• Have you ever felt "pulled in too many directions"? 2 How did you respond?
• Do you approach philosophy as a "detached intellectual exercise," an "existential life preserver," or something else?
• Where would you place yourself on the spectrum between "sick soul" and "healthy-minded"? Does that change, over time?
• Can belief that life is worth living become self-fulfilling?
• Do you know any "sick souls"? 3 Or "healthy minds"? 4 Are they the same person? 
• Do you agree that believing life to be worth living "will help create the fact"? 5
• Do you like WJ's answer to the question "Is life worth living?" 9
• Is suicide always "the wrong way to exit life"? 10
• Have you ever visited the Harvard campus? What were your impressions?
• Is "maybe" a good answer to the eponymous question of James's essay below?
• Do you like Whitman's poetic expression of "the joy of living"?
• Have you ever been as happy as Rousseau at Annecy?
• Do you agree that nature cannot embody the ultimate "divine" spirit of the universe? What if you remove (or re-define) "divine"? 489
• Do you agree that "sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life..."? 491
• Does the "purely naturalistic basis" suffice to make life worth living? 494
• Does life feel like a "real fight" to you? 502

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?

When Mr. Mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that "it depends on the liver" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer which I propose to give to-night cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues,—
"I come no more to make you laugh; things now,

That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"—

must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly; and I know not what such an association as yours intends, nor what you ask of those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence, and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness. Without further explanation or apology, then, I ask you to join me in turning an attention, commonly too unwilling, to the profounder bass-note of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour together, and see what answers in the last folds and recesses of things our question may find... (continues)

Nick Kristof, meliorist

A Farewell to Readers, With Hope
A columnist offers lessons learned from decades on the front lines of reporting and explains why he is leaving to run for office.

"...while I've spent my career on the front lines of human suffering and depravity, covering genocide, war, poverty and injustice, I've emerged firmly believing that we can make real progress by summoning the political will. We are an amazing species, and we can do better..." nyt

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Father of 'Flow,' Dies at 87
His work as a psychologist on the benefits of intense focus led to a global best seller, a term that became a cultural touchstone and new ideas about the path to happiness.

..."We can't afford to become trapped within ourselves, our jobs, and religions, and lose sight of the entire tapestry of life," he said in a 1995 interview with Omni magazine. "When the self loses itself in a transcendent purpose — whether to write great poetry, craft beautiful furniture, understand the motions of galaxies, or help children be happier — the self becomes largely invulnerable to the fears and setbacks of ordinary existence."

nyt 

“Meta” doesn’t sound so good

	Long Now Foundation ⁦‪@longnow‬⁩ Neal Stephenson coined the term "Metaverse" in 1992 to describe a dystopian future world based around virtual reality. It has since taken on a life of its own. Join us 11/17 with Neal as we discuss his new book Termination Shock and his long-term vision. eventbrite.com/e/termination-… pic.twitter.com/3rbRIZhr31   10/28/21, 1:45 PM

« Let’s go back in Plato’s cave ! » pic.twitter.com/Cll6UJvpo6

— Guillaume Dumas (@introspection) October 30, 2021

Montaigne fini, amor fati

 LISTEN. Time to close Sarah Bakewell's fine Montaigne bio. Our time with him for now is ended, but not finished. I think he's now in a dead heat with David Hume as one of my favorite skeptics. But I do have reservations.

For instance, if amor fati means "cheerful acceptance of whatever happens" I cannot join him in being firmly wedded to such a complacent-sounding stance. Loving one's fate, as I understand the concept, does not mean loving everything about everyone's fate and cheerfully renouncing the meliorist's mission to work for better futures all around. The tenor of Bakewell's discussion, in terms of Christian salvation, suggests a narrower focus--on one's personal fate--than pragmatic meliorists prefer. 

But if amor fati is more about renouncing impotent, debilitating, self-destructive regret for one's own past errors and fallibilities ("18. Reflect on everything; regret nothing") while still learning from them and cultivating conscientious, humane regard for others and a "willingness to leap between different people's points of view," that elicits my cheer... (continues)

Twenty-six

Older daughter turned that age yesterday. Today, the first day of the rest of her life, is full of promise. The rest, Susan Neiman quite rightly insists, is best.

"Having failed to create societies that our young want to grow into, we idealize the stages of youth. Watching the wide-eyed excitement with which babies face every piece of the world, we envy their openness and naivety, while forgetting the fear and frustration that accompany every bit of progress, from standing upright to drawing a stick-figure. The most pernicious bit of idealization is the very widespread view that the best time of one’s life is the decade between sixteen and twenty-six, when young men’s muscles and young women’s skin are at their most blooming. That’s due to hormones, and evolutionary biologists will explain that it happens for a reason. But your goal is not to maximize reproduction, whatever may be said of your genes. By describing what is usually the hardest time of one’s life as the best one, we make that time harder for those who are going through it. (If I’m torn and frightened now, what can I expect of the times of my life that, they all tell me, will only get worse?) And that is the point. By describing life as a downhill process, we prepare young people to expect – and demand – very little from it. Few things show this better than the progressive transformation of the Peter Pan story. In the original novel, grown-ups are simply dull: Mr Darling’s knowledge is confined to stocks and shares; his only passion is being exactly like his neighbours. By the mid-twentieth century the character is slightly menacing, an authoritarian who could become a tyrant so easily that the same actor could play father and pirate. By the end of the twentieth century, the grown-up had become ridiculous. In Hook, Steven Spielberg’s disturbing twist on the story, Peter Banning is an object of contempt. Grown-ups are still boring and rigid, but they are now so pitiful that teenagers are right to mock them. The variations on the story reflect the decline of the image of adulthood itself. At the beginning of the twentieth century, growing up looked merely dreary; by the end it looked positively pathetic. This book will discuss the ways in which our understanding of the way the world is, and the way it should be, are furthered – and hindered – by different kinds of experience. It will argue that being grown-up is itself an ideal: one that is rarely achieved in its entirety, but all the more worth striving for."

Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age" by Susan Neiman: https://a.co/iDa2pvg

Yes, I was on D2L! I was searching for the zoom on Macaro! I clicked on every single option! It was under "View User Profile" that this appeared!!!

"If a hobby is whatever you do to divert yourself from your obligations, mine would be: family, reading, walking, films, baseball, dogs, and beer... roughly in that order. I'm a philosophy prof, an enthusiast of the philosopher William James, and a family guy (our daughters are in 10th & 6thgrades, respectively). I've also taught at Vanderbilt, East Tennessee State, and Southesast Missouri State. My favorite non-teaching job was my stint as Night Manager at Vandy's Sarratt Student Center. I grew up near St. Louis, came to Tennessee in the early '80's." See y'all this afternoon!! Mary

James's "first act of free will"

LISTEN (6.'20). With all due respect to free will skeptics like the estimable Gregg Caruso, I think James's use of the concept -- understood explicitly in terms of sustained effortful attention as a lifeline and a purchase on what he called "the moral business" -- casts the typical academic free will/determinism "business" in shade. Like now-musty old wrangles over materialism and idealism, much scholarship surrounding this issue is simply irrelevant, from a humane point of view.

From 2009: [a serial review of Robert Richardson's bio of James, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism]

Last week time in Robert Richardson's James bio, our budding philosopher "just about touched bottom." He'd lost his dearest friend, possibly the love of his life. He couldn't commit to anything. He couldn't envision his own future. He needed something solid and reliable to hold onto, something to embolden his will and get him up and doing.

On the last day of April, 1870, young William James recorded a new diary entry: " I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. [He'd been having a lot of those!] I finished the first part of Renouvier's 2nd Essay and saw no reason why his definition of free will-- the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts-- need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-- until next year-- that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."

And: "Today has furnished the exceptionally passionate initiative... needful for the acquisition of habits." Young Willy already knows what older William will make so much of in Principles of Psychology, where habit is christened "the enormous fly-wheel of society."

And, explicitly rejecting suicide as an un- "manly" choice, he writes: "(I will) believe in my individual reality and creative power... I will posit life (the real, the good) in the self-governing resistance of the ego to the world. Life shall be built on doing and creating and suffering." *

He's firmly rounded the corner on his darkest days, and is moving towards the light-- or at least trying to talk himself into it.

Originally published 10.2.09

Charles Renouvier (Information Ph'er)... How I Arrived At This Conclusion: A Philosophical Memoir

*

Rorty

	Michael S Roth ⁦‪@mroth78‬⁩ My take on Dick Rorty: "Pragmatists can only point out that we depend on one another & thus should develop narratives that will encourage us to listen to one another in order to find more inclusive solutions to the problems that plague us" ⁦‪@LAReviewofBooks‬⁩ lareviewofbooks.org/article/we-can…   10/27/21, 10:48 AM

 

"[W]e do not, if I am right, need a theory of rationality, we do need a narrative of maturation." He is committed to the anti-authoritarian Enlightenment project of replacing obedience to the Divine (whether in the shape of a deity or a monarch) with obedience only to "a law one gives oneself," as Rousseau and Kant had it. We may arrive at an agreement about the laws we give ourselves — we don't discover the One True Law. Pragmatism is anti-authoritarian because it rejects the notion that we need something nonhuman (God, Reality, Truth) for our salvation.

Greta animated

	New York Times Opinion ⁦‪@nytopinion‬⁩ "Things may look dark, but I'm telling you there is hope. And that hope comes from the people, from democracy, from you," says ⁦‪@GretaThunberg‬⁩. pic.twitter.com/dAL63BPFnP   10/27/21, 7:32 AM

How to Talk to a Science Denier | Center for Inquiry

A generation ago, the flat-earther at the end of the bar or the anti-evolutionist in front of a congregation could be ignored. But today's science deniers—climate change skeptics and Covid anti-vaxxers—threaten all of us: solutions to both global catastrophes require the public's collective buy-in. Drawing on the latest academic research and his own experience speaking with those doubtful of established facts—including at a recent Flat Earth convention in Denver—McIntyre outlines the common themes and psychological roots of science denialism, illustrating a throughline from the disinformation campaigns created by tobacco companies in the 1950s to today's climate deniers, anti-vaxxers and Covid-deniers. Importantly, he also offers tools, techniques, and reasoning strategies that are effective in mitigating the effects of scientific disinformation. When science denial becomes a public health threat, all of us—laypeople and experts alike—have a responsibility to help combat it
https://centerforinquiry.org/video/how-to-talk-to-a-science-denier/

Free will skepticism

Can a free will skeptic choose to deny free will?

	Gregg Caruso ⁦‪@GreggDCaruso‬⁩ Look what just arrived in the mail! The paperback edition of Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society. ⁦‪@CambUP_PHILNYUK‬⁩ pic.twitter.com/wctsp4zdmR   10/27/21, 11:46 AM

Flattery

LISTEN. For Matt-

 

...we have video from space of the rotating spherical earth the earth is round... what's what's odd is there are people who think earth is flat but recognize that the moon is round, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the Sun are all spheres but earth is flat... Star Talk

...Eratosthenes asked himself how, at the same moment, a stick in Syene could cast no shadow and a stick in Alexandria, far to the north, could cast a pronounced shadow.... The only possible answer, he saw, was that the surface of the Earth is curved... Cosmos

 

Looking for Life on a Flat Earth

What a burgeoning movement says about science, solace, and how a theory becomes truth.

...Believing in a flat Earth is hard work; there is so much to relearn. The price of open-mindedness is isolation. “It took me about four months before I could talk to someone outside the apartment about this,” Marble said during his presentation. “You’ve gotta be ready to be called crazy.” Several people described the relief of “coming out” as a flat-Earther. “You can tell people you’re gay, you can tell people you’re Christian, but you don’t get ridiculed like a flat-Earther,” I overheard one woman say. “It’s really that bad.” At the bar, I fell into conversation with a woman who was attending a real-estate conference in the hotel. She asked what my conference was about; when I told her, she doubled over with laughter. I cringed a little, protectively, and glanced around to see if anyone had heard her.

The reward is existential solace. This, I came to understand, was the real draw, the thing that could make, say, an unemployed clerical worker drive twelve hours, alone, from Michigan to Raleigh. To believe in a flat Earth is to belong not only to a human community but to sit, once again, at the center of the cosmos. The standard facts of astronomy are emotionally untenable—a planet spinning at a thousand miles per hour, a mote in a galaxy of unimaginable scale, itself a mote in the vast and expanding universe. “That, to me, is a huge problem,” Campanella said. “You are a created individual. This is a created place. It’s not an accident; it’s not an explosion in space; it’s not random molecules joining together.”

You, we, are special. “It’s like God is patting me on the shoulder, saying, ‘You deserve this!’ ” a man from New Orleans told me. He was a trucker, the son of a former newscaster, and an occasional musician. As we were talking, an older man in a wheelchair approached and, in a drawl, introduced himself and asked if we were Christians. He brought up the notion of infinite space and the lack of a creator. “How can people live with that?” he asked.

“Those people are fucking miserable,” the trucker said. “They’re so unhappy.”

(continues)

Questions Oct 28

 17-20

1. To what attitude was Montaigne firmly wedded?

2. Who was Marie de Gournay, especially after his death?

3. de Gournay's feminism was in tune with Montaigne's ____?

4. What un-Montaignesque tendency was exhibited by his literary executors?

5. What holds the three great Hellenistic traditions together and binds them to Montaigne?

6. What line from his last essay was Virginia Woolf fond of quoting?

Discussion Questions

• Do you cheerfully accept whatever happens? Should we? 
• Did Montaigne share too much personal information? 288 Do we?
• What do you think of recent Critical Theory approaches to literature that minimize the importance of the author's intentions and focus only on the text? 311
• What do you think of Virginia Woolf's "beautiful vision of generations interlinked"? 315
• Are moderation and modesty better than "brilliance" in philosophy and in life? 320
• What does it mean to say that the only enlightenment philosophers can offer is like a "blow on the head"? 327
• Should Montaigne have paid more attention to dogs?

Radical Honesty: A Brief Overview and How it Changed my Life

 Nate Belmont:

Summary: Radical Honesty is a book written in Brad Blanton PhD. He his a crude man who uses more profanity than any other professional writer I have ever read about. Yet, in my opinion, his work is equally profound. The book itself is broken up into four parts which are the following: The being, The mind, Liberation of the being from it's mind, and Things learned from the war between the being and mind. This book is pretty dense to say the least so I will be focusing on some of the highlights from the book as well as it's effects on me personally. This book as taught me a lot about what it means to be human as well as what I can do to make things easier on myself. Radical Honesty has helped me to see some things more clearly that I couldn't quite put my finger on before reading. I hope one day each person who watches my presentation reads this book at one point or another. It is a combination of a lot of different styles of writing and doesn't make a lot of sense from a literature standpoint.  But, in my opinion, Radical Honesty is just as important to our daily lifes as any religious faith could possibly be. Brad Blanton is a therapist who has been practicing for more than thirty years in that time he has had a lot of cases he shares throughout the book and they serve as a good examples of what he is talking about. I learned a lot about life in general and I can't wait to share it with you!

Ted Talk with Blanton

https://youtu.be/V_Fp93OtaHE

Pod Cast with Blanton

https://youtu.be/NwM2HfaXHgk

Questions:

1. How important is honesty to you?

2. Is morality a good thing?

Hang around

World Series starts tonight.

So, which present Astro rookie will manage the Braves in the 2074 WS? https://t.co/IvFtMNht6Y

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 26, 2021

To the journey

 LISTEN. In our Happiness reading today we find Montaigne audaciously telling the king that if he likes the book he must like the author. But is that so audacious? Of course books convey the core humanity of their creators. The good ones do, at any rate. Montaigne must have inspired Whitman's “This is no book, / Who touches this touches a man . . . ”

We noted of Kant, in CoPhi, that he'd never ranged further than forty miles from his native Konigsberg. But Susan Neiman reminds us what an ordeal it would have been, to traverse such "stony excuses for roads" in the 18th century. Travel must have been even more of an "extreme sport" in Montaigne's day, never knowing when you might happen upon plague or pirates... (continues)

Contentment - A Layman's Guide

    In my presentation, I will be discussing contentment and how it relates to happiness. I will approach this topic through the lens of my late grandfather, whose philosophy has shaped how I approach my own. Having been born right before the Great Depression, his viewpoints were molded greatly in response to his environmental difficulties. This would lead him to rely heavily on the idea of contentment over happiness, often relying on a life assessment founded on a lasting sense of satisfaction as opposed to short bursts of enthusiastic emotional states. 

    Additionally, the presentation will draw from one of my favorite songs: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” I use many of its lyrics as a structural and topical guide. Topics will include brief discussions of moderation, relationships, religion, and self-help from the view of a layman. I will also attempt to synthesize a few of my grandfather’s positions with our assigned authors as well as my own opinion and invite the audience to bring some constructive criticism to the table. I am excited to see what you all have to offer.

Discussion questions:

What does contentment mean to you? How does it relate to happiness? Are they the same thing? Is one over all better than the other?

How do the views of our assigned authors align with your conception of contentment? Are there any additional authors that contribute to your idea? Was there someone in your life that greatly impacted your take on happiness/contentment?

Epicureanism: Freedom From Our Anxiety

    We will discuss the human condition and how taking ideas from Epicureanism can alleviate us from our modern stresses (anxieties). Epicurus believed that to free us from our stresses we must be happy with what we have. In many ways Epicureanism follows similar principles of Environmentalism (i.e. Scaling back what we consume or more specifically being content with less). Epicurus advocates gaining knowledge of the world around us and living in accordance with nature. Environmentally, “just 100 companies are responsible for global emissions” and the “U.S. Military is a bigger polluter than 140 countries combined” so while it’s not logistical to think that one persons or even a group of peoples choices will be effective in combatting climate change, I believe living an epicurean lifestyle may alleviate your own stresses about it and lead you to align with environmentally conscious ideas and a more sustainable life for you ( i.e. being being content with less and my idea which we’ll discuss tomorrow). Climate change stress isn’t the only “new stress” modern life presents us with. Studies show that although we are more socially connected than ever, were also lonelier than ever. Epicurean ideals of valuing friendships may be an answer to this problem. It’s no question the world has evolved to be more peaceful and equal than in the past. We see fewer wars and the abolition of things like slavery and serfdom or the progression of civil and economic rights around the world, yet still many of us struggle to find our place in life. Often held back by socio economic conditions, high inflation, the opioid and other drug epidemics, defunding of education, high tuition, wealth inequality and corrupt lobbying in government and other modern problems. A common trend I see with myself and others is finding meaning in our work and in our lives, I feel society places a lot of focus on going to school and making lots of money instead of placing focus on the passion we put into our work or the meaning behind it. It seems to pit what we want to do against what we have to do, or what we think society requires of us. Epicurean ideology supported working on projects that make you happy and often contributes to something that you care about. In modern society this could be finding a job that allows financial stability while also allowing you to work on something your passionate about or working for yourself. In epicurean communes this work often aligned with contributing to the community (cooking, art, etc). Do you have a job that provides you with meaning doing something that you care about? Or do you feel you are just working to survive and get a paycheck? Can we do both or do we have to actually live on a commune?

    In modern society things are more complex and the idea of work and living a meaningful life is much more subjective and convoluted. Is the industrialized worker contributing to society with meaning simply because capitalist idealism requires it or because he loves his job? Does he feel he’s contributing to a meaningful society, or would he feel it is meaningless and that we can live without much of what we have created today. Would he run away to work for himself if he could? I think Epicurus would say stop, work for yourself, do what you love! The problem is that many do not have that option and are inundated with bills, high tuition costs, inflation with flattened wages and more, behind all of this and many more modern problems many of us see anxiety. So while I think Epicureanism may hold answers to these anxieties and issues and would love to live on a commune, the real question is how can one apply them without “falling behind” in society, I.e. Affording food, getting an education, being disconnected from trends and other socially impactful events, having a place to live and more time for friends. Do we have to give up attachments? Is it saving money and working hard to afford a sustainable life off the grid,  is it being content in a low income apartment eating simple meals and working a low paying job, or is it living and sharing responsibility with friends to free some of your stresses, but not all? Are there more ways? What do you think would be the best path to a simple life free of anxiety and pain? Let’s discuss it. 

Discussion Questions:

How might Epicureanism look in modern times?

How can someone live an Epicurean Lifestyle if they have social anxiety?

How to prepare for an exam

How to prepare for an exam: relax

If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, “I won’t waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don’t care an iota whether I succeed or not.” Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently. William James, “Gospel of Relaxation"

If you’ve been up all night cramming, in other words, good luck. You’ll need it. But if you’ve been diligent, have steeped yourself in the subject all semester long, and either went out to play or to an early bed the night before, your luck will be the residue of design. You’ll do fine. Relax.

But don’t try too hard to relax.

It is needless to say that that is not the way to do it. The way to do it, paradoxical as it may seem, is genuinely not to care whether you are doing it or not.

Care later. On exam day just show up and do your best.

Mary's Presentation Summary

Mary's Presentation Summary: Montaigne is known as being consummed with thoughts of death and dying. With his experiences of losing people he was close to, and in not so pleasant ways, he even stated that: "It is not death, it is the dying that alarms me." There is much we don't know about Montaigne, like whether or not he really went to law school and became an attorney. We can only read his words, which have been translated many times over but have not lost their appeal to those wanting to live a better life. People, especially now, are turning to his works to try and alleviate their own fears about death, and many of the other uncertainties in life. In relation to death, his attitude seemed to change after his own "freak accident". What was it that provoked this "calming"? Let me suppose a few of the possible reasons why he went from fearing it to accepting its "inevitableness", with peace! Did he perhaps experience..... See y'all tomorrow! Questions for discussion: Was Montaigne, by chance, bipolar? When he had his medal made, what do you think was the point of choosing to put on it three things: his age; "Epecho" (Greek for "I abstain"); and "Que sais-je" (French for "What do I know")? Do his writings relieve any of your worries?

The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Leaf Blowers

This would make me happy.

 Nearly everything about how Americans "care" for their lawns is deadly, but these machines exist in a category of environmental hell all their own.

...the gasoline-powered leaf blower exists in a category of environmental hell all its own, spewing pollutants — carbon monoxide, smog-forming nitrous oxides, carcinogenic hydrocarbons — into the atmosphere at a literally breathtaking rate.

This particular environmental catastrophe is not news. A 2011 study by Edmunds found that a two-stroke gasoline-powered leaf blower spewed out more pollution than a 6,200-pound Ford F-150 SVT Raptor pickup truck. Jason Kavanagh, the engineering editor at Edmunds at the time, noted that "hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor."

Margaret Renkl (continues)

So, where are you going?!

From David Whyte's "The Journey In" Mary P

"Moving matters"

Work. Walk 5 Minutes. Work.

Standing up and walking around for five minutes every hour during the workday could lift your mood, combat lethargy and even dull hunger pangs.

"...the five-minute walks were more potent than the concentrated 30-minute version. When the workers rose most often, they reported greater happiness, less fatigue and considerably less craving for food than on either of the other days. Their feelings of vigor also tended to increase throughout the day, while they often had plateaued by early afternoon after walking only once in the morning." nyt

But your dogs still need their morning walk. You probably do too.

Travel

Gary's report preview reminded me of this Montaigne-esque observation:

"If you do not travel you are likely to suppose your own cultural assumptions to make up human reality – for you can only recognize what those assumptions are if you have lived in a place that runs on different ones. Travel is as important for learning about yourself and your own culture as it is for understanding others."

"Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age" by Susan Neiman https://a.co/3qBKHLj

Seeding happiness

Bloom – a touching animated short film about depression and what it takes to recover the light of being https://t.co/lSir57eIJW pic.twitter.com/X4GgQSBI93

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) October 22, 2021

Study Questions, Exam 2

Link to recorded Zoom review emailed in D2L Friday. If you exceed your Exam 1 score we'll drop it and double Exam 2.

1. Stoics say we most need to question what?

2. What do Buddhists and Stoics imply about our animal nature?

3. What did Aristotle say about money, success, fame, and relationships?

4. What view of mind and self do most psychologists and neuroscientists now support?

5. Buddhism and Stoicism both have what at their core?

6. Who kept a virtue "scorecard"?

7. What did Hierocles say about circles?

8. The most distinctive intersection of Buddhist and Stoic ethics is what?
==
Macaro 9-10
1. What matters most, for Buddhists and Stoics?

2. Why was reading and memorizing emphasized in stoic meditation?

3. What was Epictetus's excellent mindfulness tip?

4. What "states" do the "four great efforts" aim at?

5. What Epicurean techniqiue attempts to balance "anticipation of doom"?

6. Seeing clearly, says Macaro, means giving up what?
==
Bakewell, How to Live (Mon) 1-4
1. What form of writing did Montaigne invent?

2. What does essay mean?

3. After his accident Montaigne described his inward feelings as tranquil and sweet, a slide into ____.

4. His library represented what to Montaigne?

5. What's the difference between learning to die and learning to live?

6. What coda must we imagine attached to everything Montaigne wrote?

7. How did Montaigne's attitude towards books invert his father's?

8. What did Montaigne look for in a book (that later readers looked for in his books)?

==

1. What hope did La Boetie express in his sonnet?

2. What in La Boetie's writing particularly resonated with Montaigne?

3. What two things did Stoics and Epicureans consider most important to get right?

4. What doe epekho mean?

5. When brooding on death, Montaigne apparently forgot what?

6. What image of Descartes provides a neat contrast to that of Montaigne?

7. How does Bakewell imagine Blaise Pascal, in contrast to Montaigne and the libertines?

8. What was Montaigne's "real liberty"?

==

1. What hope did La Boetie express in his sonnet?

2. What in La Boetie's writing particularly resonated with Montaigne?

3. What two things did Stoics and Epicureans consider most important to get right?

4. What doe epekho mean?

5. When brooding on death, Montaigne apparently forgot what?

6. What image of Descartes provides a neat contrast to that of Montaigne?

7. How does Bakewell imagine Blaise Pascal, in contrast to Montaigne and the libertines?

8. What was Montaigne's "real liberty"?
==
1. Why should the art of conversation be encouraged in children at an early age?

2. What did Montaigne think we owe other beings?

3. What did Diderot's Tahitian tell Europeans about how to be happy?

4. Pilgrimages increased to where in the 19th century?

5. What happens to people who try to rise above the human, according to Montaigne?

6. Montaigne thought what was the essence of wisdom?

==

Will let you know if any questions are added from ch.13-16.

Questions Oct 26

 Post your comments on ch 13-16.

1. What did the king tell Montaigne, and what was Montaigne's reply?

2. What made travel an "extreme sport" in Montaigne's day?

3. Why did Montaigne seek Roman citizenship?

4. What response did Montaigne share with Freud, when viewing antiquities and relics? 

5. What was Montaigne's Pyrrhonian principle?

6. What rule did Montaigne follow, as mayor?

7. How did Montaigne come across in his letter to Henri IV in a way that resembled his essays?

8. What did English readers like about Montaigne's Essays?

Discussion Questions

• Do you like to take things from an "unaccustomed point of view"? 225
• Do you like to travel? Why or why not?
• Do you travel with a precise itinerary, or do you prefer to be spontaneous and without an agenda?
• What do you think of Emerson's views on travel? "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not...Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places..."
• What's the happiest (or un-) travel experience you've had?
• Do you find it easier to see things "afresh and with full attention" when in an unfamiliar environment?231
• Is "inactivity" a good thing, for politicians? 250
• Do you think most philosophers are "alert to everyday life as it really is"? 283
• 
  

Canine therapy

 

Presentation on Habit

 Really a habit can be anything you want it to be. Whether it is healthy or not depends on your interpretation.

Questions

- Do you feel like habits lean more towards a positive or negative side?

- How do you deal with your habits?

 

Morgan Davis

Why the Popularity of ‘Squid Game’ Terrifies Me

What does the appeal of this violent, dystopian fantasy say about us?

Are there teenagers or young adults in your life? Ask them about "Squid Game." They've probably watched it. They've quite possibly loved it. And that terrifies me. --Frank Bruni 

Okay, I'm asking...

MALA

 Middle Tennessee State University

College of Liberal Arts

Master of Arts in Liberal Arts

http://www.mtsu.edu/mala

MTSU’s Master of Arts in Liberal Arts is an innovative program allowing students to earn a graduate degree through a course of study built around the subjects that they find most interesting and captivating. Anyone holding a bachelor’s degree can pursue long-held or new passions through a personally customized program developed around individual interests. Lifelong learners, professionals, students returning to school after a break, and recent graduates can find flexibility to fit their educational needs through this unique master’s program. Students attend engaging courses and have opportunities to participate in projects in the region or even enroll in education-abroad courses around the world. Top-quality professors bring varying research and teaching interests to the classroom through inspiring instruction. The M.A. in Liberal Arts allows students to refine skills, expand horizons, learn for the joy of it, and obtain the graduate degree they have always wanted.

• Preparation for further graduate study, a new job, pursuits after retirement or lifelong learning

• 30 hours with full-time and part-time opportunities; evening and online classes available

• Specially designed courses taught by some of MTSU’s most engaging professors

• Flexible course selection to customize the program around your needs

• Options for studying independently with faculty on a particular topic and/or participating in MTSU faculty-led study abroad programs

• Customized advising to help you succeed

Interested? 

For more information contact:

MALA Program Director, Dr. Janet McCormick, Janet.McCormick@mtsu.edu

Convivial humanism

 LISTEN. How to live? More suggestions today in Happiness...

9. Be convivial: live with others. 10. Wake from the sleep of habit. 11. Live temperately. 12. Guard your humanity.

Introducing children to the art of conversation, Montaigne thought, brings them out of their private worlds and engenders indispensable social graces. The graceless and rude incivility of so much of our recent public discourse would seem to vindicate that view. He was a humanist in the fashion of Kurt Vonnegut, "trying to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishment" in a post-human paradise or hell. "We owe justice to men, and mercy and kindness to other creatures that may be capable of receiving it." 

Or as Kurt put it, addressing our newest humans: "There's only one rule... God damn it, you've got to be kind." (continues)

 

Stephen West on Montaigne

 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/philosophize-this/id659155419?i=1000313846159

Wanted to share this podcast I found today from the somewhat popular show "Philosophize This" by creator Stephen West. 

In this episode from 2014, he does cover the near-death experience of Montaigne in the beginning (so feel free to fly past a couple minutes) but also discusses the significant roles that skepticism and even cynicism played in Montaigne's life.  This wasn't something that I have thought much about during the book but found it to be an interesting perspective nonetheless. 

Singer on suffering

 LISTEN. We close Warburton's Little History today and tomorrow in CoPhi, with Peter Singer's utilitarian urgency about expanding the circle of our moral concern beyond narrow speciesism and parochial self-interest.

In The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, he says "one wants to feel that one’s life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage... one likes to look back and say that one’s done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You can look at it from this point of view: What greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?” g'r

One does want that, notwithstanding Paul Bloom's thesis that some "chosen suffering" enriches life. (The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning). A good life, a life of well-being, involves more than hedonistic self-indulgence. Of course. The effort to minimize the suffering of others must inevitably incur a measure of pain. Humanists like Vonnegut and Pullman ("there is a meaning, and it is to make things better & to work for greater good and greater wisdom") get that. Humanism is not a hedonism. Nor is it a variety of existentialism that treats meaning as a strictly personal object of manufacture. The greater wisdom does pursue the greater good... (continues)

Minds and feet are directly connected

 As Montaigne knew...

	The New Yorker ⁦‪@NewYorker‬⁩ It seems there's a curious link between our minds and our feet. nyer.cm/JJiwCyg   10/19/21, 10:14 PM

Heaven’s Gaits
What we do when we walk.

By Adam Gopnik

Why people walk is a hard question that looks easy. Upright bipedalism seems such an obvious advantage from the viewpoint of those already upright that we rarely see its difficulty. In the famous diagram, Darwinian man unfolds himself from frightened crouch to strong surveyor of the ages, and it looks like a natural ascension: you start out bending over, knuckles dragging, timidly scouring the ground for grubs, then you slowly straighten up until there you are, staring at the skies and counting the stars and thinking up gods to rule them. But the advantages of walking have actually been tricky to calculate. One guess among the evolutionary biologists has been that a significant advantage may simply be that walking on two legs frees up your hands to throw rocks at what might become your food—or to throw rocks at other bipedal creatures who are throwing rocks at what might become their food. Although walking upright seems to have preceded throwing rocks, the rock throwing, the biologists point out, is rarer than the bipedalism alone, which we share with all the birds, including awkward penguins and ostriches, and with angry bears. Meanwhile, the certainty of human back pain, like the inevitability of labor pains, is evidence of the jury-rigged, best-solution-at-hand nature of evolution... 

Walking is the Western form of meditation: “You’re doing nothing when you walk, nothing but walking. But having nothing to do but walk makes it possible to recover the pure sensation of being, to rediscover the simple joy of existing, the joy that permeates the whole of childhood.” There’s a reason, Frederic Gros suggests, that a dominant school of philosophy in the ancient world, revived in the medieval, was called the “peripatetic.” In Raphael’s great fresco of assembled ancient philosophers, conventionally called “The School of Athens,” Plato and Aristotle are shown upright and in movement, peripatetic even when fixed in place by paint, advancing toward the other philosophers rather than enthroned above them. Movement and mind are linked in Western thought... (continues)

“Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors...disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.”

“Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.”

“The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between…Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced…I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Vonnegut’s decency

	Kurt Vonnegut ⁦‪@Kurt_Vonnegut‬⁩ Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.   10/19/21, 2:07 AM

Pullman’s meaning

	Humanists UK ⁦‪@Humanists_UK‬⁩ 'I'm responsible, there is a meaning, and it is to make things better & to work for greater good and greater wisdom. That's my meaning'. A great quote by our patron ⁦‪@PhilipPullman‬⁩ to celebrate on his birthday and during our #thatshumanism campaign. Happy Birthday, Philip! pic.twitter.com/nY6a9qJ5Jz   10/19/21, 11:17 AM

Cousin Mary: “Don’t worry.”

	Maria Popova ⁦‪@brainpicker‬⁩ "Things take the time they take. Don't worry." Mary Oliver on the meaning and measure of aliveness: brainpickings.org/2015/02/09/mar…   10/19/21, 8:07 PM

Against presence

	Cardiff Philosophy ⁦‪@cardiffphilos‬⁩ You can now watch the 2021 Royal Institute of Philosophy Cardiff Annual Lecture recording. Richard Moran argues against the idea that we should live in the present. Includes discussion with Sophie Archer and responses to audience questions. youtu.be/IEKSBTWSb6Y   10/19/21, 3:24 AM