The Empathic Civilisation: our (collective) empathetic consciousness
"Never has the world seemed so completely united-in the form of communication, commerce, and culture-and so savagely torn apart-in the form of war, financial meltdown, global warming, and even the migration of diseases. ...
The human-made environment is rapidly morphing into a global space, yet our existing modes of consciousness are structured for earlier eras of history, which are just as quickly fading away. Humanity, Rifkin argues, finds itself on the cusp of its greatest experiment to date: refashioning human consciousness so that human beings can mutually live and flourish in the new globalizing society…
As the forces of globalization accelerate, deepen, and become ever more complex, the older faith-based and rational forms of consciousness are likely to become stressed, and even dangerous, as they attempt to navigate a world increasingly beyond their reach and control. Indeed, the emergence of this empathetic consciousness has implications for the future that will likely be as profound and far-reaching as when Enlightenment philosophers upended faith-based consciousness with the canon of reason."
(Jeremy Rifkin)
[A noble effort to explain the consequences of post-traditional society framed through a biological deterministic lens.]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
What Does It Mean To Become A Master?
"In the 1960's and 70's, the advent of computers not only reinforced this notion of man as a rational animal, it also led many people to predict that we would soon have machines that could think and act just like human beings. In 1972, however, Hubert Dreyfus's seminal and controversial book What Computers Can't Do anticipated the failure of what came to be known as 'artificial intelligence'.
In the book, Dreyfus explains that human beings are not at all like computers. We do not apply abstract, context-free rules to compute how to act when we engage in skilled behavior. Instead, Dreyfus argued, the fundamental thing about humans is that we are embodied beings living in a shared world of social practices and equipment. In the end, it is our skillful mastery and our shared practices that not only distinguish us from machines but allow us to assume meaningful identities."
(Tao Ruspoli, 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
American Conservatory Theater's No Exit: blurs the lines between film and theatre
"Fresh from sold-out performances across Canada, Jean-Paul Sartre's redefined classic makes its U.S. debut at A.C.T. A mysterious valet ushers three people into a shabby hotel room, and they soon discover that hell isn't fire and brimstone at all -it's other people. Sartre's existential classic, skillfully reimagined through the perspective of a series of hidden cameras, turns the stage into a cinema, and the audience into voyeurs, as a thrillingly staged 'live film' takes place before your eyes. A.C.T. continues its tradition of welcoming the work of innovative international artists to the Bay Area with this riveting multimedia event."
(American Conservatory Theater, 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Ayn Rand: objective reality
"In this engaging 1959 interview, her first on television, Ayn Rand capsulizes her philosophy for CBS's Mike Wallace. The discussion ranges from the nature of morality to the economic and historical distortions disseminated about the 'robber barons.' She also comments on her relationship with Frank O'Connor, provides some autobiographical information and gives her perspective on the future of America."
(Uploaded by hastelculo on 8 Jan 2008)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Stable Knowledge / Beständiges Wissen?
"Modernity replaced this metaphysical casting through the conception of a knowing subject as a stable medium. Information technology transformed the modern subject into an object of in-formation. But this process does not necessarily lead to the domination of information technology over humankind. It also enables the transformation of the modern subject into a project (Vilém Flusser). The medium of our projections is digital casting. Within it logos is not primarily oriented toward a stable object, but consists of unstable messages. Angelia displaces logos."
(Rafael Capurro)
Capurro, R. (2006). "Beständiges Wissen / Stable Knowledge?" LIBREAS(01/2006).
Flusser, Vilém. (1994). Vom Subjekt zum Projekt [From Subject to Project]. Bollmann (Bensheim).
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
