To be honest ideas change people

We live in malevolent times and we are the enabling or worse the purveyors of evil into a world that is confused about what is real and what is opinion. So we have an obligation to not stand idle, to obstruct "the banality of evil," and to construct a place in the world better than the places we have found.

To be honest

"There is an excitement in ideas."

That excitement allows us to envision a better, fairer. and more effective world.

We have the capacity to evoke hope, in what we conceive.

And further, we have the ability to change the world we see. "

J. Siry

"So what shall we do?"

possible areas for action

challenges of modern life

technology presents opportunities and obstacles

amusing or destructive?

empathizing

action plans

past actions

beliefs | verities | banality | aggression | Bronowski on truth | Joyce C. Oates | Postman | sources

Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil during the rise and spread of fascism throughout Europe from 1919 through the 1930s because she was appalled at the means by which societies appeared unable or unwilling to challenge the assumptions of extreme nationalism based on alleged ethnic purity.

Writing | writing from texts | how to approach writing | writing papers | writing & world views

Aggression

Abraham Maslow:

We need to "Get to work on aggression and hostility. We need the definitive book on aggression. And we need it now. Only the pieces exist: the animal stuff, the psychoanalytic stuff, the endocrine stuff. Time is running out. A key to understanding the evil which can destroy our society lies in this understanding."

beliefs | verities | banality | aggression | Bronowski on truth | Joyce C. Oates | Postman | sources

mural

The world we have created is undermining our peace of mind, not nourishing our imaginations, and destabilizing our sense of who we are.

Jacob Bronowski argues history since 1400 has been “an enrichment, moving towards what makes us more deeply human.”

“There have always been two ways of looking at truth”

1 faith in self evident truths
2 doubt (skeptically)

“by doubt we are led to inquire and by inquiry we perceive the truth.”

Peter Abelard

So now we are at a crossroads, where we are unable to determine the actual fork and the imaginary fork in the road.

“In creation man brings together two facets of reality and by discovering a likeness between them, suddenly makes them one.”

( Bronowski 51.)

distinguish what is true from what is illusory

Defining the pragmatic test of truth:

(Bronowski, explicitly on pg. 46-52.)

He proposes a model for ascertaining or discerning truth or verity ;

verity either does not match [ ≠ ] or does coincide [ = ] with “reality of things”

(Bronowski, 52.)

“in the language of science, every fact is a field -- a crisscross of implications...”

“the concepts at which its laws cross, like knots in a mesh.”

Exercising Judgment

"The pathological aspects of our era that make a death of the spirit inevitable—for that era and all who believe in its assumptions."

"The Death Throes of Romanticism: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath"
by Joyce Carol Oates
Originally published in Southern Review, July 1973.

Many people are unable to judge the road we are taking.

Neil Postman: