Owl & Ibis - A Confluence Of Minds

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich At the December 11, 2018 meeting of Owl & Ibis yours truly presented Part II of II of The Evolution of Western Individualism, "Individualism in the 20th and 21st Centuries, A Closer Look." A PDF of the evening's slideshow is  here . This presentation was Part II of II of  The Evolution of Western Individualism . The following handouts were given at the meeting – Handout 1, Handout 2. As always, comments and questions about the presentation, slideshow and handouts are welcome. Topics covered during the presentation included: Recap of Part I Collectivism as a Reactionary Force Measuring Individualism/Collectivism by Geert Hofstede The Historical Spread of Individualism Beyond the West Objectivism by Ayn Rand Individualism in the U.S. The Modern Rise of Individualism Outside the West Neoliberalism & Individualism by Noam Chomsky Closing Thoughts    Individualism-Group ...

Tech C.E.O.s Are In Love With Their Principal Doomsayer [ Yuval Harari ] by Nellie Bowles The New York Times November 9, 2018 How Silicon Valley is Erasing Your Individuality by Franklin Foer The Washington Post September 8, 2017 Imagine observing a group of chimpanzees in the woodlands of western Tanzania. One day, an otherwise ordinary member of the group decides he will affix wildflowers to the hair on his head and rub a red ochre paste on his face. Imagine further that he, so adorned, then swaggers among his fellows gesturing to his new appearance and pointing at and laughing disdainfully at his group mates. Finally, imagine that this same chimp begins taking overt and deceitful actions to get what the others consider a disproportionate share of food that the group has hunted or found.  Three Questions 1. What do you think Mr. Special’s group mates will think of him, and what consequences might he face for such behavior? His f...

(Peace Corps Logos, Old and New) The United States Peace Corps and Social Development in Africa A paper read at the University of Ghana, Legon, Department of Sociology April 29, 1990 by James E. Lassiter

No Room in the Inn by Pam Dewey "Attempting to severely limit immigration to America is a hot-button issue in the political debates of the 21st century. Yet the plaque on the Statue of Liberty has extended a warm invitation to the tired, poor, wretched, huddled masses to find refuge in America for well over a century. Has the view expressed by Lady Liberty somehow changed in recent years?  No Room in the Inn  is a docucommentary I created that explores the long history of her offer. The political debates over immigration in the Trump Era are nothing new. You may be surprised at what the man or woman in the street thought about immigration and refugees in the 19th and 20th Centuries, including Jewish refugees from the Holocaust of World War II." - Pam Dewey

A sincere thank you to those who attended O&I on Tuesday, October 23, 2018 for my presentation,  The Evolution of Western Individualism , Part I, ”From the East African Rift to Silicon Valley.” For those who missed it a PowerPoint version is  here . A PDF copy of the slideshow is  here . A key part of the meeting was an individualism-collectivism measure and an accompanying graph I developed. This may be seen below (click on image) or downloaded in higher resolution as an Excel spreadsheet  here . Any comments or questions you may have about the slideshow or the measure and graph are welcome. Regrettably, I ran over my allotted time presenting Part I and did not allow enough opportunity for discussion. I will be sure to allow plenty of discussion time during Part II, “Individualism in the 20th and 21st Centuries – A Closer Look.” O&I CALENDAR November 13 – No Meeting November 27 – No Meeting Dec 11 - Individualism, Par...

                  I am sometimes asked what sources I use for news and information. In addition to electronic and paper books and a free local weekly newspaper tossed in my driveway every Wednesday (awful opinion page, great crossword puzzle), I read mostly online sources. Some of them I subscribe to at reasonable rates. The following are my main sources for news, articles, commentary, essays, and other information. Very often in reading something I'll explore an embedded link to an additional source. But these are my day-to-day places. If you know and use others you think I might be interested in, please put them and their links in a comment. Thanks! NEWS New York Times Washington Post PBS News Hour The Guardian BBC CNN Atlanta Journal Constitution Al Jazeera Sky News Deutsche Welle AllAfrica.com ARTICLES, ESSAYS, COMMENTARY American Association for the Advancement of Science Academi...

This from the Owl & Ibis – A Confluence of Minds “Statement of Purpose and Intent:” “Respectful of the rights of its members to hold personal beliefs of their choosing, Owl and Ibis, as a learning endeavor, is interested in all civilizations, societies, cultural traditions, and belief systems but professes to none. It holds in high esteem secular-scientific thinking yet is committed to ideological pluralism and tolerance regarding all other modes of thought and inquiry. At the same time, Owl & Ibis participants will critically assess and when necessary challenge the beliefs and values of persons and groups in terms of the harm they may do or the purported benefit they provide to specific persons, peoples, and Humankind as a whole.” In this spirit O&I offers and endorses the following, a documentary video from author and videographer, Pam Dewey. An introductory note from Ms. Dewey follows. }:>~:) Part IV, the latest installment of my  Strange Br...

  Kudos to Mona Leiter on her excellent multimedia presentation Creativity in Action at last Tuesday's Owl & Ibis - A Confluence of Minds meeting! A PDF of creativity resources Mona introduced may be found  here . During the evening Mona's multimedia presentation and the discussions it generated covered a number of areas: myths about creativity; how creativity can be life enhancing, changing and saving; "creativism," creativity can be put into, made part of anything - relationships, daily living, business, time management, leisure, education methods, etc. An old and still contested question was also discussed: Is the goal of public education to produce thinking, informed citizens or train obedient, productive workers? Important creativity resources presented included: Do Schools Kill Creativity? , TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson, 2006: "creativity is as important in public education as literacy;" "if you're not prepared to be wrong...

Many thanks to all who attended Tuesday night’s “Human Nature - The Poets’ View.” The poetry recited or read aloud was wide-ranging and the discussion far exceeded expectations. Here’s the email from O&I that got this whole thing going: Can we modern humans, three hundred years since the  Enlightenment  and a century-and-a-half since Darwin, accept as truths teachings about Humankind derived from sources other than secular science materialism? Is the inner view of self and outer vision of Humankind now all about science and its tech derivatives? Are the artists, musicians and poets merely useful as entertainers? Yes, scientific or not, we humans, all of us, still like art, music and stories. But can the views expressed in, say, poetry impact us to the degree they once did, to the same degree that scientific facts do today? Can artistic, musical, literary/story truths be as consequential as those of the natural sciences? At the next O&I Confluence, led by y...