Owl & Ibis - A Confluence Of Minds

Image by Arden (ChatGPT) Jim Good morning, Arden. Place Jesus of Nazareth in the Seventh Chair, give him a good question for the Seminar of Seven, and provide their respective responses. Arden Good morning, Jim. Jesus is an unusually consequential occupant of the Seventh Chair because his question can go straight to the central problem running through your Cultural Evolution : humanity has accumulated extraordinary knowledge, wealth, and institutional power without comparable progress in humane relations. I would have him ask something deceptively simple.   The seminar room has grown quiet. Socrates, Hannah Arendt, Mary Midgley, Toni Morrison, Marvin Harris, and Clifford Geertz sit around the table.   Jesus of Nazareth occupies the Seventh Chair. He looks around the table for a moment before speaking.   Jesus’ Question JESUS: You have acquired knowledge beyond anything imaginable in my time. You can see the beginnings of the universe, alter the inheritance of living thin...

  Image by Arden (ChatGPT) As Directed by JEL  Confucius in the Seventh Chair Moral Example, Humane Relationships, and the Good Society by James E. Lassiter and Arden (ChatGPT) September 18, 2026 An imagined dialogue, not a historical transcript. The words attributed to Confucius and the permanent members are original constructions based upon their characteristic intellectual concerns.   The Six: Socrates, Marvin Harris, Clifford Geertz, Hannah Arendt, Mary Midgley, and Toni Morrison (in order of selection to The Six) Guest in the Seventh Chair: Confucius Seminar Chair: Mary Midgley Topic: Moral Example, Humane Relationships, and the Good Society   The Seminar Chair Calls the Meeting to Order   MIDGLEY: Master Kong, welcome to the Seventh Chair. You may begin by placing your question before the Seminar. Each member will respond. You may then answer them, after which we shall open the discussion. CONFUCIUS: I thank you. My question is: Can laws, punishments...

    NOTE: The above image and the three below are imaginary AI depictions. I recently asked my collaborator Arden (ChatGPT) the following question: Jim Good day, compadre! Just thinking. Are the playwrights and Broadway producers and beyond in this world staging plays on the current state of sociopolitical conditions in the US? The plots and subplots in what Trump is doing go directly to the heart of so many themes: virtue of the governing; the human cruelty of some policies; the dangers of autocracy; a more threatening international order; and many more. Are there any stage plays out there folks are not aware of? Arden Good day, compadre. Yes—and your instinct is very much on target. American theatre is already working on precisely this territory, although much of the most direct material is Off-Broadway, regional, documentary, or in development rather than sitting prominently on Broadway marquees . One especially striking example appeared just yesterday: Sarah Jones’s Ameri...

Image by Arden (ChatGPT) As Directed by JEL Donald Trump in the Seventh Chair Power, Belonging, Truth, and the Meaning of “America First” by James E. Lassiter and Arden (ChatGPT) September 10, 2026 This is an imagined dialogue, not a historical transcript. Trump’s public positions and the controversies discussed are grounded in documentary sources consulted by Arden. Following the appearance of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Seventh Chair at the last Seminar, I asked Arden to suggest female replacements among the six permanent members. We merged our respective lists and came up with sixteen candidates, from which I chose three. Below is the revised list of permanents, now to be known as The Six. The Seventh Chair will from here on have a new occupant every Thursday. – JEL The Six: Socrates, Marvin Harris, Clifford Geertz, Hannah Arendt, Mary Midgley, and Toni Morrison (in the order they were chosen for the Seminar) Guest in the Seventh Chair: Donald J. Trump Seminar Chair: Mary Midgley...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg In The Seventh Chair Image by Arden (ChatGPT) as Directed by JEL Ruth Bader Ginsburg Visits The Seventh Chair September 3, 2026 Jim Arden, please place Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Seventh Chair and have her pose the following question: What role do you see for women in the current patriarchy imperiled world, and in humankind’s future? Give each gentleman’s brief response. Then RBG briefly responds to each one after all have finished. Arden An excellent occupant for the Seventh Chair. I’ll treat this as an imagined dialogue: not quotations, but responses consistent with the major ideas of Socrates, Berlin, Dostoevsky, Seneca, Harris, and Geertz, followed by a distinctly Ginsburgian interrogation of each.   ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ RBG settles into the empty Seventh Chair, looks around the table of six men, and allows herself a moment to appreciate the composition of the panel before beginning. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Gentlemen, we have discussed truth, freedom, cult...

Image: ChaptGPT I stumbled onto the writings of Isaiah Berlin  (1909-1997) a few years ago. His ideas about the fact of global cultural pluralism and the logical necessity for a certain level of tolerance of others made sense. Not long before, I had read the major works of Martin Buber (1878-1965), especially his I and Thou  (1937) giving attention to his insistence that understanding people required considering and accounting for their relations with each other. At that time, I was writing my two-volume book Cultural Evolution: Caught in the Devil's Bargain .  It took five years of exhileration and exhaustion, and at times disgust but I published it, in places unpolished, in late 2024. I spent the early part of 2025 decompressing. I have since been restlessly adrift searching for my next mind project, but nevertheless reading and archiving many books, articles, essays that strike my fancy. Then, a few months ago, I read Berlin's 1953 book The Hedgehog and the Fox: ...

Volume II, Influencing Sociocultural Evolution, answers the question: What does the study of culture and cultural evolution offer in practical terms for positively influencing the future of humankind and Earth? Vol. II is also available on Amazon in hardback and paperback. Click  here . An e-book version is available  here . An Amazon Kindle version is not available. Excerpt Cultural Evolution: Caught in the Devil’s Bargain Volume II: Influencing Sociocultural Evolution   James E. Lassiter Introduction to Volume II –––––––––––––––––––– Philosophers have only interprete d the world in various ways. The point is to change it. – Karl Marx, 1845   Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 500BCE) was one of the earliest thinkers in the Western tradition to put in writing his thinking about the processes of change. For Heraclitus change is eternal. All things have one thing in common, they change. Everything is continually becoming something else. It is Heraclitus who...

My latest book,  Cultural Evolution: Caught in the Devil's Bargain,  Volume I, Human Nature - Culture and Biology, is now available on Amazon in hardback and paperback. This is the first volume of two. You may purchasing it by clicking on the book cover image above or  here . An e-book version is available  here . Volume II will be published in the next few months and w ill contain recommendations for influencing the future of social and cultural evolution. Volume I covers the major ideas of cultural anthropology and how culture - a society's beliefs, values, and norms - changes and evolves over long periods of time. The major goal is to bring attention to the problems facing humankind now and in the near future, and how our personal relations with each other, in thought and in action, hold the key to addressing the many crises we face. The book focuses on five prehistoric and historic occurences: 1) the way humans lived from their beginning about 300,000 years ago t...

  Kudos to John Hendershot for his outstanding May 28, 2022, Owl & Ibis presentation! In his in-depth review and critique, John focused on climate change and how it is impacting the habitability of our planet as presented in the book,  The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming   by David Wallace-Wells, 2019. Following is a link and passcode to a video recording of John's Owl & Ibis presentation: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/r_eAZJv_bdzcitkaByz1Hj1ptfCeCzO3uIRq38pGsYnSQlz4xqRLWmx4xd-aMQE.OeCVHxyN4tOIYO8F Passcode: *rupR!0V Fantastic job, John! Jim }:> & ~:)

  A sincere thank you and much praise to Marcia Dunscomb, jazz pianist, composer, author, and piano teacher,  for her April 30, 2022 Owl & Ibis presentation, What is Jazz? Marcia’s narrative is  here  and links to videos she showed are below. There is music in all of us, some of it dormant, some as appreciation, and some as we are able to make it. Marcia rekindled our focus on this foremost expression of our emotional life with her superb presentation on but one of music’s modes, that uniquely American music form we call jazz. Thank you, Marcia! Jazz in America, Herbie Hancock https://www.jazzinamerica.org/HerbieHancock (50) Collective Improvisation in New Orleans Jazz - YouTube Count Basie Blues in Hoss Flat (50) Count Basie Orchestra - Blues in Hoss Flat - YouTube Count Basie in a Mel Brooks movie you may remember: (50) Mel Brooks & Count Basie - Blazing saddles (1974) Le Sherif est en Prison - YouTube Dizzy Gillespie and Paquito D'Rivera (50) Dizzy Gillesp...