20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Written Word Enabled Philosophy, Screen Content Unravels It
The classicist Eric Havelock argued that the arrival of literacy in ancient Greece was the catalyst for the birth of philosophy. Once people had a means of pinning ideas down on the page to interrogate them, refine them and build on them, a whole new revolutionary way of analytic and abstract thinking was born — one that would go on to shape our entire civilisation3. With the birth of writing received ways of thinking could be challenged and improved. This was our species’ cognitive liber...
1 While I find this essay goes a bit into alarmism in places, I do appreciate how it communicates the importance of long-form reading in the intellectual and social advancement of civilization. I appreciate the idea that the written word is a cognitive prosthesis that can enhance our intellectual capabilities beyond what was capable during the era of oral traditions. Screens have demonstrated the same potential, but the flood of highly addictive screen-content junk-food seems so much more destructive than the pulp novels of the past.
05 MAY 2025 by ideonexus
A Universal of Human Conduct
There is one all-important law of human conduct. If we obey that law, we shall almost never get into trouble. In fact, that law, if obeyed, will bring us countless friends and constant happiness. But the very instant we break the law, we shall get into endless trouble. The law is this: Always make the other person feel important. John Dewey, as we have already noted, said that the desire to be important is the deepest urge in human nature; and William James said, “The deepest principle in h... 1 
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notes13 APR 2025 by ideonexus
"Having" Mode and "Being" Mode
The American essayist and biographer Agnes Repplier saw leisure as necessary for the completion not just of individuals but of civilizations. Leisure, she noted, “has a distinct and honorable place wherever nations are released from the pressure of their first rude needs, their first homely toil, and the rise of happier levels of grace and intellectual repose.” She believed that every investment and allowance should be made to support a leisure class—a fortunati—not so that its member... 1 notes
notes27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
We Need Play to Learn the Rules of the Game for the Civil...
The Real Significance of Play.—This scheme is, doubtless, imperfect, as critics of Groos’s book have taken occasion to point out, but the idea which underlies it all is a most suggestive and illuminating one, when rightly understood. In his latest work on the play of man, which has recently appeared, Groos makes clear this point (253, p. 492), when he observes: ‘I presuppose everywhere the existence of innate impulses (Triebe), and assume that these have only led to play-exercise (Spiel... 1 notes
notes20 JUL 2017 by ideonexus
The Need for Moral Universals in Democracy
Working societies — if they are to endure, grow, and cohere, if they are to prosper, hang together, and really mature — need moral universals. Moral universals are simply things that people believe everyone should have. In the UK, those things — those moral universals — are healthcare and media and welfare. In Germany, they are healthcare and media and welfare and higher education. And so on.
Moral universals anchor a society in a genuinely shared prosperity. Not just... 1 notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
The Need for Science-Based Organization
Some time shortly after the invention of the graphical Internet, it became ripely apparent that humanity was fucking itself with its own technology and was on the fast path toward societal morbidity. We maximized energy extraction without perfecting clean use, accelerated manufacturing technologies and global supply chains without developing socioeconomic models to cope with the disruptions, and modified life itself without having any perspective on what modifications would actually, in the ... 1 notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Gamification Pattern Building Mechanic
Ms. Forsythe divides her class into four teams (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome). Each team, over the course of the unit, learns about all four artistic cultures but becomes an expert in one. For a 20- to 30-minute exercise in discerning and judging the difference among these artistic cultures, Ms. Forsythe displays a piece of sculpture from each of the four cultures onto a large piece of heavy paper or cardboard and then cuts that image into smaller tiles and tosses all of the pieces to...Folksonomies: education gamification
Folksonomies: education gamification
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notes31 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Hero of "Brave New World"
The hero of Brave New World is John, a young man
who grew up on an Indian reservation in New Mexico.
The reservation is inhabited by primitive peoples and
maintained by the benevolent world government as a
tourist attraction. It exists so that the civilized tourists
can observe from a distance the nasty and brutish lives
of people who have the misfortune to be unprotected
by the cushions and comforts of technology. On the
reservation, traditional religions and traditional customs
are tolerate... 1 notes
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