API Blog

‘Vous n’avez pas de pain. Vous pouver manger de la brioche’
(Hat-tip to Marie Antoinette, up-dated for 2022. Note that the words ‘des gateaux’ do not
actually appear anywhere)

Recently I addressed a meeting for ‘Charter for Compassion’ in Richmond Hill (https://charterforcompassion.org)

Compassion

Yes, you heard my introduction

Hello,

My name is John Smithin and I am the Executive Co-Director of the Aurora Philosophy Institute, here in Aurora, Ontario, Canada.

Ho! Everything - appearance and existence, samsara and nirvana, has a single ground, yet two paths and two fruitions, and magically displays as awareness or unawareness.

John:

Hello. My name is John Smithin and I am the Executive Co-Director and a Fellow of the Aurora Philosophy Institute, here in Aurora, Ontario, Canada. I am here today with Will Fletcher who, I think, has a few philosophical suggestions for us. Welcome, Will.

This was a very interesting presentation and is highly recommended viewing on the API YouTube channel. The purpose of this note is to comment on a particular slide in the section about the  ‘moral aspects’ of new media  (slide #36 to be precise). McLuhan is trying to provide some sort of antidote to the overwhelming effects of one particular medium rather than another. For example, if you are watching too much television, switch it off and read a book.

Hi Louis-Phillipe,

Thank you for sending me the link to this webinar! I was very interested to hear your views on stagflation and you did not disappoint. I have been trying to work out in my mind where I differ from you, and it is not very much. However, there are some subtle points.

David Graeber was considered one of the world's leading anthropologists. His recent publication, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, co-written with archaeologist David Wengrow, was published posthumously in 2021. It provides a reinterpretation of established anthropological theory. An organizer and intellectual leader of the activist left on both sides of the Atlantic, he is credited with helping launch the Occupy Wall Street Movement and coin its slogan, “We are the 99 percent.”

There may be trouble ahead
But while there's music and moonlight
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to pay the bill
And while we still have the chance
Let's face the music and dance

Soon, we'll be without the moon

One of the more mystical things Duns accepted was the wearing of conical hats to increase learning. He noted that wizards supposedly wore such things; an apex was considered a symbol of knowledge and the hats were thought to “funnel” knowledge to the wearer.