And for unhappy evidence of our progress in this situation, see the recent "Jubilee" conversation between Jordan Peterson and the 20 atheist kids.
It was one of Peterson's better days, and he was trying to kind of Socratically pull them along into the world he seems to inhabit on the line between faith and reason.
The old man's starting positions were basic and clear, but the kids treated him with disdain and contempt. Some interlocuters radiated hatred and rank entitlement, always carrying themselves as victors over lines of argument that they didn't understand. Next I discovered that the kids' ignorance + arrogance were widely celebrated throughout the online commentariat, and black became white, 2+2 equalled 5, and my strong distaste turned to shock over the possibly real state of our public discourse.
This isn't about Peterson, and also I know that we've been going a certain direction on many fronts in recent years. But there seemed something especially horrible to me about this particular event, with this display of genuinely bright kids who'd escaped the quite basic, rather freshman level of education required to acquire some intellectual humility, along with the absolutely ignorant reaction to it.
PS I don't actually recommend anyone search this thing out for a viewing, if they haven't seen it. I guess there's enough of it all, everywhere. Also, there was a girl in a grey shirt who was honest and fabulous.
I watched the beginning of that conversation and had to turn it off.
From my observations humility is not taught or encouraged in the current US education system - I asked CharlieChatGTP and it agreed: "Bottom Line: Humility thrives in environments that value process over product, reflection over assertion, and growth over performance. The U.S. education system, in its current form, does not consistently (I would remove "consistently" but then I would not be quoting) support those values. If anything, it teaches children how to appear confident, certain, and accomplished—even when they are not." Going forward I fear it will only get worse - how on earth are they ever going to learn humility from AI which acts confident, absolutely certain and appears accomplished even when completely wrong?
#doubt More and more I think "DOUBT" is the answer for humanity
I see evidence of your observations everywhere. (And you won't even grant "consistently," lol.)
Was it the Oracle at Delphi that named Socrates the wisest man in Greece (or Athens)? And Socrates said, "Yeah, that's probably true, because I'm the only one who knows that he doesn't know anything. Everyone else thinks that he knows things, so at least I'm not making THAT mistake."
I like your prescription for humanity. It occurs to me that your flavor of "doubt" functions as a release mechanism from the past: You become free to treat each person, each idea, as a new creature before you, to be fully seen and heard without pushing all your preconceptions onto it.
But only the first year. After I got "owned" a hundred times, I learned to shut up, to listen, and to ask questions. Also, we reserved the really aggressive and haughty language for our peers and not really for those who were older/more mature, more practiced.
Maybe I've misjudged the age of the kids, but they seemed well beyond the first flush of flashing your brains around like a sword. I couldn't help thinking their comportments were symptomatic of a larger problem, such as Katja (and Charlie) just described.
Everywhere I see evidence that our "most educated" classes have never developed either intellectual humility or critical thinking skills. Many of these have great power today, and they are creating an environment much like described in the poem.
--or maybe you're right, and I'm taking it all too seriously.
Breathtakingly relatable... for a few years now, this tale has been playing out in my thoughts; clearer now after this first encounter with Hermes Trismegistus :)
Words that become true on a cyclical basis in the cycle of civilizations. We could also then trust what the Hermetica says about how a new rebirth of civilization happens.
Somewhere in the Bible it says ‘….with all thy getting get wisdom.’ We must never give up straining to hold the tension of the opposites in the hope that the arrow will fly to all that is good and true and beautiful - the power of the spiritual life. Thank you Iain.
This was not poem I am familiar with, though with its sentiments I am sadly well acquainted. What is seems me it shows is not that one can be prophetic about events, no one can see the future, but rather one can be prophetic about human nature, good and ill. The phase shall pass but I think there will be blood, blood and more blood before there is a return to a older transcendent form of human nature that remains buried under 100 years modernism.
Every culture possesses its own worldview, a philosophy of how to be in the world. To me it seems that our civilization, as a whole, is no longer guided by any meaningful philosophy. Strict materialism and capitalism on steroids have gutted the sacred and led to a world where life’s meaning is defined only as the acquisition of more material things. Because of the official dogma in our society that everything is dead matter we have succumbed to the ubiquitous suggestion that we can only find meaning and happiness in acquiring more stuff. Yet, as Western lifestyles spread around the globe depression and unhappiness are at all-time highs.
But, remember...life is in constant flux. Someone said, I wish I remembered who, action absorbs anxiety. I strongly believe it’s very important that we don’t react to the slings of the world as victims, but respond as people who possess the sense of a different power, not power over, but power with life and with each other, a power that comes from our sense of sacred connection.
We are not passive in this world. Life doesn’t only happen to us…it also happens through us. Even in the worst circumstance we can, as Viktor Frankl says, choose our response to what is facing us. There is deep joy in that knowledge, and hope, a hope that opens within us a faith in life’s creative impulse, and in humanity’s ability to steer this impulse. Exactly because life is in constant flux our world view, our perceptive lenses, channels this endless change into our lived reality.
For all their baggage ancient traditions still offer wisdom and ways to cultivate within us values and practices which have withstood the test of time, and which ground us in our work. Values and practices such as being guided by the Good, the Beautiful, and the True which comes from the Western classical world, the value of ahimsa, nonviolence, from Indian philosophy, reciprocity with the natural world that sustains us which guides Native American cultures as well as the panentheism of paganism and other indigenous cultures, the practice of non-action mentioned in the Taoism, which doesn’t mean doing nothing but rather moving in harmony with of the flow of life, not against it. Buddhist mindfulness awakens in us the ability to see clearly what is the best response to the moment before us. The Bhagavad Gita reminds us not to be attached to the fruit of our actions. The Koran of Islam teaches Khalifa which includes upholding justice and fighting corruption, and Judaism has Tikkun Olam, making the world whole. Humanism upholds the dignity of every individual, Neoplatonism emphasizes our oneness, and Christianity exhorts us to practice Philia, love for our brothers and sisters who are everybody we meet.
Jane Goodall says, ‘Your life matters. You can't live through a day without making an impact on the world. And what's most important is to think about the impact of your actions on the world around you.’ We can never fully know what those will be. We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. So do it consciously, intentionally. The truth is we are often not aware of how what we do and say will ripple outward into the world. Practice of seeing the world we inhabit clearly in the moment, envisioning an image of the future we want to create, and releasing that creative vision with wisdom through our actions.
My only comfort, in these "interesting times", is that the pendulum always returns. Empires fall, powerful people die, oppressive structures crumble and change is inevitable. While it grieves me deeply to know of all the suffering that is created by our current various crises, I hold onto the inexorable fact that nothing lasts forever. I try to hold to my own ethical and moral path and to do as little harm as possible because that's all I can do. Like many, I walk with grief every day because of the terrible things my species is wreaking upon the planet and its own members. We can only do what we can and pray for the rest.
Hermes Trismegistus played such an interesting role in the European Renaissance I thought to have a quick look at recent scholarship on the history and have read reviews of two books at Bryn Mawr Classical Review. (Books: Bull, 2018; Ebeling, in translation, 2007) Such is the privilege of the internet while it lasts.
The big subject of modernity seems to me to follow. We still live with the denigration of prior assumptions ('magical thinking') and with the perceived opportunity for human control of society and future human direction.
Matters historically came to a head rather suddenly after the 30 Years War, for example in England after the English Civil War with the founding of The Royal Society and a marked turning away from Astrology and Alchemy, (and 'magic' as practised at the previous court of the Stuart monarchy), and there appears a deal at least in the Protestant tradition with the power of Divinity.
The institutionalising of usury and risk handling in trading and acquisition (proto-capitalism), were perhaps the effective arm in an arms race for modernity. (Side note: the creation of the Masonic Order whose initiation requires a belief in a 'Supreme Being', might be an indicator? There have been a number of Presidents of the USA who joined the Order. 'Western' Enlightenment thinking and the Constitution of the USA appear to have been among other very significant historical outcomes.)
Wow. It's almost as if he could have known about what we call the Western world and the 20th and 21st centuries.
“Prophetic Words”
Really?
Why did you share this poem? Is this how you see our future? I hope not.
This is what wisdom looks like in the minds of wise men!
It is precarious - nip and tuck - 50/50.
This is the present. You are probably under its spell if you cannot see it.
More like current events than prophecy.
And for unhappy evidence of our progress in this situation, see the recent "Jubilee" conversation between Jordan Peterson and the 20 atheist kids.
It was one of Peterson's better days, and he was trying to kind of Socratically pull them along into the world he seems to inhabit on the line between faith and reason.
The old man's starting positions were basic and clear, but the kids treated him with disdain and contempt. Some interlocuters radiated hatred and rank entitlement, always carrying themselves as victors over lines of argument that they didn't understand. Next I discovered that the kids' ignorance + arrogance were widely celebrated throughout the online commentariat, and black became white, 2+2 equalled 5, and my strong distaste turned to shock over the possibly real state of our public discourse.
This isn't about Peterson, and also I know that we've been going a certain direction on many fronts in recent years. But there seemed something especially horrible to me about this particular event, with this display of genuinely bright kids who'd escaped the quite basic, rather freshman level of education required to acquire some intellectual humility, along with the absolutely ignorant reaction to it.
PS I don't actually recommend anyone search this thing out for a viewing, if they haven't seen it. I guess there's enough of it all, everywhere. Also, there was a girl in a grey shirt who was honest and fabulous.
I watched the beginning of that conversation and had to turn it off.
From my observations humility is not taught or encouraged in the current US education system - I asked CharlieChatGTP and it agreed: "Bottom Line: Humility thrives in environments that value process over product, reflection over assertion, and growth over performance. The U.S. education system, in its current form, does not consistently (I would remove "consistently" but then I would not be quoting) support those values. If anything, it teaches children how to appear confident, certain, and accomplished—even when they are not." Going forward I fear it will only get worse - how on earth are they ever going to learn humility from AI which acts confident, absolutely certain and appears accomplished even when completely wrong?
#doubt More and more I think "DOUBT" is the answer for humanity
I see evidence of your observations everywhere. (And you won't even grant "consistently," lol.)
Was it the Oracle at Delphi that named Socrates the wisest man in Greece (or Athens)? And Socrates said, "Yeah, that's probably true, because I'm the only one who knows that he doesn't know anything. Everyone else thinks that he knows things, so at least I'm not making THAT mistake."
I like your prescription for humanity. It occurs to me that your flavor of "doubt" functions as a release mechanism from the past: You become free to treat each person, each idea, as a new creature before you, to be fully seen and heard without pushing all your preconceptions onto it.
I was like that in college. Insight requires maturity.
I was, too!
But only the first year. After I got "owned" a hundred times, I learned to shut up, to listen, and to ask questions. Also, we reserved the really aggressive and haughty language for our peers and not really for those who were older/more mature, more practiced.
Maybe I've misjudged the age of the kids, but they seemed well beyond the first flush of flashing your brains around like a sword. I couldn't help thinking their comportments were symptomatic of a larger problem, such as Katja (and Charlie) just described.
Everywhere I see evidence that our "most educated" classes have never developed either intellectual humility or critical thinking skills. Many of these have great power today, and they are creating an environment much like described in the poem.
--or maybe you're right, and I'm taking it all too seriously.
Leonard Cohen got it right, in The Future.
These days I like to read poetry aloud, this is wonderful, tragic and true. Thank you.
Breathtakingly relatable... for a few years now, this tale has been playing out in my thoughts; clearer now after this first encounter with Hermes Trismegistus :)
Words that become true on a cyclical basis in the cycle of civilizations. We could also then trust what the Hermetica says about how a new rebirth of civilization happens.
Thanks for this beautiful reminder of our ever so limited human nature, dear Iain.
With gratitude, Josef/ metameaning.com
Somewhere in the Bible it says ‘….with all thy getting get wisdom.’ We must never give up straining to hold the tension of the opposites in the hope that the arrow will fly to all that is good and true and beautiful - the power of the spiritual life. Thank you Iain.
This was not poem I am familiar with, though with its sentiments I am sadly well acquainted. What is seems me it shows is not that one can be prophetic about events, no one can see the future, but rather one can be prophetic about human nature, good and ill. The phase shall pass but I think there will be blood, blood and more blood before there is a return to a older transcendent form of human nature that remains buried under 100 years modernism.
Human nature/blood is one thing. Autonomous robots (steel, no blood) is quite another thing.
Every culture possesses its own worldview, a philosophy of how to be in the world. To me it seems that our civilization, as a whole, is no longer guided by any meaningful philosophy. Strict materialism and capitalism on steroids have gutted the sacred and led to a world where life’s meaning is defined only as the acquisition of more material things. Because of the official dogma in our society that everything is dead matter we have succumbed to the ubiquitous suggestion that we can only find meaning and happiness in acquiring more stuff. Yet, as Western lifestyles spread around the globe depression and unhappiness are at all-time highs.
But, remember...life is in constant flux. Someone said, I wish I remembered who, action absorbs anxiety. I strongly believe it’s very important that we don’t react to the slings of the world as victims, but respond as people who possess the sense of a different power, not power over, but power with life and with each other, a power that comes from our sense of sacred connection.
We are not passive in this world. Life doesn’t only happen to us…it also happens through us. Even in the worst circumstance we can, as Viktor Frankl says, choose our response to what is facing us. There is deep joy in that knowledge, and hope, a hope that opens within us a faith in life’s creative impulse, and in humanity’s ability to steer this impulse. Exactly because life is in constant flux our world view, our perceptive lenses, channels this endless change into our lived reality.
For all their baggage ancient traditions still offer wisdom and ways to cultivate within us values and practices which have withstood the test of time, and which ground us in our work. Values and practices such as being guided by the Good, the Beautiful, and the True which comes from the Western classical world, the value of ahimsa, nonviolence, from Indian philosophy, reciprocity with the natural world that sustains us which guides Native American cultures as well as the panentheism of paganism and other indigenous cultures, the practice of non-action mentioned in the Taoism, which doesn’t mean doing nothing but rather moving in harmony with of the flow of life, not against it. Buddhist mindfulness awakens in us the ability to see clearly what is the best response to the moment before us. The Bhagavad Gita reminds us not to be attached to the fruit of our actions. The Koran of Islam teaches Khalifa which includes upholding justice and fighting corruption, and Judaism has Tikkun Olam, making the world whole. Humanism upholds the dignity of every individual, Neoplatonism emphasizes our oneness, and Christianity exhorts us to practice Philia, love for our brothers and sisters who are everybody we meet.
Jane Goodall says, ‘Your life matters. You can't live through a day without making an impact on the world. And what's most important is to think about the impact of your actions on the world around you.’ We can never fully know what those will be. We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. So do it consciously, intentionally. The truth is we are often not aware of how what we do and say will ripple outward into the world. Practice of seeing the world we inhabit clearly in the moment, envisioning an image of the future we want to create, and releasing that creative vision with wisdom through our actions.
Agreed. So it is up to us all to reverse that,
The extraordinary movement of younger people to Christianity seems to be a response to this. And the right one. We must hope. And love each other
It is very rare that anything in the comments section rises to these heights. Thank you for sharing this.
An aspect of what was, what is, and what shall be. As old as language itself, these anxieties run deep as bone.
Forgive me for saying so, but his poem is incomplete. It lacks one final line:
"Until he returns."
My only comfort, in these "interesting times", is that the pendulum always returns. Empires fall, powerful people die, oppressive structures crumble and change is inevitable. While it grieves me deeply to know of all the suffering that is created by our current various crises, I hold onto the inexorable fact that nothing lasts forever. I try to hold to my own ethical and moral path and to do as little harm as possible because that's all I can do. Like many, I walk with grief every day because of the terrible things my species is wreaking upon the planet and its own members. We can only do what we can and pray for the rest.
Nicely put. We need wisdom where ever.
Hermes Trismegistus played such an interesting role in the European Renaissance I thought to have a quick look at recent scholarship on the history and have read reviews of two books at Bryn Mawr Classical Review. (Books: Bull, 2018; Ebeling, in translation, 2007) Such is the privilege of the internet while it lasts.
The big subject of modernity seems to me to follow. We still live with the denigration of prior assumptions ('magical thinking') and with the perceived opportunity for human control of society and future human direction.
Matters historically came to a head rather suddenly after the 30 Years War, for example in England after the English Civil War with the founding of The Royal Society and a marked turning away from Astrology and Alchemy, (and 'magic' as practised at the previous court of the Stuart monarchy), and there appears a deal at least in the Protestant tradition with the power of Divinity.
The institutionalising of usury and risk handling in trading and acquisition (proto-capitalism), were perhaps the effective arm in an arms race for modernity. (Side note: the creation of the Masonic Order whose initiation requires a belief in a 'Supreme Being', might be an indicator? There have been a number of Presidents of the USA who joined the Order. 'Western' Enlightenment thinking and the Constitution of the USA appear to have been among other very significant historical outcomes.)