Just a quick follow-on to the video … some thoughts that came up along the way:
Primarily, I would like to pick up on a theme that @johnnydavis54 has brought up more than once: namely our current industrial-model of education (IME) and its deficiencies. Irwin does an excellent job of deterrorizing the subject matter. It’s easy to see how most laypeople, having been subjected to the IME can get lost, overwhelmed and intimidated trying to grasp what Irwin is saying. To his credit, he takes a slow, measured, and very clarification-rich approach to what he has to say so that the revulsion-threshold that must be overcome is rather low. Nevertheless, it re-emphasizes the need for serious, near-time reform, say, in the direction of Gidley’s (to mention only the most recent thinker where the notionality arose) postformal education.
There is a massive push and pressure for more STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) in school, but unfortunately no comparable, yet just as necessary simultaneous push for (I’ll call them) “arts” (for lack of a better word at moment). The mere fact that Irwin’s group is developing a “third ontology” that is language-metaphored (whereby it is also possible that it is actually language-based) underscores the need for listeners who are comfortable in both domains.
If anyone is wondering what kind of activism might be recommendable at the moment, I’d say education is always a safe bet. I consider it a central life-determining domain. Yes, we need ecological activism and social activism. Lord knows we humans are screwing up just about everything we touch, but it is one thing to march for (or against) something, and it is another to know why you’re marching at all. Given the current crisis in education and the state of understanding that too many graduates of too many institutions of higher or other learning are exhibiting once they leave those institutions, the centrality of the issue becomes more apparent. We are woefully unprepared – structurally, institutionally, socially, politically, and economically – to meet our real needs in this area. (For example, as Irwin points out, we will most likely leave our current biosphere “soon”, but we also know that we’re going to take our wasteful, inefficient, and destructive mentality with us … if we don’t off ourselves beforehand.)
There is a huge number of statements, assertions, topics, subject, and themes in this video that one could take exception to or one could explore in more detail. What struck me – at the detail level – is how many of the topics and themes that have come up in the Context-and-Backstory-section listed CCafé sessions were revisited in this talk. The three that hit me the hardest were the Meru, Mereon, and Young sessions: statements like (~@6:00) “We live in a geometric reality.” The repeated references to “lattices” (~@30:00), “projections” (~@33:00), “symmetries” (~@1:05:00), “Fibonacci chains” and phi-relationships (~@1:10:00), and especially language efficiency (~@1:15:00) are examples of this.
His excursion into “interconnectedness” (~@45:00) was strongly parallel to what Haraway had to say on the subject in the video clip I posted elsewhere.
His statement that “Consciousness is likely non-computable” dovetails as well with our recent mullings on AI and singularity, too. Rethinking, revisiting some of these previous sessions could also be worthy preparation for our get-together next Tuesday.
I think what I’m trying to say is that there is a very rich web of interconnections right here on our own little platform that are well worth taking some time to engage in more depth.