Fwd: A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities

[Olasupo Laosebikan]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: The Galileo Commission <in...@galileocommission.org>
Date: Fri, May 5, 2023 at 4:01 AM
Subject: A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities
To: olasupo laosebikan <olao...@csu.edu>

But we... who are we? Plotinus, Enneads VI, 4 Dear Galileo Commission Subscriber,   We are writing to solicit your support for our Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities, which follows on from the 2014 Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science and the 2018 Galileo Commission Report, Beyond a Materialist Worldview: Towards an Expanded Science. The new document – already signed by over 100 scholars, including Dr Iain McGilchrist, Dr Anne Baring, Prof Keith Ward FBA and Prof Jeffrey Kripal - is a corresponding call to expand the Humanities to recover the depth dimension of human spiritual identity. We argue that there is good evidence to refute the claim that we are merely ‘hackable animals’ (Yuval Noah Harari) or at best complex biological machines in need of an upgraded operating system as proposed by Transhumanism.   We contend that this impoverished view of the human has contributed to a spiritual vacuum and widespread mental dis-ease that has undermined our sense of purpose and meaning and led us to neglect the vital inner aspect of human existence. Our capacity for attention has been fragmented, and we have lost touch with our centre, root and ground.   We argue that a recovery of a deeper spiritual understanding of the human being as proposed by the likes of William James and Sir Alister Hardy FRS is vital to the future of our culture and that the emerging post-materialist understanding of consciousness points the way. READ AND SIGN THE DOCUMENT HERE   With every good wish,   David Lorimer, Marjorie Woollacott, Co-Chairs of the Galileo Commission   Dr Athena Potari, author of the Call

 

81 Larcom Street
London London SE171NJ
UNITED KINGDOM

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[Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth]

tThanks for sharing.the africans had  believed in the idea of, the evil forest, Gods ds forests anforest  and the  Kings forest. igbo dudu, igbo olorun and igbo oba butwhen the europeans  came visiting with their scientific minds they reasoned that God could not have been inthe forest and that there was no evil in the forest and the king could nt have owned the forest so they wet in and ravaged the forest, call it environmental degradation but its the afrivans spiritual belieffs that makes him live in harmony with nature. tis theme has been explored bt Wangai mataai,nobel laureate from Kenya in her book,The challenge of Africa.

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

hi augustine

i am not totally in agreement in your reading of the europeans or the africans.

one might say not that it was or is the african spiritual beliefs that made/makes him live in harmony with nature, but the other way around. i.e., people learned to live with the forests, some like pymies in the forest, but most clearing the land or forext, chopping down the bush and burning it, etc, as happens now. from the necessities of living came the spiritul beliefs as justifications.

the same for all people, everywhere.

i prefer to think of beliefs following, not initiating, structures of living and power.

so when europeans came, it wasn't with "scientific minds." they were also "believers," though generally christians, and some as missionaries. in french, the words for the colonial enterprise were "la mission civilisatrice," the civilizing mission. so, they believed in their  guns and the power to impose their educational and economic orders on africans, and called that "civilization," not science, though they must have also believed their science made them superior as well as did their ships, guns, and tall buildings.

living in harmony with nature...frankly that is a contemporary concept. i doubt any people on earth really thought that way until the onset of the modern ecological crisis we humans have brought on.

if you look at the smoke on the savanna nowadays from people burning off the bush, as had been done for centuries in the plains and forests, you might hesitate to call it living in harmony with nature. humans dominated their natural environment everywhere. when we became too successful, the fish began to disappear, the animal and insect special to disappear. we used ddt, and the poison facilitated getting rid of mosquitoes and so on.

harmony for hunter gatherers? even that i'd want to question.,

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 8:30 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAP9m8jJvE6AejzMCx9Tq%3DoV3MPEqkaH69jwxmykWg%3Dt7-QHPaw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Toyin Falola]

Ken:

I will argue that all human beings live in environments that sustain them: access to water, food, and medicine. If they don’t, they will become extinct. Second, they then create the gods and goddesses that balance survival with the environment they have. The first time I went to the Sahara Desert, I wondered why humans chose to live there. And the first time I went to Cornell at Ithaca in the early 1990s, during an intense winter, I said the same thing: the place was not created for human beings to live! But they live at Ithaca and live in the desert!

But we... who are we? Plotinus, Enneads VI, 4 Dear Galileo Commission Subscriber,   We are writing to solicit your support for our Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities, which follows on from the 2014 Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science and the 2018 Galileo Commission Report, Beyond a Materialist Worldview: Towards an Expanded Science. The new document – already signed by over 100 scholars, including Dr Iain McGilchrist, Dr Anne Baring, Prof Keith Ward FBA and Prof Jeffrey Kripal - is a corresponding call to expand the Humanities to recover the depth dimension of human spiritual identity. We argue that there is good evidence to refute the claim that we are merely ‘hackable animals’ (Yuval Noah Harari) or at best complex biological machines in need of an upgraded operating system as proposed by Transhumanism.

We contend that this impoverished view of the human has contributed to a spiritual vacuum and widespread mental dis-ease that has undermined our sense of purpose and meaning and led us to neglect the vital inner aspect of human existence. Our capacity for attention has been fragmented, and we have lost touch with our centre, root and ground.   We argue that a recovery of a deeper spiritual understanding of the human being as proposed by the likes of William James and Sir Alister Hardy FRS is vital to the future of our culture and that the emerging post-materialist understanding of consciousness points the way.

READ AND SIGN THE DOCUMENT HERE

With every good wish,

David Lorimer, Marjorie Woollacott, Co-Chairs of the Galileo Commission   Dr Athena Potari, author of the Call

 

81 Larcom Street
London London SE171NJ
UNITED KINGDOM

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

true, we adapt to our envirments, even urban or rural, then justify it.

what's troubling is that we have increased our numbers exponentially, are now destroying the environment, and eventually ourselves, unless we can control our greed.

insatiable greed.

self-destructive greed.

till now the earth could accommodate our greed. but no more.

you young people must drive the change that we oldsters failed to impose on the powerful and greedy forces in the world.

we must do what augustine said: learn to live in harmony with nature: not destroy it for profit and money. look at the rainforest destroyers in brazil; or the wealthy class on cape cod who resist building wind towera. all these cases of greed: let other people save their forests, we need the money; let other people put up wind towers, we want an unrestricted view of the ocean.

all this is greed, and power saying let others pay the price, not me. i'll drive my gas guzzling car till we all choke....

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 7, 2023 12:00 PM

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[Olasupo Laosebikan]

Here is the Galileo Commission's 2018 Report "Beyond a Materialist Worldview: Towards an Expanded Science" 

 https://galileocommission.org/report/ 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN7PR12MB8436DFC8EAFE70FC07C6E006DA709%40SN7PR12MB8436.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.