Toward Ecological Community & Civilization in Process Thought

As always I seem to be playing a little catch up with major events happening right under the bubble of economic/political news-events I never hear about or see. So here again I find another series of amazing discussions going on all around me while I am absorbed in my little worlds far, far away!

Not many years ago I obtained a Master Naturalist certification through Michigan State University's Community Extension School in which I became better acquainted with the green (land) and blue (water) ecological organizations in my area - locally, publicly, educationally, and in civic-minded townships, cities, and rural municipalities.

Certainly the linkages between these groups can be immense and wide as they are occurring everywhere at once not only in West Michigan where I live but across North, Central and South America. I found this to be true again when my wife and I travelled south to Mexico for a short vacation. There I saw glimpses of how the ancient Mayan people of the Yucatan Peninsula were trying to care for the land and water they depend despite the deep interruptions occurring across major commercial corridors of development. Like the efforts of many citizens in West Michigan, we hope to make an impact as we can upon the lives and consciousness of our fellow neighbors, communities and industrialists.

During the latter half of 2017 last year I began posting many articles on Process Thought in its derivative forms of Process Philosophy and Process Theology begun under the thinking of Alfred North Whitehead at the start of the 20th century. Much of this thinking is now being applied fundamentally towards what is known as "ecological societies" committed to "saving the earth" by re-envisioning how postmodern civilizations might live in harmony with one another as well as care for the precious resources we must share and cultivate with one another known as air, land and water. I find this heartening against the hard, cold facts of America's current Trumpian government's purposeful actions of denying and destroying everything necessary to restoring good earth practices back into our sphere/realm of influences and with our trading neighbors in general.

And so it is with great encouragement that I discovered a group of internationalists thinking along these same lines examining our behaviors and compacts with one another - how we might begin to improve our practices of consumption, reduce our ecological footprint upon this earth, and what it might mean to integrate human civilization into regional - if not global - green/blue communities.

Below is a list of topics and titles from the best of Whiteheadian thinking on ecological civilizations. Here is a world of envisioned alternative realities occurring from the best minds and hearts of progressive, process-based thinking by global citizens committed to humanity's best self rather than its too-often uglier side showcased in industrial pollution, oppressive governments, or nationalised militarization.

Yes. There can be another way. Another vision. A better reality than the one this world has made for itself. As a Christian I believe it begins with Jesus by following his code of love and goodwill. And from this ethic of belief to extend it both forwards and backwards into the recreation of renewed biotic communities of this earth we inhabit through the means of a Land Ethic once beautifully described by Aldo Leopold as inspiration to the efforts of all those who would heal the harms and wounds we have left upon so much of what we have touched. These are the grand visions and deep burdens of  people around the world. Visions and burdens to see practiced by humanity in its reforming legacies of international cooperation, communication, peace, love and harmonious care for one another and this old earth.

R.E. Slater

March 11, 2018

Information on this year's 2018 Ecological 

Civilization Conference:

http://postmodernchina.org/blog/event/12th-international-forum-on-ecological-civilization/

Ecological Civilization and Symbiotic Development

Conference Purpose

It is no secret that both China and the world are facing many disturbing problems today, and that we are heading in the direction of an ecological catastrophe. Finding an alternative to the current form of modernization has become an urgent issue. What are the root causes of the current crisis? What are the philosophical, political, economic, and cultural foundations of this crisis? How do we step out of this predicament and avoid destroying the earth’s ecosystems? Are there alternatives to the Western civilization that has formed the modern era? Is a new civilization—an ecological civilization―possible? What is “ecological civilization”? What are its philosophical foundations and its social, political, and economic implications? What kinds of kinds of sustainable practices are emerging today that may help us to create an ecological society? What kind of role can China play in creating an ecological civilization? The 12th International Forum on Ecological Civilization will contribute fresh reflection on these burning questions from an organic, relational, non-dualistic perspective that is far more congenial to classical Asian thinking in general, Chinese in particular.

Cosponsors:

This Conference will be hosted by the Institute for Postmodern Development of China, EcoCiv, the Center for Process Studies, Pitzer College, Claremont Graduate University, The South China Institute of Environmental Science, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, Huanghe Science and Technology College, and others.

Plenary speakers:

John B. Cobb, Jr., David Korten, Holmes Rolston , Philip Clayton, Steven Rowe, Clifford Cobb and others will speak at this conference

Main Topics:

I. Core Theoretical Issues concerning Ecological Civilization

• What is “ecological civilization”?
• What are its philosophical foundations?
• What are its social, political, and economic implications?
• Ecological Civilization and Symbiotic Development
• Ecological Civilization and Organic Thinking
• Marxist Ecological Thought
• Constructive Postmodernism and Ecological Marxism
• Organic Marxism and Ecological Marxism
• Process Philosophy and Ecological Civilization
• Chinese Traditional Culture and Ecological Civilization

II. Constructing Ecological Civilization

• How can we create an ecological civilization?
• Ecological Civilization and Green Development
• Ecological Civilization and Eco-cities
• Ecological Civilization and Ecological Agriculture
• Ecological Civilization and Ecological Economy
• Ecological Civilization and Green Community
• The Construction of Ecological Civilization in China
• Constructing Ecological Civilization around the World
• How to Tell the Story of Ecological Civilization: The Role of Ecological Literature
• Ecological Civilization and Green Language

III. Ecological Civilization and Education

• Ecological Civilization and Education Reform
• Ecological Civilization and Educational Innovations
• Ecological Civilization and Ecological Education
• Ecological Civilization and Education with Roots
• Ecological Civilization and Organic Education

Call for Papers

If you are committed to creating an ecological civilization and have interest in any of the above topics, you are invited to contribute a paper to the conference. Please submit a 1500 word abstract of your proposed conference paper. The deadline to submit your abstract is Feb. 28, 2018.

Contact Info:

Institute for Postmodern Development of China, USA
Email: eco-conference@postmodernchina.orgTel：909-450-1658
Fax: 909-621-2760

Toward Ecological Civilization Series

http://postmodernchina.org/blog/event/12th-international-forum-on-ecological-civilization/

This series proposes that the work of Alfred North Whitehead provides the best alternative to the pervasive worldviews that now threaten our civilization with catastrophe. His comprehensive and rigorous philosophy provides the more organic, relation, integrated, nondual, and processive conceptuality needed to support the emergence of an ecological civilization.

This series is connected with the 10th International Whitehead Conference, held June 4-7, 2015, in Claremont, California. The conference, called “Seizing an Alternative,” convened international presenters and work groups from every major field in the sciences and humanities to explore a sustainable way forward for the Earth and its inhabitants. Continuing the work of the conference is Pando Populus–a platform created as a forum for events, discussion, education, and community – sometimes in physical, always in virtual, space.

Books in this series:

• An Axiological Process Ethics, Rem B. Edwards
• Panentheism and Scientific Naturalism, David Ray Griffin
• Organic Marxism, Philip Clayton and Justin Heinzekehr
• Theological Reminiscences, John B. Cobb, Jr.
• Integrative Process, Margaret Stout and Jeannine M. Love
• Replanting Ourselves in Beauty, Jay McDaniel & Patricia Adams Farmer, eds.
• For Our Common Home, John B. Cobb, Jr., & Ignacio Castuera, eds.
• Whitehead Word Book, John B. Cobb, Jr.
• The Vindication of Radical Empiricism, Michel Weber
• Intuition in Mathematics and Physics, Ronny Desmet, ed.
• Reforming Higher Education in an Era of Ecological Crisis and Growing Digital Insecurity, Chet Bowers
• Protecting Our Common, Sacred Home, David Ray Griffin
• Educating for an Ecological Civilization, Marcus Ford and Stephen Rowe, eds.
• Socialism in Process, Justin Heinzekehr and Philip Clayton, eds.

Ecological civilization

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ecological civilization is the final goal of environmental reform within a given society. It implies that the changes required in response to global climate disruption are so extensive as to represent another form of human civilization, one based on ecological principles. Broadly construed, ecological civilization involves a synthesis of economic, educational, political, agricultural, and other societal reforms toward sustainability.^[1]

Although the term was first coined in the 1980s, it did not see widespread use until 2007, when “ecological civilization” became an explicit goal of the Communist Party of China (CPC).^[2][3] In April 2014, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and the International Ecological Safety Collaborative Organization founded a sub-committee on ecological civilization.^[4] Ecological civilization emphasizes the importance of a long-term perspective on the current climate crisis, the need for major environmental reforms, and the need to reimagine the nature of society after these reforms.^[1]

History

In 1984, former Soviet Union environment experts proposed the term “Ecological Culture” (экологической культуры) in an article entitled “Ways of Fostering Ecological Culture in Individuals under the Conditions of Mature Socialism" which was published in Scientific Communism, Moscow, vol. 2.^[5] A summary of this article was published in the Chinese newspaper the Guangming Daily, where the notion of ecological culture was translated into Chinese as 生态文明 (shēngtài wénmíng), or ecological civilization.^[6]

Two years later, the concept of ecological civilization was picked up in China, and was first used by Ye Qianji (1909–2017), an agricultural economist, in 1987.^[7][8] Professor Ye defined ecological civilization by drawing from the ecological sciences and environmental philosophy.^[9]

The first time the phrase “ecological civilization” was used as a technical term in an English-language book was in 1995.^[10] Roy Morrison, an environmentalist, coined the phrase in his book Ecological Democracy, writing that “An ecological civilization is based on diverse lifeways sustaining linked natural and social ecologies.”^[11]

The term is found more extensively in Chinese discussions beginning in 2007.^[2][3] In 2012, the Communist Party of China (CPC) included the goal of achieving an ecological civilization in its constitution, and it also featured in its five-year plan.^[1][12] In the Chinese context, the term generally presupposes the framework of a “constructive postmodernism,” as opposed to an extension of modernist practices or a “deconstructive postmodernism,” which stems from the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida.^[1]

Both “ecological civilization” and “constructive postmodernism” have been associated with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.^[1] David Ray Griffin, a process philosopher and professor at Claremont School of Theology, first used the term “constructive postmodernism” in his 1989 book, Varieties of Postmodern Theology.^[13]

The largest international conference held on the theme “ecological civilization” (Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization) took place at Pomona College in June 2015, bringing together roughly 2,000 participants from around the world and featuring such leaders in the environmental movement as Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva, John B. Cobb, Jr., Wes Jackson, and Sheri Liao.^[14]

Since 2015, the Chinese discussion of ecological civilization is increasingly associated with an “organic” form of Marxism.^[1] “Organic Marxism” was first used by Philip Clayton and Justin Heinzekehr in their 2014 book, Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe.^[15] The book, which was translated into Chinese and published by the People’s Press in 2015, describes ecological civilization as an orienting goal for the global ecological movement.^[16]

A defence of ecological civilization as the ultimate goal of humanity, has been mounted by Arran Gare in The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization: A Manifesto for the Future, ^[17] which was published in 2016.

See also

• Deep ecology
• Ecological crisis
• Ecological economics
• Ecological modernization
• Ecomodernism
• Environmentalism
• Environmental movement
• Sustainability

References

1. Zhihe Wang, Huili He, and Meijun Fan, "The Ecological Civilization Debate in China: The Role of Ecological Marxism and Constructive Postmodernism—Beyond the Predicament of Legislation", last modified 2014, Monthly Review, accessed November 1, 2016.
2. Zhang Chun, "China's New Blueprint for an 'Ecological Civilization'", last modified September 30, 2015, The Diplomat, accessed November 1, 2016.
3. James Oswald, "China turns to ecology in search of ‘civilisation’", last modified August 3, 2016, Asian Studies Association of Australia, accessed November 1, 2016.
4. Zhu Guangyao, "Ecological Civilization: A national strategy for innovative, concerted, green, open and inclusive development", last modified March 2016, United Nations Environment Programme, accessed November 1, 2016.
5. Липицкий, В. С., "Пути формирования экологической культуры личности в условиях зрелого социализма," Вестн. Моск. ун-та. Сер. 12, Теория научного коммунизма 2 1984: p43.
6. 张擅, “在成熟社会主义条件下培养个人生态文明的途径,” 光明日报, 18th February 1985.
7. 中国生态农业奠基人108岁叶谦吉教授在重庆仙逝
8. Arran Gare, [1], in Chromatikon V: Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, ed. Michel Weber and Ronny Desmet (Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2009): 167.
9. Jiahua Pan, China's Environmental Governing and Ecological Civilization (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag GmbH, 2016), 35.
10. Jiahua Pan, China's Environmental Governing and Ecological Civilization (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag GmbH, 2016), 34.
11. Roy Morrison, Ecological Democracy (Boston: South End Press, 1995), 11.
12. John B. Fullerton, "China: Ecological Civilization Rising?", last modified May 2, 2015, Huffington Post, accessed November 1, 2016.
13. John B. Cobb, Jr., "Constructive Postmodernism", 2002, Religion Online, accessed November 1, 2016. See David Ray Griffin, William A. Beardslee, and Joe Holland, Varieties of Postmodern Theology (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1989)
14. Herman Greene, "Re-Imagining Civilization as Ecological: Report on the 'Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization' Conference", last modified August 24, 2015, Center for Ecozoic Societies, accessed November 1, 2016.
15. "Spotlight: Organic Marxism, China's ecological civilization drive in spotlight at int'l conference", last modified May 1, 2016, Xinhua News Agency, accessed November 1, 2016. See Philip Clayton and Justin Heinzekehr, Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe (Claremont: Process Century Press, 2014).
16. Philip Clayton and Justin Heinzekehr, Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe, trans. Xian Meng, Guifeng Yu, and Lixia Zhang (Beijing: The People's Press, 2015).
17. Jhttps://www.routledge.com/The-Philosophical-Foundations-of-Ecological-Civilization-A-manifesto-for/Gare/p/book/9781138685765

NYT - The 10 Best Books of 2017

Credit: Nicole Licht

The 10 Best Books of 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/books/review/10-best-books-2017.html

Nov 30, 2017

The year’s best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

Fiction

Autumn by Ali Smith 

The extraordinary friendship of an elderly songwriter and the precocious child of his single-parent neighbor is at the heart of this novel that darts back and forth through the decades, from the 1960s to the era of Brexit. The first in a projected four-volume series, it’s a moving exploration of the intricacies of the imagination, a sly teasing-out of a host of big ideas and small revelations, all hovering around a timeless quandary: how to observe, how to be. 

Read our review of “Autumn”

Pantheon Books, $24.95

Fiction

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid 

A deceptively simple conceit turns a timely novel about a couple fleeing a civil war into a profound meditation on the psychology of exile. Magic doors separate the known calamities of the old world from the unknown perils of the new, as the migrants learn how to adjust to an improvisatory existence. Hamid has written a novel that fuses the real with the surreal — perhaps the most faithful way to convey the tremulous political fault lines of our interconnected planet.

Read our review of “Exit West”

Riverhead Books, $26 

Fiction 
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Lee’s stunning novel, her second, chronicles four generations of an ethnic Korean family, first in Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 20th century, then in Japan itself from the years before World War II to the late 1980s. Exploring central concerns of identity, homeland and belonging, the book announces its ambitions right from the opening sentence: “History has failed us, but no matter.” Lee suggests that behind the facades of wildly different people lie countless private desires, hopes and miseries, if we have the patience and compassion to look and listen. 

Read our review of “Pachinko”
Grand Central Publishing, $27

Fiction 

The Power by Naomi Alderman 

Alderman imagines our present moment — our history, our wars, our politics — complicated by the sudden manifestation of a lethal “electrostatic power” in women that upends gender dynamics across the globe. It’s a riveting story, told in fittingly electric language, that explores how power corrupts everyone: those new to it and those resisting its loss. Provocatively, Alderman suggests that history’s horrors are inescapable — that there will always be abuses of power, that the arc of the universe doesn’t bend toward justice so much as inscribe a circle away from it. “Transfers of power, of course, are rarely smooth,” one character observes. 

Read our review of “The Power”

Little, Brown & Company, $26

Fiction 
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 

In her follow-up to “Salvage the Bones,” Ward returns to the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Miss., and the stories of ordinary people who would be easy to classify dismissively into categories like “rural poor,” “drug-dependent,” “products of the criminal justice system.” Instead Ward gives us Jojo, a 13-year-old, and a road trip that he and his little sister take with his drug-addicted black mother to pick up their white father from prison. And there is nothing small about their existences. Their story feels mythic, both encompassing the ghosts of the past and touching on all the racial and social dynamics of the South as they course through this one fractured family. Ward’s greatest feat here is achieving a level of empathy that is all too often impossible to muster in real life, but that is genuine and inevitable in the hands of a writer of such lyric imagination. 

Read our review of “Sing, Unburied, Sing”
Scribner, $26

Nonfiction 

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us by Richard O. Prum

If a science book can be subversive and feminist and change the way we look at our own bodies — but also be mostly about birds — this is it. Prum, an ornithologist, mounts a defense of Darwin’s second, largely overlooked theory of sexual selection. Darwin believed that, in addition to evolving to adapt to the environment, some other force must be at work shaping the species: the aesthetic mating choices made largely by the females. Prum wants subjectivity and the desire for beauty to be part of our understanding of how evolution works. It’s a passionate plea that begins with birds and ends with humans and will help you finally understand, among other things, how in the world we have an animal like the peacock.

Read our review of “The Evolution of Beauty”

Doubleday, $30

Nonfiction 
Grant by Ron Chernow

Even those who think they are familiar with Ulysses S. Grant’s career will learn something from Chernow’s fascinating and comprehensive biography, especially about Grant’s often overlooked achievements as president. What is more, at a time of economic inequality reflecting the 19th century’s Gilded Age and a renewed threat from white-supremacy groups, Chernow reminds us that Grant’s courageous example is more valuable than ever, and in this sense, “Grant” is as much a mirror on our own time as a history lesson.

Read our review of “Grant”
Penguin Press, $40

Nonfiction 

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.

A former public defender in Washington, Forman has written a masterly account of how a generation of black officials, beginning in the 1970s, wrestled with recurring crises of violence and drug use in the nation’s capital. What started out as an effort to assert the value of black lives turned into an embrace of tough-on-crime policies — with devastating consequences for the very communities those officials had promised to represent. Forman argues that dismantling the American system of mass incarceration will require a new understanding of justice, one that emphasizes accountability instead of vengeance.

Read our review of “Locking Up Our Own”

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27

Nonfiction

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser 

Fraser’s biography of the author of “Little House on the Prairie” and other beloved books about her childhood during the era of westward migration captures the details of a life — and an improbable, iconic literary career — that has been expertly veiled by fiction. Exhaustively researched and passionately written, this book refreshes and revitalizes our understanding of Western American history, giving space to the stories of Native Americans displaced from the tribal lands by white settlers like the Ingalls family as well as to the travails of homesteaders, farmers and everyone else who rushed to the West to extract its often elusive riches. Ending with a savvy analysis of the 20th-century turn toward right-wing politics taken by Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, Fraser offers a remarkably wide-angle view of how national myths are shaped. 

Read our review of “Prairie Fires”

Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, $35

Nonfiction

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

In this affectionate and very funny memoir, Lockwood weaves the story of her family — including her Roman Catholic priest father, who received a special dispensation from the Vatican — with her own coming-of-age, and the crisis that later led her and her husband to live temporarily under her parents’ rectory roof. She also brings to bear her gifts as a poet, mixing the sacred and profane in a voice that’s wonderfully grounded and authentic. This book proves Lockwood to be a formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she pleases.

Read our review of “Priestdaddy”

Riverhead Books, $27

God's Incarnation into the World - Before, During, and After Jesus

A Christmas message.

During this time of the season Christians often think of Jesus as the incarnation of God come into this world to affect God's plan of salvation... which is true. But by saying this we should be careful not to think God was in any way uninvolved with the world before this time. Or that He was not in someway "incarnate" in both man and creation before this time - if by "incarnate" we mean God's presence was, in some way, always actively involved with redeeming both the world and creation before the advent of Christ. Usually, the church uses the term "incarnate" to refer to God's "special incarnation, or presence, or infilling, in Jesus - become "God amongst us" - as different from God's past "incarnations" in the world.

We can say this when observing in the bible this same idea when God used men and women, angels, and creative events in the Old Testament to affect His divine will by His presence in a way different from His other kinds of "presences" borne within the world. These might be considered instances of a "special incarnation" too - or "special infilling of His Spirit" - upon people and objects. However, before rushing off to declare all things profane but some things holy, let us step back once again to consider the psalmist and prophetic messages of how God becomes "incarnate" in all men and women - even creation - and on all occasions when partnering with His obedient creation. It is how God translates His divine presence into the world from time immemorial to this present time. In this way, all the world may be considered holy, or all activity made holy, though sin can profane this presence of God in mankind and creation.

By thinking in this way we would be broadening the idea of God's "incarnation into the world" not simply through a one time act in Christ Jesus at the time of His conception and birth but continually through the eons of the world both now and in the past and forward into the future. The world has never known a time when God has ceased to be present in its history. As such, perhaps we might speak of this act of God as His "general incarnation" or "presence" in the world as versus His "special incarnation" through Christ or other biblical events, acts or people. A divine incarnation familiar in recall to His past infillings of the Spirit upon prophets, priests, and kings but especially in Christ Jesus as the divine God made flesh within this sinful world.

By saying this we can then say that God has never been absent from His creation from the very first day of its creation until now. Who has always been actively involved with creation's salvation, reclamation, rebirth, regeneration, and transformation unto the fellowship of His love, mercy, forgiveness, and hope. This process is then especially culminated through Jesus Christ born as "God-Immanuel" (God with us) to complete the process of salvation of God through the atonement of His divine Self.

Such a divine atonement had foreshadowings in the past when displayed in God's servants both then and now. But it is in Jesus that God's atonement for the world is made complete and efficacious (meaning, a provision or remedy to an unsolvable problem). Jesus is God's personal satisfaction that salvation has come, is here, and is in process of always becoming. That it will never go away, will ever be a divine force fully activated into this world, and will make whole a broken, sinful creation. 

Which, in hindsight, is really what God has been doing through the Old Testament up until of His full presence in Jesus, who was-and-is wholly man and wholly God undivided (cf. hupostasis). By the witness of the biblical record, at every instance of failure by God's covenanted people it was God Himself who "solved" or "redeemed" His people not based upon judgment and wrath - which events Christians have interpreted as the failings of Israel but are more the evidences of man's (our) inability to be sinless, perfect, or righteous. As such, the only sacrifice - or restitution - for our failings (negatively viewed) or inabilities (positively viewed) has ever-and-always been God Himself.

By examples, this can be seen in the Abrahamic Covenant when God divided the sacrifice by His own hand as there was no other hand which could make sacrifice for man's sin; or in the Mosaic Covenant when kingdom restoration could only come by God's grace and mercy rather than through the obedience of His covenanted people who continually broke His covenant; or in the Davidic covenant when very few Israelite-Judean kings measured up to God's goodness and holiness (out of 42 kings 8 were good, 3 were better than good - David was one, and 1 best - Josiah). All of which eventuated into the need for a New Covenant binding up all previous biblical covenants of God unto Himself through the personage, ministry, and passion of Christ Jesus. This is what made Jesus especially special - as one who only in Himself could effect the binding and healing of all past covenants through Himself alone. And why? Because He was the very God who could unbreak that which was broken. There was none other - or no other means - which could unbreak what was broken but upon His divine personage.

This then is the wonder of the Christmas season. Not that God was absent in the world but was ever fully involved with a willful world unable to stay its course in God's love but for God's personal presence and sacrifice in its life every step of the way culminating and continuing through the incarnation of God in Christ Jesus. This is the good news of Christmas that God came into the world through one man to save the world from its failings that it might find a fullness of fellowship reflective of the plans and purposes of a Sovereign God in love with His creation and unwilling to forsake or abandon it.

And it is a Christmas message for ourselves as well to be inspired to be/come God's incarnations of His divine Self into a world broken by sin and thus suffering from sin's affects. It is a true statement to say "God is present in His creation." He has always been present in His creation. He has moved it, infilled it, partnered with it, directed it with willing cooperation, and so on... but God has never been absent from creation as its Creator.

In effect, God has always been in the process of incarnating His presence amongst us - but especially in His Own Personage through Christ Jesus who was made the fullness of God's efficacious New Covenant amongst men through whom salvation has come, will always be present, and cannot be broken even by our sin. The promise of God to redeem the world has been wholly enforced with the restitution of Christ Jesus, God made flesh. It is God's covenant of salvation to man that mediates for our sin, covers our sin, pays the penalty of our sin, and brings fullness of divine fellowship with our Creator-Redeemer.

And finally, within us, within His church, God's incarnation may come again and again and again as we, His (re/newed) covenanted people, allow God's divine incarnation be reflected through us by the movement of His Spirit through us making whole a broken world. We, as Christians, are the "Jesus's" or "Christ's" to this world. Not by war, anger, wrath, intolerance, sexism, discrimination, hate, injustice, or disfavor. But in all the ways which Jesus came to disrupt the sin and breakage of this world that it might be made whole again through love, mercy, forgiveness and hope. This then is the Christmas message we, the church of God, His covenanted people, must bear, share, and be/come. There can be no other message than that we "bear Jesus' name" to all when we bear God's love and mercy as His "especial incarnations."

Peace,

R.E. Slater

December 12, 2017

Why Surrounding Yourself with Unread Books is a Good Thing

Why You Should Surround Yourself With More Books Than You'll Ever Have Time to Read

An overstuffed bookcase (or e-reader) says good things about your mind.

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-you-should-stop-feeling-bad-about-all-those-books-you-buy-dont-read.html

by Jessica Stillman

Contributor, Inc.com@EntryLevelRebel

Lifelong learning will help you be happier, earn more, and even stay healthier, experts say. Plus, plenty of some of the smartest names in business, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk, insist that the best way to get smarter is to read. So what do you do? You go out and buy books, lots of them.

But life is busy and intentions are one thing, actions another. Soon you find your shelves (or e-reader) overflowing with titles you intend to read one day, or books you flipped through once but then abandoned. Is this a disaster for your project to become a smarter, wiser person?

If you never actually get around to reading any books, then yes. You might want to read up on tricks to squeeze more reading into your hectic life and why it pays to commit a few hours every week to learning. But if it's simply that your book reading in no way keeps pace with your book buying, I have good news for you (and for me, I definitely fall into this category): your overstuffed library isn't a sign of failure or ignorance, it's a badge of honor.

Why you need an "antilibrary"

That's the argument author and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes in his bestseller The Black Swan. Perpetually fascinating blog Brain Pickings dug up and highlighted the section in a particularly lovely post. Taleb kicks off his musings with an anecdote about the legendary library of Italian writer Umberto Eco, which contained a jaw-dropping 30,000 volumes.

Did Eco actually read all those books? Of course not, but that wasn't the point of surrounding himself with so much potential but as-yet-unrealized knowledge. By providing a constant reminder of all the things he didn't know, Eco's library kept him intellectually hungry and perpetually curious. An ever growing collection of books you haven't yet read can do the same for you, Taleb writes:

A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

An antilibrary is a powerful reminder of your limitations - the vast quantity of things you don't know, half know, or will one day realize you're wrong about. By living with that reminder daily you can nudge yourself towards the kind of intellectual humility that improves decision-making and drives learning.

"People don't walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it's the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did," Taleb claims.

Why? Perhaps because it is a well known psychological fact that is the most incompetent who are the most confident of their abilities and the most intelligent who are full of doubt. (Really, it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect). It's equally well established that the more readily admit you don't know things, the faster you learn.

So stop beating yourself up for buying too many books or for having a to-read list that you could never get through in three lifetimes. All those books you haven't read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you're way ahead of the vast majority of other people.

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Amazon link

Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary:

Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilibrary/

How to become an “antischolar” in a culture that treats knowledge as

“an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order.”

by Maria Popova

“It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning,” Lincoln Steffens wrote in his beautiful 1925 essay. Piercingly true as this may be, we’ve known at least since Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave that “most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.”. Although science is driven by “thoroughly conscious ignorance” and the spiritual path paved with admonitions against the illusion of thorough understanding, we cling to our knowledge — our incomplete, imperfect, infinitesimal-in-absolute-terms knowledge — like we cling to life itself.

And yet the contour of what we know is a mere silhouette cast by the infinite light of the unknown against the screen of the knowable. The great E.F. Schumacher captured this strange dynamic in the concept of adaequatio — the notion that “the understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing to be known.” But how do we face our inadequacy with grace and negotiate wisely this eternal tension between the known, the unknown, the knowable, and the unknowable?

That’s what Lebanese-American scholar, statistician, and essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb explores in a section of his modern classic The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (public library) — an illuminating inquiry into the unknowable and unpredictable outlier-events that precipitate profound change, and our tendency to manufacture facile post-factum explanations for them based on our limited knowledge.

Taleb uses legendary Italian writer Umberto Eco’s uncommon relationship with books and reading as a parable of the most fruitful relationship with knowledge:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Tsudonku: Japanese for leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with
other unread books. Illustration by Ella Frances Sanders from 'Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World.'

Eco himself has since touched on humanity’s curious relationship with the known and the unknown in his encyclopedia of imaginary lands, the very existence of which is another symptom of our compulsive tendency to fill in the gaps of our understanding with concrete objects of “knowledge,” even if we have to invent them by the force of our imagination. Taleb adds:

We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head.

Noting that Eco's Black Swan theory centers on “our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises” because we underestimate the value of what we don’t know and take what we do know “a little too seriously,” Taleb envisions the perfect dancer in the tango with knowledge:

Let us call this an antischolar — someone who focuses on the unread books, and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a possession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device — a skeptical empiricist.

Complement The Black Swan, which is fascinating it its totality, with astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser on how to live with mystery in a culture obsessed with certitude, philosopher Hannah Arendt on how unanswerable questions give shape to the human experience, and novelist Marilynne Robinson on the beauty of the unknown.

HT Bobulate