Kudos and many thanks to Richard Moore for his Owl & Ibis - A Confluence of Minds presentation, "Politics and Knowledge in the Nihilistic Days of 1920 and 2020!"
A link to the PDF of Richard's Saturday, March 27, 2021 slideshow can be downloaded here.
Here is Richard's presentation hypothesis:
Since before and after the written word, Sapiens
have repeatedly found themselves in Threatening Times and have reached back to
their Elders for guidance. The options chosen by the Elders have been Finite
for each of their pending Disasters and may be a helpful guide for each Future
Generation.
Following his introductory slideshow, Richard aired a portion of the video of UC Berkeley political theory professor Wendy Brown's lecture, Politics and Knowledge in Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber - "Knowledge." This lecture may be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXm_0DxoS_k&t=3858s
Key within Brown's lecture was her view of the role of education and the use of knowledge. Brown thinks individual students and society at large are best served when students are influenced by answers to and discussions centered on the following questions:
1. What am I living for? Why am I here today?
2. What kind of world do I want
to live in?
3. How should or could humans order our common arrangements and our relationships with the nonhuman world at this juncture in world history?
Richard’s presentation and the discussion that followed established yet another landmark within O&I.
I say this in the sense that it succeeded in having the Confluence henceforth consider nihilism, a complex subject to say the least, in a more comprehensible and useful manner. That is, in the context of knowledge and politics (power), not philosophy.
Hereafter I think everyone who attended will better understand nihilism, if/when they ever come across the term again. Not as an arcane philosophy, rather as a contested matter. A contest over the importance and usefulness of knowledge and values fought in the breach between politicians and the wealthy on the one hand who want to quantify values and control resources including people; and on the other, by individuals who wish to deeply consider and construct values for guiding their personal lives and for living well among their fellows, and within the rest of Earth’s ecosystem.
The latter, personal emphasis on values is an exercise of freedom, a dwindling freedom left to us in the modern world of techno-commercial control. Many think this individual freedom regarding the progressive, humane use of values may be our only hope for retaining any of our humaneness following modernity's inevitable collapse, and the anarchy, democratic socialism, or tyranny that become our options.
Great job, Richard!
}:> & ~:)
