ART1020 Critique & Interpret: December 2016

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Concluding Remarks and Recommended Readings for ART 1020

Dear philosophers -

You all did a great job this semester. Thank you for your openness to learning, your mindfulness training, and your sharing of your experiences. I've learned much from you all and wish you well on your Path.

Some of you asked me to recommend books on some topics we discussed. Below is a list of some of the books that have been important to me in recent years. Enjoy these treasures and feel free to email me or come visit us at the Sanctuary. We run a weekly meditation every Sunday 12 Noon to 1 PM, followed by a discussion group from 1 to 2 PM. These events are open to the public and all beings are welcome. That's a good time to visit, and you can take a hike on our 40 acre land trust. Dogs welcome too. It has been a pleasure being your learning partner this semester.

Philosophy and Spirituality

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Christopher Bache, Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life

James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

Gabriel Cousens, Spiritual Nutrition

A Course in Miracles

Ram Das, Be Here Now

Eagle Man, Spirituality for America

Shakti Gawan, Meditations

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Stephen Mitchell, Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance over Time

Krishnamurti, Total Freedom

Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

Plato, Republic

Poems of Rumi

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Gary Renard, Disappearance of the Universe

Sharon Salzberg & Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation Workbook

Rupert Sheldrake, Science Set Free

Russell Targ, The Reality of ESP

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Ken Wilber, Integral Spirituality

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

The Upanishads

Environmentalism, Development, Politics

Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

David Holmgren, Permaculture: Pathways Beyond Sustainability

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

Bill Mckibben, Eaarth

Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

John Zerzan (ed.) Against Civilization

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Money and the Gift

Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years

Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money

Stephen Zarlenga, The Lost Science of Money

E. F. Schumacher, "Buddhist Economics"

Art

Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion

Alex Grey, The Mission of Art

Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order (vol. 1-4)

Kurt Vonnegut, Blue Beard

Arthur Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace

Michael Nyman, Experimental Music

Aliens

Richard Dolan, UFOs for the 21st Century Mind
Budd Hopkins and Carol Rainey, Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings

Ken Carey, Return of the Bird Tribes
Leslie Kean, UFOS: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record

John Mack, Passport to the Cosmos

Whitley Strieber, Communion

Dolores Cannon , The Custodians

Some of my writings

"A Buddhist Energy Audit of Your Soul"

"Education As If People Mattered"

If you are interested in technical philosophy or Wittgenstein, you can check out my book, Wittgenstein and the Theory of Perception (based on my Ph.D. dissertation, led me to my teaching style, looks at philosophical questions surrounding theories of perception)

Oh, and my band, The Grays
And a Pinterest page with some of my drawings

Endgame for ART1020

Final project due in class on Thurs. Dec. 8th
(or via email by Thurs. Dec. 15th)

Dear Philosophers, just a reminder that you have until next Thursday, Dec. 15th to get me any work you haven't submitted, emailed to me at VOOD@CUMMINGS-GOOD.COM. Good luck!

Option One: Quest/ion Essay

Based on the questions you’ve been developing in your journal, this project give you the opportunity to develop and sharpen your key personal philosophical question/issue. What is the (or a) key question for you? How do you sharpen that question? How do you devise a plan – an experiment or attitudinal adjustment or research idea – into order to work towards an answer? This writing assignment (4-5 pages) can take the form of an analytical-argumentative paper or a more narrative or creative paper.

Option Two: Technology Abstinence Meditation

REQUIREMENTS: 1) Abstinence Experiment, 2) Creative Expression, 3) 4 page interpretation

AIM: To understand and express artistically your relationship with the technologies in your life that you depend on everyday.

Instructions: This project is has three parts.

(1) Choose a technology/medium, or a combination thereof, that you use, on a daily basis and that is important to you. DO WITHOUT the use of that medium for a period of 100 hours (approx. 4 days). Some examples of media: email, cellphone, instant messenger, video games, TV, cars, clothing, typography, spoken language, digital screens, shoes, i-pods and stereos, refrigerator, as well as mood-enhancement technologies such as caffeine, salt, alcohol, etc.)

(2) Create, in any medium, a self-portrait (of the artist) – that is, of YOU – as a user of a technology. Your self-portrait should explore the truth of your relationships to the technologies that matter to you. How does your use of them shape your attention, relations to other, sense of self, priorities, values, etc?

(3) Write a 4 page essay explaining your portrait and relating it to ONE of the following questions:

What is the media ecology of the technologies you abstained from?

How much technology is too much?

How do we learn to be present to each other and to ourselves?

What are the struggles with avoiding being programmed by our use of digital media and how do we overcome them?

What would REAL PROGRESS in social evolution look like?

Option Three: Mindfulness Practice Framework

Form: Creation of a meditation space in your abode, a one month meditation plan, together with a 4 page writing reflection. Your writing should focus on what meditation is, the psychological theory behind it, connections to worldview or whatever angle is most useful in your own attempts to understand it, etc. Create a meditation space / altar and document your space with a photograph. For the creation of the meditation space, be as minimal or elaborate as you feel is appropriate. Then come up with a realistic meditation plan for the next 4 weeks. Be realistic but a little ambitious too. Try to keep to your plan. At the end, congratulate yourself for your new Jedi mind skills.

Option Four: Reflection on the Purpose of Education

This class has been designed as an experimental departure from many standard practices used for teaching in higher education. If you found these departures interesting or useful to you, you can use your final project as an opportunity to reflect on your college experience, and on what our seminar has revealed or served as an alternative to. What should education strive to offer? How well does this work given standard teaching/classroom practices in college? Did the experimental methods you experienced during our class highlight any limitations on conventional practices or suggest other aspects of learning which are important for growth?

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Stanton Friedman’s Basic Argument for the ET Hypothesis

1. SOME UFOS are Real

That is, approx. 10-20% of all UFO sightings cannot be explained, and the evidence points to the fact that they are Intelligently-Controlled craft using design principles, propulsion systems and materials science which transcend any known technologies. There are 10s of thousands of reliable reports, and 4 large scale scientific studies of those reports which support this conclusion.

2. There is a COSMIC WATERGATE about ET.

In other words, there is a world-wide cover-up of this phenomenon; A small cabal of very-powerful intelligence, military, political and economic interests, which control the classification of all evidence of ET visitation. Tis policy of denial is held in place by secrecy mechanisms established in the US in the 1940s with the creation of the National Security State (CIA, NSA, Pentagon, and 17 other intelligence agencies.)

3. The ET Hypothesis can be debunked but not honestly denied.

All plausible arguments against Proposition 1 above are based on ignorance. Ergo, there are NO plausible arguments against 1. (Debunking is the opposite of skepticism by the way. Whereas true skepticism holds beliefs open to revision by evidence which contradicts those beliefs, debunking assumes that something is true or not true, and then finds evidence to support that pre-drawn conclusion.

3. The advent of ET visitation of Earth is the MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN HUMAN HISTORY

Which makes it especially strange that there is total blackout of this issue in mainstream politics, science, academia and media.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

12/6 • Introduction to Exophilosophy (Extraterrestrial Contact)

Texts for this class

1. Stanton Friedman, "The Case for the Extraterrestrial Origin of Flying Saucers"

2. Five Large Scale Scientific Studies Prove that ETs are Real and Here

Other resources

General Arthur Exon, junior officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where the Roswell debris was allegedly brought in 1947: “They knew they had something new in their hands.”