Futures are our ideas about the future. Futures provide another way for us to assemble and eventually integrate broadly informed multi-perspectival views of our worlds; futures can help us foster our comprehensivity. Moreover, futures can help us better create the future we would desire. This resource will interpret, expand upon, and contextualize the exquisite presentation “Exploring Alternative Futures” by the brilliant young futurist Angela Oguntala.
Continue reading →Change
How to Create That-Which-Is-Not-Yet
To develop our comprehensivity, our interest in broadly and deeply understanding our worlds and its peoples, we actively consider the learning of other traditions, traditions that may seem very strange to us. When we explore these kinds of resources, we may come across ideas that puzzle or intrigue us. The practicing comprehensivist will, from time-to-time, want to linger to explore a line of thought and some questions that arose in a prior exploration. This resource will exemplify such a follow-up exploration that extends our previous examination of change as ongoing genesis, ongoing creation. A key motivating issue for this continuation will be how we create that-which-is-not-yet. Many of these ideas are adapted from the 2012 book “The Design Way” by Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman.
Continue reading →Rethinking Change and Evolution: Is Genesis Ongoing?
There are many ways to approach the development of our comprehensivity, our ways of understanding the world and its peoples through broad and extensive considerations that are also deep and intensive with the aim of forming a more and more complete and integrated comprehension of our worlds. Previous resources engaged essays, papers, video lectures, books, surveys, syntheses, condensations, contextualizations, interpretations, investigations, and explorations. This resource curates a small sampling of ideas in the hopes of stimulating a broader, more comprehensive appreciation of the nature of change, evolution, and design in our conceptuality.
The idea for this resource came from the provocative, revolutionary, and controversial 2012 book “The Design Way: Intentional Change Change in an Unpredictable World” by Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman. I no longer recommend the book because too many of my associates have been unable to appreciate its provocative style. I find the book to be a wellspring of intriguing ideas. Its revolutionary approach in considering design as Humanity’s first tradition of inquiry and action is an exemplar for my efforts to create a new tradition for comprehensivism, the practice of our comprehensivity. In addition, this resource will consider ideas from W. E. H. Stanner’s essay “The Dreaming” (see a July 2017 event on “The Dreaming and The Songlines” for more notes on Stanner’s essay), Dan Everett’s studies of the Pirahã people from the “New Yorker” profile by John Colapinto, and Richard Lewontin (see his three presentations for the 2003 Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lectures at the Santa Fe Institute).
Continue reading →March 2021 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
Since the January 25th update, Comprehensivist Wednesdays has organized six events. This update documents two forthcoming events and collects resources including event descriptions, video, and essays from the ten most recent past events.
Two Forthcoming Events
In order to RSVP to attend these events, you must join either the 52 Living Ideas meetup or the Greater Philadelphia Thinking Society meetup. Joining either group will require joining Meetup.com which is a free on-line service with strong privacy controls. Once you are a member, you can RSVP to join the event from the link to its Event Page.
- Wed 10 Mar 2021 9PM (New York time): Art as a Healing Agent with Dr Rick Lippin (event at Thinking Society)
- Wed 17 Mar 2021 9PM (New York time): Rethinking Change and Evolution: How is Genesis Ongoing? with CJ Fearnley (Not Yet Posted)
The 10 Most Recent Past Events including video links and essays
- 27 January 2021: Destruction & Creation: A Method of Thinking by John Boyd (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society)
- 3 February 2021: Ignorance & Questions (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society)
- Video (1h 44m): Embracing Ignorance & Asking Questions
- 7 February 2021: Intrapersonal Diversity in Polymaths with Dr. Angela
Cotellessa (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas)- Video (1h 34m): Intrapersonal Diversity in Polymaths
- 7 February 2021: Dante’s La Vita Nuova (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society)
- Reading Dante in 2021
- Video (2h 12m): Dante’s La Vita Nuova (The New Life)
- 10 February 2021: Thoughts on CHANGE from 103 Great Ideas (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society)
- Video (1h 35m): Thoughts on Change: 103 Great Ideas
- 17 February 2021: Mistake Mystique in Learning and in Life (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society)
- 24 February 2021: Understanding Us 2: Core Concepts of Neuroscience (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society)
- Video (2h 3m): Understanding Us: Core Concepts in Neuroscience 2
- 2 March 2021: Comprehensivist Ideas You Have Found Most Useful: Connecting the Dots (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society)
- 7 March 2021: Polymathy & Authenticity with Yasuhiko Genku Kimura & Dr Angela Cotellessa (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas)
- Video (1h 59m): Authenticity: Courage to be Yourself with Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
- 7 March 2021: From the Gates of Hell to the City of the Damned (Event Page at 52 Living Ideas) (Event Page at Thinking Society):
About Comprehensivist Wednesdays
Comprehensivist Wednesdays is an on-going series of weekly events designed to foster the art of comprehensivity, the state or quality of considering with ever increasing depth and breadth more and more of Humanity’s great traditions of inquiry, more and more of Humanity’s communicated experiences that comprise Buckminster Fuller’s notion of Universe, and more and more of the Ethnosphere (Wade Davis’ cultural analogue of the biosphere). Buckminster Fuller described the approach as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive”.
The series is being organized by emcee Shrikant Rangnekar of 52 Living Ideas in collaboration with CJ Fearnley of Collaborating for Comprehensivism and the Greater Philadelphia Thinking Society. Here are three playlists of past events:
- Introduction to Comprehensivism (YouTube Playlist)
- 2020 Events from the “Comprehensivist Wednesdays” series (YouTube Playlist)
- 2021 Events from the Comprehensivist Wednesdays series (YouTube Playlist)
Collaborating for Comprehensivism is an emerging initiative to energize humanity’s collective intelligence through group conversations that facilitate incrementally the formation of ever broader and deeper and more integrated understandings of our worlds and its peoples.
Mailing List
To receive a weekly update about forthcoming events, please submit a request to join the “Collaborating for Comprehensivism” announcements-only mailing list.
Other Comprehensivist Wednesday's Series News Releases
- “Comprehensivist Wednesdays” begins 15 July 2020 @9-11PM EDT
- August 2020 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- September 2020 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- October 2020 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- November 2020 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- December 2020 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- January 2021 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- March 2021 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- April 2021 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
- June 2021 Update on Comprehensivist Wednesdays
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