Archives de catégorie : Philosophy

RADICAL CURIOSITY de Seth Goldenberg

A bold manifesto arguing that the most complex challenges we face today—as individuals, businesses, and a society—require us to ask deeper questions, not seek easier answers.

RADICAL CURIOSITY:
Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures
by Seth Goldenberg
Crown, August 2022

In a world with an endless hunger for innovation, why is it so hard to create audacious change? According to thought leader Seth Goldenberg, the answer to this question stems from how we, as a society, view questions themselves.
In RADICAL CURIOSITY, Goldenberg argues that because we value knowing above learning and prioritize doing over thinking, curiosity has become an endangered species. Only by rediscovering the power of questions can we hope to rewrite the commonly held “legacy” narratives that no longer serve us and to remake our organizations, our politics, and our lives.
 With this empowering book, Goldenberg introduces the practice of Radical Curiosity through the lens of seven narratives that are going through significant transformation: Learning, Cohesion, Time, Youth, Aliveness, Nature, and Value. Along the way, he unpacks principles intended to spark our own questioning, including:

• Education is too big to fail, but maybe it should.
• Time travel isn’t reserved for DeLoreans.
• Let us now praise rural communities.
• Survival economics have made imagination a luxury good.

Blending philosophy, business strategy, cultural criticism, and fascinating case studies, RADICAL CURIOSITY is a new way of solving our most complex problems—one focused not on technology or science but on the power of human inquiry. By asking us to relearn how we learn, reengage in dialogue, revive our youthful sense of wonder, and rethink what we value, it reignites the curiosity needed to imagine and build a better world.

Seth Goldenberg is a designer, curator, and entrepreneur who harnesses the power of questioning to catalyze innovation and cultural change. He is the founder and CEO of Curiosity & Co., a one-of-a-kind bookstore, experience laboratory, and design-ventures studio, and the creator of the Ideas Salons, invitational thought-leader retreats that tackle the essential questions of our time. Goldenberg has led high-profile projects with clients such as Apple, American Express, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and the governor of Rhode Island. He also founded Dialog:City, the civic arts festival for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, and Fast Company. He lives on the island of Jamestown, Rhode Island.

GESPRÄCHE MIT EINEM BAUM de Matthias Strolz

On the trail of the secrets of life. An inspiring story that kindles inner peace, renewed hope, and refreshing joy of life in each of us.

GESPRÄCHE MIT EINEM BAUM
(Conversations with a Tree)
by Matthias Strolz
Kailash/PRH Verlagsgruppe, March 2022

When he realises he is able to converse with his favourite tree, Matthias Strolz sets out on a journey of discovery that takes him through the essential questions of life that affect us deeply and make us human, eventually leading him to his personal « inner place ». His intensive, entertaining, and profound conversations with the magical tree revolve around birth and death, time and space, God and religion, politics and the state, money and power, job and success, pain and joy, and happiness and love. Knowledge and inner truths will come to fruition through the universal connectedness of everything in existence.

• An inspiring dialogue on the philosophical questions of life
• For all who are in a phase of change and searching for new paths in life
• For fans of John Strelecky, Paulo Coelho, and Tessa Randau

Matthias Strolz is an impact and startup entrepreneur, bestselling author, publicist, keynote speaker, people mover, free spirit, and coach. He studied political science, international economics, and systemic organisational development in Austria and internationally. Developing potential has been something close to his heart ever since his teenage years. As a coach and consultant, he advises individuals, non-profit organisations, and companies in strategy and development processes. In May 2020 his bestseller « Strength and Inspiration for These Times » (story.one) appeared, a book filled with inspirations for a proactive lifestyle and the good life.

THE WORLD BEHIND THE WORLD d’Erik Hoel

In a sweeping intellectual narrative, award-winning neuroscientist and author Erik Hoel argues there are two fundamental perspectives on reality: the intrinsic and the extrinsic. The intrinsic perspective is that of consciousness and experience, the feelings and sensations that make up your waking world. The extrinsic perspective is that of science, which views the universe as a set of mechanisms and relations.

THE WORLD BEHIND THE WORLD:
Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science
by Erik Hoel
Avid Reader, Fall 2023
(via Writers House)

The two perspectives have had an uneasy, sometimes troubled relationship. Throughout history some cultures have emphasized one perspective more than the other, which has radically changed how humans think about and conceptualize our own selves. Technologies and media often implicitly enforce one perspective: for instance, television and movies take the extrinsic perspective, exploring the world of relations and images, while literature and novels take the intrinsic perspective, exploring the world of consciousness.
Hoel offers a whirlwind tour of the two perspectives across the ages, like how the intrinsic perspective is absent from Homeric epics and earlier eras, its historical development and ultimate culmination in the invention of the novel, the separation of the two perspectives by Galileo Galilei when he recommended science remove the observer to focus solely on the extrinsic, and the reintroduction of the intrinsic perspective to science by Francis Crick, the discoverer of DNA, who proposed a search for the neural correlates of consciousness that continues to this day.
Hoel shows how our picture of reality is incomplete following Galileo’s separation and emphasis on the extrinsic. The ignored intrinsic perspective sheds light on fundamental scientific questions like causation, emergence, how the brain functions, the biological purpose of dreaming, artificial intelligence, and even why humans create art. He reveals how our own culture is becoming more based in the extrinsic perspective over time, neglecting the intrinsic and forgetting the importance of human consciousness, all to its cultural, scientific, and artistic detriment.
Ultimately, the two perspectives have stood apart for too long and must be reunited. To this end Hoel proposes a way to merge the intrinsic and the extrinsic in a radical new theory of consciousness.

Erik Hoel received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Madison-Wisconsin. He is a research assistant professor at Tufts University and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in the NeuroTechnology Lab, and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Hoel is a 2018 Forbes “30 under 30” for his neuroscientific research on consciousness. His first novel, The Revelations, was published in April 2021 by The Overlook Press. He lives in Massachusetts.

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION de Sa Sainteté le Dalaï-Lama, avec Thubte Chodron

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION offers an in-depth look at bodhicitta, arhatship, and buddhahood that you can continuously refer to as you progress on the path to full awakening.

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION
by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with Thubte Chodron
Wisdom Publications, May 2021

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION, the sixth volume of the Library of Wisdom and Compassion series, continues the Dalai Lama’s teachings on the path to awakening. The previous volume, In Praise of Great Compassion, focused on opening our hearts with love and compassion for all living beings, and the present volume explains how to embody compassion and wisdom in our daily lives. Here we enter a fascinating exploration of bodhisattvas’ activities across multiple Buddhist traditions—Tibetan, Theravada, and Chinese Buddhism.
After explaining the ten perfections according to the Pali and Sanskrit traditions, the Dalai Lama presents the sophisticated schema of the four paths and fruits for sravakas and solitary realizers and the five paths for bodhisattvas. Learning about the practices mastered by these exalted practitioners inspires us with knowledge of our minds’ potential. His Holiness also describes buddha bodies, what buddhas perceive, and buddhas’ awakening activities.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama (b. 1935) is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. For sixty years, he was the also the political leader of the Tibetan people, first from the Potala Palace in Lhasa and then helping his compatriots adapt to the modern world from his residence in northern India. An advocate for science, ethics, and harmony among people of different faiths, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and travels widely in support of Buddhism, the cause of Tibet, and human happiness.

Thubten Chodron has been a Buddhist nun since 1977. A graduate of UCLA, she is the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey in Washington State. She is a popular speaker and author of numerous books, including Buddhism for Beginners.

WILD SOULS de Emma Marris

From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with—and responsibilities toward—the planet’s wild animals.

WILD SOULS: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World
by Emma Marris
Bloomsbury, June 2021

Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions.
Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe-from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai’ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, WILD SOULS will change the way we think about nature—and our place within it.

Emma Marris is an award-winning journalist based in Oregon. She writes for The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Geographic and Outside Magazine, among many others. Her work has appeared in the “Best America Science Writing 2016” and won an award from the National Association of Science Writers for an essay about wilderness in Orion. She is best known for her previous book, Rambunctious Garden (Bloomsbury, 2011) and subsequent TED Talk urging the importance of letting children experience the outdoors.