Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series ~ Seminar No. 6: Philosophy of Money

Friday, April 25th 5:30 to 7:30 PM at the Cave, 19-1 Bates Road Chester

Two hours of yoga, philosophy, refreshments, wonderment. Suggested donation: $20

For more info call 526-9186 or email vood@cummings-good.co

“From coin to paper currency, and from currency to credit card there is a steady progression toward commercial exchange as the movement of information itself. This trend toward an inclusive information is the kind of image represented by the credit card, and approaches once more the character of tribal money. For tribal society, not knowing the specialisms of job or of work, does not specialize money either. Its money can be eaten, drunk, or worn like the new space ships that are now designed to be edible. “Work,” however, does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.” (Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media)

Primary text for seminar:

• Sarah Gelder, “Beyond Greed and Scarcity: An Interview with Bernard Lietaer”

Other recommended texts:

• Stephen Zarlenga, “A Brief Monetary History of the United States”

• E. C. Riegel, “Breaking The English Tradition”

• Catherine Austin Fitts, “Narcodollars for Beginners”

• Thomas Greco, “New Money for Healthy Communities”

Recommended videos:

• Money As Debt – Paul Grignon’s brillian animated film about modern money.

• Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve - G. Edward Griffin’s history of the Fed

• Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve - Analysis of the American banking system from the Austrian School of Economics (Ludwig von Mises Institute)

• The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America

Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series ~ Seminar No. 5: Buddhist Economics: How to Measure True Wealth

Friday, April 11th, 5:30 to 7:30 PM at the Cave, 19-1 Bates Road Chester (directions), Suggested donation: $20

For more info call 526-9186 or email vood@cummings-good.com

What is wealth? What kind of economic system would actually produce real wealth? How do you measure wealth? In this class we will explore the most famous essay by the legendary British economist E. F. Schumacher. This essay, “Buddhist Economics” appeared in Schumacher’s great book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered which articulated a compelling vision of a just and sustainable global economic system over thirty years ago. 

Readings

1. E. F. Schumacher, “Buddhist Economics”

“From the point of view of Buddhist economics, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale. Just as the modern economist would admit that a high rate of consumption of transport services between a man’s home and his place of work signifies a misfortune and not a high standard of life, so the Buddhist would hold that to satisfy human wants from faraway sources rather than from sources nearby signifies failure rather than success. The former tends to take statistics showing an increase in the number of ton/miles per head of the population carried by a country’s transport system as proof of economic progress, while to the latter-the Buddhist economist-the same statistics would indicate a highly undesirable deterioration in the pattern of consumption.” – E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beauty Economics As If People Mattered

Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series
Seminar No. 3: Philosophy of Romantic Intimacy

Friday, March 28th, 5:30 to 7:30 PM, at the Cave, 19-1 Bates Road, Chester, Suggested donation: $20. For more info call 526-9186 or email vood@cummings-good.com
In this class we will explore the ancient question concerning the sustainability of romantic intimacy. Does romantic love necessarily fade with familiarity and time, or can it be maintained and even intensified?
Our class will focus on the views of the late Stephen Mitchell, the now legendary psychoanalyst who wrote his late book on this pressing topic. Mitchell's theory is the most optimistic theory by any psychologist we know of, since he argues that romance can in fact be sustained and that the reasons it dies have to do with our unconscious sabotaging of our desires. We mentally reduce the charms of our love in order to protect ourselves from disappointment.
Readings
1. You can read selections from his last great work Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance through Time here at Google Books.
2. There is also a nice review of the book here at Salon.com.

Issues in Twenty-First Century Philosophy

Class no. 2: The Metaphysics of Pool

5:30 – 7:30 PM Friday, March 14

At The Cave (directions)

Exploring the Experiential Body-Mind

“Our body moves as our mind moves. The qualities of any movement are a manifestation of how mind is expressing through the body at that moment. Changes in movement qualities indicate that the mind has shifted focus in the body. Conversely, when we direct the mind or attention to different areas of the body and initiate movement from those areas, we change the quality of our movement. So we find that movement can be a way to observe the expressions of the mind through the body, and it can also be a way to affect changes in the body-mind relationship.” – Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

Reading for class

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, “An Introduction to Body-Mind Centering”

The Mind-Brain Problem and the Extended Mind Hypothesis

In our first class, we will look at the heated contemporary debate between neuroscientists, philosophers and biologists over the nature of consciousness and its relation to the brain and natural evolution. The key text for this class is Rupert Sheldrake’s paper “The Sense of Being Stared At.”

Sheldrake is an Oxford-trained field biologist who is one of the most controversial thinkers alive, due to his radical theory of the mind and memory as intrinsic to the very fabric of nature. His view of the mind, as a field phenomenon, extended in space beyond the physical casing of the brain, poses a profound challenge to orthodox psychology and highlights what is at stake in this intense debate.

Can you sense whether some one is staring at you? Can you make someone turn around simply by looking at them. In his fascinating essay, Rupert Sheldrake claims that scientific testings proves that the sense in fact exists, and argues that it strongly suggests that the mind actually extends outside the brain. We will explore this argument and relate it to a number of key concepts in this unresolved controversy of twenty-first philosophy.

Essential texts

• Rupert Sheldrake, “The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 1” and “Part 2”

• David Chalmers, excerpts from his paper “Facing up to the problem of consciousness”

Recommended materials

 • Rupert Sheldrake, video lecture on new 2005 experimental evidence supporting the extended mind hypothesis.

• Two short papers by Sheldrake elaborating on his morphic resonance theory of reality: “Mind, Memory, and Archetype” and “Society, Spirit & Ritual”

• To read his critics, check out his website where he has posted all of this correspondence with critics and lots of other interesting data.

Friday, March 7^th, 5:30 to 7:30 PM 

At the Cave, 19-1 Bates Road, Chester

$20 for 2 hours of yoga and philosophy

For more info call 526-9186.

Spring 2008 Chester Mind-Body Philosophy Seminar Series

Issues in Twenty-First Century Philosophy

An innovative mix of philosophy and yoga in a relaxed salon setting.

This seminar offers a casual but intense survey of exciting issues in contemporary philosophy. It is designed to be both cumulative and also modular, so that later classes do not presuppose knowledge from earlier classes. The reading materials for each class are available online, at the course blog, so no books are required. Students who sign up for the entire series receive a discount per course and are entitled to detailed feedback on an optional paper assignment.

SCHEDULE

• 10 Fridays, 5:30 to 7:30 PM starting March 7th.

• $20 per session. $180 for the whole ten week course. Each session includes 20 minutes of circus yoga mind-body relaxation and a 90 minute directed philosophy seminar. Refreshments served.

• Classes will be held at The Cave, 19-1 Bates Road, Chester.

INSTRUCTORS

• Jen Taylor (BA Vassar) is a philosopher, Yoga instructor and political activist who studied engaged Buddhism with the legendary Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh. Her philosophical work focuses on gender and sexual politics, metaphysics, ecofeminism and the cultural mythology of partnership societies.

• Justin Good (BA SUNY Purchase, PHD Boston University) is a philosopher and community organizer whose philosophical work focuses on the philosophy of mind, political and environmental philosophy, aesthetics and epistemology. He teaches philosophy at the University of Connecticut and the University of Hartford.

CURRICULUM

3/7 The Sense of Being Stared At:

The Mind-Body Problem and the Extended Mind Hypothesis

3/14 Metaphysics of Pool:

Exploring the Experiential Body-Mind

3/21 Clowning as a Spiritual Vocation:

The Laughing Body and the Trickster Archetype

3/28 Can Love Last?

Philosophy of Romantic Intimacy

4/4 Gross Domestic Happiness:

Buddhist Economics and Essence of True Wealth

4/11 Art and Truth:

Plato’s Challenge to All Future Artists

4/18 Xena Studies:

Cultural Mythology of Gender Archetypes

4/25 Poor Man’s Credit Card:

The History and Future of Money

5/2 Legendary Female Warriors:

Resistance Movements in the History of Patriarchy

5/9 The Aesthetics of Green Energy:

Wind Farms and the Theory of Wholeness

To reserve a spot for the complete course, or for individual sessions call 860-526-9186 or email vood@cummings-good.com.

Readings for courses will be available soon!

What is the philosophy of the future?