“Seek the truth; come whence it may, cost what it will.”
“Mental health is dedication to reality at all costs”
“Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. Knowledge is a viaticum; thought is a prime necessity; truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reasoning faculty, deprived of knowledge and wisdom, pines away. We should feel the same pity for minds that do not eat as for stomachs. If there be anything sadder than a body perishing for want of bread, it is a mind dying of hunger for lack of light.”
A STORY
The Two Wolves
The Cherokee people say that long ago a young boy received a beautiful drum as a gift. When his best friend saw it, he asked if he could play with it, but the boy felt torn. He didn’t want to share his new present, so he told his friend, “No!” His friend was saddened by this and went away. The boy sat down on a rock by a stream to contemplate his situation. He hated the fact that he had hurt his friend’s feelings, but the drum was too precious to him to be shared. In his quandary, he went to his grandfather for advice.
The elder listened quietly as the boy told him what had happened and then replied, “I often feel as though there are two wolves fighting inside me. One is mean and selfish and full of arrogance, but the other is caring and generous and full of humility. All the time they are struggling with each other. You, my boy, have those same two wolves inside of you.”
“Which one will prevail?” asked the boy.
The elder smiled and said, “The one you feed.”
MAPS & GUIDES
FOR THEOTREKKERS
The Universe Story, Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
The Hidden Reality:
Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, Brian Greene
The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra
The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama
The Rise of Physicalism, David Papineau [A PDF file readily available on the World Wide Web]
The Populist Delusion, Neema Parvini
Invisible Doctrine:
The Secret History of Neoliberalism, George Monbiot & Peter Hutchison
Vulture Capitalism:
Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom, Grace Blakeley
Techno Feudalism:
What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis
This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel J. Levitin
Every Life is on Fire, Jeremy England
The Death of the Left, Simon Winlow & Steve Hall
Free and Equal, Daniel Chandler
The East is Still Red, Carlos Martinez
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty
The Undertow, Jeff Sharlet
Other Minds:
The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, Peter Godfrey-Smith
The Devil’s Chessboard:
Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, David Talbot
Homo Ecophagus:
A Deep Diagnosis to Save the Earth, Warren M. Hern
The Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate’ and Daniel Mate’
Bruno Latour:
Reassembling the Political, Graham Harman
The Trouble With Being Born, Emil M. Cioran
The Quiet Before:
On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas, Gal Beckerman
The Strange Order of Things, Antonio Damasio
Doing Better, William MacAskill
Truth and Method, Hans-Georg Gadamer
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow
Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies, Edward Curtin
The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Shadia B. Drury
Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Arron Bastani
Survival Governance:
Energy and Climate in the Chinese Century, Peter Drahos
Washington Bullets:
A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, Vijay Prashad
The WEIRDest People in the World:
How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous;
Joseph Henrich
A Theory of Justice; John Rawls
The “S” Word:
A Short History of an An American Tradition… Socialism; John Nichols
The Socialist Manifesto:
The Case For Radical Politics In An Era of Extreme Inequality; Bhaskar Sunkara
Strange Rites:
New Religions for a Godless World, Tara Isabella Burton
Kropotkin And The Anarchist Intellectual Tradition, Jim Mac Laughlin
The Global Police State, William Robinson
The Metaphysical Club:
A Story of Ideas in America, Louis Menand
Hiking With Nietzsche, John Kaag
Why We Need Religion, Stephen T. Asma
American Philosophy:
A Love Story, John Kaag
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds:
How William James Can Save Your Life, John Kaag
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
Invisible Man, Got The Wole World Watching, Michael Denzel Smith
Stakes Is High:
Life After the American Dream, Michael Denzel Smith
The Case Against Reality:
How Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, Donald D. Hoffman
Yes To Life In Spite of Everything, Viktor E. Frankl
Evil In Modern Thought:
An Alternative History of Philosophy, Susan Neiman
Prefigurative Politics:
Building Tomorrow Today, Paul Raekstad & Sofa Saio Gradin
Something Deeply Hidden:
Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime, Sean Carroll
How to Get the Death You Want:
A Practical and Moral Guide, John Abraham
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn
Conscious:
A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, Annaka Harris
Reinventing the Sacred:
A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion, Stuart A. Kauffman
A World Beyond Physics:
The Emergence & Evolution of Life, Stuart A. Kauffman
Falter:
Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, Bill McKibben
The Goodness Paradox, Richard Wrangham
Working, Robert A. Caro
Genesis:
The Deep Origin of Societies, Edward O. Wilson
Confucius:
The Secular as Sacred, Herbert Fingarette
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:
The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power, Shoshana Zuboff
Louder Than Words:
The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning, Benjamin K. Bergen
What the F:
What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains & Ourselves, Benjamin K. Bergen
Origin Story:
A Big History of Everything, David Christian
Handbook of Self and Identity (2nd Ed), Mark R. Leary & June Price Tangney
The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli
The Immense Journey, Loren Eiseley
Post-Truth, Lee McIntyre
Wisdom:
From Philosophy to Neuroscience, Stephen S. Hall
Incomplete Nature:
How Mind Emerged from Matter, Terrence W. Deacon
The Symbolic Species:
The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, Terrence W. Deacon
Neither Ghost nor Machine:
The Emergence and Nature of Selves, Jeremy Sherman
Jumping at Shadows:
The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream, Sasha Abramsky
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, Alan Lightman
Fantasyland, Kurt Andersen
Lost Connections, Johann Hari
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Daniel C. Dennett
From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel C. Dennett
Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett
The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
Soldiers of Peace, Paul K. Chappell
The Cosmic Ocean, Paul K. Chappell
Why Buddhism Is True, Robert Wright
The Origins of Creativity, Edward O. Wilson
Listen, Liberal, Thomas Frank
The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Dan Ariely
Plain Radical:
Living, Loving and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully, Robert Jensen
Born on Third Base, Chuck Collins
Reality Is Not What It Seems, Carlo Rovelli
A Guide to Rational Living, Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper
Requiem for the American Dream:
The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power, Noam Chomsky
Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, Siri Hustvedt
Beyond Good and Evil, Frederick Nietzsche
Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, Frederick Nietzsche
Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth
Defiant Earth:
The fate of humans in the Anthropocene, Clive Hamilton
The Righteous Mind:
Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt
On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder
HyperNormalisation, Adam Curtis (BBC Documentary Film)
The Age of Anger - A History of the Present, Pankaj Mishra
A New History of Life, Peter Ward & Joe Kirschvink
The Big Picture:
On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, Sean Carroll
Only a Promise of Happiness, Alexander Nehamas
Minimalism:
Live a Meaningful Life, Joshua Fields Milburn & Ryan Nicodemus
Don't Even Think About It, George Marshall
The Nicene Heresy - Christendom and War, Blase Bonpane
The Qatsi Trilogy (Criterion Collection) DVD, Godfry Reggio
The Next American Revolution, Grace Lee Boggs
The Vital Question, Nick Lane
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Reinventing the Sacred, Stuart A. Kauffman
Half-Earth:
Our Planet's Fight for Life, Edward O. Wilson
The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
Fields of Color, Rodney A. Brooks
The Meaning of Human Existence, Edward O. Wilson
The Social Conquest of Earth, Edward O. Wilson
The Political Mind, George Lakoff
The Lightness of Being, Frank Wilczek
Understanding our Unseen Reality:
Solving Quantum Riddles, Ruth E. Kastner
Just Babies:
The Origins of Good and Evil, Paul Bloom
Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas
Consilience, Edward O. Wilson
A Beautiful Question, Frank Wilczek
Longing for the Harmonies, Frank Wilczek & Betsy Devine
Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl
The Meaning of Life:
A Very Short Introduction, Terry Eagleton
Change the Story, Change the Future, David C. Korten
National Geographic Brain Games, http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/brain-games/?ar_a=1
A Global Security System:
An Alternative to War, Kent Shifferd, Patrick Heller, David Swanson
Subliminal - How Your Subconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, Leonard Mlodinow
Art & Physics, Leonard Shlain
Leonardo's Brain, Leonard Shlain
Beyond the God Delusion:
How Radical Theology Harmonizes Science and Religion, Richard Grigg
Gods after God, Richard Grigg
Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene
The Spirit of Disobedience, Curtis White
Touching a Nerve:
The Self as Brain, Patricia S. Churchland
The Call to Radical Theology, Thomas J. J. Altizer
The Ego Tunnel, Thomas Metzinger
A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon
On The Origin of Tepees, Jonnie Hughes
The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore
Self Comes To Mind, Antonio Damasio
How Children Learn, John Holt
Wherever You Go There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn
A Secular Age, Charles Taylor
This Will Make You Smarter, Edited by John Brockman
The Radical Imperative, John C. Bennett
Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel C. Dennett
The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann
To Speak of God, Urban T. Holmes, III
The Future Shape of Ministry, Urban T. Holmes, III
Ministry and Imagination, Urban T. Holmes, III
The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Emile Durkheim
After God, Mark C. Taylor
Making Up The Mind, Chris Frith
Mirroring People, Marco Iacoboni
The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker
The Brighter Side of Human Nature, Alfie Kohn
Spiritual Evolution, George E. Vaillant
The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt
The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt
Beyond Revenge, Michael E. McCullough
The Great Turning:
From Empire to Earth Community, David C. Korten
The Gardens of Democracy, Nick Hanauer and Eric Li
The Evolution of God, Robert Wright
Saving God, Mark Johnston
Forged, Writing in the Name of God, Bart Ehrman
The Biology of Belief, Bruce H. Lipton
Spontaneous Evolution, Bruce H. Lipton & Steve Bhaerman
The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene
The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking
Information - A Very Short Introduction, Luciano Floridi
Principles of Neurotheology, Andrew B. Newberg
Born to Believe, Andrew B. Newberg
How God Changes Your Brain, Andrew B. Newberg
Losing Moses on the Freeway, Chris Hedges
The World As It Is:
Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress, Chris Hedges
When Atheism Becomes Religion, Chris Hedges
Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges
The Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges
American Fascists, Chris Hedges
Agenda for a New Economy, David C. Korten
The Crime of Punishment, Karl Menninger
Man and his Symbols, Carl G. Jung
Primitive Christianity, Rudolph Bultmann
The Way of the Wolf, Martin Bell
Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making, Tim Hartner
Delicatessen, Gilles Adrien, Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Castaway, Robert Zemeckis, William Broyles, Jr.
The Power of Nightmares, Adam Curtis
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Adam Curtis
Cosmos, Carl Sagan
VIDEOS
“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”