Luckily, for me the Ikigai question “what can you get paid for?” is moot. I’m effectively retired and self-funded. But the tweaked version of the Ikegai results question, “what can be effective?” is very pertinent. The problem space is communication strategy. What total communication programs work the best? The total package is usually multichannel, multimode, with lots of short-format and visually striking content on the front end to capture attention and draw people in to more complex presentations and experiences.
One thing is clear. I am NOT building my own organization! Any of my communication artifacts are meant to “sell” larger movements. From that POV, I’m thinking semester-length university courses on my content package are pretty far downstream from here. Right now, the best leverage is on social media, Zoom, and face-to-face. I like Medium as the first level of content aggregation beyond pure social media. (Substack would be an alternative). Books and courses would be for future development …
As I read through the discussion I keep thinking of the Classical Greek Academy model. Their approach combined the intellectual knowledge of the academy with a gymnasium and a temple. Plato was a great wrestler which helped him wrestle with ideas!
In Vervaeke’s terms, this adds participatory knowing (gym), perspectival knowing (gym and temple), and participatory knowing (temple) to the propositional knowledge of the academy. While AI has gotten good at the propositional part, it fails at the others. Integrating the full spectrum of knowledge would provide a more meaningful learning experience that is more adaptable to a rapidly changing landscape.
… 64% of four-year college students say that they put “a lot” of effort into schoolwork, yet only 6% report spending more than 20 hours per week studying and doing homework .
Niall Ferguson certainly has a work ethic. I likewise have enough of a work ethic to have consumed several of his products (Civilization: the West and the Rest, Doom, The Ascent of Money) along with quite a few of his YouTubes. So consider me decently well informed. Also, I cite Ferguson in my own work on applying history to navigation of the future, so I am not radically at variance with Ferguson’s sense of the world.
That said, I find Ferguson far too Western-centric and far too ready to give a pass to the Nixons, Thatchers, Reagans, and Trumps of the world. If MAGA is supposed to be the defense “western civilization” it’s no civilization I want any part of. Likewise, the company kept in those circles - Thiel, Musk, Altman, etc. - is precisely the source of the problems University of Austin is supposedly being designed to resist. By defending the ongoing pertinence of all the historical “killer apps” of the West (read Civilization) Ferguson falls headlong into the arms of the amoral tech bros. JD Vance can kiss papal rings all day long, but that makes absolutely none of it spiritual or holy.
My interest in Second Renaissance is precisely to break out of the western shell and to reground virtue and effort and values on something more global and more profound than some updated version of the Franco dictatorship. I agree with your general thrust (and with Ferguson as well) that AI is useless for the vital work of cultivating human virtue. It’s just too cheap and easy to equate virtue with “the West” and on that score Ferguson and I part company.
Well, even if you did favor Ferguson’s politics I would not hate it, because I think Ferguson’s perspective on many other matters is valuable. But his politics make him generally anathema in liminal spaces (Jordan Peterson fans excepted), so it’s hard to work Ferguson into the conversation in a graceful way.
In defense of Ferguson, just as I noted how cheap and easy it is to equate virtue with “the West”, what Ferguson is reacting against is a university culture that even more cheaply and with even less effort equates virtue with anything anti-Western. I dove into liminal spaces a few years ago not to escape from neo-cons (because there are not any if my neighborhood). What I sought in liminal spaces was an alternative to the shallowness of “woke”.
Where Ferguson is correct (in my view) is in valuing history, demanding excellence from students, and in understanding factors that allowed the West to dominate the world. Those factors included more than just greed and sadism - the West accomplished things no culture prior to it could. I’m not insensitive to that.
When considering our human pathway forward into the future, however, a quick environmental scan reveals something like only 20% of humans are white. Although I certainly do not reject Biblical or philosophic traditions on wisdom, in many cases I get more spiritual clarity from sources in the East or in the indigenous South. Ferguson is a busy fellow (hard at work on the Kissinger biography, among others). But he is too busy to open the analytic lens as wide as it needs to go. Second Renaissance, as an alternative space beyond conventional academic expectations, is better poised to support the needed global view.
Thanks - that’s useful feedback. Although, I’m sorry to say - the level of grace that you are describing is likely well out of my reach - I don’t know the sensitivities of my audience well enough.
It’s a challenging needle to thread. My school is hugely diverse and utterly wedded to DEI has a value system. In that context, I come off as something like right-wing. But in MAGA universe, I come off as Marxist-collectivist or whatever their insult of the moment may happen to be. My answer to this dilemma is to strive for what Donella Meadows calls “The power to transcend paradigms.” That means understanding everybody, to get beyond where we are now to arrive eventually at some yet undiscovered place. On that project, I take Niall Ferguson very, very seriously. But I take critical theorists like bel hooks, Paulo Friere, and David Graeber and David Wengrow equally seriously, none of whom would have any place in Ferguson’s world. I’m thus content to be a person without country, where ideology is concerned.
For my reference, two more appeals to the need for teaching “habits of thought”, where one prerequisite is separating the students and faculty from their smartphones:
So the Honors College at University of Tulsa is going to run participants a cool quarter million for a 4-year degree. If that is borrowed money, what is the career pathway to earn it back and pay it back? On top of that, current politics in the US are very unforgiving to student loan debtors, so unless mom and dad are writing big checks, this sort of program is a major risk for anyone not already a member of the upper class.
That said, I’m all for great books and challenging academics. But is there a more viable economic model to support those sorts of studies?
A couple years ago I thought I would need to return to grad school to work towards a PhD I don’t really need in order to become involved with serious research, discussion, or publication opportunities. The logistics of the grad school idea were just impossible, through. Too many hoops to jump, too much cost, too long of a waiting period to even apply …
Today I have an ecosystem involving online fora, listservs, conferences, and things like local meetings in libraries or potlucks in private homes. My research interests are so interdisciplinary, it would be challenging to find a grad school that would even touch them anyway. My library discussion group is even planning a popup meeting in a local park with a sidewalk sandwich board for advertising. This all feels like getting back to first principles and regrounding teaching and learning in pure relationship, without institutional structure getting in the way.
I liked it! Both the article (very well done) and the process of linking to writing published elsewhere. One of my fantasies is to participate in a writers’ circle in which lots of creative ideas bounce around like hacky sack. Please feel free to bring your personal game!