Category Archives: Monastic Technology

New Scientist interviews Slavoj Žižek

Posted on by
Reply

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek was interviewed in New Scientist. He calls for a deeper collaboration between philosophy and science:

Should philosophers be helping scientists?

Yes. For the last few decades, at least in the humanities, big ontological questions – What is reality? What is the nature of the universe? – were considered too naive. It was meaningless to ask for objective truth. This prohibition on asking the big questions partly accounts for the explosion of popular science books. You read Stephen Hawking’s books as a way to ask these fundamental, metaphysical questions. I think that era of relativism, where science was just another product of knowledge, is ending. We philosophers should join scientists asking those big metaphysical questions about quantum physics, about reality.

(And contemplatives should be right there with them.)

All these complex ideas… how do we come up with them?

I like Stephen Jay Gould here: intelligence, language and so on are exaptations, by-products of something which failed. Say I am using my cellphone – I become fully aware of it only when something goes wrong. We ask the big metaphysical questions even though we cannot solve them, and as a by-product we come up with wonderful, solid knowledge.

Could western monasticism be considered an exaptation — a by-product of something that failed (namely a religion in its exclusive, centrally organized and dogmatic form)?

One practice we see throughout monastic traditions is asking the big metaphysical questions over and over again… until “as a by-product we come up with wonderful, solid knowledge.” Christian prayers (Pascal’s “Oh God, if there is a God, fill my soul, if I have a soul”), mahamudra practices in Vajrayana (“what is the mind? What is the body?”), self inquiry in Advaita Vedanta (“Who am I?”)… Some traditions in fact take this idea one step further and ask questions that decidedly have no answers, and still we come up with wonderful knowledge, insight, gnosis or prajna.

Experimental Metaphysics? « Larval Subjects .

Posted on by
Reply

I’m imagining a Universal Otherhood for Experimental Metaphysics…

Everything becomes a matter of signs, propositions, representations, texts, and contents. However, what role do practices play in philosophy? This role, if it is indeed crucial, would tend to disappear in philosophical texts, leaving only subterranean traces of nonhuman encounters– perhaps what Deleuze would call “becoming-x’s” –that deeply influence the form a philosophy takes…

We can then ask ourselves the question, “what would an experimental metaphysics look like?” It’s likely that pedagogy and conferences would look very different were we to practice experimental metaphysics. For example, conferences would not simply consist in the presentation of papers and the discussion of texts. Rather, conferences would also involve all sorts of experimental activities where the participants could engage in alien matters, strange strangers, to discover the powers that reside within them. Perhaps we would toy around with environmental and social simulators to discover how different patterns emerge based on certain actions. Perhaps we would learn a bit of simple programming. Perhaps we would do a little cooking. Perhaps we would do a little topology with construction paper and scissors, or discover odd properties of knots with bits of string. Maybe we would play about with algorithms to see what complex patterns emerge from simple rules. Similarly, it seems to me that theory conferences should also be melded with the arts, containing exhibits and performance art presentations. I don’t know. The point would be to engage with something other than representations, signs, and texts to encounter a bit of the real that’s irreducible to these things and far from being a passive matter over which the net of thought is thrown.

via Experimental Metaphysics? « Larval Subjects .

Getting the questions right

Posted on by
1

Examples of the secular world learning from the world’s ancient contemplative and spiritual traditions abound.  Neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, cognitive scientists and cosmologists are learning from inner technologies of meditation and contemplative practice.

But what of the outer, visible, measurable technologies of those traditions? How are we learning from those technologies that fit into what is broadly called monasticism? And how are we impacting them? This blog asks the question:

What can the secular world learn from monasticism?

and

What can the secular world do for monastic traditions?

Some interfaith and secular groups are already learning from monasticism.  For example, I live in an ex-Franciscan convent in Labro, Italy with a community of artists called the Art Monastery, where we live together as “artmonks”.  We are growing our own monastic order: the International Otherhood of Artmonks.

Why can’t anyone build or be part of an “otherhood”? Any community or movement—whether seculary, interfaith, or of a single spiritual tradition—can choose to benefit from the wide array of monastic technologies that humanity has produced in the past 3000+ years.

This blog is about:

  • secular monasticism,
  • and high-tech monasticism,
  • and art monasticism,
  • and religious monasticism,
  • and interfaith monasticism,
  • and scientific monasticism
  • and integral monasticism
  • and more…

This is for:

  • Artmonks and other Creative contemplatives
  • “Re-monks” (part of the Christian “new monasticism” movement)
  • Co-ops, cohousing and other intentional communities (member of intentional communities around the world)
  • Benedictine, Augustine, Franciscan monks
  • Neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, information scientists
  • Doctors and medical professionals
  • Secular buddhists
  • Regular folks who want to add a little order to their lives
  • Sufi fakirs
  • Theravadan monks, Tibetan buddhist monks, Zen monks
  • Advaita Vedantan monks, etc.
  • …

Have an idea for an otherhood you want to start?

Monasticize your community’s future. Add a little order to your life. Grow your own Otherhood.

About the author

Nathan Rosquist is a writer and composer living as an artmonk at the Art Monastery in Labro, Italy.  He has a MBA in Sustainable Community Economic Development from Bainbridge Graduate Intitute.