Courage, loyalty, tolerance. Perseverance, empathy, autonomy... Most of us agree that the values we consider of highest importance in our lives don't only influence but should actively guide our living arrangements, our career choices, and our private relationships. Yet few of us possess the frameworks of introspection needed to clearly define our personal values for…
“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.” ~Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian From Socraties to Galileo to Hitchens, contrarians have always made life more, well, interesting…
In this salon, fellow Interintellect Daniel Golliher will consider local politics, its prestige deficit, its aesthetic failings, and its hurdles to engagement; he and attendees will discuss why these things arise, but–more interestingly–how they might disappear. When you think of local politics, you likely think of blank-faced people sitting in metal foldout chairs in some dilapidated civic…
After a very enjoyable first Silent Salon, we continue this new tradition. Bring a book, your studies, your work to-do's, or your meditation practice, and let's spend 3 calm hours together, undistracted, in silence... *** If the early 21st century seemed hellbent on depriving us from silence, the current pandemic, with its various types of…
Fellow Interintellect Maybe Gray explores the world of comparison that is so often hidden within the ways we think about ourselves, others Certainty and clarity are incredibly rare phenomena. In a wide variety of contexts we are all forced to make do without clear objective guides for understanding concepts. In the absence of objective information…
Étienne Fortier-Dubois leads a series of thematic discussions on the work of science fiction author Ted Chiang. In part 2, we discuss stories that imagine the world as if God were a observable scientific fact. Ted Chiang ranks among the best living authors of science fiction. Though he cannot be described as prolific — his…
This new track of monthly Interintellect Salons by Ben Fleming address the issues of how to be a physically fit and healthy intellectual: what’s beyond sitting and thinking? Save the date: this track of ii Salons will run on the first Monday of every month. The stereotypical intellectual is not a physically fit person. But it is…
In this Interintellect Salon, Taylor Pullinger will lead a discussion on resilience – in people, in nature, in systems. Sometimes things go wrong – it’s how we respond that makes all the difference. In the face of adversity we could break down and give up, we could rigidly stand firm against it, or we could… Continue reading Weathering the Storm: Cultivating Resilience
Fellow Interintellect Alex Yao explores how polymaths and Internet remix culture use combinatory play to create new works. "Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought." — Albert Einstein Nothing is original, everything is a remix. We build on what came before, and create by taking bits and pieces from our knowledge,…
A kickoff for our new Dead Economists Society Salon series – hosted by Bronwyn Williams and Peter Isztin “Imagine a world in which all major private wealth (every factory, patent or plot of land) is constantly for sale at a fair price and where most of the value of this property is paid out equally to all citizens as a…
In his debut Interintellect Salon, Cameron Harwick will examine the mindsets of our ancestors, and whether we have anything in common with them. It’s easy enough to see how we live differently from our ancestors. You’re reading this on a device that connects you instantly to people all over the world. For that matter, you’re reading it,…
Zadie Smith, Carver, Fitzgerald… In this new Interintellect Salon series, Sylvia R helps us to master the art of short fiction – through reading some of the greatest short story writers together! “That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.” ― Raymond Carver “Critics often use the term "minimalist"…
