Alex Danco joins fellow Interintellects for a Salon about the philosophy of René Girard, the (in)famous father of modern mimetic theory. We're going to get together and talk about René Girard, and his grand theory of mimetic behaviour. Sub-topics will likely include: -Scapegoating, cancel culture, and online mobs -How Silicon Valley works (founder as God-king-sacrifice;…
“Unfortunately, many analysts – in academia, special-interest groups, governments, and the press – still presume that common-pool problems are all dilemmas in which the participants themselves cannot avoid producing suboptimal…
Interintellect Patricia Hurducas will lead a discussion on curation – from curation of objects in museums to curation of ideas in our personal projects. How can we become better curators and what does that entail? The word curation comes from the Latin word curare, meaning to look after. In Roman times, it meant to take…
Join David Valerio as he continues his series on Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building. The Timeless Way of Building is a classic of architectural philosophy. It presents the organic, fractal, and down-to-earth way that we evolved buildings in the past, and serves as a biting critique of the top-down, authoritarian, and alienating approach to the “design”…
Welcome to Writer’s Corner where we talk about and practice the craft of writing. Join Sylvia R in this session where we will focus on Hemingway. This session will focus on Hemingway and will be structured as follows: Section 1: Discuss We’ll dive into the formal qualities of "Indian Camp" (see pre-salon reading materials). We’ll discuss…
Our friend Agnes Callard - associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and everyone's favourite Twitter thinker - joins us for a special discussion about the nature of "self", whether points of view exist, and how Pessoa's poetry can reveal some answers. "Pessoa's key insight is that our mind and our sensations--even our…
In her debut salon, Tanya Raj will explore the psychology behind the images we make and what they tell us about ourselves. It is said, “if you want to learn…
Physical health, strength and wellbeing for intellectuals: in his monthly Interintellect Salon, Ben Fleming addresses what’s beyond sitting and thinking? Low fat. Low carb. Vegan. Keto. Paleo. Intermittent fasting. Juice cleanse. Vegetarian. Pescatarian. Fruitarian. Carnivore. The list goes on (and on.. and on..). But which diet is the most healthy? What does "healthy" even mean in the context…
On April 7, Taylor Pullinger returns to lead a discussion on the meaning and merits of having children in light of all it entails. How did you come to exist in this world? In all likelihood it’s because your parents had a child, and their parents had a child, and their parents had a child… you get…
Interintellect founder Anna Gát dives into the mystery unlived lives: the shadow lives, the double lives, the paths we did not take - but which might linger as an aftertaste and come back from time to time to haunt us. "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the…
Join hosts Isabela Granic and Thomas Arnold to sift our reactions, reads, and interpretations of these lines, including other art it brings to mind. In this poetry reading salon we will sit together with a very short poem from Rainer Maria Rilke (known by its first line “Manchmal steht einer auf beim Abendbrot”/”Sometimes a man gets up from supper,”…
In this salon, Hollis Robbins investigates the famous story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. What lessons are we meant to learn from this fable? The poet, the artist, the sleuth—whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely “well-adjusted,” he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists among anti-social types in their…
