52 Living Ideas

We record all our Meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you prefer. Watch Past Meetups here.

1. Introduction: What is Comprehensivity? How it works? Why it works?
2. Humanity’s Great Traditions of Inquiry and Action 2020-07-18
3. The Necessities and Impossibilities of Comprehensivism 2020-08-04
4. The Fundamental Role of Story in Our Lives 2020-09-08
5. The Comprehensive Thinking of R. Buckminster Fuller 2020-10-07
6. The Value of The Ethnosphere 2020-11-09
7. The Value of Multiple Working Hypotheses 2020-12-07
8. The Inductive Attitude: A Moral Basis for Science and Comprehensivism 2021-01-06
9. Mistake Mystique in Learning and in Life 2021-02-10
10. Rethinking Change and Evolution: Is Genesis Ongoing? 2021-03-10
11. How to Create That-Which-Is-Not-Yet 2021-04-06
12. How To Explore The Future (and Why) 2021-05-04
13. Redressing The Crises of Ignorance 2021-06-03
14. Comprehensivism in the Islamic Golden Age 2021-07-08
15. Shifting Perspectives and Representing The Truth 2021-08-15
16. The Whole Shebang: “to understand all and put everything together” 2021-09-07
17. Chronofiles: Data Mining Your Life for Comprehensive Thinking 2021-10-06
18. Dante’s Comedìa and Our Comprehensivity 2021-11-11
19. The Ethics of Learning from Experience 2021-12-09
20. Comprehensive Exploration, Comprehension, and Collaboration 2022-01-06
21. Tools for Comprehensivity: Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox 2022-02-10
22. Articulating Comprehensivity: The Comprehensive Design of Our Lives 2022-03-10
23. What Is Comprehensive Learning? 2022-06-21
24. The Measurements of Life (Tools for Comprehensivity) 2022-07-07
25. Measuring Beliefs 2022-08-10
26. The Standard for All Measurements: Our Judgment 2022-09-08
27. Intellectual Virtues for Comprehensive Practice 2022-10-07

You do not need to have attended earlier meetups in this series; and you do not need to view the video in advance of the meet-up. Each meet-up is intended to be a complete, self-contained experience, with the hope that participants will share their immediate, initial impressions on the video. -- If, however, you wish to view the video before the meetup, you can view it on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5cJtYLkvE.

“The Power of Myt**h” is a set of six one-hour video interviews broadcast by the United States’ PBS, with Bill Moyers as host. IN this meetup series, participants will view episodes from this famous, ground-breaking educational experience and to discuss the power of myth more broadly in several aspects: as presented in the video, as more generally understood and as the participants have understood and benefitsd from myths in their own lives. Some of Joseph Campbell’s comments in the video series are simply his personal conclusions based on his life experience. Feel free to suggest other conclusions based on your experience!

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) is recognized around the world as a pre-eminent expert in comparative mythology and religion, with a keen focus on communicating to a general audience the benefits of mythologies for living a good life. For example, Joseph Campbell helped George Lucas develop the framework for the Star Wars trilogy (1977) around Joseph Campbell’s understanding of the “hero’s journey,” the meta-story Joseph Campbell identified as the essential element of all “quest” mythologies. (By the way, according to Campbell, everyone can be the hero or heroine of his or her own life.)

Bill Moyers (1934- ), a world-renowned PBS journalist and, incidentally, an ordained Baptist minister, conducted his interviews with Joseph Campbell in 1987-8. The series first appeared in 1990, after Joseph Campbell’s death – and annually thereafter for several years. These video interviews have been viewed and cherished by millions, as evidenced by the YouTube review posted above … and the brief comments from other You-Tuber posted below:

“This series changed the shape of my life. I grew up with Joseph Campbell’s books in my house but to hear him speak was like gathering around a patriarch for story time. Also, shoutout to this interviewer, Bill Moyers, who genuinely listened and showed an interest in the topic. I've yet to see a better interviewer.”

“What a brilliant man! So much knowledge in one person’s head is mind blowing. He’s on my short list of “People I’d most like to meet” What a gift to mankind!

*“Joseph Campbell is probably most people’s choice as favorite teacher or favorite grandparent”.*

“Joseph Campbell turned my life’s focus inward towards my ”hero's journey,” which made me realize that the divine, both good & bad, is in all of us & choosing to give my all to this life.” Review from Youtube

I hope you can join us in viewing and discussing this series – the first and third Thursday of each month until March 2024, including November 30, 2023.

We recommend the Theological Oration of Gregory of Nazianzus on The Holy Spirit to prepare for the Meetup. The Oration on The Holy Spirit starts at the 3:06:08 mark.

Gregory asks and answers the question: Where do you see The Holy Spirit in the scriptures? We will attempt to do the same for John 17, where we have the second person of The Trinity talking to the first. Given the unity of The Trinity, the third person will be present even when not explicitly named.

Here are some of Gregory’s references across the scripture:
Excerpt From
On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (Popular Patristics Series)
St. Gregory of Nazianzus

“Christ is born, the Spirit is his forerunner;82 Christ is baptized, the Spirit bears him witness;83 Christ is tempted, the Spirit leads him up;84 Christ performs miracles, the Spirit accompanies him;85 Christ ascends, the Spirit fills his place.86 Is there any significant function belonging to God, which the Spirit does not perform? Is there any title belonging to God, which cannot apply to him, except “ingenerate” and “begotten”? The Father and the Son, after all, continue to have their personalities; there must be no confusion with the Godhead, which brings all other things into harmonious order. I shudder to think of the wealth of titles, the mass of names, outraged by resistance to the Spirit. He is called “Spirit of God,”87 “Spirit of Christ,”88 “Mind of Christ,”89 “Spirit of the Lord,”90 and “Lord”91 absolutely; “Spirit of Adoption,”92 “of Truth,”93 “of Freedom”;94 “Spirit of Wisdom,” “Understanding,” “Counsel,” “Might,” “Knowledge” “Knowledge,” “True Religion” and of “The Fear of God.”95 The Spirit indeed effects all these things, filling the universe with his being, sustaining the universe. His being “fills the world,”96 his power is beyond the world’s capacity to contain it. It is his nature, not his given function, to be good,97 to be righteous98 and to be in command.99 He is the subject, not the object, of hallowing,100 apportioning,101 participating,102 filling, sustaining;103 we share in him and he shares in nothing.104 He is our inheritance,105 he is glorified,106 counted together with Father and Son;107 he is a dire warning to us.108 The “finger of God,”109 he i, like God, a “fire,”110 which proves, I think, that he is consubstantial. The Spirit it is who created111 and creates anew through baptism112 and resurrection.113 The Spirit it is who knows all things,114 who teaches all things,115 who blows where, and as strongly as, he wills,116 who leads,117 speaks, sends out, separates,118 who is vexed119 and tempted.120 He reveals,121 illumines,122 gives life—or, rather, is absolutely Light and “performs, he performs.128 Divided in fiery tongues,129 he distributes graces,130 makes Apostles, prophets,131 evangelists, pastors, and teachers.132 He is “intelligent, manifold, clear, distinct, irresistible, unpolluted”133—or in other words, he is utterly wise, his operations are multifarious,134 he clarifies all things distinctly, his authority is absolute and he is free from mutability. He is “all-powerful, overseeing all and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent and pure and most subtle”135—meaning, I think, angelic powers as well as prophets and Apostles. He penetrates them simultaneously, though they are distributed in various places;136 which shows that he is not tied down by spatial limitations.”

At the end of the Meetup, we will look at 4 songs from Luke 1 & 2 and relate it to John 17.