Comprehensivist Wednesdays: Who Does Our Thinking?
Details
In this meetup, we will explore how the founders imagined a free people governing itself. This time, we turn to the present and ask what self-government looks like today.
In his short 1784 essay “What Is Enlightenment?”, Immanuel Kant warns against letting others think for us. It’s easy, he says, to let a book understand for us or an expert judge for us. His advice is simple: have the courage to use your own understanding.
Today, the book and the expert have new company. Search engines answer our questions, social media decides what we see, and AI tools can summarize arguments, write our opinions, and even suggest compromises between people who disagree. These tools can make us better informed. They can also make it easier to stop thinking for ourselves.
Thomas Jefferson offers a test. In an 1820 letter, he writes that the people are the only safe keepers of power. If they aren’t ready, the answer is to educate them, not to take power away. Two hundred fifty years after the founding, does technology help citizens think for themselves, or does it quietly do the thinking for them? And who gets to decide how these tools are built and used?
Readings
- Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), translated by James Schmidt (CUNY, about 7 pages)
https://enlightenment.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2016/12/Kant-What-is-Enlightenment.pdf - Thomas Jefferson to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820 (National Archives, Founders Online)
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-16-02-0234
Questions to Think About
- Kant says it takes courage to use your own understanding. Why might thinking for yourself be harder today, and what would that courage look like now?
- When does a phone, search engine, or AI tool help you understand something better, and when does it make the decision for you? What’s the difference?
- Which of today’s challenges would the founders recognize, such as division, misinformation, or distrust of leaders? Which are truly new?
- Jefferson’s answer to an unready public was education. What kind of education do citizens need to face today’s challenges, including new technology?
- Powerful technologies are mostly built by a few companies. Who should decide how they are used in a democracy: companies, government, or citizens themselves?
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CJ Fearnley's book "Collaborating for Comprehensivity," is a unique exploration of comprehensive thinking, inquiry, and collaboration, is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and free PDF formats.
- The free PDF version can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bapsUhFtRDSPdAW6zRBe7omBlcghz-yi/
- Available on Amazon Kindle for the lowest price Amazon allows of $0.99 here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1K18B5/
- Available as a paperback on Amazon for the lowest price Amazon allows of $8.31 here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D11GHC9V/
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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays." Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”
See the calendar at https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/
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.
Welcome to "Comprehensivist Wednesdays"
Explore transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and polymathy in ways Buckminster Fuller described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”
A Meetup For Everyone!
Join us every weekday at 8 pm or 9 pm ET. We record all our meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you participate.
Watch Past Meetups here.