Learning, Liberty, and Progress
*** Collaboratively ***
Welcome back after the break. Today is Meta Monday offering a short preview of what’s to come here at Pose Ponder over the next three weeks. Pose Ponder publishes daily on weekdays, 3 weeks on, 1 week off.
I’m really liking these weeks “off” especially in the height of summer. It’s an opportunity to step back, reflect on what I’m trying to accomplish, work on projects, putter outside away from the computer, and attempt to catch up on reading.
Last time, I laid out a three-point agenda, some of which I actually got to! The first part of the plan was to talk about lifelong learning in theory and practice. For this I posted on The Core, Reading History, and pushed out a two-part commentary on Adler’s educational platform: part 1, part 2. For the first time ever, I also appeared in person on camera, as my friend Dan Allosso recorded a spontaneous conversation between us, in which we talked back and forth about history and education. See my cross-posts from Dan's Substack in triple: here, here, and here. Appearing on video was less terrifying than I thought, and it was thoroughly enjoyable to do this kind of collaboration, so probably more coming.
Collaboration was the second theme I wanted to get to, but apart from the video experiment there wasn’t much. Expect much more on this. I’m preoccupied with creating a way to promote collaborative lifelong learning — of course for the sake of becoming better humans in the Anthropocene. ← If this sounds like something you’d like to be in on, please get in touch!
The third theme was progress. Here I engaged with Michael Magoon’s work advocating sustained material progress as a social, economic, political, and technological imperative. I liked that his perspective is historical, toward “understanding causes and origins,” but he keeps present circumstances and problems in view. I did feel compelled to ask some further questions about locality and continuity.
Without losing any of the concrete history, I continue to wrestle with these kinds of political and economic ideas, taking more of a philosophical “pose” and “ponder” perspective as is my wont. In addition to the progress theme, I’m continuing to ask questions around contemporary critiques of liberalism, whether as modern democracy or capitalism. Is liberalism even sustainable, or does it contain the seeds of its own demise? And what to do about that — to the extent the critiques are accurate, or the political facts on the ground require a response?
As always, thank you for reading. Comments are ever appreciated or drop me a message. DMs are open.
