Humanities: The Unity of Knowledge

On nearly a daily basis I am making connections between what I'm reading or studying and what I'm hearing on the radio, perusing on the web, or seeing on television news, so I've decided it's time to put all those observations into a more permanent framework. Through the lens of my studies in the fields of literature, philosophy, and history I hope over the course of these posts to be trying to get you to think about how so many things going on in our world are interconnected. My basic ideal is that posited in E.O. Wilson's Consilience. We are entering a new age, where the different disciplines of study must once again come together into a new studia humanitatis that provides to those who want to learn the tools necessary for understanding their world and becoming better citizens within it. I saw a quote today on a Starbucks "The Way I See It" cup that admirably summed up this last idea: "Our species' survival depends on how fast we embrace the moral shift from "patriot" to "global citizen."

Buddha Art Found in Nepal Cliff

This is so cool. A shepherd in Nepal recently led researchers to an isolated cave complex set 14,000 feet up a sheer cliff in the Himalayas and filled with long-lost Buddhist art, including a 55-panel mural of Buddha's life. The art dates to the 12th century or earlier and includes, in addition to paintings, other artifacts and Tibetan manuscripts. The shepherd had found the caves while looking for shelter from a storm decades ago, but only recently told scientists. Limited excavations of the site are planned for the near future, and the site is being kept secret to prevent looting.

End of the Little Red Book

Where's Mao? Chinese Revise History Books - New York Times

"Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette."

I remember my 7th grade Social Studies class which focused one semester each on the two then most significant enemies of the U.S.: the Soviet Union and China. My instructor was a Vietnam veteran who had become disillusioned with American policy, so the class was by no means a harangue against the evils of communism, but it was nonetheless something that instilled a fear of the powerful enemies ranged against us. For my class project I used a faux-leather menu cover from The Apple Grove Inn where my mother worked to make a Little Red Book of Chairman Mao. Who would have thought then that the whole subject of that class would all be insignificant just 30 years later? Lends credence to the Buddhist notion that our focus on what we think is permanent is in fact the thing that creates much unnecessary suffering.