The Entire Archives of Radical Philosophy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler & More (1972–2018)

in Philosophy | March 9th, 2018

On a seem­ing­ly dai­ly basis, we see attacks against the intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture of the aca­d­e­m­ic human­i­ties, which, since the 1960s, have opened up spaces for left­ists to devel­op crit­i­cal the­o­ries of all kinds. Attacks from sup­pos­ed­ly lib­er­al pro­fes­sors and cen­trist op-ed colum­nists, from well-fund­ed con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks and white suprema­cists on col­lege cam­pus tours. All rail against the evils of fem­i­nism, post-mod­ernism, and some­thing called “neo-Marx­ism” with out­sized agi­ta­tion.

For stu­dents and pro­fes­sors, the onslaughts are exhaust­ing, and not only because they have very real, often dan­ger­ous, con­se­quences, but because they all attack the same straw men (or “straw peo­ple”) and refuse to engage with aca­d­e­m­ic thought on its own terms. Rarely, in the exas­per­at­ing pro­lif­er­a­tion of cranky, cher­ry-picked anti-acad­e­mia op-eds do we encounter peo­ple actu­al­ly read­ing and grap­pling with the ideas of their sup­posed ide­o­log­i­cal neme­ses.

Were non-aca­d­e­m­ic crit­ics to take aca­d­e­m­ic work seri­ous­ly, they might notice that debates over “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness,” “thought polic­ing,” “iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics,” etc. have been going on for thir­ty years now, and among left intel­lec­tu­als them­selves. Con­trary to what many seem to think, crit­i­cism of lib­er­al ide­ol­o­gy has not been banned in the acad­e­my. It is absolute­ly the case that the human­i­ties have become increas­ing­ly hos­tile to irre­spon­si­ble opin­ions that dehu­man­ize peo­ple, like emer­gency room doc­tors become hos­tile to drunk dri­ving. But it does not fol­low there­fore that one can­not dis­agree with the estab­lish­ment, as though the Uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem were still behold­en to the Vat­i­can.

Under­stand­ing this requires work many peo­ple are unwill­ing to do, either because they’re busy and dis­tract­ed or, per­haps more often, because they have oth­er, bad faith agen­das. Should one decide to sur­vey the philo­soph­i­cal debates on the left, how­ev­er, an excel­lent place to start would be Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy, which describes itself as a “UK-based jour­nal of social­ist and fem­i­nist phi­los­o­phy.” Found­ed in 1972, in response to “the wide­ly-felt dis­con­tent with the steril­i­ty of aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy at the time,” the jour­nal was itself an act of protest against the cul­ture of acad­e­mia.

Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy has pub­lished essays and inter­views with near­ly all of the big names in aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy on the left—from Marx­ists, to post-struc­tural­ists, to post-colo­nial­ists, to phe­nom­e­nol­o­gists, to crit­i­cal the­o­rists, to Laca­ni­ans, to queer the­o­rists, to rad­i­cal the­olo­gians, to the prag­ma­tist Richard Rorty, who made argu­ments for nation­al pride and made sev­er­al cri­tiques of crit­i­cal the­o­ry as an illib­er­al enter­prise. The full range of rad­i­cal crit­i­cal the­o­ry over the past 45 years appears here, as well as con­trar­i­an respons­es from philoso­phers on the left.

Rorty was hard­ly the only one in the journal’s pages to cri­tique cer­tain promi­nent trends. Soci­ol­o­gists Pierre Bour­dieu and Loic Wac­quant launched a 2001 protest against what they called “a strange Newspeak,” or “NewLib­er­al­S­peak” that includ­ed words like “glob­al­iza­tion,” “gov­er­nance,” “employ­a­bil­i­ty,” “under­class,” “com­mu­ni­tar­i­an­ism,” “mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism” and “their so-called post­mod­ern cousins.” Bour­dieu and Wac­quant argued that this dis­course obscures “the terms ‘cap­i­tal­ism,’ ‘class,’ ‘exploita­tion,’ ‘dom­i­na­tion,’ and ‘inequal­i­ty,’” as part of a “neolib­er­al rev­o­lu­tion,” that intends to “remake the world by sweep­ing away the social and eco­nom­ic con­quests of a cen­tu­ry of social strug­gles.”

One can also find in the pages of Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy philoso­pher Alain Badiou’s 2005 cri­tique of “demo­c­ra­t­ic mate­ri­al­ism,” which he iden­ti­fies as a “post­mod­ernism” that “rec­og­nizes the objec­tive exis­tence of bod­ies alone. Who would ever speak today, oth­er than to con­form to a cer­tain rhetoric? Of the sep­a­ra­bil­i­ty of our immor­tal soul?” Badiou iden­ti­fies the ide­al of max­i­mum tol­er­ance as one that also, para­dox­i­cal­ly, “guides us, irre­sistibly” to war. But he refus­es to counter demo­c­ra­t­ic materialism’s max­im that “there are only bod­ies and lan­guages” with what he calls “its for­mal oppo­site… ‘aris­to­crat­ic ide­al­ism.’” Instead, he adds the sup­ple­men­tary phrase, “except that there are truths.”

Badiou’s polemic includes an oblique swipe at Stal­in­ism, a cri­tique Michel Fou­cault makes in more depth in a 1975 inter­view, in which he approv­ing­ly cites phe­nom­e­nol­o­gist Merleau-Ponty’s “argu­ment against the Com­mu­nism of the time… that it has destroyed the dialec­tic of indi­vid­ual and history—and hence the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a human­is­tic soci­ety and indi­vid­ual free­dom.” Fou­cault made a case for this “dialec­ti­cal rela­tion­ship” as that “in which the free and open human project con­sists.” In an inter­view two years lat­er, he talks of pris­ons as insti­tu­tions “no less per­fect than school or bar­racks or hos­pi­tal” for repress­ing and trans­form­ing indi­vid­u­als.

Foucault’s polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy inspired fem­i­nist and queer the­o­rist Judith But­ler, whose argu­ments inspired many of today’s gen­der the­o­rists, and who is deeply con­cerned with ques­tions of ethics, moral­i­ty, and social respon­si­bil­i­ty. Her Adorno Prize Lec­ture, pub­lished in a 2012 issue, took up Theodor Adorno’s chal­lenge of how it is pos­si­ble to live a good life in bad cir­cum­stances (under fas­cism, for example)—a clas­si­cal polit­i­cal ques­tion that she engages through the work of Orlan­do Pat­ter­son, Han­nah Arendt, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, and Hegel. Her lec­ture ends with a dis­cus­sion of the eth­i­cal duty to active­ly resist and protest an intol­er­a­ble sta­tus quo.

You can now read for free all of these essays and hun­dreds more at the Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy archive, either on the site itself or in down­load­able PDFs. The jour­nal, run by an ‘Edi­to­r­i­al Col­lec­tive,” still appears three times a year. The most recent issue fea­tures an essay by Lars T. Lih on the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion through the lens of Thomas Hobbes, a detailed his­tor­i­cal account by Nathan Brown of the term “post­mod­ern,” and its inap­plic­a­bil­i­ty to the present moment, and an essay by Jami­la M.H. Mas­cat on the prob­lem of Hegelian abstrac­tion.

If noth­ing else, these essays and many oth­ers should upend facile notions of left­ist aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy as dom­i­nat­ed by “post­mod­ern” denials of truth, moral­i­ty, free­dom, and Enlight­en­ment thought, as doc­tri­naire Stal­in­ism, or lit­tle more than thought polic­ing through dog­mat­ic polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. For every argu­ment in the pages of Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy that might con­firm cer­tain read­ers’ bias­es, there are dozens more that will chal­lenge their assump­tions, bear­ing out Foucault’s obser­va­tion that “phi­los­o­phy can­not be an end­less scruti­ny of its own propo­si­tions.”

Enter the Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing Ergo, the New Open Phi­los­o­phy Jour­nal

His­to­ry of Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course 

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What Ancient Chinese Philosophy Can Teach Us About Living the Good Life Today: Lessons from Harvard’s Popular Professor, Michael Puett

in Life, Philosophy, TED Talks | February 26th, 2018

It has at times been con­cern­ing for some Bud­dhist schol­ars and teach­ers to watch mind­ful­ness become an inte­gral part of self-help pro­grams. A casu­al atti­tude toward the prac­tice of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion can make it seem acces­si­ble by mak­ing it seem relax­ing and effort­less, which often results in miss­ing the point entire­ly. What­ev­er the school, lin­eage, or par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion from which they come, the source texts and sages tend to agree: the pur­pose of med­i­ta­tion is not self improvement—but to real­ize that there may, indeed, be no such thing as a self.

Instead, we are all epiphe­nom­e­non aris­ing from com­bi­na­tions of ever-shift­ing ele­ments (the aggre­gates, or skand­has). The self is a con­ven­tion­al­ly use­ful illu­sion. This notion in the ancient Indi­an texts has its echo in Scot­tish enlight­en­ment philoso­pher David Hume’s so-called “bun­dle the­o­ry,” but Hume’s thoughts about the self have most­ly remained obscure foot­notes in west­ern thought, rather than cen­tral premis­es in its philoso­phies and reli­gions. But as thinkers in India took the self apart, so too did philoso­phers in ancient Chi­na, before Bud­dhism reached the coun­try dur­ing the Han Dynasty.

Har­vard Pro­fes­sor Michael Puett has been lec­tur­ing on Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy to audi­ences of hun­dreds of students—and at 21st cen­tu­ry tem­ples of self-actu­al­iza­tion like TED and the School of Life. He has co-authored a book on the sub­ject, The Path: What Chi­nese Philoso­phers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, drawn from his enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, in which he expounds the philoso­phies of Con­fu­cius, Men­cius, Zhuangzi, and Xun­zi. The book has found a ready audi­ence, and Puett’s “Clas­si­cal Chi­nese Eth­i­cal and Polit­i­cal The­o­ry” is the 3rd most pop­u­lar class among Har­vard under­grad­u­ates, behind intro to eco­nom­ics and com­put­er sci­ence. What Pro­fes­sor Puett offers, in his dis­til­la­tion of ancient Chi­nese wis­dom, is not at all to be con­strued as self-help.

Rather, he says, “I think of it as sort of anti-self-help. Self-help tends to be about learn­ing to love your­self and embrace your­self for who you are. A lot of these ideas are say­ing pre­cise­ly the opposite—no, you over­come the self, you break the self. You should not be hap­py with who you are.” Lest this sound like some form of vio­lence, we must under­stand, Puett tells Tim Dowl­ing at The Guardian, that in “break­ing” the self, we are only doing harm to an illu­sion. As in the Bud­dhist thought that took root in Chi­na, so too in the ear­li­er Con­fu­cian­ism: there is no self, just a “a messy and poten­tial­ly ugly bunch of stuff.”

While our cur­rent cir­cum­stances may seem unique in world his­to­ry, Puett shows his stu­dents how Chi­nese philoso­phers 2,500 years ago also expe­ri­enced rapid soci­etal change and upheaval, as his co-author Chris­tine Gross-Loh writes at The Atlantic; they nav­i­gat­ed and under­stood “a world where human rela­tion­ships are chal­leng­ing, nar­cis­sism and self-cen­tered­ness are on the rise, and there is dis­agree­ment on the best way for peo­ple to live har­mo­nious­ly togeth­er.” A major­i­ty of stu­dents at Har­vard are dri­ven to pur­sue “prac­ti­cal, pre­de­ter­mined” careers. By teach­ing them Con­fu­cian and Daoist phi­los­o­phy, Puett tries to help them become more spon­ta­neous and open to change.

What­ev­er we call it, the inter­act­ing phe­nom­e­non that give rise to the self can­not, we know, be observed in any­thing resem­bling an unchang­ing steady state. Yet West­ern cul­ture (for sev­er­al moti­vat­ed rea­sons) has lagged far behind both intu­itive and sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tions of this fact. Puet­t’s stu­dents have been told, “’Find your true self, espe­cial­ly dur­ing these four years of col­lege,’” and “try and be sin­cere and authen­tic to who you real­ly are” in mak­ing choic­es about careers, part­ners, pas­sions, and con­sumer prod­ucts. They take to his class because “they’ve spent 20 years look­ing for this true self and not find­ing it.”

In the two lec­tures above—a short­er one at the top from TEDx Nashville and a longer talk above for Ivy, “The Social Uni­ver­si­ty”—you can get a taste of Puett’s enthu­si­as­tic style. Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy, “in its strong form,” he says above, “can tru­ly change one’s life.” Not by mak­ing us more empow­ered, per­son­al­ly-ful­filled agents who re-cre­ate real­i­ty to bet­ter meet our nar­row specs. But rather, as he tells Dowl­ing, by train­ing us “to become incred­i­bly good at deal­ing with this capri­cious world.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Con­fu­cius’ Life & Thought Through Two Ani­mat­ed Videos

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Learn Islam­ic & Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy with 107 Episodes of the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Now Free Online

in Maps | February 22nd, 2018

Worth a quick men­tion: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press has made avail­able online — at no cost — the first three vol­umes of The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy. Or what Edward Roth­stein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambi­tious overview of map mak­ing ever under­tak­en.” He con­tin­ues:

Peo­ple come to know the world the way they come to map it—through their per­cep­tions of how its ele­ments are con­nect­ed and of how they should move among them. This is pre­cise­ly what the series is attempt­ing by sit­u­at­ing the map at the heart of cul­tur­al life and reveal­ing its rela­tion­ship to soci­ety, sci­ence, and reli­gion…. It is try­ing to define a new set of rela­tion­ships between maps and the phys­i­cal world that involve more than geo­met­ric cor­re­spon­dence. It is in essence a new map of human attempts to chart the world.

If you head over to this page, then look in the upper left, you will see links to three vol­umes (avail­able in a free PDF for­mat). My sug­ges­tion would be to look at the gallery of col­or illus­tra­tions for each book, links to which you’ll find below. The image above, appear­ing in Vol. 2, dates back to 1534. It was cre­at­ed by Oronce Fine, the first chair of math­e­mat­ics in the Col­lège Roy­al (aka the Col­lège de France), and it fea­tures the world mapped in the shape of a heart. Pret­ty great.

Vol­ume 1

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions

Vol­ume 2: Part 1

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–24)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 25–40)

Vol­ume 2: Part 2

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–16)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 17–40)

Vol­ume 2: Part 3

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–8)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 9 –24)

Vol­ume 3: Part 1

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–24)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 25–40)

Vol­ume 3: Part 2

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 41–56)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 57–80)

If you buy Vol 1. on Ama­zon, it will run you $248. As beau­ti­ful as the book prob­a­bly is, you’ll prob­a­bly appre­ci­ate this free dig­i­tal offer­ing. The series will be added to our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in August, 2015.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

A Won­der­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Map of the Moon from 1679: Can You Spot the Secret Moon Maid­en?

Galileo’s Moon Draw­ings, the First Real­is­tic Depic­tions of the Moon in His­to­ry (1609–1610)

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Google Digitizes and Puts Online a Vast Archive of Latino Artworks and Artifacts

in Art, History | February 22nd, 2018

You can’t under­stand human cul­ture in the 21st cen­tu­ry with­out under­stand­ing Amer­i­can cul­ture, and as any­one who’s spent time in most any major U.S. city knows, you cer­tain­ly can’t under­stand Amer­i­can cul­ture with­out under­stand­ing Lati­no cul­ture. I write this while trav­el­ing in Los Ange­les, a city that makes that point with par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive force, but just a few moments with an overview of Lati­no art will under­score the vital­i­ty it has pro­vid­ed Amer­i­ca, and thus the world. You could do lit­tle bet­ter for such an overview than the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s brand new Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. project, a siz­able free dig­i­tal archive of Lati­no art and arti­facts of Lati­no his­to­ry.

Forbes’ Veron­i­ca Vil­lafañe quotes Google and Youtube Head of His­pan­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Jesús Gar­cía as describ­ing the archive as “a labor of love for many Googlers and part­ner insti­tu­tions. It was a project that was more than a year in the mak­ing and took a small army to help dig­i­tize the 2,500 new art­works and curate 69 new exhibits.”

As a whole it offers “over 4,300 archives and art­works — includ­ing Diego Rivera murals — relat­ed to the Lati­no expe­ri­ence in the U.S., mul­ti­me­dia exhibits in Eng­lish and Span­ish and vir­tu­al tours of his­toric sites, as well as pro­files of key Lati­no fig­ures, such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huer­ta and Supreme Court Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or.”

Google Head of Lati­no Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Lau­ra Mar­quez notes that it also allows you to “vis­it some of the most vibrant neigh­bor­hoods in the U.S. — the homes to and cen­ters of Lati­no cul­ture— by way of his­toric pho­tographs or unmiss­able loca­tions on Google Street View, all from your phone.” You’ll also find “ultra-high res­o­lu­tion images of icon­ic Lati­no murals, such as Diego Rivera’s Detroit Indus­try from the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts.” Using the for­mi­da­ble explorato­ry plat­form of Google Earth, the project has also cre­at­ed a whole Lati­no Murals in the U.S. sec­tion, from River­a’s work in Detroit to José Clemente Oroz­co’s Prometheus in Cal­i­for­nia to the Mia­mi Arti­sans’ Free­dom Tow­er mur­al at Mia­mi Dade Col­lege.

You can also browse the Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. Project’s offer­ings by form, includ­ing dance, film, music, and style. And though the designs of Oscar de la Renta, the songs of Glo­ria Este­fan, the paint­ings of Frank Romero (and, of course, lowrid­ers) have drawn the inter­est of many a non-Lati­no toward Lati­no cul­ture, what has done quite so much out­reach as the food? Google’s project even cov­ers that ter­ri­to­ry with con­tent like an edi­to­r­i­al fea­ture on “Fast Food, Tor­tillas, and the Art of Accept­ing Your­self” by Javier Cabral, a food crit­ic based, and well known, in — where else? — Los Ange­les.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

Charles & Ray Eames’ Short Film on the Mex­i­can Day of the Dead (1957)

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

What the Map of the United States Would Look Like If All 50 States Had Equal Populations

in History, Politics | February 22nd, 2018

In the U.S., recent elec­toral events with which we’re all quite famil­iar have prompt­ed one par­tic­u­lar rad­i­cal re-eval­u­a­tion of the polit­i­cal sys­tem, among many oth­ers: we find every­one from high-pro­file Con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars to anony­mous com­menters engaged in debates about the neces­si­ty, or demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­i­ma­cy, of the Elec­toral Col­lege. While the debate may not be new, it has reached an urgent inten­si­ty, and hap­pens to occur at a time when every­thing seems up for grabs. When Neil Free­man pro­posed redraw­ing state bor­ders on his pre­scient­ly-named design site Fake is the New Real back in 2012, he cre­at­ed the map above (view it in a larg­er for­mat here) to even­ly dis­trib­ute the country’s pop­u­la­tion. He did so with the dis­claimer, “this is an art project, not a seri­ous pro­pos­al.”

The idea might get a more seri­ous recep­tion these days. Nonethe­less, the iner­tia of tra­di­tion has­n’t less­ened any. Not only is it total­ly unlike­ly that states would ever be redrawn and renamed, but the Elec­toral Col­lege is also a found­ing insti­tu­tion, emerg­ing at the first Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion when James Madi­son first pro­posed it in 1787. Since then, PBS’s Kamala Kelkar wrote on Novem­ber 6th, 2016, “the Elec­toral Col­lege sys­tem has cost four can­di­dates the race after they received the pop­u­lar vote.” Two days lat­er that num­ber went up to five.

Still, whether one deems it nec­es­sary, super­flu­ous, or deeply per­ni­cious, it’s hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial to note that this elect­ing body comes from an era so unlike our own as to be unrec­og­niz­able. A time when, as some founders argued, writes Akhil Reed Amar at Time, “ordi­nary Amer­i­cans across a vast con­ti­nent [lacked] suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to choose direct­ly and intel­li­gent­ly among lead­ing pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.” This might still be the case for var­i­ous rea­sons. But putting aside man­u­fac­tured fil­ter bub­bles and vast dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, most Amer­i­cans now have instant access, if they want it, to more infor­ma­tion than they know what to do with.

When we look at the pri­ma­ry sources, we find the actu­al rea­son for the Elec­toral Col­lege: slav­ery. Madi­son, notes Kelkar, “now known as the ‘Father of the Con­sti­tu­tion,’” was a slave­hold­ing Vir­gin­ian who wor­ried vocal­ly that North­ern states would have a decid­ed advan­tage, since upwards of 40% of the pop­u­la­tion in South­ern states con­sist­ed of enslaved peo­ple, who, of course, would not be cast­ing votes. Madison’s propo­si­tion includ­ed the infa­mous and dehu­man­iz­ing “three-fifths com­pro­mise,” which his­to­ri­an Paul Finkel­man argues enabled Thomas Jef­fer­son to win over John Adams in 1800.

Despite this his­to­ry, most peo­ple are taught that the sys­tem arose sole­ly to “bal­ance the inter­ests,” Amar writes, “of high-pop­u­la­tion and low-pop­u­la­tion states.” This sounds like a polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral inten­tion. But Free­man doesn’t ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of the Elec­toral Col­lege, call­ing it “a time-hon­ored, log­i­cal sys­tem” that he thinks should be pre­served. And yet, he writes, “it’s obvi­ous that reforms are need­ed.”

“The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of the elec­toral col­lege,” Free­man writes, “is that the states of the Unit­ed States are too dis­parate in size and influ­ence. The largest state is 66 times as pop­u­lous as the small­est and has 18 times as many elec­toral votes. This increas­es the chance for Elec­toral Col­lege results that don’t match the pop­u­lar vote.” This is hard­ly the only issue. But is Freeman’s pro­pos­al a more sta­ble solu­tion to major flaws in U.S. nation­al elec­tions than sim­ply scrap­ping the Elec­toral Col­lege alto­geth­er? He makes the fol­low­ing argu­ment, in a series of bul­let-point­ed advan­tages. His map:

• Pre­serves the his­toric struc­ture and func­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege.
• Ends the over-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of small states and under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of large states in pres­i­den­tial vot­ing and in the US Sen­ate by elim­i­nat­ing small and large states.
• Polit­i­cal bound­aries more close­ly fol­low eco­nom­ic pat­terns, since many states are more cen­tered on one or two metro areas.
• Ends vary­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the House. Cur­rent­ly, the pop­u­la­tion of House dis­tricts ranges from 528,000 to 924,000. After this reform, every House seat would rep­re­sent dis­tricts of the same size. (Since the cur­rent size of the House isn’t divis­i­ble by 50, the num­bers of seats should be increased to 450 or 500.)
• States could be redis­trict­ed after each cen­sus — just like House seats are dis­trib­uted now.

Free­man based the map–featuring new states like “Mesabi,” “Ogal­lala,” “Big Thick­et,” “Chi­nati,” and “King”–on data from the 2010 Cen­sus, which, inci­den­tal­ly, actu­al­ly did change the dis­tri­b­u­tion of elec­tors in 2012. The Cen­sus “records a pop­u­la­tion of 308,745,538 for the Unit­ed States,” he notes, “which this map divides into 50 states, each with a pop­u­la­tion of about 6,175,000.”

He does seem to down­play the dis­ad­van­tages, list­ing only two con­cerns about dupli­cat­ed coun­ty names and a “shift in state laws and pro­ce­dures.” Free­man doesn’t men­tion the high like­li­hood of civ­il war or wide­spread social unrest if such a mas­sive redis­tri­b­u­tion of the country’s state pop­u­la­tions were ever attempt­ed. Giv­en the exam­ples of pitched legal bat­tle fought dai­ly over con­gres­sion­al redis­trict­ing of ger­ry­man­dered states, it’s also prob­a­ble noth­ing like this plan would ever make it through the courts. Con­sid­ered as an “art project” or thought exper­i­ment in civics, how­ev­er, who knows? It just might work….

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal Khan & the Mup­pets’ Grover Explain the Elec­toral Col­lege

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

The “True Size” Maps Shows You the Real Size of Every Coun­try (and Will Change Your Men­tal Pic­ture of the World)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Ditching the Lecture Hall for the Recording Studio: One Historian Is Using the Power of Podcasting to Inspire a Whole New Audience

in History, Podcasts | February 20th, 2018

His­to­ry is dying at U.S. col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.  Enroll­ment in under­grad­u­ate his­to­ry cours­es is way down since 2010, and the num­ber of his­to­ry degrees award­ed annu­al­ly has like­wise been falling faster and faster.  The most recent data show a 9% nation­wide drop in his­to­ry degrees award­ed in 2014 com­pared to 2013, with an even sharp­er 13% decline at the nation’s top uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Yale, Har­vard, and Stan­ford. (1,2,3,4)  So, is his­to­ry just get­ting old?

On the con­trary.  At least out­side of acad­e­mia, his­to­ry has nev­er been more pop­u­lar.  Cul­tur­al icons includ­ing Barack Oba­ma and Bill Gates have cit­ed his­to­ry books such as Yuval Noah Harar­i’s Sapi­ens: A Brief His­to­ry of Mankind and Steven Pinker’s Enlight­en­ment Now: The Case for Rea­son, Sci­ence, Human­ism and Progress as among their favorite books of all time.  The His­to­ry Chan­nel has enjoyed a resur­gence in view­er­ship since 2013, and judg­ing by the recep­tion of more epic pro­duc­tions, from Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-win­ning movie Lin­coln in 2012 to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit musi­cal Hamil­ton in 2015, it’s clear that pub­lic hunger for his­to­ry is only grow­ing.  What, then, accounts for lack­lus­ter lec­ture hall atten­dance?

“Part of the prob­lem is that much of aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ry has become too eso­teric,” says pod­cast­er Brad Har­ris, who holds a PhD from Stan­ford in the his­to­ry of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  “Course con­tent has been shift­ing away from big ideas like the rise of mod­ern sci­ence and democ­ra­cy to nar­row­er stud­ies of things like the pol­i­tics of emo­tion and cul­tur­al con­struc­tions, which many stu­dents find less rel­e­vant to their inter­ests.”  More­over, Har­ris con­tends that col­lege his­to­ry cours­es have nev­er been more cyn­i­cal.  “Too many pro­fes­sors dwell on what human­i­ty has done wrong–who we’ve oppressed, what we’ve destroyed–and not enough on what human­i­ty has done right–who we’ve lib­er­at­ed, what we’ve invent­ed.  Where’s the inspi­ra­tion?  It’s no won­der peo­ple are ditch­ing his­to­ry lec­tures.”  And now, so has Brad Har­ris.

Since leav­ing acad­e­mia in 2015, Har­ris has been work­ing full-time to offer an attrac­tive alter­na­tive for peo­ple who want to learn his­to­ry, pro­vid­ing con­tent that is as infor­ma­tive as a col­lege lec­ture but as enter­tain­ing as a cin­e­mat­ic pro­duc­tion: a pod­cast called How It Began: A His­to­ry of the Mod­ern World.  Avail­able every­where pod­casts are found, and also from his web­site, howitbegan.com, How It Began inter­prets a broad array of the most impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and cul­tur­al advance­ments in his­to­ry, from dog domes­ti­ca­tion to the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion.  Here is an excerpt from the show’s intro­duc­to­ry episode:

In each episode, we will fly through the cen­turies to fol­low the seeds of an inno­va­tion or dis­cov­ery as it blos­soms into one of the many fruits of moder­ni­ty.  Far from a cat­a­log of dead men and dates, How It Began offers a cin­e­mat­ic-like immer­sion into the sto­ries behind some of our species’ great­est achieve­ments.  The over­all theme?  Cel­e­bra­tion!  We are for­tu­nate to be descend­ed from men and women who dared to dream big and even die for the cause of progress.  Their work is unfin­ished, and some parts of moder­ni­ty are even worse than before.  But most are bet­ter, much bet­ter.  And we have more tools than ever to fix what’s still bro­ken.  

Brad Har­ris hopes his show’s focus on mod­ern progress will cap­ti­vate peo­ple who crave more inspir­ing explo­rations of his­to­ry, and judg­ing by How It Began’s recep­tion so far, he seems well on his way to achiev­ing exact­ly that.  

Episodes are between 30 and 60 min­utes long and released every month or so.  The pod­cast explores a wide range of top­ics, from the rise of mod­ern surgery and com­put­ers to the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage and the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion.  “Wolves to Dogs: The Ori­gin of our Alliance” was one of the most pop­u­lar episodes of Sea­son One.   In a more recent episode, Har­ris reveals the sur­pris­ing cor­re­la­tions between the spread of cof­fee con­sump­tion and the estab­lish­ment of mod­ern insti­tu­tions:

This is a guest post by Mor­gan Stew­art, an edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant and founder of With­in Reach Edu­ca­tion­al Con­sul­tants.

Is Charles Bukowski a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Brutally Honest, Yet Oddly Inspiring, Poems and Decide for Yourself

in Literature, Writing | February 19th, 2018

I don’t know if he’s been replaced as a major influ­ence on young, rest­less (and almost exclu­sive­ly male) aspir­ing writ­ers, but once upon a time—if you weren’t into the roman­tic wan­der­lust of Ker­ouac but still con­sid­ered your­self a fringe character—it might be to the hard-boiled shit-talk­ing of wise old man Charles Bukows­ki that you turned. Upon first learn­ing this, and being a busy col­lege stu­dent, I decid­ed to take a crash course and checked out a doc­u­men­tary.

I did not find myself charmed all at once. But one can fall in love with an author’s per­sona yet loathe them on the page. Bukowski’s crude­ness and bad humor on film could not hide the deep wells of sad­ness in which he seemed to swim, as if—like some ancient cyn­ic philosopher—he knew some­thing pro­found and ter­ri­ble and spared us the telling of it by pos­ing as a drunk­en, half-mad street-cor­ner racon­teur. I had to go and read him.

In his idiom—that of an elo­quent street­wise barfly—Bukowski can be every bit as pas­sion­ate and pro­found as his hero Dos­to­evsky. His unfor­get­table mix­ing of com­ic seed­i­ness and casu­al abuse with a deeply trag­ic mourn­ing over the human con­di­tion, while not to everyone’s taste, make his decades-long strug­gle out of penury and obscu­ri­ty a feat wor­thy of the telling in his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal prose and poet­ry.

But does it make him a role mod­el? For any­one but cer­tain young, most­ly male, aspir­ing writ­ers maybe spend­ing more time drink­ing than writ­ing, that is?

A fair num­ber of peo­ple seem to think so, and I leave it to you to decide, first by lis­ten­ing to the Bukows­ki poems read here, post­ed on YouTube with heavy, inspi­ra­tional back­ground music. Some are giv­en new titles to sound more like self-help seminars—such as “Rein­vent Your Life” at the top (orig­i­nal­ly “No Lead­ers, Please”). The video read­ing called “Go all the way,” sec­ond from top, changes the title of “Roll the Dice,” a clas­sic pic­ture of Bukowski’s uncom­pro­mis­ing com­mit­ment to “going all the way,” even if it means “freez­ing on a park bench” and “los­ing girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe your mind.”

Solid­ly mid­dle-class par­ents might approve of the first poem’s sen­ti­ments, which could be wedged into a suit­ably vague, yet bold-sound­ing com­mence­ment speech or a job recruiter’s pep talk. But “Roll the Dice” sim­ply goes too far. “It could mean jail, it could mean deri­sion, mock­ery, iso­la­tion”? This won’t do at all. Hear anoth­er read­ing of “Roll the Dice” by inspi­ra­tional rock star Bono fur­ther up, just after the more Bukows­ki-like Tom Waits reads “The Laugh­ing Heart,” fre­quent­ly ref­er­enced for its inten­si­ty of feel­ing. Like Thomas Hardy or Leonard Cohen, the bard of the barstools could look life straight in the eye, see all of its bleak­ness and vio­lence, and still man­age at times to catch a divine glim­mer.

And for the many aspi­rants to whom Bukows­ki has appealed, we have, fur­ther up, “So, You Want to Be a Writer?” Before you hear, or read, this poem, be advised: these are not warm words of encour­age­ment or help­ful life-coach­ing in verse. It is the kind of raw talk no respectable writ­ing teacher will give you, and maybe they’re right not to, who’s to say? Except a man who went all the way, froze on park bench­es, went to jail, lost girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe his mind? Read an excerpt of Bukowski’s writ­ing advice below, and just above, hear the author him­self read “Friend­ly Advice to a Lot of Young Men,” which urges them to do vir­tu­al­ly any­thing they like, “But don’t write poet­ry.”

don’t be like so many writ­ers,
don’t be like so many thou­sands of
peo­ple who call them­selves writ­ers,
don’t be dull and bor­ing and
pre­ten­tious, don’t be con­sumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned them­selves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rock­et,
unless being still would
dri­ve you to mad­ness or
sui­cide or mur­der,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burn­ing your gut,
don’t do it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton (RIP) Reads Poems by Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance” 

Inspi­ra­tion from Charles Bukows­ki: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crap­py,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Tim Minchin Presents “9 Rules to Live By” in a Funny and Wise Commencement Speech (2013)

in Graduation Speech, Life | February 19th, 2018

Tim Minchin isn’t much of a role mod­el in the hair brush­ing depart­ment, but in every oth­er way the pro­lif­ic comedian/actor/writer/musician/director inspires.

He’s unabashed­ly enthu­si­as­tic about sci­ence, a life­long learn­er who’s a strong believ­er in the pow­er of exer­cise, trav­el, and thank you notes….

He uses his star­dom and tal­ent for pen­ning con­tro­ver­sial lyrics to raise aware­ness and mon­ey for such caus­es as the UK’s Nation­al Autis­tic Soci­ety and a local char­i­ty formed to send adults who, as chil­dren, were sex­u­al­ly abused by Catholic cler­gy, to Rome.

His cre­ative out­put is prodi­gious.

And he’s one hel­lu­va com­mence­ment speak­er.

In 2013, his alma mater, the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia, award­ed him an Hon­orary Degree of Doc­tor of Let­ters and invit­ed him to address the grad­u­at­ing class.

The speak­er insist­ed up front that an “inflat­ed sense of self impor­tance” born of address­ing large crowds was the only thing that posi­tioned him to give such an address, then went on to share a fun­ny 9‑point guide to life that stressed the impor­tance of grat­i­tude, edu­ca­tion, intel­lec­tu­al rig­or, and kind­ness toward oth­ers.

If you haven’t the time to watch the entire 12-minute speech, above, be sure to cir­cle back lat­er. His advice is hilar­i­ous, heart­warm­ing, and mem­o­rable.

In extrap­o­lat­ing the essence of each of his nine “life lessons” below, we dis­cov­ered many bonus lessons con­tained there­in (one of which we include below.)

Tim Minchin’s 9 Rules To Live By

1. You don’t have to have a dream. Be micro-ambi­tious and see what hap­pens as you pur­sue short-term goals…
2. Rather than chas­ing hap­pi­ness for your­self, keep busy and aim to make some­one else hap­py.
3. Remem­ber that we are lucky to be here, and that most of us — espe­cial­ly those of us with a col­lege edu­ca­tion, or those active­ly seek­ing to edu­cate them­selves to a sim­i­lar degree—will achieve a lev­el of wealth that “most humans through­out his­to­ry could not have dreamed of.”
4. Exer­cise. Among oth­er things, it helps com­bat depres­sion. 
5. Iden­ti­fy your bias­es, prej­u­dices, and priv­i­leges and do not exempt your own beliefs and opin­ions from intel­lec­tu­al rig­or.
6. Be a teacher!  Swell the ranks of this noble pro­fes­sion.
7. Define your­self by what you love, rather than what you despise, and lav­ish praise on the peo­ple and things that move you.
8. Respect those with less pow­er than your­self, and be wary of those who do not. 
9. Don’t be in a rush to suc­ceed. It might come at a cost. 

BONUS.  Uphold the notion that art and sci­ence are not an either/or choice, but rather com­pli­ment each oth­er. “If you need proof—Twain, Dou­glas Adams, Von­negut, McE­wan, Sagan and Shake­speare, Dick­ens for a start. …The arts and sci­ences need to work togeth­er to improve how knowl­edge is com­mu­ni­cat­ed. “

Read the full tran­script of Minchin’s com­mence­ment speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

David Lynch Gives Uncon­ven­tion­al Advice to Grad­u­ates in an Unusu­al Com­mence­ment Address

Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Com­mence­ment Address: The Entire World is an Elec­tive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Science of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Version of Yale University’s Most Popular Course

in Online Courses, Psychology | February 15th, 2018

Don’t lis­ten to peo­ple who tell you they’ve found the one true path to hap­pi­ness — but do lis­ten to peo­ple who seem seri­ous­ly in search of it. One such per­son, Yale psy­chol­o­gy and cog­ni­tive sci­ence pro­fes­sor Lau­rie San­tos, teach­es a whole course on the sub­ject: Psych 157, also known as “Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life.” And even though col­lege stu­dents are liv­ing the best time of their lives — or so the cul­ture keeps insist­ing to them — enough of them desire its insights to make it the most pop­u­lar class at the uni­ver­si­ty, with more than 1,180 stu­dents cur­rent­ly enrolled.

“The course focus­es both on pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy — the char­ac­ter­is­tics that allow humans to flour­ish, accord­ing to Dr. San­tos — and behav­ioral change, or how to live by those lessons in real life,” writes The New York Times’ David Shimer. “Stu­dents must take quizzes, com­plete a midterm exam and, as their final assess­ment, con­duct what Dr. San­tos calls a ‘Hack Yo’Self Project,’ a per­son­al self-improve­ment project.” The body of knowl­edge under­ly­ing it all is hard­ly obvi­ous: “Sci­en­tists didn’t real­ize this in the same way 10 or so years ago, that our intu­itions about what will make us hap­py, like win­ning the lot­tery and get­ting a good grade — are total­ly wrong,” the arti­cle quotes San­tos as say­ing.

So what, accord­ing to the up-to-date research of San­tos and oth­ers, does make us hap­py? Now, you don’t need to go Yale to find out: you can sim­ply take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” the new online ver­sion of San­tos’ course, on Cours­era. “The first half of the course reveals mis­con­cep­tions we have about hap­pi­ness and the annoy­ing fea­tures of the mind that lead us to think the way we do,” says its descrip­tion. “The sec­ond half of the course focus­es on activ­i­ties that have been proven to increase hap­pi­ness along with strate­gies to build bet­ter habits.”

Now open for enroll­ment, “The Sci­ence of Well-Being” can be tak­en any time, and its num­ber of stu­dents cer­tain­ly won’t be lim­it­ed by the capac­i­ty of Woolsey Hall. If you’d like to get a sense of the learn­ing expe­ri­ence on offer, have a look at the course’s trail­er above, in which San­tos explains the ori­gin and devel­op­ment of the course, which began in her own home and now, with a poten­tial­ly world­wide audi­ence, uses not just the lat­est sci­ence but a spe­cial­ly devel­oped app to help its stu­dents devel­op the ele­ments of their own good life. Will you fin­ish the course per­fect­ly hap­py? She does­n’t promise that, but nobody ever lost their way to hap­pi­ness by know­ing a bit about it.

Enroll in “The Sci­ence of Well-Being” here. And if there’s any con­fu­sion, select the “Audit” option to take the course for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Albert Camus Explains Why Hap­pi­ness Is Like Com­mit­ting a Crime—”You Should Nev­er Admit to it” (1959)

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

The Keys to Hap­pi­ness: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence and the Upcom­ing MOOC by Raj Raghu­nathan

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

Albert Einstein’s Ele­gant The­o­ry of Hap­pi­ness: It Just Sold for $1.6 Mil­lion at Auc­tion, But You Can Use It for Free

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The 25 Principles for Adult Behavior: John Perry Barlow (R.I.P.) Creates a List of Wise Rules to Live By

in Life, Music, Technology | February 9th, 2018

Image by the Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The most suc­cess­ful out­laws live by a code, and in many ways John Per­ry Bar­low, founder of the Elec­tron­ic Free­dom Foun­da­tion, Wyoming ranch­er, and erst­while song­writer for the Grate­ful Dead—who died on Wednes­day at the age of 70—was an arche­typ­al Amer­i­can out­law all of his life. He might have worn a white hat, so to speak, but he had no use for the gov­ern­ment telling him what to do. And his charis­mat­ic defense of unfet­tered inter­net lib­er­ty inspired a new gen­er­a­tion of hack­ers and activists, includ­ing a 12-year-old Aaron Swartz, who saw Bar­low speak at his mid­dle school and left the class­room changed.

Few peo­ple get to leave as last­ing a lega­cy as Bar­low, even had he not pio­neered ear­ly cyber­cul­ture, pen­ning the “Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence of the Inter­net,” a techo-utopi­an doc­u­ment that con­tin­ues to influ­ence pro­po­nents of open access and free infor­ma­tion. He intro­duced the Grate­ful Dead to Dr. Tim­o­thy Leary, under whose guid­ance Bar­low began exper­i­ment­ing with LSD in col­lege. His cre­ative and per­son­al rela­tion­ship with the Dead’s Bob Weir stretch­es back to their high school days in Col­orado, and he became an unof­fi­cial mem­ber of the band and its “junior lyri­cist,” as he put it (after Robert Hunter).

“John had a way of tak­ing life’s most dif­fi­cult things and fram­ing them as chal­lenges, there­fore adven­tures,” wrote Weir in a suc­cinct­ly poignant Twit­ter eulo­gy for his friend. We might think of Bar­low’s code, which he laid out in a list he called the “25 Prin­ci­ples of Adult Behav­ior,” as a series of instruc­tions for turn­ing life’s dif­fi­cul­ties into chal­lenges, an adven­tur­ous refram­ing of what it means to grow up. For Bar­low, that meant defy­ing author­i­ty when it imposed arbi­trary bar­ri­ers and pro­pri­etary rules on the once-wild-open spaces of the inter­net.

But being a grown-up also meant accept­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s behav­ior, life’s pur­pose, and the eth­i­cal treat­ment of one­self and oth­ers. See his list below, notable not so much for its orig­i­nal­i­ty but for its plain­spo­ken reminder of the sim­ple, shared wis­dom that gets drowned in the assaultive noise of mod­ern life. Such uncom­pli­cat­ed ide­al­ism was at the cen­ter of Perry’s life and work.

1. Be patient. No mat­ter what.
2. Don’t bad­mouth: Assign respon­si­bil­i­ty, not blame. Say noth­ing of anoth­er you wouldn’t say to him.
3. Nev­er assume the motives of oth­ers are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the pos­si­ble.
5. Don’t trou­ble your­self with mat­ters you tru­ly can­not change.
6. Expect no more of any­one than you can deliv­er your­self.
7. Tol­er­ate ambi­gu­i­ty.
8. Laugh at your­self fre­quent­ly.
9. Con­cern your­self with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Nev­er for­get that, no mat­ter how cer­tain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remem­ber that your life belongs to oth­ers as well. Don’t risk it friv­o­lous­ly.
13. Nev­er lie to any­one for any rea­son. (Lies of omis­sion are some­times exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. Seek to define your mis­sion and pur­sue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first per­son­al pro­noun.
17. Praise at least as often as you dis­par­age.
18. Admit your errors freely and soon.
19. Become less sus­pi­cious of joy.
20. Under­stand humil­i­ty.
21. Remem­ber that love for­gives every­thing.
22. Fos­ter dig­ni­ty.
23. Live mem­o­rably.
24. Love your­self.
25. Endure.

Bar­low the “cow­boy, poet, roman­tic, fam­i­ly man, philoso­pher, and ulti­mate­ly, the bard of the dig­i­tal revolution”—as Stephen Levy describes him at Wired—“became a great explain­er” of the pos­si­bil­i­ties inher­ent in new media. He watched the inter­net become a far dark­er place than it had ever been in the 90s, a place where gov­ern­ments con­duct cyber­wars and impose cen­sor­ship and bar­ri­ers to access; where bad actors of all kinds manip­u­late, threat­en, and intim­i­date.

But Bar­low stood by his vision, of “a world that all may enter with­out priv­i­lege or prej­u­dice accord­ed by race, eco­nom­ic pow­er, mil­i­tary force, or sta­tion of birth… a world where any­one, any­where may express his or her beliefs, no mat­ter how sin­gu­lar, with­out fear of being coerced into silence or con­for­mi­ty.”

This may sound naïve, yet as Cindy Cohn writes in EFF’s obit­u­ary for its founder, Bar­low “knew that new tech­nol­o­gy could cre­ate and empow­er evil as much as it could cre­ate and empow­er good. He made a con­scious deci­sion to move toward the lat­ter.” His 25-point code urges us to do the same.

via Kot­tke/Hack­er News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

The Hobo Eth­i­cal Code of 1889: 15 Rules for Liv­ing a Self-Reliant, Hon­est & Com­pas­sion­ate Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness