interdisciplinarity ⇛

• RSA Animate: The Power of Networks
  • ↪ a paradigm shift of how we see knowledge: knowledge used to be seen as a 'tree' in a strictly hierarchical structure (the analogy being that areas would branch off individually and remain disconnected to much of the rest of the 'tree'), however we now know that knowledge is highly interconnected, just like a dense network or web (disparate areas of knowledge are tied together)
  • ↪ the neuro-network of a mouse is similar to that of the neuro-network of a human to that of a millennium simulation – suggesting a 'universal structure' of a network
• Haidt: The Righteous Mind
  • ↪ open-mindedness to opposing political (thereby moral) stances in order to achieve interdisciplinarity: liberals act on a three-moral foundation (care-harm, fairness, liberty), whereas conservatives act almost equally among all six foundations
• Joe Moran: Interdisciplinarity
  • ↪ "The development of disciplines has not merely created self-contained bodies of knowledge; it has been accompanied by frequent attempts to assert the superiority of certain fields of learning over others."
  • ↪ "I want to suggest that the value of the term, ‘interdisciplinary’, lies in its flexibility and indeterminacy, and that there are potentially as many forms of interdisciplinarity as there are disciplines. In a sense, to suggest otherwise would be to ‘discipline’ it, to confine it within a set of theoretical and methodological orthodoxies. Within the broadest possible sense of the term, I take interdisciplinarity to mean any form of dialogue or interaction between two or more disciplines."

societies ⇛

• Wade Davis x TED: Dreams from endangered cultures
  • ↪ "Do we want a polychromatic world of diversity?"
  • ↪ "At the National Geographic, we believe that politics will never accomplish anything [...] Storytelling can change the world."

health + environment ⇛

• RSA Animate: the Empathic Civilisation
  • ↪ "We are soft wired to experience another's plight as if we are experiencing it ourselves." (mirror neurons)
  • ↪ "There is no empathy in Utopia because there is no mortality or suffering."
  • the idea that our empathy has extended due to technological progresses; our range of empathy differs to that of a hunter-forager 3000 years ago, as time-space convergence (due to a range of networks and transport developments) has allowed us to reach across fictional nation states and call such members 'extended family'
  • ↪ e.g. natural disasters: our empathy extends towards strangers in other countries as we are able to 'feel' their suffering (exacerbated via Twitter, Youtube and other media sources that allow us to see the vast and disastrous effects)
  • ↪ relates to Haidt: 90% chimp and 10% bee (we do not fully act in the name of utilitarianism and 'self-interest')
  • ↪ however, i disagree that our empathy is able to extend to the whole human race (to thereby catalyse a global change and save our human race and biosphere) – where would we begin? what is our solution or our 'starting point'? how do we engage in empathy when there are those who suppress this trait as their first drives? how do we get such empathy to last – surely, as we see with deaths of celebrities or reporting on natural disasters, this shared empathic trait 'fades' as modern culture also replenishes itself?
• RSA Animate: Language as a Window to Human Nature
  • ↪ "With overt language, you can't take it back (and continue the fiction of a friendship) – it's 'out there'."
  • ↪ Generalises veiled language on Western cultural norms