Retrospective 2024-16

This is a retrospective of week 16, 2024 (2024-04-15–2024-04-21).

It turned out that I didn’t write the review of Elisabet Sahtouris’ latest book as mentioned last week. Instead I’ve dived deep into the work of Forrest Landry. I heard about Forrest Landry the first time this week in Tim Freke’s interview with David Schmachtenberger. I then discovered that Freke had done an interview with Landry too. Forrest Landry introduces himself and his work like this:

…I grew up as a as a woodworker. I grew up…as a as an apprentice to my dad… I learned a kind of mastery of craft… to work with one’s hands and to to make things… I wanted to be able to understand the inside world of my own psyche with the same level of clarity and detail and precision as which I could understand mathematics or computer science…

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/7gO7Qic804k?feature=shared&t=663

Some of this material [that I’ve explored for the majority of my life] is now being used…to think about community process, like how do we understand value, how do we understand the relationship between meaning, value, and purpose.”

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/7gO7Qic804k?feature=shared&t=3998

We need to ground the notion of choice in something that is…meaningful. We need to show that the notion of meaningfulness is actually itself grounded. It’s not just about purpose. It’s not just about, what can we do? But it’s about, why are we doing it and what does that mean? So, in effect, what I’ve done is I’ve created a series of concepts, a series of architectures, that allow for the emergence of those concepts to be recognized as grounded at a level of truth that is at least as deep as everything we know about science and technology, and more, much more.

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/7gO7Qic804k?feature=shared&t=4431

I then found Manda Scott’s interview with Forrest Landry, which covers topics like values and how to make good choices. Landry asks in a TEDx Talk:

How do we enter into the kind of stewardship that recognizes the true meaningfulness, the true value of life on this earth? How do we begin to think about those choices in an effective way?

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/iAmLRLc4ffk?feature=shared&t=515

Forrest Landry suggests in the interview with Manda Scott that “to the degree that we can become at least a little bit more aware of the actual genuine value of the of the totality of life, and the more we make choices on that basis, the…easier it’s going to be to make good choices“. Landry says that “the notion of the real is actually bound to the notion of choice just as much as it’s bound to the notion of change and causation“.

Forrest Landry invites all of us to do the following in his TEDx Talk:

I invite you to treat your choice, your capacity to choose, as sacred. In the same way that I would describe this world as being critically sacred, the notion of sacred is a deepening of the notion of value, a deepening of the notion of purpose, a deepening of the notion of meaningfulness.

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/iAmLRLc4ffk?feature=shared&t=1110

Forrest Landry ends his TEDx Talk with the following words:

Love is that which enables choice. Love is always stronger than fear. Always choose on the basis of love.

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/iAmLRLc4ffk?feature=shared&t=1173

Forrest Landry explains and expands this last statement in Daniel Schmachtenberger’s interview with him. They explore love and choice in this interview and discuss (among other things):

• What is a good choice and what is a loving choice?
• The distinction between choice and decision.
• Being, becoming and doing.
• Being in right relationship with yourself, other people and the world.

I have started reading Forrest Landry’s An Immanent Metaphysics and will return work this book and Landry’s work in future posts. I find it interesting that the book has been formatted as a series of aphorisms since Goethe used aphorisms too. Forrest Landry’s exploration of values and good choices also reminds me of Robert S. Hartman’s work (see the related posts below).

Related posts:
Book Review: Freedom to Live by Robert S. Hartman
Book Review: The Structure of Value by Robert S. Hartman
Notes on Goethe’s Aphorisms translated by Daniel Christian Wahl
Organisms must be free to choose