Bbenzon
Description
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 7356 )
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On the Poverty of Literary Cognitivism 2: What I Learned When I Walked off the...
In the first post in this series I took a look at an essay-review Alan Richardson wrote about two recent books in literary cognitivism and asserted, in effect,... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A White Blackman @ 3QD
Nothing is more deeply American that white folks listening to, absorbing, learning, and then performing black music. I've published a bit of my own enactment... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Poverty of Literary Cognitivism 1: Alan Richardson Makes a Case
I’m pretty sure that Richardson would be somewhere between puzzled and shocked at the idea that he believes literary cognitivism to be an impoverished... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Vicarious Experience, Or How to Think Biologically About Literature
A couple of years ago I reviewed William Flesch, Comeuppance, for Twentieth Century Literature. I've now put that review online at Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's Time to Create New Adulthoods for the New Worlds Now Emerging
Recently the NYTimes published an article on wage-slavery in the white collar ranks of Amazon.com. Many of us reacted in horror at what we read. Read more
Posted on 21 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Secularization Has All but Won, Even in the Islamic World
Oliver Roy has a fascinating article, The disconnect between religion and culture, in Eurosone. There are many different ways to define secularization. Read more
Posted on 21 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why IS Animal Culture So Thin, Or, When & How Did We Learn to Practice?
If by culture we mean learned behavior that is passed down from one generation to the next, then, certainly, animal culture exists. But why is it so thin? Why i... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coates, Baldwin, Obama and Expressive Culture 2
My previous post in this series didn’t go quite where I wanted it to go. Scratch that, as I didn’t really know where I was going – which happens a lot and is a... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stephen Spender on the Last Good War, but We'll Never Know
From Bruce Jackson, The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Project MUSE. Web. 19 Aug. 2015.... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Amazon and the Borg Vs. Shabbos and the People
Over the weekend I read two articles in the NYTimes that struck up a peculiar resonance in my mind. One of them, Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruisin... Read more
Posted on 17 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The “Cultural Reticulum”, a Term in the Study of Cultural Evolution
I’ve long held the view that the environment to which cultural “things” must adapt is the human mind. But not the individual mind. Rather, a bunch of... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In Search of Literary Form
This post is a proper response to the essay by Sandra Macpherson that I mentioned in yesterday’s post, On the Matter of Form: Three Language Games. Read more
Posted on 15 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Frontiers Jam Session on Music
The journals Frontiers in Psychology and Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology have a set of 14 articles on music. I've got excerpts from three articles... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Matter of Form: Three Language Games (attn Sandra MacPherson)
Last evening I decided to avail myself of online resources available to me through my alma mater, Johns hopkins. I took a look through the recent journal... Read more
Posted on 14 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sex, Power, and Purity in Kawajiri’s Ninja Scroll, the Working Paper
This is my most popular post, with 49,861 views as of the time of upload. I decided to turn it into a working paper. Dowload at Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Massive Human Entrainment
Fusaroli R, Perlman M, Mislove A, Paxton A, Matlock T, Dale R (2015) Timescales of Massive Human Entrainment. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0122742.... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Latour, Language, and Translation
I’ve been reading Rita Felski’s draft essay, Comparison, Translation, and Actor-Network Theory, which is about the implications of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network... Read more
Posted on 12 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fear of Religion
I thought I'd repost this piece from The Valve while I'm sorting through a career's worth of work, thinking about my book-in-progress, Mind-Culture Co-Evolution. Read more
Posted on 11 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Visual Resonance 2
For an explanation, see Visual Resonance. Original image: Filtered version: Two different blends (look at. e.g. top center, lower right, the white ornamental... Read more
Posted on 10 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coates, Baldwin, Obama and Expressive Culture
A couple of weeks ago I had a post in which I used game theory and the story of the emperor’s new clothes to talk about Ta-Nehisi Coates, Malcolm X, Game Theory... Read more
Posted on 10 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
