Perspectiva's Substack

A tragic irony drives world events, while hiding in plain sight. In ordinary language, the problem is this: our safety depends on teaching AI to choose the right goals, but we have chosen the wrong goal for AI. Our most advanced technology - AI - is only ‘safe’ to the extent that it can be grown/built in ways that are aligned with human interests and values.

Editor’s Introduction: It is said that it’s easier to act ourselves into new ways of thinking than to think our way into new ways of acting.

I hope this post finds the reader wearing their finest flip-flops and feeling suitably august, and perhaps even reading something more Augustinian than Augustine. Droughts, fires, trade wars and real wars aside, it’s still summer, and it sometimes feels like there is a tacit cultural duty to at least pretend to enjoy ourselves. I am in South India, and I plan to share some reflections on my trip on my personal Substack, The Joyous Struggle, before long.

Only by reckoning with time can we understand why the present feels simultaneously ancient, accelerated, haunted, precious, unstable, and morally urgent. The perennial questions of who we are, why we are here, and what we should do are still with us, but as creatures vulnerable to habit and convenience, we are as likely to look for answers on our phones as in the rivers or the stars. This is still a viable, liveable, wonderful planet, and life is a great blessing.

There will be a new “It’s not woo if it’s true” instalment shortly. I need a little longer to get a feel for all the ways that Henri Corbin’s Latin coinage of mundus imaginalis (the imaginal realm) is indebted to broader currents of Islamic mysticism, not least Ibn Arabi, that I barely know anything about.

Editor’s note: There is a great long read ahead about unusual and transgressive subject matter. In case the choice of inquiry makes you wonder - are you crazy? - I offer a few introductory thoughts to encourage you to invest the time (half an hour) to read it. Perspectiva has always been about offering permission to reimagine the world.

Force collapses time into impulse and action. And this is where attention, Weil’s great counterweight to force, enters the picture. Attention is not simply noticing. Where force compresses, attention reintroduces duration, hesitation, and moral space. The two are structurally opposed. Force makes persons into things. Attention restores the reality of persons. For Weil, this is close to a spiritual act, a form of grace.

The association of anarchy with social mayhem remains deeply embedded in both the popular and theoretical imagination. Indeed, the stereotypical image of the anarchist as a terrorist or a nihilist and that of the state of anarchy as a condition of disorder and anomia endure.Yet these biased stigmatisations are gradually being eroded.

Beyond Tomorrow: Planning a New Civilisation by Christopher Nye “The eyes of the future are looking back at us ...praying for us to see beyond our own time.” — Terry Tempest Williams In the early summer of 2024, I met Christopher Nye, who had travelled far from his home in what he calls “Geezer Valley”, a retirment community in New Mexico, USA, to attend The Realisation Festival in Dorset.

The birth of the heart as an organ of conscious perception Editor’s note: It is a privilege to offer Perspectiva’s substack to others to publish high quality writing that seems aligned with our aims, and thereby support and inspire the existing and emerging fields we are part of.