Love, Death, and Annihilation in Contemporary Literature and Cinema

Questions of Love and Death are among the deepest that humans can ask. Out of thirty million species of life on Earth, Homo sapiens is singular in its need for imaginative works in order to complete the movement from infancy to maturity. When we reflect on the devastation taking place throughout the Earth Community at this time, we need to ask the obvious question: Why have our symbolic works failed so spectacularly?

Part of the answer can be seen in the shift in our universities from communities focused on awakening the deep qualities of humanity to training camps for attaining the particular cognitive skills required by our corporations. Departments of Philosophy throughout America are emblematic of this devolution. Instead of fostering the quest for truth, our academic philosophers convinced themselves they should make their field "scientific" by avoiding such, for them, embarrassing topics as "wisdom" or "the meaning of life". If philosophers are going to abandon this quest, the novelists, filmmakers, and other artists will take up the challenge to provide the works of the imagination necessary for human development.

This conversation event is adapted from a new cross-departmental course also titled Love, Death, and Annihilation in Contemporary Literature and Cinema taught at CIIS by Carolyn Cooke and Brian Thomas Swimme.

Pre-registration - $10
Members - $8
At the Door - $15