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Reading List:

 

The following books and courses, while not an exhaustive list, have had a significant impact on my intellectual and creative development:

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Philosophy:

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Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spake Zarathustra!, The Twilight of the Idols, The Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil

S. Kierkergaard - The Present Age, The Sickness Unto Death

Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Idea

Albert Camus - The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus 

Ayn Rand - Capitalism

Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

Jean Paul Sartre - Existential Psychoanalysis

Hannah Arendt - The Origins of Totalitarianism

PlatoThe Dialogues

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Religion/Mythology:

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C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters

Joseph Campbell - The Hero With A Thousand Faces, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, Occidental Mythology, Myths to Live By, The Power of Myth (interview series with Bill Moyers)

John Dominic Crossan - The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant

Eric Fromm - The Dogma of Christ

Robert M. Price - Holy Fable: The Old

Testament Undistorted by Faith

Richard Carrier - On The Historicity of Jesus

S.G.F. Brandon - Jesus and the Zealots:A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity

Reza Aslan - Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Houston Smith - The World's Religions

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Theology:

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Kelly Brown Douglas - The Black Christ

Dean WIlliam Ferm - Contemporary American Theology

Donald Bloesch - Essentials of Evangelical Theology

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New Age/Speculative:

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Terrance McKenna - The Archaic Revival

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Art/Music:

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Gregory Youtz - On Composition

Anthony Storr - Music and the Mind

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Musicology:

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Anthony Storr - Music and the Mind

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Psychology:

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Ken Wilber - A Brief History of Everything, The Spectrum of Consciousness, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Up From Eden, Eye To Eye: The Quest for a New Paradigm, The Eye of Spirit, No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth, Boomeritis

Jordan B. Peterson - Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

Carl Jung - Psychology and Religion

Eric Neumann - The Origins and History of Consciousness

Sigmund Freud - Psychoanlysis

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Economics:

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Milton Friedman - Free To Choose

Friedrich Hayek - The Road to Serfdom

Robert HeilbronerThe Worldly Philosophers

Thomas Sowell -

Glenn Lowry -

Karl Marx - Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto

Steven Levitt, Stephen J. Dubnar -

Freakanomics

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Classic Literature:

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Homer - The Illyiad

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(Existential Authors)

George Saunders - Pastoralia

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, Sirens of Titan, Timequake

George Orwell - 1984, Animal Farm, The Road to Wigan Pier

Herman Hesse - The Glass Bead Game, Siddhartha

Samuel Beckett - No Exit

Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis

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Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland

Frank L. Baum - The Wizard of Oz

C.S. LewisThe Chronicles of Narnia

J.R.R Tolkein - The Lord of the Rings, The Samirillion

Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead, Altas Shrugged

 

(Contemporary)

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Clive Barker - Imajica, Weaveworld

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter cycle

Robert Pullman - His Dark Materials trilogy

Lev Grossman - The Magicians trilogy

Raymond Feist - Riftwar Saga

Anne Rice - Interview..., Memnoch the Devil

Suzanne Collins - The Humger Games Trilogy

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Science/non-fiction:

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Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein - A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century 

Eric Weinstein - Geometric Unity

Gary Zukav - The Dancing Wu Li Masters

Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World

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Historical non-fiction:

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn -

The Gulag Archipeligo

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 Educational Courses:

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Landmark Education- Landmark Forum (three day educational intensive seminar using insights from existentialism, Buddhism, and other traditions to unlock personal responsibility and meaning-making)

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Jordan Peterson- Self Authoring program, Maps of Meaning and various other online lecture material

Useful websites, Podcasts, & Content Creators:

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Daniel Schmactenberger- The Consilience Project, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, Jordan Peterson, The Portal with Eric Weinstein, Paul VanderKlay, Jordan Greenhall, Academic Agent, John Vervaeke (Cognitive Scientist, University of Toronto), Rebel Wisdom, The Boyce of Reason, Making Sense with Sam Harris, Zero Books with Douglas Lain, New Discourses with James Lyndsey, Po the Person, The Critical Drinker, MythVision Podcast,

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  Social Capital Society

Many of us sense that we inhabit a world in which the traditional sources of meaning and moral authority have been undermined, fractured, and in some cases, completely destroyed. The Social Capital Society is a community of friends and people of all ages seeking to reconstruct a functional system of meaning, truth, beauty, and goodness in a world that can be suspicious or even openly hostile to such a pursuit. 

 

How do we understand our deep religious impulses in a world that dismisses and ridicules the idea of God or the supernatural? What tools should we bring to bear on the problem of making sense of the profound complexity of our contemporary world? What place do dance, music, beauty, truth, love, and openness have in a world that seems to be primarily oriented toward economic and material? How do I refuse the endless temptations of immediate pleasure so that I might build something truly valuable for my future self and for others who count on me? What must I believe in order to practice a more spiritually integrated life? These are only a sampling of the kinds of questions the SCS might explore.

 

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The Social Capital Society Creed

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The most authentic experience of Being is available through the action of pursuing the highest value we can imagine. The path toward this value is illuminated by the apprehension of meaning. To discover meaning, we must take responsibility for our place in the world. To do this, we must tell our truth in every moment- especially when the path forward is unclear.

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Truth - Responsibility - Meaning - Value - Action - Being

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Social capital (a term first used by economists Jane Jacobs and Glenn Loury, but which I am modifying and expanding somewhat) is the currency with which individuals and groups build appreciation, admiration, acknowledgement, commitment, and reciprocity of action toward one another in the shared desire to pursue meaningful lives. The Social Capital Society operates in tandem with The Peter Benjamin Music Workshop and focuses on building individual, relational, and communal integrity through principles derived from collective action and dialectic process among those who participate. This dialectic is performed through the sharing and distribution of ideas, experiences, insights, knowledge, skills, and expertise. Put more simply, we come together to share our experiences, skills, knowledge, and insights in order to create a healthier world.

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The SCS seeks action, partnership, and service with a wide range of people and organizations. Here are just a few of the groups and organizations that we are involved with.

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Meetings and activities -

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Life, Labor, & Work - Discussions on how to integrate what you do for a living with what you do for life.

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We live in a time of significant economic and social change. As a expression of this change, the connection between our jobs, our relationships, our habits, and our health is perhaps more confusing than ever. The life, labor, and work discussion group is a one-on-one and/or group dialogue designed to give you tools and strategies on how best to optimize life's most important things. Contact Peter at peterbenjaminmusic@gmail.com to see how you can participate!

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Reflection, Value, & Dialogue - Identifying and orienting yourself toward your highest value.

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The religious act of worship is essentially one of acknowledging and orienting ourselves to the thing(s) we value most highly. For traditionally religious people, this highest value is understood as God. However, whether or not we consider ourselves religious, we all have a set of values that we arrange into some kind of hierarchy, whether or not we realize it. For some, it might be family.* For others it could be work. For still others it might be art, music, or some other creative pursuit. It's important to realize however, that any action in pursuit of our highest values is religious in nature. Unfortunately, many people are oriented toward the pursuit of things that aren't good for them or those around them. Perhaps we can re-identify and reformulate what we most value and reorient ourselves in pursuit of them such that our lives have the greatest possible meaning.

 

The Reflection, Value, and Dialogue program currently takes place Sunday mornings and is interactive educational group meeting focusing on the discussion and development of the core ideas and values out of which we can live the most authentic and productive human lives. The group focuses on biblical narratives as well as a diverse range of sources including academic, literary, film, music, and philosophical to more fully contextualize the stories that form the foundation of our shared civilization. This program is geared toward families,* groups, and individuals who may not have a strong doctrinal commitment within a church but who are interested in the foundational narratives and teaching of the biblical canon. Peter approaches The Bible and other sacred writings, narratives, and texts as a studied and informed lay-philosopher and experienced educator and whose lifestyle is heavily bent toward religious ideas and practice, regardless of their historical or cultural origins.

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* In my experience, one of the most powerful driving forces behind the loss of meaning in our lives has to do with the disappointment and dysfunction around the relationships within our own families. Humans understand and experience the fundamental realities of the world in large part through the personalities or images of the father, mother, and child. If our experience of these basic personalities of nature becomes somehow damaged or otherwise pathological, we will struggle to exist fully and authentically in the world as adults. Simply put, strengthening and repairing family roles and relationships is a major part of improving our lives.

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Contact Peter at peterbenjaminmusic@gmail.com to see how you can participate.

Peter Benjamin Schatz earned a Bachelor of Musical Arts from Pacific Lutheran University in 1997 where he studied under renown composers, choral directors, philosophers and theologians. He supplemented his music studies with a broad range of philosophy, religion, and humanities courses. His time at PLU was a seminal moment in his intellectual and artistic development.

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