Montana Classical College

An Invitation to Our First Live Event The last couple of years, I have been thinking about the best way to host an in-person summer event. I’ve finally figured it out! Every summer, there is a Moby-Dick Read-a-Thon in Pittsfield, MA (July 30th - August 1st) at the property where Melville wrote Moby-Dick. Listeners take turns as readers as the book is read outloud in its entirety across those days. Something the event does not offer, however, is a discussion of the book! That is what we will be doing. We will have a Socratic style seminar each evening after the readings. I will supply the seminar questions to you in early April. You should read the book over the summer with those questions in mind. Then we will have delightful conversations in person. Each conversation will be focused on core themes and characters. A week after the event ends, we will have one additional online conversation to tie up loose ends and discuss the new ideas and questions that will undoubtedly emerge. I’m principally concerned with understanding Ishmael’s view of science, philosophy, and religion (and Fate!); trying to understand Ahab as he understands himself with a view to finding out if his madness might be a spectacular version of a problem that we ourselves have smaller approximations of (in what sense are all of us Ahab-ian in quiet ways?); whether there is a carefully ordered plan of the book that underlies the apparently chaotic structure; and figuring out some kind of rank order of the characters as to who has the best psychological make-up. By no means are these the limits of what we can and will discuss, but it is good to have some things we are aiming at. In previous years, the readings ended at 5:00 pm. Here are the logistics: 1. After the readings, we will get dinner together (or get it on your own if some private time is exactly what you need on such a public-facing day). I have talked on the phone with a number of people who read this stack, and even met a few people in real life who do. I do not exaggerate at all when I say that all of them have been people whom I respect. This will be a powerful network-building event. 2. Seminars will go from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. That doesn’t have to be a hard stopping time, but I know that many of you live well ordered lives where you go to bed early, work out in the morning, etc. 3. I have rooms secured (a conference room at a hotel; community room at a coffee shop; and a private room at a bar for the last night). I will only disclose those locations to those who officially sign up because this is a private event. 4. On Sunday (August 2nd), there is a lovely 3-hour hike right off of Melville’s property for those who don’t have early flights home. 5. The cost: Chapter 99 of Moby-Dick is called “The Doubloon.” So the price for attendance at the seminars is $99. There is no cost to attending the readings. You can donate to the Berkshire Historical Society if the spirit moves you. I will set up a tier on this Substack called the “Doubloon Tier.” In addition to the seminars, you will get 2 years of free access to anything here that is behind a pay wall (which there will be more of soon) 6. If you have questions, you can reply here or email me at: montanaclassicalcollege@gmail.com Do you want to meet good people, listen to America’s greatest novel read by people who love it, discuss the fundamental questions, and then go on a beautiful hike? I’ll see you in July. (that is Melville's house below)

@alexpriou @GregMcBrayer3 I thought that was closer to the center of his talk than the conclusion.

Full house turned up to hear papers on Aristotle and natural science, only to be submitted to @GregMcBrayer3’s thoughts on Xenophon’s “On Hunting with Dogs,” culminating in the observation that DOG spelled backwards is GOD.

@wit_tomahawk It was in Nevada! All the towns we passed through were run down. Arizona strikes me as having a better vibe.

@MTClassical Is this an Arizona bathroom lmao

Driving to Arizona from Montana and a gas station bathroom had a sign that said, "Don't flush colostomy bags. Please place them in the trash." This is a troll sign, right?

@thenewthinkery @GregMcBrayer3 @miamiuniversity I reposted this because I admire Greg, but this account does so much gaslighting on grave matters (like David Bahr being dead, Alex being the next Shah of Iran, etc) that I will have to wait and see if this is true.

It gives us great pleasure to announces that @GregMcBrayer3 is now with @miamiuniversity. Join us in congratulating him on his new position as Assoc. Dir. and Professor of the Miami University Center for Civics, Culture and Society.

@jameszimmermann Thank you

@MTClassical Great post

I love reading and writing at car repair shops. I have no idea what they are doing to my car; they usually don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing. I need them, but they don't need my paper on Moby-Dick. We get to hold each other in simultaneous contempt and admiration.

@second_sailing You couldn't read that much Aristotle in a week with the proper care. But for T/R class that switches between lecture and discussion, reading close to 100 pages of Marx or 20th century IR theorists was not outrageous in 2012, much less when this class took place.

This is a perfectly reasonable amount of reading?

A meditation on the precipitous decline of academic history. stevehayward.substack.com/p/the-slow-sui…

@alexpriou Where they give almost a wikipedia style summary of the work (which is offered as the true account); say that your interpretation deviates from that the summary (=true account); and proceed to solemnly condemn such a deviation?

Received comments on a paper from a blind reviewer, and I think I encountered the rare scholarly type that not only prefers pedantry but can understanding nothing but pedantry.

@cakewalk3 Thank you

@MTClassical This is so Chestertonian in spirit! I got a good laugh

@realmarkmetz That is the worst. I was fortunate today.

@MTClassical Tried to read while my car was being worked on earlier today, but was unfortunately sharing a lobby with a speakerphone American

I went to Catholic school and there was mass every Friday put on by a class. We were practicing, and every single reading that was printed out was riddled with typos (I think copy paste existed when I was a kid, so Idk how this happened). We cruelly traded back and forth pieces of paper with mistakes: "It says 'angles' not 'angels' teehee". She was probably tired and stressed. But that was the moment I realized the adult in the room was far more like me than I had previously suspected.

@reddit_lies A child's first introduction to the incompetence of adults is often his teachers.

Incredible things happening on r/teachers

@paul_jkrause 700 pages into BK right now; planning to read CP in the summer. Will report back in July.

The Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment, which is the better read?

Love this book. See reply for neat web version…

“That the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.” Referring to Adam and Eve

@AlmostMedia @stephwakefield_ An extremely powerful law for the people

@MTClassical @stephwakefield_ This is the goal of Montana’s right to compute law. Enable us to choose how we direct our use of this without state coercion

It seems like there is going to be a kind of bifurcation in mankind: 1) Those who become pasteboard masks behind which AI basically directs their lives and thoughts. They make themselves utterly replaceable because the only skill they have is the ability to enter prompts. 2) On the other side, there are two subsets: a) Those who will relentlessly do everything they can to cultivate what is rarest and most distinctively human, while using AI like a better version of google. b) Those who develop real skills beyond the prompting and who harness AI, and get it to automate and create things while they are sleeping, and who will accrue vast amounts of wealth and power. I attempt to be part of 2a above, but am worried that 2b people will build a world that won't permit, at the level of coercion, 2a to exist. Like mandating smartphones, neural chips that become as normal and required as vaccinations, education through personalized LLMs alone, etc. I want to be a human being, and I want my future children to be human beings.

Looking through Bulkington's catalog right now to take him up on this. One reason you should buy his books is because he features a contemporary cetology page that updates you on the rough number of whales of different types alive right now, with migration patterns!

Talking to a girl is an entirely different activity that questions one's self-worth in a much different way. See Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. Cyrano will fight 100 men or retrieve things on the battlefield that no one else can. Tell Roxane his feelings? Too dangerous.

We do keep shrinking. I can't help but think as well about how Ishmael can look at things like the monkey rope or the line and see them as analogies for the fundamental human situation. There is a hidden kinship between everything that is, perhaps because those things aren't as different as they appear. Does the awareness, though, not amount to anything? It doesn't make us special or cosmically significant, but it seems like the potential to grasp the true character of the situation and even to love it is a small difference between SOME humans and everything else. Am I wrong? Or is my wish to be different or separate the problem?

@MTClassical What's left to keep us thinking we're distinct from every other decaying thing in existence? Not the soul and now not even awareness, rare or not. Ishmael asks "is it...[the] colorless all-color of atheism from which we shrink?" Idk but we keep shrinking, no?