Templates · Slides · Study register · Draft

Study deck

For white papers, research talks and seminars: rigour leads. A fifteen-slide talk on Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good (White paper No. 6), as a mock to work out both the design and the talk.

Every content slide states a claim as a sentence in Restora, then shows the evidence: a figure, a short list, a table or a quote.
Polyamine on the cover only. White ground; woodcuts only on section slides; the one night is the closing slide, as on the paper’s back cover.
Figures are the house diagrams, unchanged: they carry their own title and signature. Photographs sit flat and square.

See every slide

The deck at a glance

Every slide

The paper’s cover: a blue painted heart with leaves growing from it — **1 · Cover.** The one Polyamine in a study deck. Series line, title, subtitle, authors; the paper’s own cover flat on the right with a hairline edge. `.slide--cover`

The argument

Modernity has staged a heist.

The field of legitimate knowledge has been stripped of all that’s good and beautiful, leaving only what can be measured.

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good2

2 · Statement. One claim set alone in Restora, one plain line under it. The talk’s thesis, or a turn in the argument. .slide--statement

Contents

Four steps in the argument

1The wisdom gapOur power grows faster than our capacity to use it well
2Questions of quantityHow modern decision-making reduced value to measurement
3Knowing beyond measurementValueception, and the work of Christopher Alexander
4Who’s wise, and how do we know?Peer-selected networks, and what they mean for democracy

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good3

3 · Contents. The parts in order, numbered because they are a sequence, each with one line on what it argues. .slide--study.slide--contents

Part one

The wisdom gap

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good4

4 · Section. White ground, the part title in Restora, one small woodcut, as a chapter opens in the paper. .slide--section.slide--plain

Technological power rises steeply over time while our capacity to use it well rises slowly; the gap between them widens — **5 · Figure.** A house diagram fills the slide as it is: its title is already the claim and it signs itself, so the slide adds only its number. `.slide--figure`

Wisdom, a practical capacity, branches into valueception (sensing what’s good), sensemaking (discerning paths towards the good) and will (the resolve to act) — **6 · Figure.** The second figure: a concept map. Same treatment. `.slide--figure`

Part two

Questions of quantity

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good7

7 · Section. .slide--section.slide--plain

Questions of quantity

Modern societies trust two ways of knowing, and sideline a third

Rationality: deriving outcomes by logic.
Empiricism: objective facts about the world, usually by measurement.
Valueception: sensing what is good. Dismissed as “subjective”, and so left uncultivated.

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good8

8 · Claim and list. The headline says what to see; the list is the evidence, in short full sentences, one level, ink square markers. .slide--study + .slide__list

“The meta-crisis is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of what is valuable … pursuing an abstract definition of value, quantitative, financialised, to the detriment of the actual, living field of embodied, intrinsic value.”
Zak Stein

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good9

9 · Quote. A long quotation in Restora, the source in Apfel. No mark: the words carry it. .slide--quote.slide--plain

Part three

Knowing beyond measurement

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good10

10 · Section. .slide--section.slide--plain

Notre-Dame seen along a tree-lined quay on the Seine, people sitting by the water — **11 · Claim and photograph.** The claim and its evidence (here a quotation) on the left; the photograph bleeds off the right edge, flat, with a straight edge in this register. `.slide--split.slide--plain`

Part four

Who’s wise, and how do we know?

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good12

12 · Section. Past ten words would move to a smaller size; here five. .slide--section.slide--plain

Who’s wise

Some fields already choose by discernment, through peers

Field	Who decides	On what basis
Courts	Judges, chosen by experienced peers	Judgement: evidence weighed with experience and intuition
Contemplative lineages	Teachers, recognised by practitioners	“Who were your teachers? Who were theirs?”
Wine, music, sport	Experts, appointed by experts	Similarly discerning peers can tell

All are open to corruption. So wisdom has to be cultivated widely, not only at the top.

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good13

13 · Claim and table. Rows on hairlines, column heads as Apfel tags, a one-line note under the table. For comparisons a list would flatten. .slide--study + .slide__table

Conclusion

What we need, it is within us to discern.

The task is not to invent wisdom anew, but to renew and reintegrate it.

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good14

14 · Statement. The same type as slide 2, closing the argument. .slide--statement

Seeds of Renaissance · White paper No. 6

Read the paper

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good, by Rufus Pollock and Rosie Bell. Free to read and share under CC BY 4.0.

secondrenaissance.net/papers

15 · Closing. The deck’s one night, as on the paper’s back cover: where to read it, the licence, the logo on its disc. .slide--closing.slide--night

Wisdom and Wanting What’s Good

Modernity has staged a heist.

Four steps in the argument

The wisdom gap

Questions of quantity

Modern societies trust two ways of knowing, and sideline a third

Knowing beyond measurement

For Alexander, a good building is not a matter of taste

Who’s wise, and how do we know?

Some fields already choose by discernment, through peers

What we need, it is within us to discern.

Read the paper