Series description: What is Logos XXI: The Rise of the One? For starters, an epic didactic drama: a fusion of education and spectacle, which is epic in length (the actual duration is forecasted to be the equivalent of one semester of lectures) and scope (= ground covered). Now, how could a project of this size possibly be explained in a few paragraphs? Perhaps, only by alluding to high level themes of both the inspiration which led to its realization and the actual content of the epos. Since Plato, a pioneer of didactic drama, that is, philosophical theatre, is one of the main influences, let’s reduce the author of this project to nothing but an imitator: someone who cannot help, but copy forms of representation. So, what are the existent, historical forms which are being amalgamated into this (literally) moving collage? Clearly, Plato’s form of representation itself (dialogue), but Logos XXI goes all the way back to and thru the biblical form of telling and showing. At last, the title alludes as much to the epic line “in the beginning was the word (= logos)” as to one of the original developers of the idea of ‘logos’: Heraclitus, the philosopher of paradox, of coincidentia oppositorum, of the conflict and unity of opposites, of dark and light, war and peace, truth and illusion, love and hatred, fun and seriousness, levity and gravity, practice and theory, reality and illusion. To put it simply, the poetic substrate of Logos XXI can be defined as Greco-Judeo-Christian. But, what else is on the list of the imitator? Naturally, many of those who followed this very same current of thought and fiction. Dante? Certainly. Meister Eckhart? Yes. Blake? Definitely. Hegel? Sure. Tolkien? Of course! Wittgenstein? Jung? Star Wars? Batman? Joker? The Matrix? Eminem and Slim Shady? Why the hell not?! At last, what is Christian story-telling, if not centered around a conflict of opposites? And yet, Logos XXI would not be Logos XXI, if it was behind its time and had not dealt with the ‘Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ and the guy who went mad trying to move beyond good and evil. So, anti-Christian, Nietzschean, it is. But, Nietzsche was anti-Plato, so how, if at all, can such unholy union be imitated? Well, paradox rules: in XXI, God returns as Joker with a formula of absolute logic and as Dictator with a vision of the Kingdom of the One. And as king. The series starts with a divine peace offering presented by Walter Theodor Feuergeist aka God’s Joker and “GOAT”, followed by David Donnerstein’s declaration of the Final World War: the Platonic Führer must redeem his fathers.
Old Description: Logos XXI is an epic didactic drama continuing the history of Western Thought with the return of the One. In Level 1, God's Joker presents David Donnerstein's peace-offering: a philosophical reaction to the pronunciation of the Final Solution to the Human Question which was triggered by the technologically-enframed Western Mind. In Level 2, David Donnerstein declares the Final World War, before he joins his brother and propaganda minister on The One Podcast to announce his utopia and remake of Plato's Republic. While no background in philosophy is necessarily needed, the series draws as much on the works of Plato, Nietzsche, Jung or Wittgenstein as on the poetics of Dante, William Blake or Fernando Pessoa. Form and content are further influenced by comics, rap and 21st century cinema (i.e. Tarantino). The series is hierarchically ordered and will feature a total of eight levels. Level 1 may be considered the optional background, the subterranean dimension, if you will, to the edifice which will be mapped out in Level 2 to then be raised in an exponentially increasing manner.
Author profile (one perspective): A native German, fluent in three foreign languages, with an education in business and economics and years of tech industry experience in corporate America and Europe, the author was pursuing a career as investment portfolio manager, before realizing that his true interest and passion was in the market of ideas and their representation. Transferring his analytical training from the monetary domain to the cognitive domain, his model of the mind featuring all but four elements is likely the most promising innovation in 21st century philosophy, yielding significant insights into how cognitive capital ought to be allocated in order for young minds and society at large to flourish. Given his background in model building, the author is currently working on an algorithm to transform the internet into an attention meritocracy: a project resembling Ray Dalio's "idea meritocracy" at Bridgewater Associates. In the spirit of Plato, he represents his ideas in the form of dramatic dialogues, where a joyful Joker interviews a totalitarian thinker. Totalitarian, as in "absolutely convinced of the truthfulness of his ideas and so much so that he bears the appropriate title Platonic Führer. Similar to Warren Buffett before the dot-com bubble burst and Michael Burry before the crash of the housing market, the author is best characterized as a 'contrarian idea investor’, and if ideas carried a monetary value and were traded in a regulated idea market, he would hold significant short positions in Western intelligentsia's current world models. To sum up, the author fuses the chaotic imagination of the inspired poet with the sober rationality of a chess player. Then again, who cares for the profile of the author, since the "death of the author"? It should however be pointed out that as an innovator, the author poses a threat to the way "mental business is being done" by the established attention market leaders in both the education and entertainment industries.
Author profile (another perspective): The author believes that the following argument is self-defensive, that is perhaps not self-evident at first sight, but rock solid upon deep thought: death is certain. Mortality applies universally. And there is no escaping it. Except for living in forgetfulness of this most profound existential condition, of course. Then, everything goes and it is not clear what to focus on, because the unconsciously expected time span of one’s life seems to extend infinitely. Hence, boredom. Hence, vice. Hence, the pursuit of any project promising illusory meaning. Now, there are by definition two extreme ways of dealing with this: Denial of Death - or its memory. Absolute forgetfulness or absolute remembrance. To remember is an interesting word. In English, it means something like “to re-embody”. The Spanish “acordar-se” signifies “waking oneself up” (to a memory), while the German “er-innern” means to re-interiorize. As if death, or perhaps even the dead, were always there to be re-embodied. Then again, the body dies, so what is the point? If one cares about some-body else, and in fact more than about oneself; if one was willing to die for some-body and actually mean it, then how ought such person live? Since death is certain and its imminent possibility ever-given, the one way to be of absolute service to one’s loved ones would be to live in the utmost presence of death, thus re-embodying the dead in order to pass them on. That is, the contents of their mind or perhaps more importantly, their self-knowledge. To provide those outliving the dead with that which they will need to deal with their existential condition. And eventually, overcome it. However, absolute consciousness of mortality would be insanity, while the opposite renders people slaves of their time.
