In this third and final lecture unravelling the multifaceted layers of C.S. Lewis’ penetrating mind and playful style contained in his ‘science fiction trilogy’, Rising Tide Foundation President Cynthia Chung tells the tell of ‘That Hideous Strength’ as it has never been told before. In her presentation, Cynthia reviews a tale which serves as a…
C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra: Towards a Beatific or Miserific Vision?
C.S. Lewis is famously known for his work ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’ as well as his impassioned defense of Christianity in an age of accelerating materialism, but he is less known for his work in science fiction. Although not often appreciated as these works deserve, Lewis’ sci-fi trilogy (Out of the Silent…
C.S. Lewis vs H.G. Wells: A Journey out of the Deep Black Void
C.S. Lewis is famously known for his work ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’ as well as his impassioned defense of Christianity in an age of accelerating materialism, but he is less known for his work in science fiction. Although not often appreciated as these works deserve, Lewis’ sci-fi trilogy (Out of the Silent…
What it Means to be an American Citizen this Fourth of July
By Cynthia Chung In celebration of the upcoming Independence Day, I thought I would share with you the transcript of a lecture I delivered 2 years ago on the subject of “Frederick Douglass and the Fight to Save the Soul of America.” It is a pretty heated situation in the United States right now, pretty much likened…
Now Available! Volume 3 of Clash of the Two Americas: The Birth of a Eurasian Manifest Destiny
The Rising Tide Foundation is proud to announce that the third volume of the Clash of the Two Americas trilogy is now available for purchase in paperback and digital editions. Titled “The Birth of a Eurasian Manifest Destiny”, volume three ends in some ways how the trilogy began in 1776 as told in Volume 1……
The Imperial Myth of Canada’s National Policy. Its Contemporary Implications
By Matthew Ehret The mythology of Canada’s National Policy is a multi-layered fallacy of composition which must be addressed from the standpoint of locating Canada’s struggle for nationhood as locked in the midst of a battle between two conceptions of man and law expressed in the British vs. American systems of political economy. Before entering…
Favorable Winds from China: How the BRI is Transforming West Asia
By Cynthia Chung [Orginally published on The Cradle.] ‘A crisis is an opportunity riding the dangerous wind.’ So says a Chinese proverb, and nowhere is this truer than in crisis-ridden West Asia, now a major focus of Beijing’s BRI vision to bring infrastructure, connectivity and economic growth to this struggling region. West Asia’s winds have…
Sparks of a New Renaissance in Painting Emerge from China
By Matthew Ehret It is rare to see new artistic movements arise. It is even rarer that such artistic revolutions manage to respect the best traditions of the past while at the same time infuse something new and improved into society. The fatal error made by many innovators attempting to break with the often stultifying…
Manifest Destiny Done Right. China and Russia Succeed Where the U.S. Failed
By Matthew Ehret “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” -Abraham Lincoln It should be obvious that the world is being sucked into a new Cold War, with old school iron curtains, anti-communist rhetoric and even nuclear sabre rattling pushed by unipolar war hawks in the west. Unlike the first Cold…
Calixa Lavallée: Father of Canada’s National Anthem and Lafayette of American music
By Matthew Ehret Many may have heard of the name Calixa Lavallée as the composer of the song “Ô Canada” which officially became the Canadian National anthem one hundred years after it was first produced in 1880. Many know of the name Marquis de Lafayette as the young French nobleman, who changed the course of…
How the Hudson River School of Canadian Painting was Derailed
At a historical inflection point during the American Civil War, it was uncertain what Canada would become… would we become an independent republic, or a part of Lincoln’s America or would we remain a Northern anti-American confederacy under British control? (Britain’s other confederacy did fail in 1865 after all). Nowhere was this battle over our…
The Edgar Poe You Never Knew: a Mere Writer of Horror or a Humanist Master of the Mind
by Cynthia Chung What say of it? what say CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path? -Chamberlayne’s Pharonnida The purpose of this paper is to debunk the myth surrounding Poe; that he was just a mere writer of horror and that he had an unhealthy obsession with the mad and the morbid…since isn’t that all…
Who Will Be Brave in Huxley’s New World?
By Cynthia Chung “ ‘Science?’….’Yes,’ Mustapha Mond was saying, ‘that’s another item in the cost of stability. It isn’t only art that’s incompatible with happiness; it’s also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled…I’m interested in truth, I like science. But truth’s a menace, science is a public…
As Above, So Below: Re-Uniting the Macroverse with the Microverse Symposium
Although western civilization currently enjoys some of the highest rates of education ever seen in history, it appears that the rates of insolvable problems in the political, economic, military and even scientific spheres have multiplied far faster. If education and science are meant to empower each generation to problem solve, and make ever-more refined discoveries…
Are We Destined to Act on the Future? Optical Biophysics as a Teleological Approach to Science
In this 2013 lecture, Rising Tide Foundation director Matthew Ehret presents an introduction to the scientific discoveries that shaped our understanding of matter, electromagnetism and how the revolution in field theory gives us a better way to observe how systems of non-living, living, and cognitive matter are organised by future states of existence. By investigating…
Discourse On the Debt of Africa, Thirty-Three Years On
by PD Lawton Today, Africa stands at the cross-roads. This is the last opportunity for the continent`s leadership to decide the fate of 1.3 billion people. This is the most crucial moment in Africa`s history. The choice on one hand, is to continue following IMF diktat and agree to a future of economic policy that benefits the…
Political Pessimism and Opposition to the Development of the African Interior with Transaqua
By PD Lawton We live in strange times where supposedly well-informed analysts tell us that transformative infrastructure projects in Africa are soft power tools and that therefore development is dangerous…. Neither questions about the climate or development have ambiguous answers. The truth is not a variable! Carbon dioxide is plant food not a pollutant and…
Why H.G. Wells’ ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ Has Arrived Today
By Cynthia Chung “It has become apparent that whole masses of human population are, as a whole, inferior in their claim upon the future, to other masses, that they cannot be given opportunities or trusted with power as the superior peoples are trusted, that their characteristic weaknesses are contagious and detrimental to the civilizing fabric,…
The War on Science and the 20th Century Descent of Man
By Cynthia Chung In Part 1 the question was discussed what was Aldous’ real intention in writing the Brave New World; was it meant as an exhortation, an inevitable prophecy or as an Open Conspiracy? An Open Conspiracy closely linked to not only H.G. Wells, who clearly laid out such a vision in his book by the…
Open System Pathways for a Multi-Polar Future
By Matthew Ehret During the course of President Putin’s June 24 opening speech during the Moscow Parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of WWII, the following call to action was made: “We understand how important it is to strengthen friendship and trust between nations, and are open to dialogue and cooperation on the most pressing issues on the international…
Franklin D. Roosevelt: A US President Committed to the Development of Humankind
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, historian and Africa expert Lawrence Freeman presents a deep dive into the life, policies and political battles of Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a focus on the New Deal followed by an analysis of the clash between post-WW2 ideologies (British imperial vs American republican) at Bretton Woods in 1944. Transcript…
Vladimir Vernadsky’s Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon: A New RTF Workshop Begins
The Rising Tide Foundation has launched a new workshop which involved a reading/discussion of Vladimir Vernadsky’s 1939 essay ‘Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon’ followed by ‘Some Words About the Noosphere (1943) which will take place every Wednesday evening at 8pm EST starting on May 24 to July 28. The recordings of past workshops are…
Leibniz vs Newton: A Clash of Paradigms
RTF President Cynthia Chung kicks off the symposium ‘As Above so Below: Re-uniting the Macroverse with the Microverse” with a presentation on Leibniz vs Newton: A Clash of Paradigms. This presentation will introduce the principled conflict of two opposing schools of thought materialist/mathematical defined by Newton vs the higher dynamic/metaphysical method embodied by Gottfried Leibniz….
The Art of Peace- The New Silk Road Counters an Age of Turbulence
The Rising Tide Foundation proudly presents the proceedings of the November 16 seminar held in Montreal Canada entitled “The Art of Peace: The New Silk Road Counters an Age of Turbulence” featuring six speakers tackling the multi-faceted New Silk Road from artistic, engineering, historical, philosophical and scientific standpoints. Presentation 1: A new epoch of cooperation…
Western Civilization at a Crossroads: Mythical Hegemony or Win-Win Paradigm?
By Matthew Ehret and Edward Lozansky [originally published on the American Committee for East West Accord] As the world is moving slowly but surely to the edge of the abyss, there is a parallel crisis going within the nations that claim to exemplify the best of “western values” while undermining and violating them at every…
Symposium: Rediscovering the Infinite Through Classical Art
The Rising Tide Foundation presents the Symposium: Rediscovering the Infinite Through Classical Art, which opened with a presentation by Cynthia Chung on Shakespeare and the use of tragedy in elevating an audience’s knowledge of human nature in order to break free from tragic dynamics within us. This was followed by a lecture delivered by Matthew…
Schiller’s William Tell: A People’s Fight for Freedom
Friedrich Schiller is a name beloved in Germany as the “poet of freedom”, and while festivals were once held in his honor across the English speaking world just a few generations ago, his memory has sadly fallen into the shadows. Despite that, Schiller’s life and works of drama and poetry inspired not only the greatest…
Vicarious Explorations into Genius: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Analyzed
It has become commonplace to assert that artistic beauty is relative existing only in the eye of the beholder. This abused statement has become almost a parody in our modern age, as everything becomes art, and everything- regardless of its ugliness becomes raised to a pedestal of beauty. This loss of any principled standards of…
Why Must Aesthetics Govern A Society Worthy Of Political Freedom? Ask the CIA
By Matthew Ehret In the mid-1990s, a series of exposés featured on the London Independent and elsewhere brought a dark secret to light. Many were startled by the revelation that the entire evolution of 20th century modern art was directed in large measure by the CIA! This not only included the direct financing of abstract painters like Jackson Pollock…
The Coming Self-Destruction of Atonalism
By Felix Dupin Music is a language we hear and decipher unknowingly since the earliest period of youth. Although expressing both passion and creativity, music is also made of rules and whether studied intellectually or not, it is perfectly comprehensible to the untrained ear and evolved organically transmitting both creative energy and lawful harmonies, consonances,…
The Shocking Truth of the 1938 Munich Agreement
In this Rising Tide Foundation presentation, economic analyst, researcher and historian Alex Krainer shed light on the shocking truth of the 1938 Munich Agreement and broader Tripartate agenda for a fascist world order which nearly succeeded before and even during WW2.
For Victory Day: It’s Time to Think About Finally Winning WWII
By Matthew Ehret 77 years ago Germany surrendered to allied forces finally ending the ravages of the Second World War. Today, as the world celebrates the 77th anniversary of this victory, why not think very seriously about finally winning that war once and for all? If you’re confused by this statement, then you might want…
Remembering Rabindranath Tagore: A Life Dedicated to the Universal
Originally published on the Poetry Foundation. On his 70th birthday, in an address delivered at the university he founded in 1918, Rabindranath Tagore said: “I have, it is true, engaged myself in a series of activities. But the innermost me is not to be found in any of these. At the end of the journey…
Sun Yat-sen’s Advice to Young Revolutionaries
By Matthew Ehret On January 1, 1912 Dr. Sun Yat-sen was inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of China consolidating a decades-long effort to overthrow an ancient feudal order premised upon a hereditary power structure of the “divine right of bloodlines”. Sun’s fascinating life defies any pre-existing categorization as a “socialist” or “capitalist”…
Humanity’s Struggle for a City of God: From Plato to Thomas More
In this final installment of a trilogy of lectures on the topic of ‘Humanity’s Struggle for a City of God’, Matt Ehret recapitulates the first two classes by going over the the migration of the Babylonian oligarchy and its network of cults to Persia, and thence to Rome after Alexander the Great’s victory over his…
Plato and Confucius, Spiritual Brothers and Philosopher Kings Living at Two Ends of the World Island
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, Dr. Quan Le breaks the commonly held belief that the west and east are organized by two fundamentally opposing paradigms of Confucian pragmatism on the one side in opposition to Platonic idealism on the other. Dr. Le does this by introducing the individuals and philosophies of both great men…
The Power of Metaphor
By David Gosselin Metaphor should not be approached as some “thing,” but as a transformative power, the invisible process by which “things” come into being. Using metaphor, even very simple language and very common-place images can be brought into new, unique constellations. Contrary to the sundry definitions of metaphor proffered by many school teachers and…
Clarity vs. Obscurity V: Eliot’s Masks
By Adam Sedia Click here for Part I, Part II, Part III , and Part IV to this series. T.S. Eliot means many things to many different people. Like Yeats he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the academy he numbers among the titans of twentieth-century poetry, with The Waste Land hailed as the epic of our…
Reviving the Memory of Time through Ruins
By Ryan Hamadeh An article I wrote that ponders the significance of Culture. What secrets inhabit this revered term. We use it abundantly in an ill defined way, but up close it reveals secrets which bestow meaning to our most profound perplexion. Countries to have lost their way in bitter war or societies that yearn…
A Harmony of Interests: Inquiries into the True Nature of the American System
What ideas will shape the next centuries of human civilization as our species begins to confront the reality of our collective self-interest living on the earth? The use of the atomic for either peaceful or warlike purposes has given our species for the first time in history the dual potential to destroy all life as…
How the British Empire Created and Destroyed Orwell [Martin Sieff RTF lecture]
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, Martin Sieff unveils a side of George Orwell that you’ve never seen.
St. Augustine’s City of God vs the Rot of the Roman Empire
This is the second part of Matt Ehret’s ongoing trilogy on Universal history. The first lecture in the series probed the growth of the oligarchical system via a network of cults throughout the Babylonian empire as it transitioned to Persia as a seat of a globally extended empire. Within the context, the story was told of…
Paul Robeson: His Life as an Unfinished Symphony
Many know of the name Paul Robeson as a great baritone singer and actor of the early 20th century… but few know of Paul Robeson as the cultural warrior, renaissance man and world citizen who created the foundations for the civil rights movement, played a leading role in the international anti-colonial freedom struggle, or anti-fascist…
Why Shelley Wrote ‘A Defense of Poetry’ and its Relevance for Today
In the wake of the 1815 Congress of Vienna which saw a suffocating cage imposed upon all forms of creative literature, art, and music deemed “insurrectionary” by the oligarchical families then restating their power after two decades of napoleonic wars, it appeared to many that any hopes of a republican spirit in the arts and…
Unifying Spirit between East and West: Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), Jesuit painter in the Forbidden City.
By Matthew Ehret “In pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative, we should ensure that when it comes to different civilizations, exchange will replace estrangement, mutual learning will replace clashes, and coexistence will replace a sense of superiority. This will boost mutual understanding, mutual respect and mutual trust among different countries” -Xi Jinping, Belt and Road…
Study of the Heavens: a History of Chinese Astronomy
Transcript of a lecture given by Cynthia Chung at ‘The Universe, Creativity and You‘ Symposium. We live in a strange time. Many have forgotten the power of imagination and are instead bogged down with the reality of ‘practicality’. The reality of ‘the budget’, and the reality of ‘what is deemed useful and what is deemed…
The Spirit of Win-Win Cooperation: 15-19th Century Diplomatic Success of China
Although it is well known that China has become the world’s largest and fastest growing economy in the world- outpacing the USA since the unveiling of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, it is too often forgotten that this dominant position is not new, but merely a return to the “normal” state of world…
On Optimism: A Chant of Darkness
By Cynthia Chung “So my optimism is no mild and unreasoning satisfaction. A poet once said I must be happy because I did not see the bare, cold present, but lived in a beautiful dream. I do live in a beautiful dream; but that dream is the actual, the present – not cold, but warm;…
Plato’s Republic vs Klaus’ Great Narrative: Who Guards the Guardians?
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, Matthew Ehret introduces the two opposing solutions to the One/Many problem of governance first developed by Plato through the character of his mentor Socrates 2400 years ago. The question in its basic terms can be summarized the following way: IF human society is capable of breaking free of the…
Schiller’s Mission of Moses
What were the geopolitical and cultural realities shaping the world Moses was born into and upon which he intervened? How did his experience growing up in the royal halls of Egypt with access to the highest cultural education then available during the 12th century BC also shape his mind and heart as he struggled over…
Why the Poetic Principle is Imperative for Statecraft
Cynthia Chung Today, perhaps more so than at any time in history, we are experiencing a divide between what is considered to be the “domain” or “confinement” of art as wholly separate from the domain of “politics.” The irony of such a perception is its failure to recognise that the root of our political system…
The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon
The great poet, historian and dramatist Friedrich Schiller recognized that the study of universal history were impossible if the mind of the researcher missed the fundamental tension between two opposing paradigms which strike at the heart of the nature of man, god, and reality itself. While this fundamental tension has expressed itself in diverse manners…
Plato’s Fight Against Apollo’s Temple of Delphi and the Cult of Democracy
We are too often drawn into the bad habit of thinking of ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and his teacher Socrates as ivory tower philosophers lost in the abstract realm of “ideas” and utopian ideals detached of all reality and human struggle on earth. In this lecture, Rising Tide Foundation president Cynthia Chung shatters that…
Schiller’s Ghost Seer, Intelligence Methods and a Global Citizenry
A Study of Schiller’s The Ghost Seer By Cynthia Chung The Ghost Seer first appeared in several instalments in Schiller’s publication journal Thalia from 1787 to 1789, and was later published as a three-volume book. It was one of the most popular works of Schiller’s during his lifetime. People were attracted by the subject of…
Ancient India and the Vedas: The Untold Story
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, Dr Raj Vedam introduces a multi parameter analysis of ancient Indian civilization by incorporating archeology, archeo-genetics, linguistics, archeo-astronomy, mathematics, engineering, architecture and literary analysis with one aim: Prove definitively that Indian culture is both much older than “Aryan invasion” devotees would have the world believe. In opposition to the…
Germany’s Stockholm Syndrome and the Firing of Valery Gergiev
By Cynthia Chung “No, there is a limit to the tyrant’s power! When the oppressed man finds no justice, When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals with fearless heart to heaven, and thence brings down his everlasting rights, which there abide, inalienably his, and indestructible as stars themselves. The primal state of nature reappears, wherein man…
The ABCs in Energy: Do We Actually Understand How Energy Works?
By Cynthia Chung Europeans are presently being told that the energy crisis they are entering, with natural gas prices now four times higher than last year, stems from a longer winter, competition with East Asian countries for gas, and problems on the supply end with delayed maintenance and less investment. These gas prices are in…
What Determines A Limit to Growth?
By Cynthia Chung This is an article version of a class Cynthia Chung gave for the symposium “The Earth Next 100 Years” which can be viewed here. What Determines a “Limit to Growth”? This might seem like a rather ignorant or simplistic question to some. Many will think the answer rather obvious, that the Limit…