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Because Prince Charles is heir to the throne (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person), some in the HN community m
by dr_dshiv 6y ago
Because Prince Charles is heir to the throne (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person), some in the HN community may be surprised to know that he wrote a book on philosophy.
https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-New-Way-Looking-World/dp/0061731358?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_marketplace https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-New-Way-Looking-World/dp/0061...
I found the book to be astonishingly good. It takes a design approach to Platonism and western esotericism. It goes deep into "sacred geometry" but steers clear of woo or religion. He adopts a Pythagorean perennialism and advocates for an ecological "spirituality" that is integrated with science. It contains examples from his own urban design projects. I was reeeeally surprised to find this kind of thinking coming from the Prince of Wales.
- bencollier49 6y agoWhat a wonderful comment. Thanks - I didn't realise that he'd written a book like that, and the fact that it incorporates Platonism and Western Esotericism is even more impressive. Thanks for the comment.
- afandian 6y agoI'd never heard of this, but I do note that it has two co-authors (Tony Juniper, Ian Skelly).
- de_keyboard 6y agohttps://www.insider.com/poundbury-prince-charless-nostalgic-vision-of-an-english-town-2021-1 https://www.insider.com/poundbury-prince-charless-nostalgic-...
- nanna 6y ago> (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person) Bold statement.
- 076ae80a-3c97-4 6y agoConsidering Prince Andrew exists, it's a false statement.
- b1476 6y ago> (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person) Um, did you forget about his first wife?
- ben_w 6y agoWell, she is dead. I would suggest that both Andrew and Megan (for very different reasons!) are treated worse in the media than Charles, and that’s just within the royal family. Does even one British newspaper like Theresa May?
- neaden 6y agoAre you thinking of Diana? She was Charles' wife.
- Thorentis 6y agoLooks like banal, new-age pseudo-science being sold as royal wisdom.
- rogerthis 6y agoI think he was friend of Martin Lings, who was very close to the Perennialist School (René Guenon, Frithjof Schuon).
- andrepd 6y ago> Because Prince Charles is heir to the throne (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person) I can sit and name persons more negatively treated for hours and not run out of names. EDIT: Why is my comment collapsed? Genuine question, don't know how this works.
- baybal2 6y ago> Because Prince Charles is heir to the throne (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person) The UK should quickly tweak their royal succession laws, and give the crown to Edward, or Anne, while the queen is still alive. If Charles abdicates, the line of succession dispute would be rather funny under the current succession laws.
- akjssdk 6y agoI have never heard about this, do you have a link that elaborates? I love weird succession lines.
- baybal2 6y agoIf Charles abdicates, his children receive the baton. But Harry's, and William's succession is under question with both being known not to have that much enthusiasm with the royal business. If they too decline, line goes to their children below the age of majority, and the icky question of regency appears. The regency in question notionally gives quite a lot of power, as the crown itself. If regency goes to the executive branch, it will throw out the last check on the Downing st. for may many thing, including the use of UK's nuclear weapons.
- alistairSH 6y agoIs there any law that speaks to regency? Does Parliament pick the regent? Or Kate? Or somebody else?
- 6y ago
- AndrewOMartin 6y agoJust in case anyone was skim reading a bit too quickly. This is written by Charles, not Philip.
- digitalengineer 6y ago"sacred geometry", esoteric, Pythagorean and holistic? It certainly sounds freemasonry-like. Was he a Freemason?
- bencollier49 6y agoI believe Prince Charles may have been made a mason, but I don't think he's active, unlike several of his relatives.
- samstave 6y agoLike who? Anyplace to read up on it? Obviously their ceremonies are full of masonic and other esoteric pagan ritual. THey are a pagan Germanic-druid hybrid after-all.
- bencollier49 6y agoThat might be pushing it a bit. Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent is the Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of England. Freemasonry isn't pagan in any major sense. It's pretty solidly Abrahamic, and parts of it are explicitly Christian. The closest you'll get to paganism is a continuation of themes and symbolism which are shared in common between ancient cultures. https://www.ugle.org.uk/about-us/whos-who/12-governance/155-grand-master https://www.ugle.org.uk/about-us/whos-who/12-governance/155-...
- JohnHaugeland 6y agoUh. What? Sacred Geometry is an ancient Greek concept that has nothing to do with Freemasons. Pythagoras was the most famous person to push it. It's that thing where they thought the world was made out of the Platonic solids, tried to explain the planetary orbits in terms of polygons, et cetera. It remained huge through Greece and Italy until the 1400s. The Leonardo piece "Vitruvian Man," where the guy has his arms at a couple of angles, and all the describing shapes behind him? That's Sacred Geometry. People used to think those shapes were evidence of design by God. This was extremely common throughout Europe, especially in Christian churches and cathedrals (much like Islamic) until the late 1400s, when an Italian named Alberti wrote a book that basically pushed religious architecture forward 100 years in ability to make safe large buildings. That book pushed for a return to circles and the cross, and most of Europe followed. However, that was also 60 years before the Anglican split, and about how long it took things to move from one end of a continent to another back then, so when it was getting to England, England decided to say that the rest of Europe was losing the beat, and stuck to the more complex Greek styled visuals Most of Europe removed the Sacred Geometry, but England (and Italy) kept theirs. England in particular sees this as a tie to historic legitimacy; one of the things that makes Their Church Different And Better (tm). "We didn't forget the old ways" kind of thing. Freemasonry? This isn't the Flintstones.
- throwaway59553 6y agoThere is also a BBC documentary on architecture[1], and his multiple interventions on the subject [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=891qV-7Y42w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=891qV-7Y42w [2] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFoke4cads8VNAi1pbi7IkM7pM-wJgFgR https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFoke4cads8VNAi1pbi7IkM7p...
- galuggus 6y agoI wonder if he's read it.
- ubermonkey 6y agoExtremely famous people frequently "author" books, usually with ghostwriters. Charles' book is credit to him "with" two other people (Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly who, I suspect, did most of the heavy lifting. Charles has for years been sympathetic to all sorts of woo, such as "alternative" medicine; his book was met with broad criticism for its cherry-picking of scientific findings to support his environmental agenda but ignoring evidence against alt medicine, etc.
- oneplane 6y agoI don't think there is such a thing as 'alternative medicine'. There is medicine, and there is not-medicine. Just like there is treatment and there is not-treatment. Calling things 'alternative' puts them on the same level, which they are not.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI agree. I guess people use “alternative” to refer to “treatments” that have not been, are not able to be, or have failed proper trials.
- starfallg 6y agoPart of the issue is that the practice of medicine predate scientific medicine (which is known as just 'medicine' today). For example, many medicinal herbs used in traditional medicine are effective for a variety of ailments, and some have been proven scientifically. So how do we reconcile that with scientific medicine without stigmatising possibly effective remedies.
- rodelrod 6y agoWe do the trials.
- msla 6y agoAs others have said: We do the trials, and, if something from the pre-scientific era passes muster, we figure out the best way to make it as safe and efficacious as possible with the least variability in effect and fewest side effects. I'm not saying that eating a plant is ineffective, but plants don't come with dosage information for the active ingredient printed on the stem, and knowing how much of the useful (and potentially deadly) substance you're ingesting is important. Vitally important, if you're taking something like digitalis, which comes from foxglove: Get a digitalis dosage far enough wrong and it kills you.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago> and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person Uhm, what?
- chanmad29 6y agoDeserved or not, the coverage he gets has been a balancing act to all the generally sympathetic coverage that Diana gets.
- JohnHaugeland 6y agoPlease be serious. He's not even the worst treated person in the British royal family, and Diana has been off of the television for decades The Prince was largely irrelevant even on British television, let alone the rest of the world If he was the worst treated person on TV, we'd have heard a whole lot more about his Epstein time
- chanmad29 6y agoYou're right. Meghan appears to have been treated worse than PC. My understanding is that there is an overall negative image of PC, but he does not constant coverage, so that helps his case I guess.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoYeah. Some guy named Trump would like a word about being portrayed negatively...
- k__ 6y agoAs the next head of a big church, some philosohical work is probably expected from him.
- cbfrench 6y agoAs an Anglican priest, I can confidently say that our expectation and hope runs rather the opposite direction, given the—ahem—somewhat questionable mental faculties of many who’ve served as Supreme Governour of the Church of England since the Act of Supremacy, lol.
- mateus1 6y agoJust goes to show how interesting and creative life would be, were we not wage-slaves like Philip.
- JohnHaugeland 6y ago> (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person) They really do love making victims out of their predatory world leaders, don't they? Trump fans do this too
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Because Prince Charles is heir to the throne (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person) Unless your scope of attention is limited to the British Royal Family, I’m not sure how you come to approximately that conclusion. And even if it was, Prince Andrew easily beats him out. And if we’re going by intensity of negative portrayal, and considering just the British media, the Duke and especially Duchess of Sussex is at least in close competition with him, too, and probabyl way ahead if we are just looking at current coverage.