Welcome!

Thank you for your registration into Jonah’s Club – a club for the purpose of strengthening your best strengths – the very best habits that lead toward a happy and fulfilling life.

With this first step, you are now part of Jonah’s Club community.

Over the next few days, weeks and months, we will engage in a conversation, a transformational journey that shares with you, some of the world’s best thinking, on the subject of what does it mean to be human…

What does it mean to have a happy and fulfilling life?

These are super big questions, I realize. I don’t presume to know THE answers.

But we can together at least explore these questions and what some great thinkers in our history have proposed to be ‘reasonable answers’.

We will explore in fact, the three questions that philosopher Immanuel Kant defined as the three most important questions that we must ask ourselves in this life, if we are to be fully human.

That is,

• What can we know in our lifetime?
  What shall we make of our learning, during our brief stay on Earth? 
• What can we do in light of what we know?
  What activities should we invest in with our time, as being the most worthwhile to pursue? 
• What can we hope for?
  What are the best values and aims that we can fulfill in this lifetime – what can realistically give us the greatest happiness, the greatest fulfilment, the greatest life meaning?

Kant made the case that our lives will always feel “incomplete” and almost “inhuman”, if we don’t seriously and intentionally consider these questions. For it is by figuring out and thinking through these questions for ourselves that we can find “enlightenment”.

We at Jonah’s Club tend to agree with Kant’s insight.

Tomorrow we begin this transformational journey with the first documentary presentation created for you.

It is titled “The Right Question”, and it explores what I believe to be the most important question we need to ask ourselves, as we start on this journey.

In this first film, we consider one of the great paradoxes of our times:

How is it that today, amidst history’s greatest levels of economic affluence, maximum social freedoms, and time spent in education – people plummet into ever-increasing levels of depression and confusion about who they are?

Even our intelligence is lowering, while we study more than ever before!

In Volume 1, we unravel this paradox. We explore the impact that our education has had on shaping our mind and how we see our world. This impacts directly what choices we make, what relationships we end up in, and what career paths we take.

This journey as part of your free membership, we will undertake through emails such at this one, and within the club website itself – through articles, videos and forum discussions.

Ultimately, we hope to inspire you to make it to your local Jonah’s Club. There it’s where we meet with other people – in real time and in a real space – where we tackle this ambitious educational journey, together.

It is at your local club where things get really interesting and ‘juicy’.

For if we seek to get to a place where we can realize the deepest levels of authenticity, connection and fulfilment – it is our firm belief and experience, that this can only be realized person to person, and not online.

The fullness of experiences in life is in the presence of other people – particularly though who seek to go beyond mere ‘chit chat’ conversations.

For this online medium is in itself a double-edged sword that can both help us and hurt us in pursuit of our original goal…

Yes, there are many positive to appreciate about this medium, the Internet. It is convenient. It is able to share with you instantly, all kinds of information, no matter where you are. And of course, we were able to find each other through it.

But, as Nicholas Carr’s research into the use of the Internet reveals, this medium also tends to make us “superficial thinkers”. This being the very worst condition to be in, as to participate in Jonah’s Club.

The Internet most often crowds out “deep thinking”.

As much recent research reveals, most people on the net today mostly skim read and bounce from one idea to another – attracted evermore by the latest ‘hacks’ and education via entertainment. This gradually transforms them into ‘shallow thinkers’.

And this is mostly not their fault, as the whole medium has been built to do just that. Hyperlinks, click bait headlines and imagery, along with the habitual training to react to curiosities – this continually erodes at our ability to think deeply about the important matters of life.

For in all learning, the most important ingredient we have, is our ability to pay attention and to concentrate. An undivided attention is at the heart of all forms of mastery. We need then to be ever vigilant that we don’t cheat ourselves out of this.

For this purpose, it’s why we have opted to host our own videos, on our site, rather than going on a platform like youtube. The possibility of getting distracted and staying focused is just too great.

This is also why we have opted to send you out emails and videos one day at a time – rather that giving you access to all the pieces, all at once. The deepest and most important learning we make in life is not built up through random hyperlinks and bits and bobs along the way…

Great learning is like a story. It has a beginning, middle and end.

Think of how much sense you would have made out of an epic story like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or Games of Thrones – if all the films were chopped up into short 5 minute click bait segments and spread across a blog, for you to then randomly access.

Then, you were to see some, or many of them, in random sequence, and what you thought sounded most catchy and appealing through their titles at the time…

If you’re anything like me, would this be a fair way of self-organizing the scenes? Explosions and battle scenes – Hooray! Talky bits and scenery shots – Boo!!! 😉

How much would you have failed to gain, if the director decided to structure the story like this?

Great learning has a sequence and it’s why the most important ideas of all time have been bound up in books – i.e. so a person is able to concentrate on one idea at a time. So the argument builds up and makes sense as working through from simple ideas, into the most complex.

So we ultimately feel things! So they come to matter!

This is why then, through this transformative journey, you’ll notice that I’ll number each email and resource that I shall forward to you, from now on.

The information here has a sequence. It has a story-like structure and we intentionally build from one simple idea, to the next, to the next, into the more complex whole.

Please do not try to skip ahead and only randomly read emails or resources. Go through argument and the story as it is laid out – in the order we have presented. (You’ll have a reference link to the resource we sent through last time.)

So with that said – it’s good to have you here! 🙂

Tomorrow, at around this same time, you’ll receive access to see our first feature film.

But before we get into this, I just wanted to draw your attention to a short feature video that you may have missed – which explains in more detail, the inspiration behind this club:

[videopress vg4HPj4M]

 

Please enjoy, and I’ll see you tomorrow,

John