The Human Condition.
TL;DR: In some religious traditions, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness.
Abstract: Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:
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TL;DR: The tendency to idealise artificial intelligence as independent from human manipulators, combined with the growing ontological entanglement of humans and digital machines, has created an "anthrobot" as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The tendency to idealise artificial intelligence as independent from human manipulators, combined with the growing ontological entanglement of humans and digital machines, has created an “anthrobot ...
12 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...If we do not comprehend that the possibility of possibility should not be addressed only with computerised solutions, we might become indeed a self-domesticated robotic species (Arendt, 1958)....
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TL;DR: This paper explored Sznaider's notion of a Jewish cosmopolitanism in tandem with a close reading of Russian-Jewish writer Olga Grjasnowa's 2012 German-language novel Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt (All Russians Love Birch Trees).
Abstract: In his Jewish Memory and the Cosmopolitan Order (2011), Natan Sznaider shows how Jewish thinkers both before and after the Holocaust have advanced universalist ideas out of their particularist Jewish identities, connecting the Jewish experience to contemporary cosmopolitan concerns such as Human Rights, genocide prevention and international justice. Sznaider focuses on Hannah Arendt and illustrates how this post-Holocaust Jewish thinker both defended her rootedness in her Jewish identity and drew universalising conclusions from it. This article explores Sznaider’s notion of a ‘Jewish cosmopolitanism’ in tandem with a close reading of Russian-Jewish writer Olga Grjasnowa’s 2012 German-language novel Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt (All Russians Love Birch Trees). The empathy Grjasnowa’s protagonist feels for the plight of Palestinians reveals her commitment to a universalist ideal of Human Rights even as she remains rooted in her Jewish identity: her activism draws on the transmission of the ...
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TL;DR: The 1957-58 International Geophysical Year (IGY) as discussed by the authors was a powerful fulcrum in the transfer of ideas about Earth's global environment from Western security establishments to conservationists worldwide.
Abstract: Security concerns during the early Cold War prompted United States strategists to solicit worldwide assistance in studying Earth’s physical environment. Comprehensive geophysical knowledge required cooperation between researchers on every part of the planet, leading practitioners to tout transnational earth science – despite direct military applications in an age of submarines and ballistic missiles – as a non-political form of peaceful universalism. This article examines the 1957–58 International Geophysical Year as a powerful fulcrum in the transfer of ideas about Earth’s global environment from Western security establishments to conservationists worldwide. For eighteen months, tens of thousands of researchers across every continent pooled resources for data collection to create a scientific benchmark for future comparisons. Illuminating Earth as dynamic and interconnected, participants robustly conceptualized humanity’s emergence as a geophysical force, capable of ‘artificially’ modifying the natural world. Studies of anthropogenic geophysics, including satellites, nuclear fallout, and climate change, conditioned the global rise of environmentalism.
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01 May 2020
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TL;DR: The book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" as discussed by the authors was written by Hannah Arendt and published in 1963 and highlighted how this brutal criminal was an absolutely normal person in everyday and family life, in contrast and asymmetry to the ruthlessness that he practiced in his ''work''.
Abstract: The book \"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil\" was written by Hannah Arendt and published in 1963 [1,2]. Arendt, a political philosopher who was persecuted by the Nazi regime, had followed the Eichmann trial for war crimes and highlighted how this brutal criminal was an absolutely \"normal\" person in everyday and family life, in contrast and asymmetry to the ruthlessness that he practiced in his \"work\". Is it possible, asked Arendt, that apparently normal individuals, judged as such by expert psychiatrists, can in particular circumstances become heinous criminals without the slightest sense of guilt? How widespread could this anomaly of the human soul potentially be? Arendt argued that such circumstances might occur when there are no roots, no memory of past mistakes, no reverting to one’s own thoughts and actions, in short, a lack of inner dialogue. \"Gnotzi seauton\" (know thyself) was the highest exhortation engraved on the front of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. You need to know your own mind to understand the world and the people around you, claimed Plato [3,4]. However, it seems that this propensity has been lost in our time, leading to everyone being less independent in making choices in life, devoid of critical thinking skills and imagination but influenced by an invasive and ratifying cultural model that turns the masses into a sort of \"plankton\" at the mercy of the waves and the wind, unable to look within.
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Book•
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27 Mar 2015
TL;DR: In this article, a series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human are presented, with a focus on the life of lines.
Abstract: To live, every being must put out a line, and in life these lines tangle with one another. This book is a study of the life of lines. Following on from Tim Ingold's groundbreaking work Lines: A Brief History, it offers a wholly original series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human.
In the first part, Ingold argues that a world of life is woven from knots, and not built from blocks as commonly thought. He shows how the principle of knotting underwrites both the way things join with one another, in walls, buildings and bodies, and the composition of the ground and the knowledge we find there.
In the second part, Ingold argues that to study living lines, we must also study the weather. To complement a linealogy that asks what is common to walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling and writing, he develops a meteorology that seeks the common denominator of breath, time, mood, sound, memory, colour and the sky. This denominator is the atmosphere.
In the third part, Ingold carries the line into the domain of human life. He shows that for life to continue, the things we do must be framed within the lives we undergo. In continually answering to one another, these lives enact a principle of correspondence that is fundamentally social.
This compelling volume brings our thinking about the material world refreshingly back to life. While anchored in anthropology, the book ranges widely over an interdisciplinary terrain that includes philosophy, geography, sociology, art and architecture.
410 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the fact that gender equality and women empowerment have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice.
Abstract: The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.
271 citations
TL;DR: A network simulation model used to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation finds an “echo chamber effect”: the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions.
Abstract: The viral spread of digital misinformation has become so severe that the World Economic Forum considers it among the main threats to human society This spread have been suggested to be related to the similarly problematized phenomenon of “echo chambers”, but the causal nature of this relationship has proven difficult to disentangle due to the connected nature of social media, whose causality is characterized by complexity, non-linearity and emergence This paper uses a network simulation model to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation It finds an “echo chamber effect”: the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions, and there is a synergetic effect between opinion and network polarization on the virality of misinformation The echo chambers effect likely comes from that they form the initial bandwagon for diffusion These findings have implication for the study of the media logic of new social media
223 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a mediation model to explain the relationship between CEO humility and firm performance and found that when a more humble CEO leads a firm, its top management team is more likely to collaborate, share information, jointly make decisions, and possess a shared vision.
215 citations
TL;DR: The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies.
Abstract: Beginning in the 1940s, mass production of antibiotics involved the industrialscale growth of microorganisms to harvest their metabolic products. Unfortunately, the use of antibiotics selects for resistance at answering scale. The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies. In turning to biological manifestations of antibiotic use, sciences fathom material outcomes of their own previous concepts. Archival work with stored soil and clinical samples produces a record described here as ‘the biology of history’: the physical registration of human history in bacterial life. This account thus foregrounds the importance of understanding both the materiality of history and the historicity of matter in theories and concepts of life today.
204 citations