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:
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that it is through the capacity to imagine other worlds or to imagine something not present, that one can become an autonomous thinker, and that the failure of education is evident not so much in ignorance as in imprisonment of the mind by conventional ideas.
Abstract: In educational theory, there has been some confusion regarding, and subsequently conflation involving, the ability to imagine an object that is not present with the capacity to remember what was and to forecast what will be. Part of this confusion might stem from the fact that little attention has been placed on inquiring into the workings of the imagination for its own sake or on its own terms. Perhaps the closest an educational theorist has come to examining imagination in itself is Egan (1992), who argues that it is important for educators to get “a grasp on what imagination is” (1). In his study, Egan provides an account of the ways different peoples and cultures have ascribed meaning to imagination throughout history and its significance in education. He also argues that it is through the capacity to imagine other worlds, or to imagine something not present, that one can “become an autonomous thinker” (47). Why does imagination, and the independence of thought that it stimulates, matter? Independent thinking is synonymous with freedom of the mind or inner freedom; politically speaking, “freedom of mental activity” (47), and the exchange of ideas that such freedom can elicit, is vital to sustain democracies. “The failure of education,” Egan points out, “is evident not so much in ignorance as in imprisonment of the mind by conventional ideas” (47). What one thinks of such conventions, and what kind of worlds one can imagine (and put into practice) that are different from the prevailing order, is a question of ethics; a subject to be attended to in this article, which involves cultivating the ethical imagination in education. Though imagination is a familiar and frequently used word in everyday language, it can nevertheless mean quite different things to different people. Egan, as well, discovered that of the many educational scholars who wrote for his edited collection on the subject, each “clearly conceived of the imagination rather differently.” Indeed, “imagination lies at the crux of those aspects of our lives that are least well understood” (3). Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (350 BCE) said as much when studying the soul: “The case of imagination is obscure” (19). And Kant has expressed that, of all the human faculties, imagination is “the most mysterious” (Arendt 2003, 139) given that images come to our mind spontaneously (Kant 2008, 149). Because the subject
9 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...This erasure adds another perspective to Kant’s concern over using human beings for a means to another end (see Arendt 1998, 155)....
[...]
...The “Kantian formula that no man must ever become a means to an end, that every human being is an end in himself” (Arendt 1998, 155) does not compute under such an ideology, yet it holds great meaning for those of us who recognize the dangers of “the intrusion of economics into everything else”…...
[...]
...For Arendt (1998), the key concern of the human condition is to “think what we are doing” (5)....
[...]
01 May 2020
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors make use of a distinction made by Peter Sloterdijk, who argues that the concept of care makes its comeback in twentieth-century thought, and study two fundamentally different forms in which the concept makes its return.
Abstract: The paper studies two fundamentally different forms in which the concept of care makes its comeback in twentieth-century thought. We make use of a distinction made by Peter Sloterdijk, who argues t...
9 citations
TL;DR: The primal scene is the Freudian articulation of the crucial role of infantile sexual and violent fantasies in structuring psychic life, linked to the loss of, or denial of, the material/maternal body as source or origin this article.
Abstract: Motherhood has recently re-emerged as ‘material’ for artistic practice, and as a viable subject of academic research that both recognizes and extends earlier feminist assertions that the maternal is a key site for the anxious psychosocial negotiations of identity, subjectivity, equality, ethics and politics. Additionally, pregnancy and birth have graphically entered the public domain. Hundreds of thousands of short films of live birth, for instance, circulate around the globe on video sharing platforms such as YouTube, some with followings of many million viewers. Yet, how might we understand the desire to perform and spectate birth? ‘YouTube birth’ raises questions about performing and spectating birth in digital culture, and the meaning of watching our own birth with a mass public of millions of viewers. In this paper I explore these questions through revisiting the psychoanalytic notion of the ‘primal scene’. The primal scene is the Freudian articulation of the crucial role of infantile sexual and violent fantasies in structuring psychic life, linked to the loss of, or denial of, the material/maternal body as source or origin. Although within feminist scholarship the primal scene as a theoretical concept is radically out of date, it may be productive to revisit primal fantasies in the digital age, and the ways digital technologies shift our relation to ‘analogue’ notions of place, scene, birth, origin and loss. Exploring the continued place of psychoanalysis in helping to understand issues to do with origin, reproduction and temporality, I ask both what psychoanalysis might have to offer our understanding of performing and watching birth, and how a psychoanalytic configuration of the primal scene may itself need to change in relation to digital primal fantasies and technologies that function through fungibility and loss-less-ness.
9 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...In The Human Condition, Arendt stated that ‘natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of political thought’ (Arendt 1958: 9)....
[...]
07 Dec 2018
TL;DR: This article explored North-South encounters and mutual imaginations within humanitarian economies, a term used to refer to the organized systems of assistance provision that address people affected by war and rely on their own repertory of values and norms.
Abstract: This chapter explores North-South encounters and mutual imaginations within humanitarian economies, a term I use to refer to the organised systems of assistance provision that address people affected by war and rely on their own repertory of values and norms. Based on the research I conducted in northern Lebanon (Akkar) and Beirut’s southern suburbs (Dahiye) between 2011 and 2013, it advances a critical reflection on the tension that exists between the philanthropic spirit of the humanitarian system as it is implemented in the “global South” (Butt 2002) and local and refugee responses to what I call “Southism”. The Southist intent of the Northern humanitarian system to care for, rescue, upgrade, and assist Southern settings – and that, as I will discuss later, partially transcends physical geographies combines personal affection with necessity, and collective compassion with professional aspirations. In this sense, I use the notion of Southism in a way that resonates with the “monumentalisation of the margins” (Spivak 1999, p. 170), which crystallises needs and areas of need in the global South while powerfully acknowledging the good intentionality of humanitarian workers. As such, I propose Southism both as a concept and a mode of analysis which indicates a structural relationship between different sets of providers and beneficiaries, rather than a mere act of assisting the South with a philanthropic spirit. Specifically, Southism, as a mode of analysis, is underpinned by a preconception of the South as disempowered and incapable, while cementing the “global South” as the key symbolic capital of Northern empowerment, accountability, and capability. To some extent, I think of Southism as a peculiar configuration of Orientalism (Said 1978). By departing from Said’s theory which aimed to capture the history and character of Western attitudes, ideologies and imaginations towards the East and by further problematizing West-East/North-South political geographies, I draw on Southism to enhance our
9 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...It is also composed of moral self-legitimisation, in assisting and voicing those individuals who, allegedly, can only be assisted and be given a voice (Arendt 1958, Agamben 1998, Pandolfi 2000)....
[...]
...…words of local beneficiaries if I had wanted to conduct rigorous biographic and biological lives, according to which the world would become divided up into voiceless victims on the one hand and people who can witness, narrate, and better explain the lives of such victims on the other (Arendt 1958)....
[...]
References
More filters
Book•
[...]
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