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Journal Article•DOI•

The Human Condition.

Andrew J. McLean
29 Jun 2017-Academic Psychiatry (Springer International Publishing)-Vol. 41, Iss: 6, pp 771-771
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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Citations
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Dissertation•
Dramatizing Human Enhancement : how to turn a moral and social debate about a futuristic technology into a TV series screenplay

[...]

Eran Barak medina
05 Feb 2020
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the process of writing a science fiction TV series pilot screenplay that deals with the morally charged subject of human enhancement, and analyze the development of the writing process leading up to the final screenplay.
Abstract: This PhD dissertation is a “research-through-creation” project, which set out to explore and gain insights from the process of writing a science fiction TV series pilot screenplay, that deals with the morally charged subject of human enhancement.Science fiction is a very important genre in today's rapidly changing world, with its continuously advancing technology. Science fiction novels, movies and TV series play a major role in creating a social, moral and cultural discourse about how we, as humanity, can and should deal with current and future technologies and lead the way we evolve. Human enhancement is one of the major technologies which' potential evolvement could disrupt and change society and humanity in a significant way by offering humankind the possibility to transcend natural selection and control how it will develop. The science fiction writer is in a unique position in which he/she needs to mediate science, technology and their psychological, moral and social possibilities in the form of story and drama. When done so successfully, the science fiction writer's work can offer value by contributing to the social discourse. Researching this unique position, between science, social relevance and storytelling, is at the heart of this work. Its objective is to articulate insights and conceptualizations for the considerations, actions and creative decisions required to accomplish this kind of a challenge.To do so I have written two science fiction TV pilot screenplays, an earlier version and a later version. In parallel, I have studied the subject of human enhancement both for its scientific aspect and its philosophical and social aspect, and also studied about the theory and practice of science fiction writing, with an emphasis on stories that deal with human enhancement and current science fiction TV series. The two lines of work inter-related and complement each other.The study of human enhancement and science fiction took part in the progression of the writing from the initial screenplay to the final one, which is considered by me to be more satisfactory in achieving both a good representation of the social and moral issues of human enhancement, and in fulfilling the dramatic potential of the subject.This dissertation includes the screenplays and other creative materials, preceded by a critical essay which describes the study of human enhancement and science fiction, and analyzes the development of the writing process leading up to the final screenplay. The insights gained from the research highlight the importance of the science fiction writer's understanding of the technology he writes about (or the “novum” – the technological/scientific difference-maker); creating a story premise which as a derivative of the technology; exploring the different moral, psychological and social aspects of the chosen technology and translating those to story conflicts and character motivations; and making story-world decisions that best serve the thematic issues the writer wants to convey.

34 citations

Book•DOI•
Zur Zukunft der Bereichsethiken – Herausforderungen durch die Ökonomisierung der Welt

[...]

Matthias Maring
20 Jul 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors dealt with approaches and examples how to face these challenges and what that means for the future of applied ethics in the context of the economy of the world.
Abstract: Im vorliegenden Band „Zur Zukunft der Bereichsethiken – Herausforderungen durch die Okonomisierung der Welt“ werden Ansatze und Beispiele behandelt, diese Herausforderungen anzugehen und damit auch einen Beitrag zur Zukunft der Bereichsethiken zu leisten. Themen sind u.a.: zur Zukunft der Technik-, Wirtschafts- und Wissenschaftsethik, die Okonomisierung der gesellschaftlichen und Sozialen Arbeit, der Medien, der personlichen Beziehungen, der Wasserversorgung, im Gesundheitswesen sowie im Sport. In the present volume “The future of areas of applied ethics – challenges by the economisation of the world” will be dealt with approaches and examples how to face these challenges and what that means for the future of applied ethics. Subjects are among others: the future of engineering, business and science ethics, the economisation of professional and social work, media, personal relationships, water supply, health care and sport. Umfang: 460 S. Preis: €64.00 | £59.00 | $112.00

34 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Solidarities In and Through Work in an Age of Extremes

[...]

Vanessa Beck, Paul A. Brook1•
University of Leicester1
23 Jan 2020-Work, Employment & Society
TL;DR: The authors introduce a special issue of Work, Employment and Society on solidarities in and through the experience of work in an age of austerity and political polarisation, which commences by disc...
Abstract: This article introduces a special issue of Work, Employment and Society on solidarities in and through the experience of work in an age of austerity and political polarisation. It commences by disc...

34 citations

Cites background from "The Human Condition."

  • ...In the fifth article, Strauß and Fleischmann (2019) consider yet another aspect of solidarity by investigating cultural work in the social factory and by focusing on underpinning political action that an Arendtian (Arendt, 1998) distinction between labour, work and political action encourages. Their research setting is a summer school comprising a diverse group of international attendees, mainly architecture, design and engineering students, and beneficiaries who come together to refurbish a house privately owned by an individual without the economic resources to sustain their home. The research investigates how a temporary group of individuals can develop group cohesion as part of a summer school in which solidarity with socially, economically and aesthetically de-valued and marginalised positions was actively encouraged. Individual expectations, requirements and political perspectives provide added complications to the development of group cohesion, let alone solidarity, within this temporary group and between the group and the house owner. These positions were also made public in attempts to influence public opinion and local housing policy. The article thus considers solidarity in work and non-work, as well as the political mode of human activities. Such changing notions of work also require changing notions of solidarity and demand a focus that goes beyond merely considering a redistribution of resources. Solidarity is thus conceptualised as a precarious and temporary phenomenon that interconnects socio-economic and socio-political spheres. Since the formation of large-scale trade union organisation in the late 19th century, internationalism has commonly been a foundational aspect of the labour movement’s approach to solidarity. At the institutional level, there is a long-established network of international trade union federations designed specifically to co-ordinate international co-operation and solidarity among member unions and between industrial sectors. In the next article, Fox-Hodess (2019) examines an innovative attempt by the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) to foster long-term internationalism ‘from below’, which she compares and contrasts with the traditional bureaucratically mediated approach of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). Fox-Hodess (2019) acknowledges that there have been plenty of examples of ‘one-off’ global solidarity campaigns organised in a non-bureaucratic fashion and driven by workplace activists, but the institutionalisation of rank-and-file internationalism into the routine work of the IDC is a distinct and novel organisational form for global trade unionism. Fox-Hodess (2019) explains how the IDC’s removal of bureaucratic layers mediating routine contact between workplace dock workers in different countries allowed them to communicate directly and quickly with one another, especially when they wanted to build on-the-ground solidarity for a labour dispute or other campaign....

    [...]

  • ...In the fifth article, Strauß and Fleischmann (2019) consider yet another aspect of solidarity by investigating cultural work in the social factory and by focusing on underpinning political action that an Arendtian (Arendt, 1998) distinction between labour, work and political action encourages. Their research setting is a summer school comprising a diverse group of international attendees, mainly architecture, design and engineering students, and beneficiaries who come together to refurbish a house privately owned by an individual without the economic resources to sustain their home. The research investigates how a temporary group of individuals can develop group cohesion as part of a summer school in which solidarity with socially, economically and aesthetically de-valued and marginalised positions was actively encouraged. Individual expectations, requirements and political perspectives provide added complications to the development of group cohesion, let alone solidarity, within this temporary group and between the group and the house owner. These positions were also made public in attempts to influence public opinion and local housing policy. The article thus considers solidarity in work and non-work, as well as the political mode of human activities. Such changing notions of work also require changing notions of solidarity and demand a focus that goes beyond merely considering a redistribution of resources. Solidarity is thus conceptualised as a precarious and temporary phenomenon that interconnects socio-economic and socio-political spheres. Since the formation of large-scale trade union organisation in the late 19th century, internationalism has commonly been a foundational aspect of the labour movement’s approach to solidarity. At the institutional level, there is a long-established network of international trade union federations designed specifically to co-ordinate international co-operation and solidarity among member unions and between industrial sectors. In the next article, Fox-Hodess (2019) examines an innovative attempt by the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) to foster long-term internationalism ‘from below’, which she compares and contrasts with the traditional bureaucratically mediated approach of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). Fox-Hodess (2019) acknowledges that there have been plenty of examples of ‘one-off’ global solidarity campaigns organised in a non-bureaucratic fashion and driven by workplace activists, but the institutionalisation of rank-and-file internationalism into the routine work of the IDC is a distinct and novel organisational form for global trade unionism....

    [...]

  • ...In the fifth article, Strauß and Fleischmann (2019) consider yet another aspect of solidarity by investigating cultural work in the social factory and by focusing on underpinning political action that an Arendtian (Arendt, 1998) distinction between labour, work and political action encourages. Their research setting is a summer school comprising a diverse group of international attendees, mainly architecture, design and engineering students, and beneficiaries who come together to refurbish a house privately owned by an individual without the economic resources to sustain their home. The research investigates how a temporary group of individuals can develop group cohesion as part of a summer school in which solidarity with socially, economically and aesthetically de-valued and marginalised positions was actively encouraged. Individual expectations, requirements and political perspectives provide added complications to the development of group cohesion, let alone solidarity, within this temporary group and between the group and the house owner. These positions were also made public in attempts to influence public opinion and local housing policy. The article thus considers solidarity in work and non-work, as well as the political mode of human activities. Such changing notions of work also require changing notions of solidarity and demand a focus that goes beyond merely considering a redistribution of resources. Solidarity is thus conceptualised as a precarious and temporary phenomenon that interconnects socio-economic and socio-political spheres. Since the formation of large-scale trade union organisation in the late 19th century, internationalism has commonly been a foundational aspect of the labour movement’s approach to solidarity. At the institutional level, there is a long-established network of international trade union federations designed specifically to co-ordinate international co-operation and solidarity among member unions and between industrial sectors. In the next article, Fox-Hodess (2019) examines an innovative attempt by the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) to foster long-term internationalism ‘from below’, which she compares and contrasts with the traditional bureaucratically mediated approach of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). Fox-Hodess (2019) acknowledges that there have been plenty of examples of ‘one-off’ global solidarity campaigns organised in a non-bureaucratic fashion and driven by workplace activists, but the institutionalisation of rank-and-file internationalism into the routine work of the IDC is a distinct and novel organisational form for global trade unionism. Fox-Hodess (2019) explains how the IDC’s removal of bureaucratic layers mediating routine contact between workplace dock workers in different countries allowed them to communicate directly and quickly with one another, especially when they wanted to build on-the-ground solidarity for a labour dispute or other campaign. Communicating directly generated greater agility, militancy and shared culture across national borders, resulting in the building of an international solidarity network potentially involving tens of thousands of dock workers across the globe. Fox-Hodess (2019) acknowledges that the downside...

    [...]

  • ...In the fifth article, Strauß and Fleischmann (2019) consider yet another aspect of solidarity by investigating cultural work in the social factory and by focusing on underpinning political action that an Arendtian (Arendt, 1998) distinction between labour, work and political action encourages. Their research setting is a summer school comprising a diverse group of international attendees, mainly architecture, design and engineering students, and beneficiaries who come together to refurbish a house privately owned by an individual without the economic resources to sustain their home. The research investigates how a temporary group of individuals can develop group cohesion as part of a summer school in which solidarity with socially, economically and aesthetically de-valued and marginalised positions was actively encouraged. Individual expectations, requirements and political perspectives provide added complications to the development of group cohesion, let alone solidarity, within this temporary group and between the group and the house owner. These positions were also made public in attempts to influence public opinion and local housing policy. The article thus considers solidarity in work and non-work, as well as the political mode of human activities. Such changing notions of work also require changing notions of solidarity and demand a focus that goes beyond merely considering a redistribution of resources. Solidarity is thus conceptualised as a precarious and temporary phenomenon that interconnects socio-economic and socio-political spheres. Since the formation of large-scale trade union organisation in the late 19th century, internationalism has commonly been a foundational aspect of the labour movement’s approach to solidarity. At the institutional level, there is a long-established network of international trade union federations designed specifically to co-ordinate international co-operation and solidarity among member unions and between industrial sectors. In the next article, Fox-Hodess (2019) examines an innovative attempt by the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) to foster long-term internationalism ‘from below’, which she compares and contrasts with the traditional bureaucratically mediated approach of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)....

    [...]

  • ...In the fifth article, Strauß and Fleischmann (2019) consider yet another aspect of solidarity by investigating cultural work in the social factory and by focusing on underpinning political action that an Arendtian (Arendt, 1998) distinction between labour, work and political action encourages....

    [...]

Journal Article•DOI•
People’s Councils for Ethical Machine Learning:

[...]

Daniel McQuillan1•
Goldsmiths, University of London1
01 Apr 2018-Social media and society
TL;DR: The way the affordances of machine learning itself, and the forms of social apparatus that it becomes a part of, will potentially erode ethics and draw us in to a drone-like perspective is explored.
Abstract: Machine learning is a form of knowledge production native to the era of big data. It is at the core of social media platforms and everyday interactions. It is also being rapidly adopted for research and discovery across academia, business and government. This paper will explore the way the affordances of machine learning itself, and the forms of social apparatus that it becomes a part of, will potentially erode ethics and draw us in to a drone-like perspective. Unconstrained machine learning enables and delimits our knowledge of the world in particular ways: the abstractions and operations of machine learning produce a ‘view from above’ whose consequences for both ethics and legality parallel the dilemmas of drone warfare. The family of machine learning methods is not somehow inherently bad or dangerous, nor does implementing them signal any intent to cause harm. Nevertheless, the machine learning assemblage produces a targeting gaze whose algorithms obfuscate the legality of its judgements, and whose iterations threaten to create both specific injustices and broader states of exception. Given the urgent need to provide some kind of balance before machine learning becomes embedded everywhere, this paper proposes people’s councils as a way to contest machinic judgements and reassert openness and discourse.

34 citations

Cites background from "The Human Condition."

  • ...In her book “The Human Condition,” Hannah Arendt (1998) critiqued the instrumentalism and cycles of social reproduction that she saw as already characterizing the industrial society of the post-war years: If we see these processes against the background of human purposes, which have a willed…...

    [...]

  • ...In her book “The Human Condition,” Hannah Arendt (1998) critiqued the instrumentalism and cycles of social reproduction that she saw as already characterizing the industrial society of the post-war years: If we see these processes against the background of human purposes, which have a willed beginning and a definite end, they assume the character of automatism....

    [...]

  • ...What she saw as action is exactly that the opposite to the patterns of life paradigm; action is the beginning which happens “against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability” (Arendt, 1998, p. 178)....

    [...]

Journal Article•DOI•
Surveillance, freedom and the republic

[...]

J. Matthew Hoye1, Jeffrey Monaghan2•
Maastricht University1, University of Ottawa2
01 Jul 2018-European Journal of Political Theory
TL;DR: The authors argue that arbitrary state and corporate powers are helping to turn the Internet into a global surveillance dragnet, and that responses to this novel form of power have been tepid and ineffective.
Abstract: Arbitrary state and corporate powers are helping to turn the Internet into a global surveillance dragnet. Responses to this novel form of power have been tepid and ineffective. Liberal critiques of...

34 citations

Cites background from "The Human Condition."

  • ...In the background of this debate is an internal debate between neorepublicans and civic humanists (Arendt, 1990, 1998; Baron, 1966; Pocock, 2003)....

    [...]

References
More filters
Book•
The Life of Lines

[...]

Tim Ingold
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

Journal Article•DOI•
From ‘gender equality and ‘women’s empowerment’ to global justice: reclaiming a transformative agenda for gender and development

[...]

Andrea Cornwall1, Althea-Maria Rivas2•
University of Sussex1, Centre for Development Studies2
24 Mar 2015-Third World Quarterly
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

Journal Article•DOI•
Echo chambers and viral misinformation: Modeling fake news as complex contagion.

[...]

Petter Törnberg1•
University of Amsterdam1
20 Sep 2018-PLOS ONE
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

Journal Article•DOI•
Do Humble CEOs Matter? An Examination of CEO Humility and Firm Outcomes

[...]

Amy Y. Ou1, David A. Waldman2, Suzanne J. Peterson2•
National University of Singapore1, Arizona State University2
01 Mar 2018-Journal of Management
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

Journal Article•DOI•
Antibiotic Resistance and the Biology of History

[...]

Hannah Landecker1•
University of California1
01 Dec 2016-Body & Society
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