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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01 Dec 2019
TL;DR: Fugitive democracy is a theory composed of two parts: a robust, normative ideal of democracy and a clear-eyed vision of the historical defeats and generic difficulties attendant to that ideal as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Urgent alarms now warn of the erosion of democratic norms and the decline of democratic institutions. These antidemocratic trends have prompted some democratic theorists to reject the seeming inevitability of democratic forms of government and instead to consider democracy as a fugitive phenomenon. Fugitive democracy, as we argue below, is a theory composed of two parts. F irst, it includes a robust, normative ideal of democracy and, second, a clear-eyed vision of the historical defeats and generic difficulties attendant to that ideal. This article considers how democratic theorists might respond to the challenges posed by fugitive democracy and the implications of such an understanding for future research in democratic theory.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a "green populism" is proposed using Hannah Arendt's analysis of the tension between science and politics, where nature itself is defined by its mortality, environmentalism and political action acquire a common logic, that could fuel a participatory, green populism.
Abstract: The rise of ‘populism’, often conflated with authoritarianism, is frequently viewed as being antagonistic to environmental values, where the latter are associated with ‘liberal elites’. However, with a less pejorative understanding of populism, we might be able to identify elements within that can be usefully channelled and mobilised towards the urgent rescue of human and non-human life. This paper seeks to illuminate a ‘green populism’ using Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the tension between science and politics. In Arendt’s account, Western philosophy and science is predicated on a rejection of the mortal realm of politics, in search of eternal laws of nature. However, the pressing mortality of nature has pushed it back into the political realm, shrinking the distance between science and politics. Where nature itself is defined by its mortality, environmentalism and political action acquire a common logic, that could fuel a participatory, green populism.
21 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...In Arendt’s account, political interaction, generating common feeling, is the only ultimate assurance we all inhabit the same world at all: “the presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves” (Arendt, 1958: 50)....
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...The former has a worldly character, in which political actors seek ‘immortality’ through exceptional deeds, whereas the latter has an unworldly quality, which departs from the sphere of human activity in search of ‘eternal’ laws and truths (Arendt, 1958)....
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...The human world, where politics necessarily takes place, is reduced to the status of any other object in an infinite universe, a mere specimen governed by timeless laws (Arendt, 1958: 258)....
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...…hope consisted in the fact that action always brings a new world into being, giving birth to something: “Since action is the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of political, as distinguished from metaphysical, thought” (Arendt, 1958: 9)....
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...With the formation of statistics in the late 17th century, ‘society’ was envisaged as obeying its own immanent, rational laws of behaviour, in a way that was no different to the planets or other aspects of nature (Arendt, 1958: 46)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare Indigenous and Western modernities by examining how contemporary Indigenous polities are finding inventive ways to assert their sovereignty, and present an innovation in Indigenous governance introduced recently by the Ngarrindjeri people in Southern Australia.
Abstract: The objective of this article is to compare Indigenous and Western modernities by examining how contemporary Indigenous polities are finding inventive ways to assert their sovereignty. Our discussion presents an innovation in Indigenous governance introduced recently by the Ngarrindjeri people in Southern Australia. We explain the conditions in which Ngarrindjeri initiated their process of political reformation; we link our analysis to critiques of Western modernism and imperialism; and we then outline some key political technologies created by the Ngarrindjeri Nation to enable its successful influence in matters affecting their Country and community. We find that these resources remain firmly grounded in Ngarrindjeri ways of knowing, being and doing, yet they are expressed in a contemporary hybrid form that is accessible to non- Indigenous negotiation partners. As a consequence, they have established a modern Indigenous framework for intercultural negotiation of interests previously controlled by the South Australian state and other non- Indigenous organizations.
21 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...…European and bourgeois means that the modern form of reason is also linked with modern tendencies to social domination (including imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy), which fi nds an ultimate expression in totalitarian fascism (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002 [1944]; see also Arendt, 1951, 1958)....
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01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the historical development of digital games in the post-Fordist condition of cognitive capitalism and explore how gamers can respond to this system of control by forming what Hakim Bey called autonomous zones of subjectivation.
Abstract: This thesis explores the historical development of digital gaming in the post-Fordist condition of cognitive capitalism. By utilising concepts from the fields of neurology, media philosophy and the Buddhist epistemology of the mind it studies the biopoilitcal aspects of gaming culture by looking at the practices and strategies that where historically applied by gamers, in order to map how these strategies functioned as a contemporary diagram of govermantality and how gamers can respond to this system of control. Thus, this thesis seeks to both examine the way gaming is related with the image culture of cognitive capitalism, which aims to produce flexible individuals that continuously solve problems and how we can respond to this affective matrix designed by the gaming industry. Accordingly this study is not limited in the way that software as an affective map organized by the industry that aims to control and produce flexible subjects, but also at the ways in which we can respond to these affective products by forming what Hakim Bey called ‘autonomous zones’ of subjectivation. To study this, I examine the ethical discourse of digital images, then move on to examine specific examples of games, reading them through the lens of Buddhist meditational practices and Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’ as the basis for an ethical response to the control mechanisms of digital spaces. The concept of mindfulness, therefore, will be used to develop a new disciplinary approach that draws on the insights of Buddhist epistemology and its meditational technologies to suggest a politically engaged and utterly contemporary ‘care of the self.’
21 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors document discourses and practices of civility as mutuality with limits in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, and propose a mode of Civility with limits.
Abstract: Building on more than ten years of ethnographic research in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article documents discourses and practices of civility as mutuality with limits. This mode of civility ...
21 citations
References
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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