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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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
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...The disappearance of media intermediation seems not to have, as was believed, fostered a space for direct meetings in a sort of online Habermasian public sphere, but rather to have implied that the “world between them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them” [6] (p....
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...But despite early optimism about this ostensibly decentralized and democratic meetingplace, the online world seems less and less like a common “table” that “gathers us together” [6] (p....
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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
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...Drawing on the communal power perspective (Arendt, 1958), we propose that humble CEOs do not stress power over other TMT members but, instead, have power to pursue goals for collective interest with the TMTs....
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...In this sense, humble CEOs exercise power in a way that diverts from an interpersonal power perspective (Sturm & Antonakis, 2015) and complies with a communal power perspective (Arendt, 1958)....
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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
References
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine surveillance and transparency not as a dichotomy but as a constitutive relation in the field of academia, focusing specifically on ranking and rivalry in the context of competitive performance.
Abstract: Transparency is both a powerful idea and a technology of power associated with accountability, justice and democracy, which opposes the secretive and shadowy power of surveillance wielded by states and corporations. This article examines surveillance and transparency not as a dichotomy but as a constitutive relation in the field of academia, focusing specifically on ranking and rivalry in the context of competitive performance. Transparency-as-openness (open access platforms) is enmeshed in enclosures assembled from (self-) surveillance, personal data, public institutions and private enterprise. The analysis pays particular attention to how altmetrics and credibility metrics – used to enhance personal prestige and professional standing – reinforce the neo-liberalisation of higher education. The article concludes by engaging critically with the politics and poetics of open enclosures with a view to re-imagining the practice of academic freedom.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a Grundlegende Frage nach der Conditio Humana in digitalen Humanismus and the grundlegendende Methodologie des Humanismsus werden in Abgrenzung zu anti-humanistischen Stromungen herausgearbeitet.
Abstract: In den bestehenden Debatten und dem Wiener Manifest des digitalen Humanismus bleibt trotz der klaren und zukunftsweisenden Normativitat vielfach offen, in welcher Denkrichtung der digitale Humanismus verortet ist und ob sich hinter diesem Begriff eine ein Paradigma und eine bestimmte Lehre vom Menschen verbirgt? Daraus folgen gegebenenfalls divergierende Grundorientierungen zum digitalen Humanismus und es ist offen, ob ein gemeinsames Narrativ des digitalen Humanismus notwendig ist oder gerade die Pluralitat einen postmodernen digitalen Humanismus konstituiert? Diesen Fragen geht der hier vorgelegte Artikel nach, versucht eine Zuwendung zu zentralen Studien zum Humanismus und sucht damit eine Grundlegung und Verortung des digitalen Humanismus und dessen Wiener Manifest zu schaffen. Dazu werden in einem ersten Schritt die inneren Grundlagen des Humanismus dargelegt. Die grundlegende Frage nach der Conditio Humana und die grundlegende Methodologie des Humanismus werden in Abgrenzung zu anti-humanistischen Stromungen herausgearbeitet. In einem zweiten Schritt werden bestehende Grundlagen des digitalen Humanismus benannt. Zentrales Ergebnis ist, dass die Erfindung der Conditio Humana als rationales Denken und logisches Operieren zur Entmythologisierung der Natur eine Errungenschaft der Aufklarung war. Die Conditio Humana im digitalen Humanismus jedoch in Relation zur Maschine verandert wird, denn das Rationale am Denken und das logische Operieren wird der Maschine zugeschrieben. Kreativitat und individuelles Sprechvermogen im digitalen Raum sind zwei neue Conditio Humana im digitalen Humanismus. Der postmoderne Mensch wird damit von der berechenbaren Rationalitat entlastet ohne in die Mythologie zuruckzufallen. Im Fazit werden Konsequenzen der Neuerfindung der Conditio Humana angedeutet und zentrale Problem- und Fragestellungen fur eine wunschenswerte Zukunft des digitalen Humanismus identifiziert.
9 citations
TL;DR: The case of using robots to simulate evolution, in particular the case of Hamilton's Law, is explored, provoked by a strange similarity between the problem of simulation in philosophy of science, and Deleuze’s reading of Plato on the relationship of ideas, copies and simulacra.
Abstract: This paper explores the case of using robots to simulate evolution, in particular the case of Hamilton's Law. The uses of robots raises several questions that this paper seeks to address. The first concerns the role of the robots in biological research: do they simulate something (life, evolution, sociality) or do they participate in something? The second question concerns the physicality of the robots: what difference does embodiment make to the role of the robot in these experiments. Thirdly, how do life, embodiment and social behavior relate in contemporary biology and why is it possible for robots to illuminate this relation? These questions are provoked by a strange similarity that has not been noted before: between the problem of simulation in philosophy of science, and Deleuze's reading of Plato on the relationship of ideas, copies and simulacra.
9 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: This paper reviewed the contribution of media institutions to modernity and its wider institutional arrangements and suggested that, under conditions of increased complexity and radically transformed market competition, the changing set of institutions we call "media" demand a major reinterpretation of how modernity ‘works' through institutional concentration.
Abstract: This article reviews the contribution of media institutions to modernity and its wider institutional arrangements. It will consider how this relationship has normally been conceived, even mythified, and then, in its second half, review how the institutions that we now call ‘media’ are, potentially, disrupting, even deranging, modernity’s arrangements in profound ways. The article will suggest that, under conditions of increased complexity and radically transformed market competition, the changing set of institutions we call ‘media’ demand a major reinterpretation of how modernity ‘works’ through institutional concentration. The first main section reviews in schematic terms the role which media institutions (the press, radio, television, film, but also infrastructural media such as the telegraph) played in the institutional development of modernity from the late 18th century, stabilising the circulation of information and contributing to the freedom associated with modernity, but in the course of this installing a ‘myth of the mediated centre’. The second section will review how this traditional settlement between media and modernity is now being deranged. This goes beyond the globalization of modernity and the complexification of culture landscapes through media and time-space compression. It is a matter, more fundamentally, of a change in the conditions under which media institutions exist and are able to ‘centralize’ communications flows. Today, communications are becoming centralised less through the production and circulation of elaborate media contents at/from global/national centres throughout the social domain (funded through audience-based advertising or state subsidy) and more through the stimulation to/from everywhere of symbolic interactions within a global information space (the internet, and its related apparatus) funded by the collection and sale of data ‘exhaust’ generated by those interactions. The result, paradoxically, is likely to be an increasing destabilisation of many traditional institutions of modernity, and the normalisation of unfreedom through continuous surveillance, undermining the legitimacy of institutional arrangements on which modernity has conventionally relied.
9 citations