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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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
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TL;DR: The great theorist of political founding, Hannah Arendt, pointed out that birth, not death, equipped us for the task of beginning, and pointed to Vir... as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Does death provide a generative force in politics? The great theorist of political founding, Hannah Arendt, insisted that birth, not death, equipped us for the task of beginning, and pointed to Vir...
8 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take as their starting point the forcible closure of an art exhibit at the 2015 Venice Biennale in order to illustrate wider dynamics of rising Islamophobia across Europe today.
Abstract: This paper takes as its starting point the forcible closure of an art exhibit at the 2015 Venice Biennale in order to illustrate wider dynamics of rising Islamophobia across Europe today. THE MOSQUE was the Icelandic national contribution to the Biennale, an exhibit that lasted only two weeks before being shut down by the local authorities for ‘public safety reasons’. Presented in its press release as ‘merely a visual analog’ of a mosque, the installation was made ‘real’ as the Venetian Islamic community began using it as a site for gathering and prayers, an all-too-real performance that sparked protests and brought the installation’s closure. The fate of THE MOSQUE is a compelling story that speaks to a series of broader struggles over visibility and invisibility, and over who and what has the right to appear in the landscape of a European city. It speaks to the phantom menace of a fetishized Islam that is haunting Europe today, as nativist and anti-immigrant movements mobilize against perceived threats ...
8 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines how a delusive social imaginary of criminal justice has underpinned contemporary U.S. mass incarceration and encouraged widespread indifference to its violence, and traces the compulsive nature of criminal-justice narratives.
Abstract: This paper examines how a delusive social imaginary of criminal-justice has underpinned contemporary U.S. mass incarceration and encouraged widespread indifference to its violence. I trace the comp...
8 citations
TL;DR: Many of my rough sleeping informants were competing for surface-space on the hot air vents emanating heat around Paris' Gare du Nord during the winter months in particular, when warm space was scarce.
Abstract: Many of my rough sleeping informants were competing for surface-space on the hot air vents emanating heat around Paris’ Gare du Nord. During the winter months in particular, warm space was a scarce...
8 citations
TL;DR: A plethora of sub-themes that constitute these two themes of interest are discussed in this paper, including the ambivalent nature of the state along with its co-reality, that is, sovereignty.
Abstract: The conception(s) of the State and Sovereignty is not new-fangled at any apposite construal outlook However, this ought not to be deciphered to connote that an affinity to delve into their comprehension is futile In this paper, there are a plethora of sub-themes that constitute these two themes of interest Appertaining to the State, it is ordered by the constitutional structures which partake of proffering a delineating social identity as well as the legitimacy of the State action Moreover, the society is construed to be the transitional sphere through which individuals can deliberate on varied issues as a sort of nourishment State sovereignty is comprehended as vastly resounding along with invariant expressions Varied schools’ of thought such as the realists’ interpret the State sovereignty from a pragmatist stance It is in tandem with this deportment that the concern of whether sovereignty could suffer any brand of obliteration emerges The interest of this exposition is to delve into the ambivalent nature of the State along with its co-reality, that is, sovereignty The methodologies that were employed in the pursuit of possible rejoinder(s) to the foregoing problem were hermeneutic and critical approach Arendtian proclivity to the State’s and sovereignty viewpoints were interpreted and later on appraised with an avant-garde lens It was realized that Arendt thought sovereignty besides autarchy to be the same in human endeavours by differentiating between an idea of rights and rights Additionally, there ensues to be two sorts of sovereignty, to be precise, external along with internal sovereignties The lingering enquiry at this juncture is the equipoise and nexus between internal and external sovereignty Autocracy is by and largely vindicated as the need to surmount temporarily the weakness of dualistic or admixtured or functionally separated forms of government The facilitation is in determining the institution of a legitimate actor entitled to all rights along with privileges of statehood in addition to defining the underpinning strictures of rightful State action It is germane to accentuate that legitimacy ought to be silhouetted by the construal of power as the outright will’s aptitude to bring into being as well as impose change on that which is in the correlation between the State and sovereignty
8 citations