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Journal ArticleDOI

The Human Condition.

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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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

Journal ArticleDOI
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 ArticleDOI
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


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....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
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....

    [...]

  • ...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)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that play is the most common (and endangered) time and space in which children act for the collective and apply the work of Ranciere and Arendt to think about collectivity as civic action in young children's schooling lives.
Abstract: Using data from an international, comparative study of civic action in preschools in New Zealand, Australia and the US, we consider some of the types of civic action that are possible when time and space are offered for children to use their agency to initiate, work together and collectively pursue ideas and things that are important to the group. We use an example from each country and apply the work of Ranciere and Arendt to think about collectivity as civic action in young children’s schooling lives. Play, rather than an act itself, is positioned here as political time and space that make such civic action possible in the everyday lives of children. We argue here that play is the most common (and endangered) time and space in which children act for the collective.

25 citations

DOI
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: The ICEVORG as discussed by the authors is a conceptual being that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into conceptual being, which is a new scion that combines avatars and mediums.
Abstract: Reality is nevermore. Reality, or our state of being, has always been a site of contestation. Avatars are representations of us; they are digital beings emerging from our minds to populate and add a new layer of simulation to our conception of reality. Avatars now penetrate our consciousness and demand our attention. They need us, but not as much as we need them. Avatars are digital containers of identity operated by us, their initial puppeteers. They are the key cultural constituents of what French theorist Jean Baudrillard (1994) conceptualized as the hyperreal. I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.” The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop (Hosftadter, 1980, p. 10), as an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and naturalization. The development of the framework explains how the conceptual creature spawns in the interstices between fiction and reality. The ICEVORG transgresses boundaries to reach and transcend the concepts of the avatar and cyborg in order to generate meaning and pursue relevance in contemporary society. Through qualitative analysis of two selected case studies I will introduce evidence of ICEVORGS and how they nurture the discourse 9 on the development of identity in cyberspace by becoming agents of change. Finally, in order to construct my argument, I employ autoethnography, a research methodology that allows for a more personal voice to be included as part of the research process. Autoethnography helps me explore and develop the notion of the ICEVORG in the more appropriate context of hybrid media. 10 Proem It was the end of the spring term in 2001. Emilio, my first born, was five months old. He and his mom were arriving from a trip to Los Angeles, and I picked them up at the Richmond International Airport. After not having slept for three consecutive days driving to the airport was an unforgettable adventure. I was attempting to write my first thesis project to present to my academic adviser. I intended to write a “new” theory of design in the interval of a few days, and I discovered, out of exhaustion and frustration, that failure was imminent. Nonetheless, I kept trying. One book just led to another book, which pushed me into the dark and cold abyss of failure. My family members were expected to arrive at midnight, and Red Bull was not an option in 2001, just dark, heavy coffee. So, I drank enough of it to wake up half of the East Coast. I drove in a surreal state. I think that moment must have been close to what descriptions of a drug-induced altered state of mind must feel like. I drove smoothly on the black pavement with no music or any other sound beyond what the environments around me provided. I was not blinking much, and my pupils were dilated—that I remember. I arrived at the airport and met them with a huge smile and sign that I printed on white paper. The sign bore a red heart with the outline of a man extending his arms to greet his people. We walked to the car and I explained my sleep deprivation to my wife, so she decided to drive. I sat down in the back seat behind the driver and placed my son’s car seat by my side to the right. I covered it with a blanket so the headlights of approaching cars wouldn’t wake him up. I must have fallen sleep that very instant. Sometime later, I woke up on a hospital bed and my previous reality had vanished. 11 Upon my return to what could be described as normal life I noticed that my way of thinking was different yet I could not explain how or why. It was not until I had a professional clinical psychologist test my brain and diagnose it with a condition known as Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder that I found out I could become a normal person by turning myself into a conceptual cyborg. It entailed the ingestion of drugs that I conceptualized as micro-computers altering my natural state of being to improve it. To better understand what ADHD is here is a brief explanation: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, refers to a behavioral condition that has been firmly established as a psychiatric disorder that meets the criteria for the validation of psychiatric diagnoses as outlined by Robins and Guze (1970). The first published case reports of children exhibiting ADHD-like difficulties appeared in the mid-1800s. Not until the turn of the century, however, was any attempt made to view such problems scientifically [What problems? You need to describe in the first sentence what it is.]. In what is often credited as the first of such attempts, Still (1902) described a group of children whose behavior was characterized by symptoms of inattention and overactivity, which began in early childhood, persisted over time, and deviated significantly from expectations for peers of the same age (Anastopoulous & Shelton, 2001). In spite of the great amount of resources and attention given to the condition, it continues to be considered highly controversial, and is questioned by journalists, the media, politicians, and other interest groups (Buitelaar, 2008). The condition is, however, 12 accepted as such by the government and its education system. Section 504 represents federal recognition of ADHD as a condition. Its intent is to provide protection for individuals against discrimination by classifying them as persons with disabilities. Even though the term “disability” is itself constantly under the critical observation of policymakers and the general public, it is accepted as a universal means for signifying “difference.” 1 Section 504 is federal civil rights law under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It provides protection against discrimination for individuals with disabilities. Students in school settings fall under the civil rights protection of Section 504. Figure 1: Evidence. Composition of digital images captured after the accident to show the level of impact that the car, and my head, suffered. Photographs by Vladimir del Rosario.

25 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the shortcomings contained in the substantial definitions of publicity commonly applied to the analysis of both public spaces (physical) and public space (public space) are examined, and the shortcomings of these definitions are discussed.
Abstract: In this article, we start by jointly examining the shortcomings contained in the substantial definitions of publicity commonly applied to the analysis of both public spaces (physical) and public sp...

25 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the way in which the securitisation of education, effected through initiatives in counter-terrorism such as Prevent, leads to what they call "pedagogical injustice" for students.
Abstract: This article addresses the way in which the securitisation of education, effected through initiatives in counter-terrorism such as Prevent, leads to what I call ‘pedagogical injustice’ for students...

25 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that giving consideration to vulnerability can only lead to an ethics, or is only relative to a politics derived from morality, and they define the political as a movement of reengaging with and transforming what is already instituted, and interpret care theories as an attempt to overcome the difficulty of thinking the political from the viewpoint of vulnerability.
Abstract: This paper aims to refute the idea whereby giving consideration to vulnerability can only lead to an ethics, or is only relative to a politics derived from morality. I first shed some light on the seeming impossibility experienced by a large number of contemporary theories of vulnerability to fully think the political. Second, I define what one overlooks in the political when one simply considers it as a sphere of implementation of moral principles. Finally, I interpret care theories as an attempt to overcome the difficulty of thinking the political from the viewpoint of vulnerability, and I define the political as a movement of reengaging with and transforming what is already instituted.

25 citations