Jeff Bezos' former housekeeper is suing the Amazon founder for workplace discrimination that she says forced her to literally climb out out the window of his house to use the bathroom.

In the suit, filed this week in a Washington state court, the former housekeeper claimed that she and Bezos' other household staff were not provided with legally-mandated eating or restroom breaks, and that because there was no "readily accessible bathroom" for them to use, they had to clamber out a laundry room window to get to one.

In the complaint, lawyers for the ex-housekeeper, who is described as having worked for wealthy families for nearly 20 years, wrote that household staff were initially allowed to use a small bathroom in the security room of Bezos' main house, but "this soon stopped... because it was decided that housekeepers using the bathroom was a breach of security protocol."

The suit also alleges that housekeepers in the billionaire's employ "frequently developed Urinary Tract Infections" that they believed was related to not being able to use the bathroom when they needed to at work.

"There was no breakroom for the housekeepers," the complaint adds. "Even though Plaintiff worked 10, 12, and sometimes 14 hours a day, there was no designated area for her to sit down and rest."

The housekeeper — who, like almost all of her coworkers, is Latino — was allegedly not aware that she was entitled to breaks for lunch or rest, and was only able to have a lunch break when Bezos or his family were not on the premises, the lawsuit alleges.

The Washington Post owner has denied his former housekeeper's claims of discrimination through an attorney.

"We have investigated the claims, and they lack merit," Harry Korrell, a Bezos attorney, told Insider of the suit. "[The former employee] made over six figures annually and was the lead housekeeper."

He added that the former housekeeper "was responsible for her own break and meal times, and there were several bathrooms and breakrooms available to her and other staff."

"The evidence will show that [the former housekeeper] was terminated for performance reasons," he continued. "She initially demanded over $9M, and when the company refused, she decided to file this suit."

As the suit was just filed and may well end in a settlement, it'll likely be a long time, if ever, before we find out what really happened at Bezos' house — but if we do, it'll be a fascinating peek behind the curtain at the home life of one of the world's most powerful and wealthy men.

More on billionaires: Tesla Morale Low As Workers Still Don't Have Desks, Face Increased Attendance Surveillance

The post Jeff Bezos' Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom appeared first on Futurism.

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Jeff Bezos' Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom

Droning On

Someone thinks it's a great idea to fly 500 drones over New York City to create a huge ad in the sky on Thursday evening. Because New Yorkers certainly don't have any historical reason to mistrust unknown aircraft over their skyline, right?

As Gothamist reports, the drone swarm is part of a "surreal takeover of New York City’s skyline" on behalf of — we shit you not — the mobile game Candy Crush.

Fernanda Romano, Candy Crush's chief marketing officer, told Gothamist that the stunt will "turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet" using the small, light-up drones.

Though this is not the first time the Manhattan skyline has been used as ad space — that distinction goes to the National Basketball Association and State Farm, which did a similar stunt this summer during the NBA draft — local lawmakers are ticked off about it nonetheless.

"I think it’s outrageous to be spoiling our city’s skyline for private profit," Brad Hoylman, a state senator that represents Manhattan's West Side in the NY Legislature, told the local news site. "It’s offensive to New Yorkers, to our local laws, to public safety, and to wildlife."

Freak Out

Indeed, as the NYC Audubon Society noted in a tweet, the Candy Crush crapshoot "could disrupt the flight patterns of thousands of birds flying through NYC, leading to collisions with buildings" as they migrate.

Beyond the harm this will do to birds and the annoyance it will undoubtedly cause the famously-grumpy people of New York, this stunt is also going down with very little warning, considering that Gothamist is one of the only news outlets even reporting on it ahead of time.

While most viewers will hopefully be able to figure out what's going on pretty quickly, the concept of seeing unknown aircraft above the skyline is a little too reminiscent of 9/11 for comfort — and if Candy Crush took that into consideration, they haven't let on.

So here's hoping this event shocks and awes Thursday night city-goers in a good way, and not in the way that makes them panic.

More drone warfare: Russia Accused of Pelting Ukraine Capital With "Kamikaze" Drones

The post Huge Drone Swarm to Form Giant Advertisement Over NYC Skyline appeared first on Futurism.

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Huge Drone Swarm to Form Giant Advertisement Over NYC Skyline

Latest Feud

Another day, another Elon Musk feud on Twitter — except now, he's the owner of the social network, and he's beefing with a sitting member of Congress.

The whole thing started innocently enough earlier this week, when firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, and better known by her initials, "AOC") subtweeted the website's new owner.

"Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that 'free speech' is actually a $8/mo subscription plan," the New York Democratic Socialist tweeted in a post that, upon Futurism's perusal, appeared to load only half the time.

Sweat Equity

Not one to be shown up, Musk later posted a screenshot of an AOC-branded sweatshirt from the congressperson's website, with its $58 price tag circled and an emoji belying the billionaire's alleged affront at the price.

In response, Ocasio-Cortez said she was proud her sweatshirts were made by union labor, and that the proceeds from their sales were going to fund educational support for needy kids. She later dug in further, noting that her account was "conveniently" not working and joking that Musk couldn't buy his way "out of insecurity."

Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me pic.twitter.com/e3hcZ7T9up

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2022

Bricked

To be clear, any suggestion that Musk personally had anything to do with any Twitter glitches on AOC's part would seem ludicrously petty. But then again, this is a guy who once hired a private detective to investigate a random critic.

Occam's razor, though, suggests that it was probably AOC's mega-viral tweet that broke the site's notoriously dodgy infrastructure. Of course, that's not a ringing endorsement of the site that Musk just acquired for the colossal sum of $44 billion.

More on Twitter: Twitter Working on Plan to Charge Users to Watch Videos

The post AOC Says Her Twitter Account Broke After She Made Fun of Elon Musk appeared first on Futurism.

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AOC Says Her Twitter Account Broke After She Made Fun of Elon Musk

You know that "research" going around saying humans are going to evolve to have hunchbacks and claws because of the way we use our smartphones? Though our posture could certainly use some work, you'll be glad to know that it's just lazy spam intended to juice search engine results.

Let's back up. Today the Daily Mail published a viral story about "how humans may look in the year 3000." Among its predictions: hunched backs, clawed hands, a second eyelid, a thicker skull and a smaller brain.

Sure, that's fascinating! The only problem? The Mail's only source is a post published a year ago by the renowned scientists at... uh... TollFreeForwarding.com, a site that sells, as its name suggests, virtual phone numbers.

If the idea that phone salespeople are purporting to be making predictions about human evolution didn't tip you off, this "research" doesn't seem very scientific at all. Instead, it more closely resembles what it actually is — a blog post written by some poor grunt, intended to get backlinks from sites like the Mail that'll juice TollFreeForwarding's position in search engine results.

To get those delicious backlinks, the top minds at TollFreeForwarding leveraged renders of a "future human" by a 3D model artist. The result of these efforts is "Mindy," a creepy-looking hunchback in black skinny jeans (which is how you can tell she's from a different era).

Grotesque model reveals what humans could look like in the year 3000 due to our reliance on technology

Full story: https://t.co/vQzyMZPNBv pic.twitter.com/vqBuYOBrcg

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 3, 2022

"To fully realize the impact everyday tech has on us, we sourced scientific research and expert opinion on the subject," the TollFreeForwarding post reads, "before working with a 3D designer to create a future human whose body has physically changed due to consistent use of smartphones, laptops, and other tech."

Its sources, though, are dubious. Its authority on spinal development, for instance, is a "health and wellness expert" at a site that sells massage lotion. His highest academic achievement? A business degree.

We could go on and on about TollFreeForwarding's dismal sourcing — some of which looks suspiciously like even more SEO spam for entirely different clients — but you get the idea.

It's probably not surprising that the this gambit for clicks took off among dingbats on Twitter. What is somewhat disappointing is that it ended up on StudyFinds, a generally reliable blog about academic research. This time, though, for inscrutable reasons it treated this egregious SEO spam as a legitimate scientific study.

The site's readers, though, were quick to call it out, leading to a comically enormous editor's note appended to the story.

"Our content is intended to stir debate and conversation, and we always encourage our readers to discuss why or why not they agree with the findings," it reads in part. "If you heavily disagree with a report — please debunk to your delight in the comments below."

You heard them! Get debunking, people.

More conspiracy theories: If You Think Joe Rogan Is Credible, This Bizarre Clip of Him Yelling at a Scientist Will Probably Change Your Mind

The post That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original here:

That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

"And very, very stupid," she adds.

"I did not know what I was doing. So I cut a hole in my finger with a scalpel, which is silly. You're not supposed to use a scalpel; you're supposed to use a needle. The scalpel I used hurt incredibly; it was excruciatingly painful. And then I had to hold the wound open - which I did with a sterilized potato peeler - to insert the magnet. That should have been an absolute septic disaster, but for some reason, it turned out to be fine," says Anonym.

She started her journey with RFID sensors, considered a transdermal temperature sensor (which was a disaster), began experimenting with homebred sensors, and now has a temperature sensor, which she says is the latest addition to her body.

Anonym is trying to work on North Paw, an anklet made by the biohacking group Sensebridgethat gives wearers the ability to navigate their surroundings. The anklet holds eight cellphone vibrator motors around your ankle.

A control unit in the haptic compass senses magnetic north and turns on and off the motors. A few years ago, she detailed plans to have the first South Paw created and implanted in her left leg. "I had a prototype in my ankle for a while, but not anymore. And that had to come out because I was concerned about corrosion," says Anonym.

The biggest questions raised would revolve around ethics and safety measures when it comes to implanting devices oneself.

DIY biohacking falls in a grey zone. With grinders moving into unforeseen territories, regulators are yet to keep up the pace. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning that biohacking procedures involving gene-editing products for self-administration were illegal.

In the United Kingdom, there are no regulationsaround self-implanted microchips as they do not fall under the purview of medical devices, as per theMedicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

However, Professor Tom Joyce, a biomedical engineer at Newcastle University, told Medical Device Networkthat biohacking raises questionsabout liability and responsibility in situations that go wrong.

For example, while a user might be held responsible for modifying an implant counter to the manufacturers instructions, the possibility of hacking the implant might be attributed to a security vulnerability for which the manufacturer might be liable, she says.

As for safety, researchers have notedthat modern body modifications can lead to complications that shouldn't be underestimated.

To Anonym, the ethics of biohacking lie in "a principle called bodily autonomy, wherein, in my opinion, everyone should have the right to alter their own body as they see fit, as long as that doesn't involve anyone else. And what I would find very unethical would be to alter anyone else's body, or to tell anyone else that you can or can't have this done," she says.

More:

A transhuman biohacker implanted over 50 chips and magnets in her body - Interesting Engineering

Radhika Ramaseshan

Senior journalist

Alargely unanticipated but significant transformation in Indias post-Independence polity has been the emergence, exponential growth and near hegemonic position attained by the BJP. If the Congress had an overarching influence over the polity for over four decades since 1947, the BJP is set to appropriate this status in the foreseeable future. But thats not how the BJPs saga started.

Seismic changes wrought by the BJP constitute the most significant political development after Independence.

The Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the BJPs forerunner, was founded four years after Indias Independence but barely left an imprint on the polity except when it assembled a coalition with the non-Congress entities from the socialist stream. The BJSs political philosophy contained elements of the BJP which were never fashioned into a coherent ideology. Its outlook was fuzzy because it subscribed to the concept of integral humanism and believed in social conservatism and swadeshi economics. It was recognisably embedded in the now reshaped and recognisable notions of an Akhand Bharat and the evolution of a single Bharatiya culture. The BJSs high point was trumping the Congress in the 1967 General Election, but only after it regrouped with the Bharatiya Kranti Dal, Samyukta Socialist Party and the Praja Socialist Party to form the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal governmnent.

In 1977, the BJS merged with the Janata Party in an experiment that was a disaster in hindsight but occasioned by the Emergency and Indira Gandhis decision to call a snap poll. Opposition unity was paramount and the BJSs ideological mentor, the RSS, had no issues making common cause even with the Left in the pursuit of powera hallmark of the Sanghs strategy. In 1980, the BJS pulled out of the Janata conglomeration and the BJP was founded.

In the second inning of its political progeny, the RSS assumed a more interventionist role, and was determined to let ideology become the cornerstone of the BJPs growth even as it was not averse to doing business with vaguely similar groupings which were opposed to the Congress. The BJP got off to a slow start, was nearly vanquished in the 1984-85 elections but shepherded by the Sangh, found its feet by 1989. The BJP played a critical role in shaping the National Front-Left Front government, led by VP Singh, but withdrew its external support once the message from the ground in northern and western India was articulated in clear terms. The movement to liberate the birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya fired the imagination of a large part of the electorate and brought electoral dividends to the BJP. Its voters had no use for the minority-appeasement policies of the Congress, the Left and the socialists. Ayodhya symbolised the issues that had exercised sections of Hindus for a long time, notably the need for a common civil code that would nullify the privileges afforded by personal law and deny Kashmir a special status. The BJP played to the gallery. From there on, its rise was exponential.

The course it mapped culminated in the most significant transformations the polity saw after 1947. The changes the BJP wrought in the political structures and sub-structures were seismic and challenged, and eventually demolished some of the certitudes held dear for decades by political leaders. It was as though the party had mined the subliminal emotions of large sections of the majority community and channelled the sentiments into a hardcore agenda that fused hyper-nationalism with political Hinduism.

The BJPs rise proved the dictum that notwithstanding Indias diversity and plurality, its polity can centre round only one national pole. The Congress has ceased to be the axis around which politics revolved. The BJP and Congress cannot coexist as two opposing poles of commensurate strength. The BJPs acceleration ran parallel to the Congresss decline. If the Congress aimed to project itself as a robust foil to the BJP, it would have called for a sharp enunciation in word and deed of its founding principles of secularism and socialism. That was a big demand. As the BJP disseminated its version of Hinduism and found a ready audience for the rhetoric and practice of targeting the minorities and dissenters, the Congress was unable to defend what it stood for. The pre-Independence divide in its ranks on the issues of secularism and socialism got more sharply accentuated in a BJP-dominated era. The Congress ought to have owned up the success achieved by the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh duo in bringing the economy back on track and gifting a horn of plenty to the middle and upper classes after economic liberalisation. Instead, the party could not bring itself to acknowledge the role of two individuals from outside the Gandhi family. The issue got muddled in successive debates over plenitude versus poverty which largely obliterated the genuine benefits of economic reforms. The BJP, meanwhile, enshrined reforms in its manifesto and policies after jettisoning the proponents of swadeshi economics in its rank. Pragmatism was the byword in its practice of politics under the garb of ideology which was unsheathed to get the votes.

The BJPs greatest success lay not just in undermining the Congress but presenting its divisive ideology as acceptable to regional forces that were once shy of uttering Hindutva. If a semblance of political opposition still exists, it is manifest in a few federal parties which struggle to retain their space against the BJPs onslaught. But there is little scope of consolidating an Opposition of the kind seen in the times when the Congress was dominant. The parties have none of the resilience and spontaneity which culminated in the anti-Congress experiments of the 70s and 80s.

A factor that cannot be ignored is the sway which the BJP and the Centre exercise over the institutional domain. Every instrument of the state, meant to coerce the Opposition and dissenters, is theirs for the asking. The Congress had abused such privileges in the past but the BJP has taken it to another level.

In engaging the BJP, the Opposition lacks a level playing field.

Read the original:

Phenomenal rise of BJP - The Tribune India

One of the sources of social discontent in post-apartheid South Africa is the legacy of white racism. This toxic legacy is evident in racialised poverty and inequality.

It is a historical fact that the economic prosperity of whites in South Africa is based on the racist exploitation and impoverishment of blacks.

The long history of racism enabled white South Africans to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world by the 1970s. In his new book, titled Can We Unlearn Racism?, Jacob R Boersema, a New York University academic, shows that by the 21st century white South Africans lifetime work-related earnings on average are four times higher than for Africans.

Add to this corruption, rampant crime, frightening levels of gender based violence and failing political institutions: the outcome is a social horror show that produces misery for millions of black people. This is what former president Thabo Mbeki was referring to in his recent scathing critique of the governing African National Congress (ANC).

Mbeki also criticised the party for not being able to organise a racially diverse audience for the memorial service of the late ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte. That, he said, showed that the ANC had failed to embody its fundamental value of non-racialism.

Read more: Pandemic underscores gross inequalities in South Africa, and the need to fix them

Mbekis thinking reveals deep confusion about race, racism, diversity and non-racialism. He falsely assumes that diversity means harmony.

Non-racialism is one of the unexamined dogmas of the ANC. It has its roots in the politics of Christian humanism that inspired the formation of the party in 1912. That humanism regarded Christianity as transcending race by offering an ultimate goal of inter-racial harmony based on the brotherhood of man.

Whatever solidarity there was between different racial groups in political structures like the Congress Alliance which drew up the ANCs Freedom Charter in 1955 did not translate to the social world outside politics.

The world outside politics was defined by racial segregation. That has not changed much. Apart from the workplace and in schools, ordinary blacks and whites continue to live racially segregated lives.

Read more: How South Africa's white liberals dodge honest debates about race

The ANC, since its formation, has been ideologically trapped in the 19th century black Cape politics of Victorian liberalism which advocated for loyalty to the British Crown. This resulted in blacks making moral appeals to white benevolence for justice and freedom, instead of making political demands. The ANC has never fully understood how white racism functions.

The ANCs establishment in 1912 was driven by an ideological blending of British liberalism and a Christian vision of non-racialism. This equipped it poorly to respond to and make sense of racism and modern South Africa.

For most of the early 20th century, the ANC thought it could defeat racism by appealing to Britains sense of common justice. In his presidential address to the South African Native Congress (now ANC) in 1912 which was published in the Christian Express, the Christian missionary journal published by the Lovedale Press Reverend John Dube encouraged black people to show deep and dutiful respect for the rulers whom God has placed over us because the

sense of common justice and love of freedom so innate in the British character (would) ultimately triumph over all other baser tendencies to colour prejudice and class tyranny.

Consequently, from its formation to the 1950s, when its leaders were subjected to government bans, the ANC failed to win a single political victory over white racism, as historians have pointed out.

From the 1950s, it moved away from black Victorianism and incorporated a Pan-Africanist worldview, as well as Das Kapital Karl Marxs critique of capitalism. The Marxists in the ANC argued that the aim of the struggle was to overthrow capitalism, which they saw in terms of class rather than race.

Black people thus focused their hostility on the apartheid government, and never on whites as such. Black people who dared to use race as an analytical category were eventually purged from the ANC.

By the turn of this century the ANC had rid itself of British liberalism and Christian politics. But it remained committed to the idea of non-racialism.And it has embraced capitalism in particular the capitalism entrenched in South Africa by white people.

There are three consequences.

Firstly, the ANC is an intellectually impoverished organisation that rewards incompetence and greed, and encourages individuals to strive to be the king of the rubbish pile.

Secondly, corruption and blatant disregard for the law have achieved ambient levels.

Thirdly, South Africa is dysfunctional and social cohesion has broken down.

Mbeki is one of the few ANC politicians to admit publicly that non-racialism has failed to unite South Africans. The black intellectual ecosystem has yet to develop a compelling analysis of the relationship between white wealth and black poverty.

The white narrative that blames the black elite for the persistence of racialised inequality erases white racism from post-apartheid South Africa.

According to Statistics South Africa:

The labour market experiences of different population groups in South Africa continue to diverge substantially, and still reflect the strongly persistent legacies of apartheid policies Thus, black African unemployment rates are between four and five times as high as they are amongst whites.

The black middle class remains largely an academic construct. It consists of a mere 4.2 million people whereas blacks make up 80% of the population of 60 million. Research shows no sign of a decrease in racialised wealth inequality since apartheid.

Read more: Why 'pro-poor' policies on their own won't shift inequality in South Africa

The ANCs failures mean that the vast majority of black people are trapped in poverty, with few prospects of escaping.

Thabo Mbeki is right to be worried. And it is not only the ANC that does not have the solution to the countrys problems.

Until black people break from the ideological capture of non-racialism, the legacy of white racism will never be dislodged.

Read the original:

Racism in South Africa: why the ANC has failed to dismantle patterns of white privilege - The Conversation Indonesia

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In an essay for MSNBCs website, columnistZeeshan Aleem calls for a new style of atheism that could address both the growing threat of Christian nationalism and the decline in community thats been hastened by people leaving organized religion.

The first point, about Christian nationalism, has been repeatedly discussed on this site. Its a very real, very troubling phenomenon that affects us all. Between Supreme Court rulings that favor religion over non-religionand Christianity over other religionsand government officials making no secret of their theocratic fantasies, we absolutely need to push back against the dangerous threat of Christian extremism and protect church/state separation.

The second point deserves elaboration, and heres what Aleem writes about why the fall of organized religion is bad for society:

there has been anaccelerating American driftaway from organized religion and most often towardnothing in particular.A rapidly increasing share of Americans aredetaching from religious communitiesthat provide purpose and forums for moral contemplation, and not necessarily finding anything in their stead. Theyredropping out of churchand survey data suggests theyre disproportionately likely to bechecked out from civic life. Their trajectory tracks with a broader decades-long trend of secular life defined byplunging social trust,faith in institutions, and participation in civil society.

Aleem isnt wrong there. People have been less inclined to be part of any community for a while now. (I feel like this is the right place for the obligatory mention of Robert Putnams Bowling Alone, written in 2000.) While traditional forms of civic engagement may be dying out, however, other forms of community have cropped up. Theres a much larger debate to be had about whether theyre substantively as useful, but its not like people leave church and ditch the concept of friendship and rallying around shared causes.

Aleem says a stronger atheist community could address many of these problems. Consider the legal side of things. Couldnt atheists spur a movement that fights back against Christian nationalism?

Aleem says:

An organized atheist community can help agitate for and finance a secularist equivalent of the Federalist Society the right-wing legal movement that helped populate the federal courts with hard right jurists andhelped get us into this mess to act as a bulwark against theocracy. There has been zero, and I meanzero, innovation in the doctrine of separation [of church and state] in the last 50 years, Jacques Berlinerblau, a scholar at Georgetown University and the author of Secularism: The Basics, told me. Atheists who consciously believe in their worldview have a particularly urgent interest in helping to lead a legal and political movement to protect against theocracy.

This kind of enterprise is not only for atheists. It should appeal to anyone with secular and liberal inclinations, and its a space where there is opportunity for coalitions with people of faith who dont think religion should shape American politics and laws. But atheists can play a key role in sounding the alarms if they articulate themselves as citizens whose rights must be respected.

The idea that atheists ought to create a liberal version of the Federalist Society is almost comical because:

But broad support for church/state separation is indeed popular, and guess what? There have been coalitions with people of faith!

The Bremerton case (involving the football coach who wanted to perform coercive prayers at midfield after games for a large audience) was supported by a wide array of religious, non-religious, and civil rights groups. Another recent case, Carson v. Makin, which was about the legality of state funding for private religious schools, saw a joint amicus brief written by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the ACLU, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the American Humanist Association, the Hindu American Foundation, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Sikh Coalition. Thats just one brief!

The point is: When it comes to our legal system, atheist groups routinely work with religious groups to advance their shared goals. This has been a regular practice for many, many years now. Atheist and church/state separation groups are allies of progressive religious organizations when it comes to defending actual religious freedom.

Thats not a pipe dream. Its happening right now.

What about the social aspects of religion? Aleem says we need secular spaces that provide the benefits of religion without God:

By putting together study groups, communities for secular meditation, and elucidating the meaning and joys of atheism without spewing venom toward all religion, atheists can build spaces for religion-skeptical people to find purpose, think about ethics, form community and consider more carefully how to build a better society.

Atheists should create deliberate communities, and this can take many forms. For example study groups for pursuing the great questions of existence by reading works of literature, philosophy and, yes, even religious texts.

Atheists should form secular meditation groups or explore something else that allows for contemplation if its not their cup of tea

I swear, Googles not that hard to use

Anyone whos paid attention to the world of organized atheism for the past two decades undoubtedly knows there have been attempts to do all this. Many of them are still ongoing. For a while, atheist churches like Sunday Assembly and Oasis received lots of media coverage (and several of those groups continue attracting lots of people). They focus on the positives of a secular outlook rather than tearing down religion.

There are also communities for secular meditation, and dealing with addiction without resorting to religion, and a network of secular therapists, and a charitable organization that does good without God.

They all exist! Theyve all been doing this work for years, if not decades. They need financial support. (Its a running theme here.)

Theres also, you may have heard, Secular Humanism.

Greg M. Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, also took exception to the suggestion that atheists ought to do exactly what I just spent a decade working onand, more importantly, what dozens if not hundreds of wonderfulleaders I know are still working on. He added that the request being made of our movement is simply unfair:

After having personally spent well over 10,000 hours and well over a million dollars of donors money to help mobilize thousands of nonreligious people towards popular, positive, community-oriented programs, Ive come to the conclusion that its not really fair to ask us atheists, as social entrepreneurs, to turn water into wine. Yes, we do great work and its very important for people to continue to back that work, financially, and with time and moral support. But what Americareallyneeds: leaders and citizens who can learn to sacrifice for one another to build a more compassionate, inclusive and equitable society, honoring all rational beliefsreligious and secularalong the way.

So if the critique of atheism is that were not providing these resources, thats just not true. The resources are out there. They often lack the support they need to thrive, and sometimes, yes, they fail for other reasons as well. But they are out there.

Finally, Aleem says hes been disillusioned by the myopic focus of the New Atheist movement that got so much attention about 15 years ago. Thats why hed like to see a strong secular movement that goes much deeper than those writers did back then.

On the other hand, I found that the New Atheists caricatured religion, and neglected to consider all the nuances of religious belief and the positive role it could play in peoples lives.

This group was so fixated on religion as the root of all evil and Islam as the most evil of them all that it failed to understand how Islamist terrorism might not just be about religion but also the specific political agenda of a group of extremists. As a leftist activist, and as a person who knew many liberal and fairly secular Muslims one of whom spurred me to become an atheist I found this political tilt repugnant.

Thats a fair criticism. Its one thats been made many times by other atheists. But had Aleem explored the national organizations that serve atheists, he wouldve found secular leaders who dont take their cues from the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc. They are proudly diverse. They are much more inclusive of women and people of color. They work with religious groups when it comes to shared interests. They are less interested in tearing down religion than lifting up atheists who need their help. If you dont know the names of the people running these groups, thats because the movement in general is far less centralized around a handful of figureheads than it used to be, and thats a good thing.

In short, Aleems concerns are warranted, but its not like theyre being ignored. The work has been happening. And speaking with the people who do that work, instead of two philosophers who appear to pay no attention to it, wouldve revealed that.

Related Posts

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'A new kind of atheism' already exists in America (if you look closely) - OnlySky

Nigerian Academy of Letters is foremost Nigerias Academy of intellectuals at home and outside the shores of our country.

The members that make up the Academy are full professors who possess the required experience in terms of their years of Professorship which usually fall within the range of criteria that the founding fathers established decades ago. Of course, members of the Academy are drawn from every pertinent discipline of the Humanities.

The Academy also has a college of fellows composed of leading scholars, and professors, that is, in the respective disciplines of the Humanities literature, orature, language, foreign languages, linguistics, history, drama/theatre, music, religions, philosophy, culture, etc.

The college of fellows regulates and guides the Academy, if need be, on pertinent affairs/matters relating to the Academy. There are executive officers of the Academy who are responsible for making things happen in accordance with what the college of fellows agrees to after official deliberations.

The President (currently in the person of Professor Duro Oni of the University of Lagos), ably assisted by other voted-for officers, runs the affairs of the Academy in line with the Academys constitution as written by the founding fathers such as Emeritus Professor Ayo Bamgbose, Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo both of the University of Ibadan and other prominent and eminent Professors whose names I could not immediately recall when my nib set to work on this column.

Pioneers Fellows of the Academy included Professors Chinua Achebe, J. P. Clark (both of whom are now late) and Professor Wole Soyinka, our three pre-eminent writers and scholars. Other front-line scholars and professors such as Ayo Bamgbose, Ayo Banjo, Romanus Egudu, Dan Izevbaye, Munzali Jibril, Olu Obafemi, Francis Egbokhare (each of whom at one time or the other had been the President of the Academy), Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Union Edebiri, Duro Oni and Godwin Sogolo, Toyin Falola, Tanure Ojaide, Amechi Nicholas Akwanya, Ademola Da Sylva, Akachi Ezigbo, Mabel Osakwe, and several other reputable professors of quality are as today distinguished Fellows of the Academy (usually inducted every year of the Convocation when new Fellows and members are also accepted into the fold as shall happen next week).

Now I have dwelt at length on this longish beginning primarily to draw the attention of my readers and the public to this illustrious realm of intellectual and professional expertise that has not institutionally been divorced from our universities and our historical and social world since above twenty years ago. Our body of intellectual and professional humanists as far as I can discern from my limited key-hole perception (of the Academy) has over the years defended the virtues of liberal education and the precious pleasures of the humanities without betraying its essence and value to the central authority and its insurrectionary running a-ground today of your country my country our country. As far as I can tell, things have come to a head this year. The bombings and kidnappings and other political and criminal iniquities are in full course today threatening our existence as a nation of diverse and multi-ethnic peoples who have been living in brotherhood and in unity since time immemorial.

The Academys 24th Convocation which begins from August 10-12, 2022 at the J.F. Ajayi Hall/Theatre, University of Lagos will to a large degree meaningfully address our current colonial/post-colonial circumstances without, I presume, any particular sort of camouflage. The speakers at the event are from the United States of America and our public Higher Institutions that have been un-patriotically shut for six months or so now by our allegedly diabolical/demonic conciliator-instigator and confusion engineer in our central labour ministry. He was once upon a time a votary of the rebarbative Okeija deity. I have made a pertinent temporary digression which illustrates the inhumanity of all those within all the domains of our central governments political activities. They are savanna and forest and mangrove sloths.

Professor Simeon Olusegun Illesanmi of Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, North Carolina, USA will deliver the Convocation lecture entitled The Republic of Dignity: The Nigerian Common Humanity in a Culturally Heterogeneous Nigeria; at the scientific session of the event Professor Egodi Uchendu of University of Nigeria, Nsukka will speak on Historical Indications of Cultural Commonalities in Nigerias Heterogeneity while Professors Emmanuel S. Dandaura of Nasarawa State University, Keffi and Gideon Sunday Omachonu also of Nasarawa State University, Keffi will respectively speak on Navigating Nigerias Multiculturalism and the National Identity Question and Cultural Commonalities in Nigerias Heterogeneity: A Linguistic Perspective.

All the topics as they seem to me are quests for the absolute and I personally want to understand them in terms of their directions and purposes of my great wish to be present physically at the event. As a matter of fact, all readers of this column and all scholars in our lock-up and un-lock-up universities and higher institutions should journey happily to the University of Lagos to partake in the sipping or sucking of the milk of the event. But the existential actualities of human life that are so un-dignifying in your country my country our country now cannot but knock out the thought from our academic, critical and journalistic consciousness.

The more I think about the Convention the more I adore the Nigerian Academy of Letters. That the Academy could organize the Convention at this time of our post-colonial social, cultural, political and academic contamination says so much about the humanism of members Fellows and executive officers of the Academy. The Convention, against all the crushing oddities of our realities, is a powerful response to the formidable or over-riding complexities they generate in our age of seeming declining academic power. Professor (Mrs.) Mabel Evwiehoma, a Fellow of the Academy, who is of the University of Abuja, pertinently told me as follows in response to a question I journalistically threw at her relating to what delights or should delight the public about NALs academic principles and emotional stimulus:

It is the humanities (that NAL champions) that bear the courage to attest to all that is humane and seeks all that has value in people. Societies that show advancement in technology rose in the sector with much respect for their arts, languages, lores and literature. It is therefore imperative to commend the NAL, the first Academy in Nigeria even before the Nigerian Academy of Science, for its efforts in our complex society to extend the frontiers of humanity, liberty and development, all on the platform of humaneness, which is the pursuit of the good for social good. One cannot shy away from the governments efforts to disdain the arts. and the total state of the humanities in our citadels of learning . (Despite the challenges) NAL. is acclaimed for its role in shoring up the humanities.

Professor Evwierhomas argument cannot be countered by any sane person. I will give her a perfect nod with a request to the Nigerian Academy of Letters to continue to remain itself whether or not a government exists that catches its eye all right or whether or not a government exists that does not catch NALs perspective and eye all right. But I must end this column with an un-assailable argument put forward by Amiri Baraka (1934-2014, African-American writer of all the genres of literature, who was previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka): There are people who actually believe that politicians are more powerful than artists, what a bizarre lie.

What else do I say? The Nigerian Academy of Letters is inviting us all to the University of Lagos from August 10-12 to witness, and share the smell, the power of freedom, happiness, goodness, decency and of love that the humanities germinate in healthy minds and hearts. You can also join the train of the gathering through zoom.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

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On 24th convocation of Nigerian Academy of Letters Opinion The Guardian Nigeria News Nigeria and World News - Guardian Nigeria

It is, indeed, a great pleasure for me to avail myself the opportunity to say a few words on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the late Professor A. K. Nazmul Karim, who was my teacher, supervisor and colleague at the Department of Sociology, University of Dhaka since the mid-1960s. He taught me "Social Thought" and "Introduction to Sociology" at the undergraduate level during 1966-69 and "Theory of Social Change" at the Master's level during 1969-70.

Incidentally, he also took a course on "Theory of Social Change" with Professor Herbert Marcuse during 1952-53 at Columbia University, New York. However, in his course outline at the University of Dhaka, where he taught us the course, he did not introduce any strand of Marcuse or Frankfurt/Critical School. In that way, we missed a great opportunity to hear about Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964) from one of Marcuse's students to whom we had easy access. Notwithstanding, Professor Karim's introduction to Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930) in that course created a lasting impression on my nascent sociological imagination and I remained ever grateful to him for that.

Odd enough, when I returned to the University of Dhaka in 1986 after obtaining my PhD from York University, I was asked to teach Professor Karim's favourite course "Theory of Social Change" in his mortal absence. I felt strange. As of today, I am still teaching this course and I am grateful to the Department of Sociology, University of Dhaka to allow me to teach this course for the last 36 years at a stretch.

I also found a strange tie on another count: both Professor Karim and I had one common thesis supervisor, T. B. Bottomore, the leading British sociologist at that time. We also had an almost common thesis topic. He supervised Professor Karim's PhD thesis, "The Modern Muslim Political Elite in Bengal" (1964) at the London School of Economics & Political Science. After more than a decade, Professor Bottomore supervised my Master's thesis, "Political Elite in Bangladesh" (1976) at Dalhousie University.

During 1969-70, I was researching Swami Vivekananda as my Master's thesis at the University of Dhaka under the supervision of Professor Karim. At that time, he was the Head of two Departments, Sociology and Political Science. I found my friends from Political Science unhappy about this.

It was never easy to enter into a "communicative action" (to borrow a phrase from Habermas) with Professor Karim: he appeared to us as an intellectual high priest and we felt dwarfed by his physical presence. This produced a general fear and anxiety coupled with a feeling of intellectual inadequacy. In the still of the summer noon, his voice sounded like a Upanishadic rishi in his colonial-style office, and I tried my utmost to grasp his advice and comments.

The only fond memory that I have is my autumn evening appointment at his Isa Khan Road residence for a discussion on my thesis. I was offered plenty of snacks and we had a long and fruitful discussion. Probably that was the only fearless simulacrum I could construct across time. His insights thrown on me in his characteristic manner on the social structure of Bengal were immensely beneficial in understanding my research problem. I was motivated to explore the colonial social structure of Bengal. Finally, I could locate Vivekananda sociologically: he wrote the autobiography of his own age.

As a stroke of luck, I became Professor Karim's colleague at the Department in early 1973, after a year of post-liberation transitional teaching in a college in Dhaka. He routinised a weekly seminar presentation in his office followed by tea for the young teachers for their skill development. When my presentation caught his attention and I received a few comforting words from him, my years of cumulative trepidation and agony suddenly left me. Then I began to prepare for higher studies and upon receiving Fellowship and Teaching-Assistantship, left the University of Dhaka for Dalhousie University, Halifax. But I kept on communicating with him from Halifax and later, from Toronto. The news of his departed soul received in Toronto left me shocked. Myriad of images down the memory lane flashed and nostalgia gripped me. Cinematographically, I began to walk around the corridor of the Arts Building from where I began my journey to the world of learning.

My first impression of Professor Karim comes from his two articles, "Evolution of Religion and Marxism" (Aroni, Kolkata, 14 April 1944) and "Geography and God" (Dhaka University Annual, 1946). By that time, I finished reading R. M. MacIver and P. Sorokin and could see a strong influence of them in his ideas. The radical thinking reflected in those articles never found its expression in his later work, Changing Society in India and Pakistan: A Study in Social Change and Social Stratification (1956) and The Dynamics of Bangladesh Society (1980), which were his Master's and PhD theses respectively. Thus, in Changing Society, Karim described the nascent development of "class consciousness" in colonial India and Independent Pakistan. Later, he shifted to "political consciousness" of purposive associations and political parties to assert that political parties are the democratic translation of class struggle.

The non-development of class consciousness in our society is never explained theoretically. For the Western society, Gyrgy Lukcs emphasised on 'commodity fetishism' and 'reification' in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923) and Marcuse highlighted 'instrumental reason' in One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964). Similarly, in The Dynamics, Karim could continue his earlier radical tradition to show the relationships between class and elites as C. Wright Mills did in The Power Elite (1956).

His use of historical method in both works is extremely useful for the development of Bangladesh's social history, if not sociology. The utility of this method increases manifold and becomes sociologically essential, if combined with dialectics as in Theodor W. Adorno's Negative Dialectics (1966) and Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947).

Established in 1957 with the assistance of UNESCO, the Department of Sociology was colonized by neocolonial Pakistan it was recommended by Claude Lvi-Strauss, UNESCO Commission Chief, first chaired by Pierre Bessaignet (1957-58), and taught by John Owen and Co Pot Land. The UNESCO assistance continued for a decade. Later, in neoliberal Bangladesh, to the utter disgust of its architect, the Department of Sociology has become completely NGOized in the general rubric of "commodification of knowledge" as asserted by Jean-Franois Lyotard. The failure of the Department of Sociology, University of Dhaka to decolonise pedagogy of the colonisers and bring about an epistemic shift in the form of European Enlightenment, is the fiasco of Bangladeshi sociologists to grasp the importance of historical method [dialectical added] for the study of sociological phenomena as emphasised by Professor Karim.

A. I. Mahbub Uddin Ahmed is a Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Dhaka.

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In memory of my teacher - The Daily Star

Class of philosophies

Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is a term with at least seven definitions according to philosopher Francesca Ferrando:[1]

Philosopher Ted Schatzki suggests there are two varieties of posthumanism of the philosophical kind:[15]

One, which he calls 'objectivism', tries to counter the overemphasis of the subjective or intersubjective that pervades humanism, and emphasises the role of the nonhuman agents, whether they be animals and plants, or computers or other things.[15]

A second prioritizes practices, especially social practices, over individuals (or individual subjects) which, they say, constitute the individual.[15]

There may be a third kind of posthumanism, propounded by the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Though he did not label it as 'posthumanism', he made an extensive and penetrating immanent critique of Humanism, and then constructed a philosophy that presupposed neither Humanist, nor Scholastic, nor Greek thought but started with a different religious ground motive.[16] Dooyeweerd prioritized law and meaningfulness as that which enables humanity and all else to exist, behave, live, occur, etc. "Meaning is the being of all that has been created," Dooyeweerd wrote, "and the nature even of our selfhood."[17] Both human and nonhuman alike function subject to a common 'law-side', which is diverse, composed of a number of distinct law-spheres or aspects.[18] The temporal being of both human and non-human is multi-aspectual; for example, both plants and humans are bodies, functioning in the biotic aspect, and both computers and humans function in the formative and lingual aspect, but humans function in the aesthetic, juridical, ethical and faith aspects too. The Dooyeweerdian version is able to incorporate and integrate both the objectivist version and the practices version, because it allows nonhuman agents their own subject-functioning in various aspects and places emphasis on aspectual functioning.[19]

Ihab Hassan, theorist in the academic study of literature, once stated:

Humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something one must helplessly call posthumanism.[20]

This view predates most currents of posthumanism which have developed over the late 20th century in somewhat diverse, but complementary, domains of thought and practice. For example, Hassan is a known scholar whose theoretical writings expressly address postmodernity in society.[21] Beyond postmodernist studies, posthumanism has been developed and deployed by various cultural theorists, often in reaction to problematic inherent assumptions within humanistic and enlightenment thought.[4]

Theorists who both complement and contrast Hassan include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, cyberneticists such as Gregory Bateson, Warren McCullouch, Norbert Wiener, Bruno Latour, Cary Wolfe, Elaine Graham, N. Katherine Hayles, Benjamin H. Bratton, Donna Haraway, Peter Sloterdijk, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Timothy Morton, and Douglas Kellner. Among the theorists are philosophers, such as Robert Pepperell, who have written about a "posthuman condition", which is often substituted for the term "posthumanism".[5][8]

Posthumanism differs from classical humanism by relegating humanity back to one of many natural species, thereby rejecting any claims founded on anthropocentric dominance.[22] According to this claim, humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it in ethical considerations a priori.[23] Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, previously seen as the defining aspect of the world. Human rights exist on a spectrum with animal rights and posthuman rights.[24] The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though it does not imply abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.[25]

Proponents of a posthuman discourse, suggest that innovative advancements and emerging technologies have transcended the traditional model of the human, as proposed by Descartes among others associated with philosophy of the Enlightenment period.[26] In contrast to humanism, the discourse of posthumanism seeks to redefine the boundaries surrounding modern philosophical understanding of the human. Posthumanism represents an evolution of thought beyond that of the contemporary social boundaries and is predicated on the seeking of truth within a postmodern context. In so doing, it rejects previous attempts to establish 'anthropological universals' that are imbued with anthropocentric assumptions.[22] Recently, critics have sought to describe the emergence of posthumanism as a critical moment in modernity, arguing for the origins of key posthuman ideas in modern fiction,[27] in Nietzsche,[28] or in a modernist response to the crisis of historicity.[29]

Although Nietzsche's philosophy has been characterized as posthumanist,[30][31][32] the philosopher Michel Foucault placed posthumanism within a context that differentiated humanism from enlightenment thought. According to Foucault, the two existed in a state of tension: as humanism sought to establish norms while Enlightenment thought attempted to transcend all that is material, including the boundaries that are constructed by humanistic thought.[22] Drawing on the Enlightenment's challenges to the boundaries of humanism, posthumanism rejects the various assumptions of human dogmas (anthropological, political, scientific) and takes the next step by attempting to change the nature of thought about what it means to be human. This requires not only decentering the human in multiple discourses (evolutionary, ecological, technological) but also examining those discourses to uncover inherent humanistic, anthropocentric, normative notions of humanness and the concept of the human.

Posthumanistic discourse aims to open up spaces to examine what it means to be human and critically question the concept of "the human" in light of current cultural and historical contexts.[4] In her book How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles, writes about the struggle between different versions of the posthuman as it continually co-evolves alongside intelligent machines.[33] Such coevolution, according to some strands of the posthuman discourse, allows one to extend their subjective understandings of real experiences beyond the boundaries of embodied existence. According to Hayles's view of posthuman, often referred to as technological posthumanism, visual perception and digital representations thus paradoxically become ever more salient. Even as one seeks to extend knowledge by deconstructing perceived boundaries, it is these same boundaries that make knowledge acquisition possible. The use of technology in a contemporary society is thought to complicate this relationship.[34]

Hayles discusses the translation of human bodies into information (as suggested by Hans Moravec) in order to illuminate how the boundaries of our embodied reality have been compromised in the current age and how narrow definitions of humanness no longer apply. Because of this, according to Hayles, posthumanism is characterized by a loss of subjectivity based on bodily boundaries.[4] This strand of posthumanism, including the changing notion of subjectivity and the disruption of ideas concerning what it means to be human, is often associated with Donna Haraways concept of the cyborg.[4] However, Haraway has distanced herself from posthumanistic discourse due to other theorists use of the term to promote utopian views of technological innovation to extend the human biological capacity[35] (even though these notions would more correctly fall into the realm of transhumanism[4]).

While posthumanism is a broad and complex ideology, it has relevant implications today and for the future. It attempts to redefine social structures without inherently humanly or even biological origins, but rather in terms of social and psychological systems where consciousness and communication could potentially exist as unique disembodied entities. Questions subsequently emerge with respect to the current use and the future of technology in shaping human existence,[22] as do new concerns with regards to language, symbolism, subjectivity, phenomenology, ethics, justice and creativity.

Sociologist James Hughes comments that there is considerable confusion between the two terms.[36][37] In the introduction to their book on post- and transhumanism, Robert Ranisch and Stefan Sorgner address the source of this confusion, stating that posthumanism is often used as an umbrella term that includes both transhumanism and critical posthumanism.[36]

Although both subjects relate to the future of humanity, they differ in their view of anthropocentrism.[38] Pramod Nayar, author of Posthumanism, states that posthumanism has two main branches: ontological and critical.[39] Ontological posthumanism is synonymous with transhumanism. The subject is regarded as an intensification of humanism.[40] Transhumanist thought suggests that humans are not post human yet, but that human enhancement, often through technological advancement and application, is the passage of becoming post human.[41] Transhumanism retains humanism's focus on the Homo sapiens as the center of the world but also considers technology to be an integral aid to human progression. Critical posthumanism, however, is opposed to these views.[42] Critical posthumanism rejects both human exceptionalism (the idea that humans are unique creatures) and human instrumentalism (that humans have a right to control the natural world).[39] These contrasting views on the importance of human beings are the main distinctions between the two subjects.[43]

Transhumanism is also more ingrained in popular culture than critical posthumanism, especially in science fiction. The term is referred to by Pramod Nayar as "the pop posthumanism of cinema and pop culture."[39]

Some critics have argued that all forms of posthumanism, including transhumanism, have more in common than their respective proponents realize.[44] Linking these different approaches, Paul James suggests that 'the key political problem is that, in effect, the position allows the human as a category of being to flow down the plughole of history':

This is ontologically critical. Unlike the naming of postmodernism where the post does not infer the end of what it previously meant to be human (just the passing of the dominance of the modern) the posthumanists are playing a serious game where the human, in all its ontological variability, disappears in the name of saving something unspecified about us as merely a motley co-location of individuals and communities.[45]

However, some posthumanists in the humanities and the arts are critical of transhumanism (the brunt of Paul James's criticism), in part, because they argue that it incorporates and extends many of the values of Enlightenment humanism and classical liberalism, namely scientism, according to performance philosopher Shannon Bell:[46]

Altruism, mutualism, humanism are the soft and slimy virtues that underpin liberal capitalism. Humanism has always been integrated into discourses of exploitation: colonialism, imperialism, neoimperialism, democracy, and of course, American democratization. One of the serious flaws in transhumanism is the importation of liberal-human values to the biotechno enhancement of the human. Posthumanism has a much stronger critical edge attempting to develop through enactment new understandings of the self and others, essence, consciousness, intelligence, reason, agency, intimacy, life, embodiment, identity and the body.[46]

While many modern leaders of thought are accepting of nature of ideologies described by posthumanism, some are more skeptical of the term. Donna Haraway, the author of A Cyborg Manifesto, has outspokenly rejected the term, though acknowledges a philosophical alignment with posthumanism. Haraway opts instead for the term of companion species, referring to nonhuman entities with which humans coexist.[35]

Questions of race, some argue, are suspiciously elided within the "turn" to posthumanism. Noting that the terms "post" and "human" are already loaded with racial meaning, critical theorist Zakiyyah Iman Jackson argues that the impulse to move "beyond" the human within posthumanism too often ignores "praxes of humanity and critiques produced by black people", including Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire to Hortense Spillers and Fred Moten. Interrogating the conceptual grounds in which such a mode of beyond is rendered legible and viable, Jackson argues that it is important to observe that "blackness conditions and constitutes the very nonhuman disruption and/or disruption" which posthumanists invite. In other words, given that race in general and blackness in particular constitutes the very terms through which human/nonhuman distinctions are made, for example in enduring legacies of scientific racism, a gesture toward a beyond actually returns us to a Eurocentric transcendentalism long challenged. Posthumanist scholarship, due to characteristic rhetorical techniques, is also frequently subject to the same critiques commonly made of postmodernist scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Posthumanism - Wikipedia

In reality, though, Sophia was not a breakthrough in AI. She was just an elaborately made puppet that could answer some simple questions. But the debate Sophia provoked about what rights robots might have in the future is a topic that is being explored by an emerging philosophical movement known as post-humanism.

In order to understand what post-humanism is, its important to start with a definition of what it is departing from. Humanism is a term that captures a broad range of philosophical and ethical movements that are unified by their unshakable belief in the unique value, agency, and moral supremacy of human beings.

Emerging during the Renaissance, humanism was a reaction against the superstition and religious authoritarianism of Medieval Europe. It wrested control of human destiny from the whims of a transcendent divinity and placed it in the hands of rational individuals (which, at that time, meant white men). In so doing, the humanist worldview, which still holds sway over many of our most important political and social institutions, positions humans at the centre of the moral world.

Post-humanism, which is a set of ideas that have been emerging since around the 1990s, challenges the notion that humans are and always will be the only agents of the moral world. In fact, post-humanists argue that in our technologically mediated future, understanding the world as a moral hierarchy and placing humans at the top of it will no longer make sense.

The best-known post-humanists, who are also sometimes referred to as transhumanists, claim that in the coming century, human beings will be radically altered by implants, bio-hacking, cognitive enhancement and other bio-medical technology. These enhancements will lead us to evolve into a species that is completely unrecognisable to what we are now.

This vision of the future is championed most vocally by Ray Kurzweil, a chief engineer of Google, who believes that the exponential rate of technological development will bring an end to human history as we have known it, triggering completely new ways of being that mere mortals like us cannot yet comprehend.

While this vision of the post-human appeals to Kurzweils Silicon Valley imagination, other post-human thinkers offer a very different perspective. Philosopher Donna Haraway, for instance, argues that the fusing of humans and technology will not physically enhance humanity, but will help us see ourselves as being interconnected rather than separate from non-human beings.

She argues that becoming cyborgs strange assemblages of human and machine will help us understand that the oppositions we set up between the human and non-human, natural and artificial, self and other, organic and inorganic, are merely ideas that can be broken down and renegotiated. And more than this, she thinks if we are comfortable with seeing ourselves as being part human and part machine, perhaps we will also find it easier to break down other outdated oppositions of gender, of race, of species.

So while for Kurzweil post-humanism describes a technological future of enhanced humanity, for Haraway, post-humanism is an ethical position that extends moral concern to things that are different from us and in particular to other species and objects with which we cohabit the world.

Our post-human future, Haraway claims, will be a time when species meet, and when humans finally make room for non-human things within the scope of our moral concern. A post-human ethics, therefore, encourages us to think outside of the interests of our own species, be less narcissistic in our conception of the world, and to take the interests and rights of things that are different to us seriously.

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What is Post-Humanism? - Ethics Explainer By The Ethics Centre

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What does it mean to advance humanism in healthcare? According to Arnold P. Gold Foundation advancing humanism in healthcare is characterized as, a respectful and compassionate relationship between physicians, members of the healthcare team and their patients. A recent article published January 26, 2019 in Modern Healthcare talks about the importance of having all members of the healthcare team constantly educated regarding how to utilize patient-communication-best-practices to ensure the best outcomes. This title says it all, Physician empathy a key driver of patient satisfaction. This article was published by Science Daily and points out that sixty-five percent of patient satisfaction was attributed to physician empathy.Additional Gold Foundation studies have also recognized the impact empathy has on improving health outcomes and its significance in patient care.

Empathy is defined as, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It is the capacity to put ones self in anothers shoes and feel what that person is going through and share their emotions and feelings. It is the recognition and validation of a patients fear, anxiety, pain, and worry. It is the ability to understand patients feelings and facilitate a more accurate diagnoses and more caring treatment. Expressing patient empathy indeed advances humanism in healthcare as a matter of fact expressing empathy in healthcare is THE KEY INGREDIENT to enhancing the patient experience and patient encounter.

Both empathy and compassion in healthcare play vital roles in thepatient experienceand are key components of the physician-patient relationship. When a patient arrives to see their healthcare provider, the patients medical condition whether it is a severe illness or injury, a chronic condition, or simply a routine check-up will often manifest emotions such as anxiety, fear, and apprehension. Patients want to know they are receiving the very best care, and that is conveyed when their care team is empathetic and compassionate.

Empathy extends far beyond a patients medical history, signs, and symptoms. It is more than a clinical diagnosis and treatment. Empathy encompasses a connection and an understanding that includes the mind, body, and soul. Expressing empathy is highly effective and powerful, which builds patient trust, calms anxiety, and improves health outcomes.Research has shownempathy and compassion to be associated with better adherence to medications, decreased malpractice cases, fewer mistakes, and increased patient satisfaction. Expressing empathy, one patient at a time, advances humanism in healthcare.

When I first watched the video below, I was reminded, and blown-away, by the notion that the smallest expressions of empathy make huge lasting impressions. Checkout the Cleveland Clinics, Delos Toby Cosgrove, MD, President and CEO, as he and his team demonstrate some special moments that exemplifies the power of empathy in healthcare. The video has become a viral sensation, with 4,437,714 views on YouTube, as of this writing. It may be viewed below:

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The Importance of Empathy in Healthcare: Advancing Humanism

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation champions humanism in healthcare, which we define as compassionate, collaborative, and scientifically excellent care. This Gold standard of care embraces all and targets barriers to such care. We empower experts, learners, and leaders to together create systems and cultures that support humanistic care for all.

The Gold Foundation is pleased to announce the six winners of the 2022 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest: three by medical students and three by nursing students. First place is awarded to Mason Blacker of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and nursing student Jessica Pierce of the Oregon Health & Science University. This years winning essays all tell the story of the moments that take us back to our own humanity.

17 medical students have been selected as 2022 Gold Student Summer Fellows, launching summer projects to magnify humanism in healthcare and help address health inequities. Each of the 9 projects was selected for their focus on underserved communities.

The Annual Gala was June 9th in New York City, a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Gold Humanism Honor Society and the 5th anniversary of the Gold Corporate Council. Check back next week for a recording of the full 90-minute event. Thank you to all who joined us, and congratulations to the gala honorees!

Advancing Healthcare Equity with Medical Humanities is an illuminating webinar series that spans 10 sessions, all of which further dialogue on the timely issue of health equity across the healthcare ecosystem. CME credits are available for $10 / 1 hour per webinar.

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1.How did humanism affect the Enlightenment?

A. It led people to return to traditional religious beliefs.

B. It led people to turn away from scientific explanations of events.

C. It led people to apply logic and reason to understand the world.

D. It led to an increase in absolute monarchies in Europe.

2.What does the quote We should regard all men as our brothers describe?

A. feminism

B. tolerance

C. separation of powers

D. natural rights

3.Rousseau's idea of (tolerance, the social contract, natural rights, or separation of powers)[choose one] stood in direct contrast to the previous idea of a king's right to rule by divine right. Under Rousseau's theory, a government gets its power from(the people, a constitution,god,or the natural order of things)[choose one]rather than from (the people, a constitution, god,or the natural order of things)[choose one] .

4.The framers of the United States Constitution used Montesquieu's idea of (free markets, the social contract, natural rights, or a separation of powers)[choose one] when they gave (the free market,the people, the president, or congress)[choose one] the ability to create laws and (the free market,the people, the president, or congress)[choose one] the ability to carry out the laws..

Someone here will be able to check what YOU THINK the answers are once you post them.

1. C - It led people to apply logic and reason to understand the world.2. B - Tolerance3. The social contract, the people, God4. a separation of powers, Congress, the president

Megan is correct

thanks megan

The answers are 1.C 2.the social contract, the people,god 3.a separation of powers,Congress,president 4.B

Megan is a lifesaver with the correct answers and Nick took her correct answers and placed them in the correct order and for that... Thanks to the both of you!

nick is correct because he has the social contract instead of Megan as tolerance because she got them all mixed up. so GG my guy

Nick is right. Thanks!

thanks Nick

CABD

Thanks Nick and Megan, you two are lifesavers

t r a s h

im confused

XD One minute after you " "

Morningfrost

The girl that gave the questions didn't give em in order like the lesson did. that's why some of you guys got It wrong LOL

But who asked though

totally.not.jett

thx Megan

1:C2: the social contract, the people, god3: a separation of powers, Congress, president 4:B

Social Studies

1:C2: the social contract, the people, god3: a separation of powers, Congress, president4: B

no

Still correct for connexus1:C2: the social contract, the people, god3: a separation of powers, Congress, president4:B

Megan is correct. BTW thanks megan :>

creepy mcnugget

Nick is correct thanks

Mitsuki Nakamura

Dattebama!It is correct!

Menma Uzumaki

@Nick is correct for Connexus

YouDontNeedToKnowMyName

I used Nick's answers and they were correct, thx bro! also to clear up some confusion, ''connexus'' and ''connections'' are the same!

Megan is right just in a different order good job

Thx @Nick

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1.How did humanism affect the Enlightenment? A. It led people to return ...

The question which strikes you every time you watch a body horror movie is, What are the limitations of the moniker of body horror? Is it only restricted to simple gore and bloodshed as mutilations are inflicted on the body? At what point does body horror evolve from gore to something far more sensual and potent? The near future of David Cronenbergs Crimes Of The Future is a terrifying dystopia.

Mature-Content Warning

The world is affected by pollution and climate change with disastrous results, causing unforeseen changes to the human body. To counter that, significant biotechnological advances have been made, including the invention of machines that interface with the human body and control bodily functions. However, unlike most sci-fi dealing with post-humanism (for example, the Deus-Ex games), the visual aesthetic of said interfaces is less machine-like and more human-like. Even the pieces of machinery are covered with viscera and slime; the electronics used to conduct surgery are shaped more like bones than electronic appendages. But perhaps due to the cause of such environmental changes, the human body itself has evolved such that the threshold of pain and the presence of infectious diseases has decreased. Thus, in typical Cronenbergian fashion, the pain has replaced pleasure, and as a character calls it, Surgery is the new sex.

However, evolution has resulted in mutations as well. For an eight-year-old child named Brecken, that translates to an ability to eat plastic, which causes him to be murdered by his mother because of the exhibition of such inhuman characteristics. For Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), this has caused his body to develop new vestigial organs. While this causes Tenser excruciating pain and has rendered him dependent on machinery linked to his endocrine system to maintain optimum stability, Tenser uses this ability to elevate himself as a famous performance artist, with his assistant Caprice performing surgery on him in front of a live audience and extracting the new vestigial organ. In a world as potently unique as this one, the physical body is a form of identity. Marking and tattooing of organs is a deliberate method of ownership and also registration of different organs.

The world and environment in the movie are interesting, and Cronenberg ensures you remember them. That comprises letting the environment speak for it, but for the majority of its runtime, Crimes Of The Future (2022) is a victim of clunky exposition delivered through clumsily simplistic written dialogues which sound more forced than natural. The use of a minimum score in the movie adds to the very unsettling flair of the storytelling. That feeling of unsettlement is compounded by the eagerness of characters to undergo surgery, where Cronenberg satirizes the use of plastic surgery to increase the number of scars and mutilations and exhibits them as a badge of honor and performance art. To some extent, that is a political statement; the ownership of ones body just extends to the interior organs, if we take the concept of tattooing to its literal extreme.

The issue with Crimes Of The Future is its introduction of different curveballs, which take time to develop, but the resultant payoff feels surprisingly low. It is very much a result of the movie being dramatically inert. The emotional utterances and moments of tearful poignancy feel blatantly artificial or over the top compared to the cold, haunting, pause-filled conversations between the characters. The gore scenes are scored to classical music, and the editing and staging of these sequences of surgery and gore feel cool, almost mechanical in their approach, even though seeing images like a zipper connecting two halves of the stomach and Lea Seydouxs character Caprice opening said zipper and delivering oral should be a cause for grimace or puking. Instead, it brought about a minor sense of curiosity.

Because that is what Crimes Of The Future is. An exercise in the development of ideas about human evolution and the evolution of the environment, remotely different from most visually spectacled sci-fi. The different political factions of performance artists, the commercial sniveling bureaucracy of The National Organ Registry, and the mutated plastic-eating members of society are thickly veiled satires of the difference between art and commerce and how Tenser, through his performance art, is trying to straddle that line. Maybe, in the end, even he succumbs to the temptation of art. This exercise in ideas is suitably carried by Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux, who are acting at the perfect wavelength which Cronenberg desires. Kristen Stewart, however, plays the manic version of Princess Diana in Spencer, and it is extremely distracting, while Scott Speedman shows sparks of passion and insanity not unfamiliar with the world Cronenberg has crafted. It is a fascinating movie, which will satisfy the Cronenberg diehards. I only wish it had more visceral energy and the sticky bloody warmth you would expect from a film where surgery is the new form of pleasure.

See More: Crimes Of The Future Ending, Explained: What Happens At The Live Autopsy Performance? Is Saul Dead Or Alive?

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'Crimes Of The Future' Review: David Cronenberg's Experiment In World-Building And Idea Generation | DMT - DMT

There are several Hindu principles which the world has adopted from Hinduism and there are many which the world needs to adopt so as to make it a better place to live

Celebrating Hindu way of life.

Hinduism is the oldest existing civilisation in the world. The interesting thing is that besides being the oldest, it is a resilient and ever flourishing civilisation, too. Have you ever wondered why this civilisation has survived and is still blooming? The answer lies in its civilisational ethos. Hinduism is not a religion; it is a way of life. With the march of civilisation, the Hindu-intellect evolved certain values, principles, creeds and beliefs. This Hindu way of living is based on these core values and fundamentals which make it ever growing and sustaining. There is a basic underlying value-system which has enabled this civilisation to survive for over 5,000 years. Interestingly, these values have been assimilated in our culture in such a way that they have become part of our daily lives. These ways of life are termedSanatani(beginning-less) since they are beyond time and space and are universal in their applicability.

There are many Hindu principles which the world has adopted from Hinduism and there are many which the world needs to adopt so as to make it a better place to live. The following are a few of them:

Extended family as a life value

National Geographic researcher and Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner discovered that communities with most centenarians have one thing in common: Making family members and other loved ones among the daily priorities. As per this research, time spent with family is a wise investment which can add up to six years to your life expectancy! Living in an extended family is one of the important values of Hinduism.

The Hindu concept of life is not a life based on individualism per se, but a life which is based on family-ism. It is not the individual but individual in family who is the basic unit of Hindu identity. Family is a pivot on which the whole Hindu way of life revolves. It is in the family that a Hindu-individual is born, groomed and gets his value system. Living in a family makes your life stress-free and gives psychological support to excel.

Hindu parents are duty bound to raise their children and take care of ageing parents. This unit of family is generally an extended family in which though all the members may not be living under the same roof but enjoy very close emotional bonds. You cannot conceive of any Hindu family without family as the basic unit.

Respecting parents and elders

A child is groomed to respect, care and obey his parents and grandparents. Lord Ram gave up his kingdom for the sake of his fathers vow. Parents for any Hindu child are living Gods. Indian legends have the example of Shravan Kumar who shouldered his blind parents to all the holy cities. Out of father and mother, mother is given more respect since she is the birth-giver.

Unlike many Western cultures where parents are disobeyed, it is hard to think of any Hindu child disobeying his parents. The other social value is respecting elders. The elders may include uncles, aunts (both paternal and maternal), other elders of the family, and elders in general. The teacher is worshiped as a guru and is given equal respect as parents. A guru is a mentor, friend, philosopher and guide for his students and is revered as such.

Respecting guests

You will not find such a welcoming attitude towards guests in any culture where the latter are hailed as gods. The underlying thought of Hindu-philosophy isAtithi Devo Bhav(Guests are Gods). The visiting guest is given utmost respect and care. This value is imbibed right in the family culture and has been ritualised as a tradition. This is one of the reasons why the Hindu civilisation has been so receptive to all the incoming cultures and giving space to accommodate them all. India is home to all the major six religions of the world and people from other religions have settled here because of the accommodative ethos of Hinduism.

Co-existence with other beings

Going to temple and reciting prayers is a daily ritual for many Hindus. The most interesting part is the recitation of the prayers ending with two axioms Parniyon Mein Sadbhavna Ho (let all living beings live in peace with each other) and Vishva Ka Kalyan Ho (Let the whole world prosper). The Hindu is not concerned about me, myself or fellow human beings only.Praniyonmeans all living creatures, including birds, animals, plants, trees, etc. Even the Panch-Tatva which are five basic elements of life water, air, earth, space and fire are considered living entities and are hailed and worshiped as such. A Hindu worships rivers, mountains, fire, forests, sky, et al. As for Vishva Ka kalyanHo, it means that a Hindu is not only concerned with fellow countrymen, but prays for the well-being and welfare of the whole universal; this is true humanism and universalism.

The world needs to learn these cultural values which are the core ethics of Hinduism.

The writer is an independent columnist. Views expressed are personal.

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Five Hindu ways of life world needs to learn for peace, prosperity and happiness - Firstpost

With an increasing glut of water-themed exhibitions, the artworld is taking a compelling, aquatic turn

The ocean provides a model to accommodate change and unpredictability, to sway back and forth between, and ultimately to transcend, numerous disciplines, writes curator Stefanie Hessler in her essay Tidalectic Curating (2020). Proffering a radical premise for an alternative artistic practice, one that looks towards an aquatic, rather than telluric, form of posthumanism, Hessler invokes a term first coined by Barbadian writer and poet Kamau Brathwaite to describe a singular ontology linked to the oceans tidal movements in his words, the ripple and the two tide movement, which leads, above all, to a rejection of the notion of dialectic (and its three-part structure of thesis, antithesis and synthesis). More importantly, Brathwaites thinking allows for a construction of identity that moves away from traditional anchors in time and place, to propose a new, fluid form that crossed oceans and continents. Its this thesis that thinkers and curators like Hessler gravitate towards. As she says, by following the thought of Brathwaite one may find oneself immersed in a hybrid worldview from the oceans, with their surfaces as much as in their depths.

Hesslers exploration of what has become more generally termed critical ocean studies or blue humanities, by scholars such as Elizabeth Deloughrey (who, along with Hessler, spoke at the Oceanic Imaginaries conference held in March at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and Philip E. Steinberg, signals a compelling, aquatic turn in posthumanist critique of the last decade, and one that had been absent throughout large swathes of twentieth-century theory outside the narrow purview of the environmental activist movement. But the current exothermic transformations to the worlds hydrosphere have drastically rewritten the material imaginary of water and its relation to the terrestrial bios. Such changes are clearly visible in the aquatic-themed works of contemporary multimedia artists such as Superflex (Flooded McDonalds, 2009, and Dive-In, 2019), David Gumbs (Water & Dreams, 2014), Julien Creuzet (mon corps carcasse, 2019) and Elise Rasmussen (The Year Without a Summer, 2020).

Critical ocean studies water-borne imaginaries, however, have ventricles that stretch back far beyond a twenty-first-century eco-poetics. In fact, much of the current artistic fascination with these imaginaries is indebted to a premodern worldview, in which climate was often associated with a sublime, and leaky, volatility. In Gumbss experimental film, for example, a fluid collage of vivid, computer-generated colours and effects overlaid on video of tide pools and slow-motion droplets of liquid produces a sensation of immersive virtuality what might be called the image of digital wetness. Yet Gumbss techno-uterine fantasy is largely indebted to Gaston Bachelards 1942 text of the same name, in which the mercurial French philosopher conceives of a water mind-set that distinguishes between an ancient Heraclitean flux, and the Socratic metaphysics that dominated Western thought for centuries. [Water] is the essential, ontological metamorphosis between fire and earth, he writes. [It is an] element more feminine and more uniform than fire, a more constant one which symbolizes human powers that are more hidden, simple and simplifying. For Gumbs, as for Bachelard, the water mindset is closely linked with an atavistic and maternal reverie, an experience that precedes the moderns emphasis on conscious thought and contemplation.

Despite its reputation as an urtext on water (Bachelards Water and Dreams is the second in a four-part collection he published on the elements), the philosophers work is not ahistorical; rather, it is rooted in a Romantic tradition of climatology and hydrophilia, which often employed the theme of water to blur the edges between artistic innovation and private fantasy. This lineage includes the Surrealist-inspired, painterly films of Jean Painlev, Jean Vigo and Jean Epstein; the proto-Oulipo novels of Raymond Roussel; the nautical, poetic-prose of Jules Verne, Charles Baudelaire and Jules Michelet; as well as the musical impressionism of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Lili Boulanger. They helped to prologue what Deloughrey (2020) would describe as critical ocean studies rich maritime grammar of swirling interdisciplinarity.

Rasmussens film The Year Without a Summer is similarly rooted in a Romantic-era history of water and climate, drawing comparisons between the global crisis of the Anthropocene and the colonial-era crisis instigated by Mount Tamboras 1815 eruption on the island of Sumbawa. The subsequent anomalies in aerosols, cold temperatures and rain lingered over Earth for years, with food shortages reaching as far afield as Ireland and Switzerland, while inadvertently helping to inspire the late-Gothic tradition in literature and painting. The emergence of murky seascapes and cloudscapes, like Caspar David Friedrichs Two Men by the Sea (1817) and J.M.W. Turners 181618 sketches (later published as The Skies Sketchbook), created at the height of Tamboras atmospheric fallout, show how the centurys increasing fascination with a water mindset was softening boundaries between traditional landscape and colour field, figuration and abstraction. This would reach its culmination in the liquiform abstractions of James McNeill Whistlers Thames nocturnes and the lacustrine impressionism of Claude Monet.

[Maritime mythologies] show us that the 19th century was an epoch of great speculations about the elements, German theorist Peter Sloterdijk writes in Neither Sun nor Death (2011). He points to the expansion of colonialism and the technologisation of shipbuilding for the eras changing relationships to the sea, in which the sublime was remodeled into the Titanesque [A]n ocean appears as a giant matrix, an immense test tube, as an immeasurable incubator. It is this contest between Titanic mastery and dissolution that characterised a Romantic poetics of water, or what cultural historian Howard Isham (2004) calls oceanic consciousness. As the paradigm of that mastery, the ship appeared not only as an image of colonial-era technology but also that of safe enclosure, a finite habitat against the vast, liquid unknown, according to Roland Barthes (1957), for whom Vernes Nautilus submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) is mans ideal, seaward living room.

In this sense, the iconography of the ship continues to appear in contemporary works like Superflexs mesmerising Flooded McDonalds, a film in which a fast-food restaurants self-contained interior is slowly submerged in water, sending all of its trademark scenography, food and plastic wrappings into a swirling vortex. As a miniature parable of a cataclysmic weather event, it also evokes the Romantic fantasy of the sinking ship on turbulent seas, a particularly popular Dutch subgenre of painting further dramatised by both Turner (The Wreck of a Transport Ship, 1810) and Friedrich (The Sea of Ice, 182324). Or in the followup, Dive-In, the group erects a coral reef-like megalith in the water-parched Coachella Valley and projects underwater images taken from onboard Dardanella (the research ship of TBA21-Academy, founded by art collector and activist Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, and of which Hessler was a curator, 201619), thus creating a cinematic aquarium on the desert floor. While the project suggests both the deep history of the valleys Lake Cahuilla and the future ruins of an apocalyptic sea-rise, it also recalls eighteenth- and late-nineteenth-century panoramic devices like the Eidophusikon (which often exhibited seascapes) or Hugo dAlesis Marorama. DAlesis protocinematic tourist attraction was erected for the 1900 Paris Exposition and allowed visitors to sit in a lifesize cruise ship, where they could view a hydraulic backdrop of the Mediterranean shore scrolling across the deck accompanied by artificial fragrances and mechanical soundscapes of sea travel. Like Vernes vision of the Nautilus, dAlesi aspired to craft a floating living room for the Romantics oceanic consciousness.

Vernes descriptions aboard the Nautilus also hinted at the nineteenth-centurys orientalised visions of Eastern waters. In the second section of Twenty Thousand Leagues he writes of the Indian Oceans surface as largely uninhabited by ships or sailors except for a floating graveyard of bodies that flows from the Ganges. Despite this, the sea itself is filled with plentiful treasures waiting to be discovered; and sharks, from which Captain Nemo saves a helpless Indian oyster diver, declaring him an oppressed compatriot. This depiction by Verne was based upon a prevalent, Eurocentric travel narrative that reduced the Afro-Asian worlds cultural and commercial infrastructures to an undifferentiated tribal paradise ripe for harvesting. In fact, the Indian Oceans trade winds and early shipping technologies had created a littoral network that contested European imperial power in both size and innovation, and contained its own oceanic imaginaries. It was only by the nineteenth century that European traders, buttressed by vast militaries and indentured labour, were able to gain control of South Asian shipping routes and attain global dominance of the oceans. Not coincidentally, the nineteenth century also saw the invention of the historical category of the Indian Ocean by Europeans, according to Indian Ocean studies scholar Rila Mukherjee (2013). It is along these same lines that creative mapmaking works like Yonatan Cohen and Rafi Segals Territorial Map of the World (2013) and Izabela Plutas Oceanic Atlas (vanishing) (2020) reimagine the apparatus of Western cartography in stratifying the borders between land and ocean, home and antipodes, West and East.

The European ship was also deeply implicated in the abhorrent activity of the Atlantic slave trade, which reached its zenith at the end of the eighteenth century but contributed to much of the wealth, technology and ideology of the nineteenth-century nation-state and those banana republics of the Caribbean archipelago that served as colonial fiefdoms. The Romantics oceanic consciousness contained the repressed memory of African bondage. This is examined in French- Caribbean artist Julien Creuzets video mon corps carcasse, which uses digital animation to simulate the ongoing poisoning of Martiniques tropical landscape through the contemporary plantation system, imaging the fluid absorption of toxins through the populations bloodstream. Here, the microscopic liquidity of the black colonial body draws an explicit link between what Hessler, citing both British theorist Paul Gilroys The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993) and queer studies scholar Macarena Gmez- Barriss The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (2017), describes as the Wests extractive capitalism and the historical dispossession of the Middle Passage, in which millions of Africans were forced across the Atlantic as chattel slaves. In Creuzets film, as in the work of fellow French-Caribbean poet and critic douard Glissant, the Romantic water mindset must shed its Western fantasies of fixity and power, and embrace an archipelagic ethics of creolisation if it is to become truly tidalectic.

Critical ocean studies absorbs all of these rivulets of water-based imaginaries in an effort to reconsider their place in the contemporary, terrestrial world. With the increasing glut of water-themed exhibitions and scholarship, it appears the nineteenth-century oceanic consciousness has reemerged as a twenty-first-century water mindset. But the formers fantasies of immersion and abstraction have also prefigured the impending climatological crisis and a new, drowning mindset in which the human ship floats precariously on a rising sea.

Elise Rasmussens The Year Without a Summer (2020), Izabela Plutas Oceanic Atlas (vanishing) (2020) and Superflexs Dive-In (2019) are on show in Oceanic Thinking, at the University of Queensland Museum, through 25 June

Erik Morse is a writer based in Texas

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Why Artists Are Returning to 'Oceanic Thinking' - ArtReview

In a previous post, I wrote that the Evangelical mind was being split apart. This was in virtue of living amidst two competing camps of philosophical method. Here I address a different yet related issue. It is one causing not so much a bifurcation of the Christian mind, but a devastating fragmentation of it. The source of this fragmentation is the technology available to us, combined with our undisciplined use of it.

The framing question is this: is our technology, and our use of it, overwhelming our mental capacities in such a way that we are suffering emotionally and spiritually? I think this may be the case. If so, we must reconsider this dynamic relationship between human person and human product.

Mind and body have only been strongly delineated since Rene Descartes gave birth to modern philosophy in the 17th century. With Descartes, the infamous mind-body problem emerges on the philosophical scene (well, sort of). Ancient views of the human person could speak both of body and mind, or soul, but not in such compartmentalized terms (with the exception of the Gnostics perhaps, who misunderstood and misapplied Plato). Paulssarx is far more than just the physical body, it has a mental and spiritual component as well.

Thus, the biblical view of the human person speaks about the spirit or soul of man along withthe body. The two are united in an organic synthesis. The God of the Bible made and united body and soul as a means for us to bear His divine image. Just as the physical macrocosmos expresses the majesty of the Creator (Psalm 19:1-6), so to the physical microcosmos that is every human person (Psalm 8:4-8).

Hence the vital importance of Jesus incarnation and His bodily resurrection, as well as the bodily resurrection of all souls at the end of timesome to judgment, some to eternal glory. Gods paradigm creation, the human person, was meant to be eternally physical as well as spiritual. I do not claim that Gods power was limited in such a way as to necessitate bodily existence. God could have made world consisting only of immaterial minds. But Gods freedom in His choice of creation, which is intimately interwoven with His goodness, must be respected.

And so what we do with our bodies matters greatly to the vitality of our soul (or mind). This is a basic truth that every food scientist and dietician knows quite well. Conversely, what we put into our mind affects the health and wellbeing of our bodies. Bad ideas can corrupt our bodies just as immoral bodily acts corrupt our inner self.It is for this reason that Paul, on the one hand, can commend the church in Philippi to do the following:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Phil 4:8

and then turn around and say this on the other:

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in mepractice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Phil 4:9

When piety of thought and physical practice fit together, there is harmony of action, and, for the Christian, God is with us in that action. This is what it means to be moral.

Any athlete who habitually practices thinking about his movements on the playing field knows that this envisioning of what one is about to do physically increases the likelihood of actually doing it. Similarly, envisioning wicked things or entertaining evil thoughts will increase the likelihood of actually doing them. This is how the human person is constructed. This is not to say we will necessarily do all that we think (and thank God for that!). It is however to say that to habitually entertain or imagine something in the mind will facilitate acting it out in the body. Something that is rarely or hardly ever contemplated will rarely if ever be actualized.

We can only begin to imagine how powerful and how good this mind-body dynamic will be when fully redeemed in Christ. Is it too much to think we might be able to create wonderful realities simply by thinking about them, apart from the manipulation of other materials? Only an eternal time in heaven will tell. Of course the corollary to this is what an embodied soul that thinks only evil thoughts will be like given an eternal timescale. I have written about this elsewhere, but it is a consideration that may make the Christian doctrine of hell more comprehensible, especially if we were to take our inner most thoughts, feelings and desires both seriously and at face value.

It is for these reasons, therefore, that we must think hard about technology and how its use can affect our inner lives. As our parents (or grandparents) rightly taught us: garbage in, garbage out. Although it is not only garbage that we must be aware of. The devil is more subtle than that. Not all information we take in is intrinsically bad.

Information can often be good. At least we tend to see the status of being informed as a generally good thing. However, the mind (and body) cannot sustain receiving a constant flow of information without some negative effects. We were not designed to be information processing machines only, although in one sense we are like that. And so we must learn to manage and regulate the amount of information we take in. Otherwise we might find ourselves overwhelmed, perhaps to the point of being incapacitated or, as I said, fragmented. It seems we really can overdose on information. This is something that theologian Robin Phillips has appropriately called Information Fatigue.

I can think of four ways that too much information might negatively affect us (although certainly there are more). If we are not careful, this information overflow can have serious ramifications for our well being. And so we must be sensitive to taking in too much of the following:

Each of these types of information, if not managed well, might facilitate serious mental and emotional illness. Each area of information can affect us negatively in its own way.

Daily we are met with information about the following: wars overseas, mass shootings, domestic violence, racial tension, potential financial collapse, rising costs, growing inflation, global pandemics and devastation due to earthquake, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves and forest fires. The first set of issues relates to what moral philosophers and theologians would call human or moral evil. The latter are usually categorized as natural evil or suffering. The first have to do with what cognizant, personal agents do to each other. The latter have to do with what impersonal nature can do to us. There is a third type of evil, demonic evil, which I will not address here (in spite of the fact that it underlies much of the other two kinds).

In addition to seeing all the general evil and suffering of the world, in both religious and non-religious contexts, Christians in particular are constantly reminded of various and sundry moral failures of high-ranking or prominent spokesmenfor the Church. The Church, which is supposed to be the safe-haven from the world, often appears no different than it or even much worse. Thus we are overwhelmed daily with this kind of information. Not only by the numerous atrocities of mankind or the volatility of nature in general, but about evil and suffering within our own Christian context.This can be too much for the mind to process. Moreover, in light of point 4 below, we can feel helpless to do anything about this level or degree of evil.

Of course the problem is not that there is moral evil and natural suffering in the world. The Church has always provided answers to the Problem of Evil in rich and robust ways throughout its history. While that answer may not be adequate for some skeptics, the Christian message of hope and redemption in Christ, in spite of evil and suffering, is still the best solution to the problem the world has yet received.

The problem, therefore, is not evil and suffering per se. Rather it isthe access we have to information about evil and suffering. The amount of evil in the world is likely, although this seems impossible to quantify, no more or less today (adjusted for population size of course) than in the past. In fact, we might assume there is far less suffering today than in the past. As C.S. Lewis was keen to point out: one of the only real differences between us and pre-modern men has been the invention of chloroform (i.e., painkillers). Yet our ancestors physical suffering drove them toward God, while our physical comfort drives us away.

But here is perhaps one other major difference between us and our fore-forefathers: our technology exposes us to a much greater volume and variety of grief. But this is not just grief in generalwhich we always knew existed but grief in particular. We become aware of too many individual stories of tragedy. We know of too many personal examples of real people in real places who suffer real sufferings or commit real evils. For every school shooting in America, there is the story of the numerous victims as well as the story of the shooter himself. Prior generations would only have known about the tragedies in their immediate, localized area of knowledge (e.g., in their villages, townships andmaybe cities).

True, all this global information might motivate us to moral action. But so could seeing the same thing locally motivate us to act. In fact, it is possible that knowing too much information about evil and suffering at a distance might actually hinder us from acting locally. Perhaps we miss what is going on right in front of us, specifically because we are busy reading about or watching horrors from around the world. This dynamic would be inverse, the further back in time one goes and the simpler the technology of the day.

There is one more important point to make about this unparalleled access to information regarding human evil and suffering. That is this: reporting about human wickedness and natural disasters will always outweigh reporting about human goodness and the regular, and very beneficial, operations of natural processes. Rarely will the media report about someone being terribly kind or extraordinarily gracious; or that two individuals or groups treated each other with unusual generosity. Even more rarely will you hear anyone report, at least in spectacular fashion, about how the water cycle yet again functioned in accordance with natural laws today; or how the suns rays once more reliably contributed to photosynthesis, growing the worlds crops; or how there was not an earthquake in this part of the world or a tornado in that part of the country yesterday or last week.

One of the reasons the medieval Roman Catholic church retained Latin as the language of the Church was so that thorny doctrinal issues could be debated behind the scenes, sparing the common man from the intense battle of ideas and terms often required to hash out critical theological judgements. The common man and woman could have their simple religion without being exposed to the long, arduous debates over which doctrines should actually be taught or preached. They could simply benefit from the results of those debates.

Of course the Reformers position was that in spite of the chaos it might cause for a vernacular Bible to be in the hand of every ploughboy and shoemaker, it was nevertheless worth the risk. For the common man to have the Word of God available to him for his daily bread was too great a reward, one that offset the price paid of large-scale theological turmoil. Nevertheless, the Reformation did open the pandoras box of public theological debate, debates that eventually lead to open war. That open war eventually lead to the Enlightenments understandable, albeit unjustified, rejection of revelation and the teaching authority of the Church.

Today, however, we have a very different problem than just vying theological interpretations among denominations or ecumenical traditions. With the rise of the modern research university in the 19th century, the fragmentation of academic disciplines, the abandonment of public Christian education in favor of secular humanism and the dawn of the internet and social media, it is not only debates about Christian doctrines that are public and seemingly endless. It is endless debates about reality itself that now overwhelm us. Having no public authority or consensus view, or even consensus method about how to grasp truth, the contemporary mind is literally fragmented in ways never before in human history.

Even if algorithms are set up to keep us in a particular kind of ideological echo chamber, a problem in itself, the inevitable wave of seeing or hearing point and counterpoint and counter-counter point to every thing we believe in, from the nature of certain human products, like vaccines, to human nature itself can be truly distressing and depressing. Mental health experts, whoever they may be (another problem), have only begun to scratch the surface of this new epistemic situation, one that could only be called chaotic if not outright nihilistic. Too many worldview options may very well just end in the void of never landing anywhere. This post-modern malaise, once contained in the confines of the brick and mortar academy, now spills out into the virtual streets via the internet.

For Christians, this raises numerous question of how to approach information in our continuous search for deeper levels of truth, given the bounds of the biblical revelation. Which studies or news sources do we access for reliable information? Which studies do we go on to cite as either accurately supporting, or genuinely challenging, our prior theological commitments? Which studies or news stories do we allow to shape our worldview? I could go on. Robin Phillips has again done an excellent job addressing this epistemic crisis we now face. Nevertheless that this problem of too much competing information about reality is itself a daunting reality cannot be overstated.

In contrast to number 1, this problem relates to our endless access to mindless, trivial and foolish information. This takes many forms: late-night talk shows, late-late night talk shows and even later night talk shows than those. Then there is the endless stream of sports; of movies (bad ones, usually about comic book or video game characters); of supposedly sophisticated British TV Series, of incoherent, egoistical reality TV shows (The Masked Singer American Idol, The Housewives of Upper Siberia, etc., etc.); of shows that get too particular about incredibly mundane things (baking shows dedicated solely to cupcakes); and so on and so forth.

This list could grow exponentially if we include Youtube channels, Tik Tok, etc. I hesitate to think about how many hours of how many lives have been wasted watching stupid animal videos or just stupid human videos. As I mentioned, this problem is the converse of the first two. It is not the overwhelming of the mind with the serious, the weighty and the significant. It is the spoiling of the mind with the inane a distracting of the soul from all matters of real import. C.S. Lewis summed up this tactic of the devil in his classicThe Screwtape Letters,where the pursuit of nothing of particular importance leads gradually to eternal separation from God:

Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a mans best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual onethe gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Seinfeld, one of the most acclaimed TV-series of the 1990s, was self-referentially a show about nothing. Indeed our technology has allowed us to become a culture that is very much about the sameabout nothing.

Finally, all of these have to do in some way or another with a broader category of information. What I mean is that these other sources of information overflow all exist as a subset of a larger domain. That domain could be described as: information about things we cannot really affect or actualize given our circumstance or capacities. In other words, technology opens us up to a world of concrete, particular events and people that seem near to us but actually are at quite a distance.

The conflict in Ukraine might be one example of this. Many can, and have, donated money to the cause of Ukraine on account of technology itself. However, at the same time, there are simply too many aspects of the war that most of us cannot conceivably affect. As I pointed out above, this concern over things we cannot affect might even deter us from focusing on, or even being aware of, some local issue that we can affect (like things going on in our own home or on our block).

But there are also things constantly presented to us that are not just at a physical distance. Instead they exist at a kind of metaphysical distance. For example, I can take in enormous amounts of information about all kinds of potential life opportunities or pathways. This could be information related to exotic travel destination or to exciting career opportunities; or about people who have done extraordinary things (Stephan Curry perhaps) usually on account of their extraordinary abilities. I can consume information about things that I, in reality, could never actualize.

In taking in so much information of this sort, I can be lured into a kind of dream state. It is a state that could fool me into believing I can not only do one of these things but perhaps all of them. I can have a life full of adventurous travel given a career as a black-ops, special forces soldier who also has a lovely home with a faithful wife and five happy, healthy children and, of course, a dog. One can see the problem of having access to information about so many various lifestyle opportunities. It can tempt us to form a composite image of a life that is utterly unrealizable or unactualizable. Moreover, it would be impossible not just for me, but really for anyone.

This sets us up for a very hard fall. Especially if we actually try to pursue one or more of these goals. Moreover, for Christians, it can cause us to lose sight of where God has placed us, what God has given us (ability-wise) and what He has actually called us to be and do. Too much information of this last type can hinder our ability to discern Gods actual call on our life by overwhelming us with the wide array of possible life callings.

In sum, the human person is a holistic creature: body and soul in a unified synthesis. What comes into our minds will have affects on the body. What we do with our bodies will either degrade or elevate our minds. Todays technology is overwhelming us in various ways and our minds were not meant for this abundance of information.

If we do not discipline our use of technology, information of four types can begin to harm us. They can harm not only our individual soul, but the life and well-being of our immediate community. This community starts with our families, then our neighborhoods and our local institutions, to include the local church. I do not have a perfect solution to this very modern problem. Still I am fairly certain we need a better approach to information and we need it soon. If not we may find ourselves on a very gradual slope to a very infernal place.

Originally posted here:

The Overwhelming Of The Evangelical Mind: Information and The Soul's Limits - Patheos

When Egyptian football legend Mohammed Aboutreika came out swinging against homosexuality in late 2021, he touched a raw nerve across the Muslim world.

The tit-for-tat between Mr. Aboutreika and supporters of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights laid bare a yawning gap.

For Mr. Aboutreika and many in the Muslim world, the issue is adhering to their values and rejecting attempts to impose the values of others.

For supporters of LGBT rights and LGBT soccer fans, at stake most immediately is LGBT peoples right to attend the 2022 Qatar World Cup without fear of discrimination or legal entanglement because of their sexuality.

Longer-term, its about ensuring recognition of LGBT rights, including social acceptability, inclusivity, and non-discrimination.

Solving the immediate problem may be the lower hanging fruit. However, it may also open a pathway to what is realistically achievable in the middle term.

The reality is that what may be realistically possible is at best akin to US President Bill Clintons application to gays in the US military of the dont ask, dont tell rule or Indonesias de facto live and let live principle.

That may not be satisfactory, but it may be the only thing that, for now, is possible without putting LGBT communities at risk by provoking public hostility and backlash.

To be sure, autocratic Middle Eastern regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt often target LGBT communities for domestic political gain. In addition, the United Arab Emirates, perhaps the Middle Easts socially most liberal society, recently backtracked on LGBT-related issues.

The trick in campaigning for LGBT rights is avoiding playing into the hands of autocrats while maintaining the pressure.

Simply attempting to impose recognition is unlikely to produce results. Instead, a more realistic strategy is to devise ways to stimulate debate in Muslim-majority countries and encourage social change bottom-up to ensure public buy-in.

That worked to a degree as human rights groups, and trade unions used the World Cup to pressure Qatar to make changes to its labour regime. LGBT rights are in a different category and relate more directly, rightly or wrongly, to perceived religious precepts.

As such, what worked with labour rights, even if human rights groups would like to see more far-reaching reforms, is unlikely to produce similar results when it comes to LGBT rights.

Lobbying on behalf of a vast migrant labour force, which has historically been subjected to brutally exploitative practices, has yielded tangible results But there is a long way to go before the rights of a mainly South Asian workforce, from some of the worlds poorest countries, are properly safeguarded, The Guardian noted.

The paper backed proposals by human rights groups and British trade unions for the establishment in Qatar of migrant workers centres, which would offer advice, support and representation in lieu of a trade union, and compensation for relatives of labourers who died while employed in World Cup-related public works projects.

Going to extremes, Saudi Arabia, amid a push to encourage tourism, launched rainbow raids this month on shops selling childrens toys and accessories.

Authorities targeted clothing and toys, including hair clips, pop-its, t-shirts, bows, skirts, hats, and colouring pencils that contradict the Islamic faith and public morals and promote homosexual colours that target the younger generation, said a commerce ministry official.

Earlier, the kingdom, like the UAE, banned Lightyear, a Disney and Pixar animated production, because of a same-sex kiss scene, and Disneys Doctor Strange in the Universe of Madness, in which one character refers to her two mums.

The UAE ban appeared to contradict the governments announcement in late 2021 that it would end the censorship of films. The countrys Media Regulatory Office said it would introduce a 21+ age viewer classification policy instead. However, that wasnt evident when the office tweeted an image of Lightyear, crossed out with a red line.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly charged that Egyptian police and National Security Agency officers arbitrarily arrest LGBT people and detain them in inhuman conditions, systematically subject them to ill-treatment including torture, and often incite fellow inmates to abuse them.

With the World Cup only months away, Qatar is caught in a Catch-22. In a country where the few gays willing to speak out describe an environment of social and legal discrimination, Qatari authorities would like to see the World Cup finals as an interlude of live and let live.

Qatari officials have insisted in recent years that LGBT fans would be welcome during the World Cup but would be expected to respect norms that frown on public expressions of affection irrespective of sexual orientation.

Paul Amann, the founder of Liverpool FCs LGBT supporters club Kop Outs, met in 2019 with Qatari World Cup organizers before traveling to Doha with his husband to evaluate the situation.

Im very satisfied that their approach is to provide an everyone is welcome ethos that does include respect, albeit through privacy. Im not sure if rainbow flags generally will ever be accepted in-country, but maybe in stadia, Mr. Amann said upon his return.

Mr. Aboutreika put Qatar on the spot when he asserted in November 2021 that our role is to stand up to this phenomenon, homosexuality, because its a dangerous ideology and its becoming nasty, and people are not ashamed of it anymore. They (the Premier League) will tell you that homosexuality is human rights. No, it is not human rights; in fact, its against humanity.

The Qatari parliament and state-aligned media, imams in Saudi mosques, Saudi diplomats, and Al-Azhar, the citadel of Islamic learning in Cairo, rallied to reiterate Mr. Aboutreika s condemnation despite his allegedly Islamist leanings.

Mr. Aboutreikas remarks were in response to Australian gay footballer Josh Cavallo who revived the sexuality debate when he declared that he would be afraid to play in the Qatar World Cup because of the Gulf states ban on homosexuality and harsh legal penalties ranging from flogging to lengthy prison terms.

One of the few players to discuss his sexuality publicly, Mr. Cavallo expressed his concern a month after coming out as gay. Mr. Cavallo said other footballers had privately expressed similar fears.

What is evident in the sexuality debate is that few people, if any, will be convinced by arguments raised by the opposing side in what amounts to a dialogue of the deaf. Both sides of the divide feel deeply about their positions.

For proponents of LGBT rights, the challenge is to develop strategies that may contribute to change rather than insisting on a path that is more likely to deepen the trench lines than produce results for the people it is really about: the LGBT community.

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