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This sophisticated book by internationally renowned theorist Zaki Laidi, tackles the problem of individual identity in a rapidly changing global political environment. He argues that it is increasingly hard to find meaning in our ever-expanding world, especially after the collapse of political ideologies such as communism. With the breakup of countries such as the former Yugoslavia, it is clear that people are now looking to old models like nationalism and ethnicity to help them forge an identity. But how effective are these old certainties in a globalized world in a permanent state of flux?
This sophisticated book by internationally renowned theorist Zaki Laidi, tackles the problem of individual identity in a rapidly changing global political environment. He argues that it is increasingly hard to find meaning in our ever-expanding world, especially after the collapse of political ideologies such as communism. With the breakup of countries such as the former Yugoslavia, it is clear that people are now looking to old models like nationalism and ethnicity to help them forge an identity. But how effective are these old certainties in a globalized world in a permanent state of flux?
Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World by Iddo Landau Pdf
Does life have meaning? Is it possible for life to be meaningful when the world is filled with suffering and when so much depends merely upon chance? Even if there is meaning, is there enough to justify living? These questions are difficult to resolve. There are times in which we face the mundane, the illogically cruel, and the tragic, which leave us to question the value of our lives. However, Iddo Landau argues, our lives often are, or could be made, meaningfulwe've just been setting the bar too high for evaluating what meaning there is. When it comes to meaning in life, Landau explains, we have let perfect become the enemy of the good. We have failed to find life perfectly meaningful, and therefore have failed to see any meaning in our lives. We must attune ourselves to enhancing and appreciating the meaning in our lives, and Landau shows us how to do that. In this warmly written book, rich with examples from the author's life, film, literature, and history, Landau offers new theories and practical advice that awaken us to the meaning already present in our lives and demonstrates how we can enhance it. He confronts prevailing nihilist ideas that undermine our existence, and the questions that dog us no matter what we believe. While exposing the weaknesses of ideas that lead many to despair, he builds a strong case for maintaining more hope. Along the way, he faces provocative questions: Would we choose to live forever if we could? Does death render life meaningless? If we examine it in the context of the immensity of the whole universe, can we consider life meaningful? If we feel empty once we achieve our goals, and the pursuit of these goals is what gives us a sense of meaning, then what can we do? Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World is likely to alter the way you understand your life.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES & MCKINSEY 2020 BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR One of Fortune Best Books of the Year One of Inc. Best Business Books of the Year One of The Times (UK) Best Business Books of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice From an Oxford economist, a visionary account of how technology will transform the world of work, and what we should do about it From mechanical looms to the combustion engine to the first computers, new technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. For centuries, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. But as Daniel Susskind demonstrates, this time really is different. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk. Drawing on almost a decade of research in the field, Susskind argues that machines no longer need to think like us in order to outperform us, as was once widely believed. As a result, more and more tasks that used to be far beyond the capability of computers – from diagnosing illnesses to drafting legal contracts, from writing news reports to composing music – are coming within their reach. The threat of technological unemployment is now real. This is not necessarily a bad thing, Susskind emphasizes. Technological progress could bring about unprecedented prosperity, solving one of humanity’s oldest problems: how to make sure that everyone has enough to live on. The challenges will be to distribute this prosperity fairly, to constrain the burgeoning power of Big Tech, and to provide meaning in a world where work is no longer the center of our lives. Perceptive, pragmatic, and ultimately hopeful, A World Without Work shows the way.
The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays by Albert Camus Pdf
One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.
Immediacy and Meaning seeks to approach the odd uneasiness at root in all metaphysical meaning; that the human knower attempts to mediate what cannot be mediated; that there is a pre-cognitive immemorial immediacy to Being that renders its participants irreducible, incommunicable and personal. The dilemma of metaphysics rests on the relationship between the spectator and the player, both as essential responses to the immediacy of Being. Immediacy and Meaning is an attempt to pause, but without retreat, to be a spectator within the game, to gain access into this immediate Presence, for a moment only perhaps, before the signatory failure into metaphysical language returns us to the mediated. J. K. Huysman's semi-autobiographical tetralogy anchors this book as a meditation, neither purely poetic nor only philosophical; it claims a unique territory when attempting to speak what cannot be spoken. The unnerving merits of nominalism, the difficulties of an honest appraisal of efficacious prayer, the mad sanity of the muse, the relationship between the uncreated and the created, and an originary ethics of antagonism, each serves to clarify the formation of a new epistemology.
Malaysia and the Developing World by Jan Stark Pdf
As Malaysia’s economy grows and flourishes, strong new links are being forged with other developing countries in the region and beyond. This book traces the ways in which age-old organizational, political, religious and trade networks between Nusantara, the Malay World, and Central Asia, East Africa and the Middle East have changed in recent years. The book argues that these old links are being revived by new forms of globalization, modernization and knowledge transfer that are developing and implementing non-western models of governance, often in direct reference to Islam. The book goes on to explain how, as Malaysia develops new links with Indian Ocean countries, many of them Muslim countries, a new style trading network is being formed, a network with Islamic characteristics, which echoes Indian Ocean Islamic trading networks of earlier times. Interspersed with interesting methodological insights into the latest network, transnational and spatial theories, the book provides detailed case studies of Malaysia’s and Southeast Asia’s trade and numerous other links with Indonesia, Egypt, Zanzibar, Comoros and Central Asia, and concludes by assessing how Malaysia’s and ASEAN’s new style network is likely to develop and influence wider global networks. Written with a depth of knowledge reflective of the author’s many years of research throughout Asia, this book gives a real insight into how Malaysia’s mentalities, traditions and ways of thinking are being applied to its interactions with its immediate neighbours and the wider world.
The specter of the apocalypse has always been a semiotic fantasy: only at the end of all things will their true meaning be revealed. Our long romance with catastrophe is inseparable from the Western hermeneutical tradition: our search for an elusive truth, one that can only be uncovered through the interminable work of interpretation. Catastrophe terrifies and tantalizes to the extent it promises an end to this task. 9/11 is this book’s beginning, but not its end. Here, it seemed, was the apocalypse America had long been waiting for; until it became just another event. And, indeed, the real lesson of 9/11 may be that catastrophe is the purest form of the event. From the poetry of classical Greece to the popular culture of contemporary America, The End of Meaning seeks to demonstrate that catastrophe, precisely as the notion of the sui generis, has always been generic. This is not a book on the great catastrophes of the West; it offers no canon of catastrophe, no history of the catastrophic. The End of Meaning asks, instead, what if meaning itself is a catastrophe?
Books Are Not Life But Then What Is? by Marvin Mudrick Pdf
Books Are Not Life, But Then What Is? demonstrates how much Marvin Mudrick loved life and celebrated the dignity of life in literature. “It’s helpful to be reminded now and then,” he writes, that “while novelists persist in their noisy betrayals of human dignity, living has a longer history than reading, and truth than fiction.” Mudrick insists on seeing authors and their characters as people and he describes and judges them as frankly as if they were living among us. In this collection, we meet heroes, monsters, and every shade of character in between: Chaucer, Pepys, Rochester, Boswell, Jane Austen (and Anne Elliot), Dickens (and Pecksniff), Pushkin, Tolstoy, Kafka, Edmund Wilson, and many other novelists, scholars, and critics. We get to know each of them, so vivid are Mudrick’s quotations and commentary. Essay after essay demonstrates that good criticism can amplify both life and literature.
Beyond a World Divided by Erika Erdmann,David Stover Pdf
Thinkers as diverse as C.P. Snow, J. Bronowski, and Carl Sagan have described the rift between the “two cultures” of science and the humanities as the greatest barrier to solving the many problems threatening today’s world. During the last two decades of his life, Nobel laureate Roger W. Sperry – best known for his pioneering split-brain studies that highlighted the differing aptitudes of the two hemispheres of the human brain – turned his energies to this dilemma. Sperry’s ideas about consciousness challenged the behaviorist orthodoxy that prevailed in psychology in the 1950s and ’60s, and provided a way of understanding the relationship between brain and mind that not only more accurately reflected reality, but also promised a reconciliation between the conflicting claims of hard-edged objective fact and the realm of human emotion and subjective experience. Beyond A World Divided chronicles the neuroscientist’s groundbreaking research, his efforts to refine and win acceptance for his ideas, and his struggle to advance his work despite the onslaught of the degenerative nerve disease that eventually killed him. The book concludes by surveying the debate in the psychological and philosophical communities about the impact of Sperry’s ideas – a debate which still continues.
Shared Experiences in Human Communication by Stewart L. Tubbs Pdf
A novel approach to traditional subjects, the wide variety of opinions, and the extensive introductory material lift this book out of the ordinary “readings" class, and will reward the reader with understanding and appreciation of a complex subject. This collection of 37 provocative selections on human communication shares with the reader the experience and insights of some of the best minds in the discipline. The selections for the most part deal with traditional communication topics in a novel way. For example, in the chapter on verbal communication, there is a selection on profane language; in the chapter on nonverbal communication, there is a section entitled “The Silent Language of Love”; in the chapter on small group communication, there’s the Parkinson article on laws in groups; and in the chapter on mass communication, there’s one on today’s interest in sexually oriented magazines. The entire spectrum of topics usually found in beginning courses in speech communication is here. An extensive Section Two includes discussion on the psychological and transactional analysis views of communication. A brief introduction precedes each section focusing on the key ideas of each reading. Sources include the Journal of Communication, Industry Week, Journalism Quarterly, Psychology Today, Supervisory Management, Journal of Social Issues, Harvard Business Review, and Today's Speech.
Finding Your Power to Be Happy: Seven Practices to Bring Unconditional Happiness into Your Life by D.E. Hardesty Pdf
Learn to find the happiness that is natural to you, and enjoy better relationships, better health, more success and a longer life. The peculiar thing about us humans is, we spend a lot of time working to find people and things that will make us happy. In fact, we seem to spend the majority of our time doing this. However, there is no guarantee that any of this effort will work. There are lots of people who have hordes of people around them, and who have lots of things, but have been unable to make themselves happy. The truth is, happiness can be had with little effort. Have you ever been happy for no reason at all? Of course you have. Without anything changing in life, happiness just appears. We see it in young children all the time. In fact, we expect to see it in children. If you happen to ask a smiling child why he or she is so happy, at best the answer may be, “Because.” For an adult this may be an unsatisfying answer, but for the child it is the truth -- happiness exists “just because.” As we age we seem to lose touch with happiness-for-no-reason-at-all. We see a world where everyone is striving for stuff, striving for popularity, striving, striving, striving. The natural fount of happiness we once enjoyed disappears as we join them. However, that happiness is not gone. All that happened is we lost our connection to it. This book is about recovering that connection. We all grow up believing that if we work hard, and if we are good people, we will enjoy good relationships with others, good health, success and a long life. Obviously this is not true. There are a lot of rich old people who are not happy. What we have, what we do, and the other circumstances of our lives do not provide authentic happiness. Instead, happiness comes from inside of us, and all by itself enables us to have secure relationships, good health, more success and longer lives. So, what is the secret of being happy? Being happy is a little like flipping a switch. When it’s on you are happy and when it’s off you are not. It’s so easy. How else can you explain being happy for no reason. What you need to do is learn to turn it on, and keep it turned on. This book discusses seven practices that help you do that. There is a lot of wisdom available about how to be happy. Most of it is thousands of years old, but some is quite new. The seven practices we will look at incorporate this wisdom to help you learn how to turn on happiness in your life. This kind of happiness does not require changing anything in your life. All you have to do is learn to turn it on.
JOSEPH SMITH THE PROPHET-TEACHER by B. H. ROBERTS Pdf
- This book includes a biographical sketch of the author. Did the American continent exist before Columbus discovered it? Yes. Did electricity exist before mankind learned how to utilize it? Of course. Has every truth to be discovered, been discovered? No. Is it possible that religious beliefs in the world today are incorrect? Yes! There are truths in God's universe that are now existing, and have always existed, but man, as yet, has no knowledge of them. So how does a person distinguish truth from error? Joseph Smith defined truth in this way, “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come." As a prophet of God, who received revelation, Joseph Smith acting in the capacity of a teacher, taught the saints the truth of all things - clarifying misconceptions and false truths. For example, against the sectarian dogma of the cessation of revelation, Joseph Smith proclaimed the reopening of the heavens. Against the doctrine that angels would no more visit the earth, he asserted the visitation of angels to him, revealing the existence of the Book of Mormon, a new volume of Scripture. This book JOSEPH SMITH THE PROPHET-TEACHER, is a collection of truths taught by the prophet during his life. These topics include clarification on; revelation, heaven and hell, our relationship with God, the nature of God, man’s origin, eternal punishment, and the existence of good and evil, among many other topics. It may be asked, “What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen?” And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.