I think your thought process is indicative of our modern age. It is hard to concept of nations in the online environment that, at least for the time being, remains borderless. Nationalism has produced 2 world wars and several smaller conflicts and given its impetus in 1648 as a way of allowing kingdoms and countries to decide their religion without outside influence I think the 21st century will see fewer borders rather than more borders. That being said a quick read of any news site would make that statement hard to believe as nations get more nationalistic. However, advances in communication, transportation, and the movement of good, services, capital, and people will make borders less and less meaningless. What is a nation? What is geographical area? What is a political border? Our economy and our way of working is reducing that meaning. 30 years ago your country was the sum total of your upbringing, language, culture, shared values, and chances in life. Movement was long and hard and fraught with difficulty. That is becoming far less in our modern age. I think we all will feel tied to where we were born and grew up because its comfortable, its homey, we know the back routes, we know the cultural rules and being tribal as humans are we generally fit into that tribe. Those are all important things. Your personal identity is never, nor has it ever been tied to a passport. It is just a little book that tells other countries where you are coming from and some information about you. It is not you, it a part of you that is on paper for movement purposes. The lesson in life that you are more often than not wrong is nothing to be afraid of or anything to cause you distress but rather you are finding the juicy part of the human existence.
cameroncowan
This is juicy and oh-so-obvious. The people arguing for stability and for things generally staying the same (in the US mostly for their collective benefit) are going to perceive any change as bad unless it directly benefits them. This is rational acting at work: does it or does it not benefit me? Lets remember humans care at a fundamental level three things: reproduction, eating, and life-survival (Can I make with it? Can I eat it? Will it kill me?). Therefore, if something in the environment changes that threatens those fundamental things then it can be perceived as negative. Those on the reform side have a different send of answers to those survival questions and look at those stimuli differently while also having stimuli they view as negative. Ultimately, within this dichotomy the good of “the people” is at debate. Sadly, political systems only work when all parties have at least a partial agreed upon premise. Here in the US the agreed upon premise has gone away and gridlock is the new rule. In Europe things are different post austerity and a new set of shared presumptions is being formed (How involved should countries be in the EU?) It is not often in these charged days that people are willing to stand up and make the hard and often unpopular decisions to do what is expedient for the greatest number of people rather than being beholden to interest groups. Such is politics and you are right, politics has little to do with policy and more to do with reptile mind survival of systems that benefit the people involved rather than what moves society forward or backward to a certain agreed upon ideal.
I think part of the problem here is that you are confusing existence with consciousness and reason with consciousness.
Deciding that we “exist” is something that philosophers have defined as thinking (Decartes) to the use of language (Heidegger). If there is one common thing to the human existence is that we have figured out that we are different because we can make a decision using reason to do or not to do something. We also are more aware of the passing of the seasons, planets, and other phenomena at a level beyond the instinctive (brain stem/lower brain) and can make decisions based upon that. Humans also have the ability to observe, take in knowledge and then make decisions based upon that information that fly in the face of instinct and continue to do so for succeeding moments without reverting to instinct. This ability is described as consciousness.
Everything in the universe is connected by the material that was present in the big bang and, I believe, by impetus from the Divine. Using your virus example, it is possible, at very high levels of meditation technique to energetically work with the virus and take it out of your body. Take A.R. Heaver for example. After suffering paralysis following a bi-plane accident in WWI he used esoteric techniques and experienced robust health until his 80s. Because everything is connected and has a level of consciousness that varies from ours (very high) to the lowest (single cell) you can tap into that consciousness and create great change. You can observe group consciousness as well. If I take a group of humans together and start talking to them about something and I can speak from a place of authority and convince them that I can speak on that topic then I can begin to convince them of a variety of things. I can even employ questions and talking amongst them as devices to advance my goals. Cultures where group consensus and agreement are paramount see this used every day as a way for society to move forward and to come to quick, culturally agreed solutions to problems. Many people have said that this group consciousness caused everything from the rise of Communism in Russia to the rise of National Socialism (NAZI) politics in Germany.
To say that there is no consciousness is to deny your own existence, your own awareness of what is happening around you, and to deny your connection with everything from the smallest of the small to the expanse that is the universe. It is all us and we are all it. Your computer has a kind of consciousness although its consciousness is limited. Your car has a kind of consciousness. Environments have consciousness through systems. Take the interstate for example. It has systems (signs, lanes, on ramps, off ramps, over passes, and barriers) to allow humans piloting cars to navigate the environment to achieve their transportation goals. To deny that consciousness is to deny the awareness of the engineers, the construction workers, the paint, the concrete, and the technology behind it that created it. You also deny the conscious decisions made by everyone that allows us to drive 55-75 mph without crashing into each other. If you work with objects you can being to understand them and their consciousness, their beingness, and their contribution and connectedness to the greater Whole. All of the universe is looking for wholeness and within each of us is that unique possibility. This is consciousness.
The term is not useless because it applies to everything. That would be like saying the term “air” is less useful because we don’t define all the gases and where it is specifically where everything is specifically. The point is that consciousness is like a connection a type of connect-mind that ties all things together. It is something that because it is within all things allows us to connect with objects both large and small. Its a system of beingness.
Yes, however the desire for Colorado to split into two states for California to split into 6 and for the ukraine to split into 2 I think shows that there is a identity/policy crisis going on that is compelling political entities to split. Although one does have to dig past the hype these news sites have their use.
I think what you are really looking for is a model above the fray. By trying to mold your mind into that of FAI you are trying to decide what to leave behind and what to keep. This problem is deeply spiritual. By divesting yourself of identity you are allowing a new idea of who you are to develop. What does that look like? By wanting to improve your life and make it as happy and long as possible you are doing what you can to make this life count. That is a question of what does your life look like? How can you manifest that? Although you are more than a physical working self improvement and improving the world around are noble and decent goals. I think if you seek to become as human and as incarnated as possible you will improve.
Right! Therefore I think its helpful to think about the institution of the nation state and how to govern ourselves as a political entity rather than forfeiting that right to others. Does the nation state concept still have meaning or is it time for a change?
But that would depend on other factors not just the probability of lung cancer. That depends on what her motivation is to smoke (relaxation, social partnerships, reducing her anxiety, stress management). In that case the temporary benefit gained from smoking may outweigh the Bayesian probability of her getting lung cancer which will take 20-30 to take hold (most likely) rather than using other means to mitigate her very present problems. If she is deciding to smoke or not based solely on the probability of getting lung cancer and her anxiety level about that the rational brain usually chooses to do things that reduce risk rather than increase it and if she is looking to reduce the anxiety level she should choose not to smoke because the chances of lung cancer derived from smoking go down. However, she could also use nicotine as a way to cope with her stress or anxiety which may provide a much better present relief and mitigate any anxiety she has about developing lung cancer in the future.
I am working on the post neoliberal wikipedia article and I wanted to see what people thought should be included. I’ve pulled together some resources and its something of interest and so I’d like to see what people think should be included including prominent theorists and so on.
I just made the transition from marketing/content management consulting to creative writing full time. I also just completed a week of transcribing my long hand writing notes across my 7 active novels. I use Evernote and love it very much. I have it on all my devices and put things down as I think of them which includes outline ideas, bits of dialogue or setting or simply interesting things that may be useful. As far as categorizing your ideas I would think in this manner:
Score each idea on feasibility from 1 to 10 (including cost, time, expertise, and gamification)
Then evaluate these ideas from 1 to 10 on how much you actually want to see them happen
Lastly, evaluate these ideas from 1 to 10 on how they move the conversation of your life forward.
I would then add all those up and then rank your projects by score. Those that score highest go first. You can also organize them by how they ranked by category if you so choose. Let’s think about this:
To use myself as an example I have 7 novels, a short story project, and articles going.
I score the novels on the following:
How long I’ve had the idea The amount of work already done Project viability (based on what’s the shelf right now and my ability to sell said novel)
Therefore my novels are categorized:
Memoir (foremost project I’m working on that scored highest) Cast Iron (A novel project with 6 years working duration) Project C Project D Project E Project F Project G
I then take everything else and score it based on urgency which looks like this:
Blogging for Cameroncowan.net (getting ready for fall) Inkspired articles (due for November issue) I.G. Farben web series (long awaited and delayed 3 times) Ancient archetypes for Modern Masculine Living Gay men in the Media (moving up because there is a potential publisher)
When September arrives I am doing the fall season of my talk show and I will be reworking that workflow to create my video topics and news stories and then record all the videos in one day and then spread out the distribution of those videos over time compared to my record and upload strategy that was clunky and time consuming.
I hope this helps!
I had ratings from 1.0 to 0.0 with an average of .55 (I don’t have the required 2 Karma to vote, but its alright). Anyway, I would say I’m middle of the road. In the right area I am willing to take risks and a few of these I’ve done. I had my share of no go areas and my areas where I would go full bore for the possibility of success.
Post-neoliberialism is the economic theories and policies that are coming out of the neoliberal (think Milton Friedman) economics of the mid 20th century. This is most pronounced in South America where Neoliberal thinking as proposed by the Chicago School (Milton Friedman and company) was most widely practiced. Many of these governments are trying to balance the need of industry and companies to support the countries they do business in as well as provide for growth and jobs thereby. They are trying to balance the socialist past with free markets and globalization. So this article will address common theories and their theorists, policies, and other decisions being made in regards to the move away from Neoliberal economic philosophy.
Milton Friedman would be neoliberal.
I find that a little difficult but yes the other comment is true it’s more economic academic jargon.
Post neoliberal thought seeks to reincorporate some of the Keynesian economic policies that had been popular while preserving the competitiveness and growth potential that neoliberal economics offers. I’m still looking at foremost post-neoliberal theorists.
Why not then just get a working knowledge of those languages? I had classical education and so I took latin and greek. I also speak some german as well as a working and halting conversational knowledge of french. When you have that you can understand the latin root from a word like ambulate or return.
The actual medical knowledge is still requires but if you know the roots of things you can learn a great deal. The medical knowledge will give you meaning these can be quickly researched. In this day and time the ability to know a great deal of something requires only simple searches. I make a list of things to search all the time regular reading a research is Aristotelian.
Aristotelian = of Aristotle. Aristotle believed that regular reading, research, and expansion of the mind on various subjects was necessary to a good life. He wrote a great deal about the good life. I suggest adding that to your reading list.
I just take a subject say, “Scoliosis” and just put that into google and see what comes up. I start with the most popular sites and then look to more personal accounts once I know what is or is not scientific about it. For example, I am working on a novel right now and I needed to know how people performed check fraud. So I put that into google and started to read and eventually found a book by a detective about different cases he had solved. That helped me create a scenario that was very good and real life for the book. If you so choose you can do that regularly on a variety of subjects to learn more about something. The luxury about having a background in classical languages is that you can decode language and derive some meaning from it. Research is about layering. You start at the surface and then go deeper, then deeper and then deeper still. Think about the hierarchy of media:
Social Media (instant) Newspapers (or daily up to the minute news) Magazines (or media taking 4-5 days to create) Content aggregators/Monthly Publications Books
So for example researching check fraud I might see:
Tweets/posts about it A newspaper article about a check fraud ring A Magazine piece about its prevalence in America A group of these items over a period of time between one month and one year A book about check fraud rings by an expert
How far you go in the hierarchy depends on how much you want to know or where that information might be located. Also, for more effective searches in the future you may wish to use full sentences (Google is getting good at that) or also learning Boolean search terms.
Have you done everything you can to improve your overall efficiency? Have you looked for blocks of time that could be otherwise used more effectively? I like to group my reading together in blocks and I’m a big fan of having multiple things going at once. While doing laundry or cooking I’ve got the notebook or iPad out and I’m using that time effectively. I’ve found that to make the day more productive overall.
You also might wish to consider the ways in which you learn or like to take on large projects. Personally, I am a list maker. I like to have a map a plan if you will. When I’m working on a novel I do the same thing and it may get revised several times before the work is completed. When I was in my Master’s program I had my system down so that I could wrote a 25 page paper on International Relations and associated topics in 3 days starting from research to final completion. To do that required caffeine, medication, and no sleep but it was what I had to do at the time to get the job done. You have to create a system, a habit, to do this. If you can find a reliable way of working rather than working ad hoc then you will be able to do more easily and tackle large projects in the future.