Living Skillfully

Author(s):  
Dale S. Wright

This book attempts to articulate a contemporary philosophy of life drawing upon Buddhist resources from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. Among the major themes in this Mahayana Buddhist scripture is the “skillful means” required to live a healthy and undeluded life. The book adopts that theme as a means of developing a practical approach to contemporary Buddhist life. Following many of the brilliant stories in the sutra, this book attempts to provide clear explanations for the primary Buddhist teachings and the relationships that bind them all together into an inspiring way of living. Among the questions addressed are: Who is the Buddha? How is a worldview of change and contingency applicable to current life? What does it mean to claim that there is no permanent self? What are the primary characteristics of an admirable Buddhist life? How is freedom conceived in Buddhism? And how do all of these themes help us address contemporary issues such as global warming, gender identities, political dichotomies, the global economy, and more? Although historical questions do arise in the book, its primary purpose is contemporary and practical, an effort to say clearly how this text helps us stake out a way of living for contemporary global citizens.

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
David Foster

We will look back on the last year as a period when extraordinary economic events marked the unraveling of one economic model and placed in front of the global community a set of choices. Either we restructure the architecture of the global economy and replace it with something else, or we face a future of devastating economic consequences. The Blue Green Alliance has become one of America's leading advocates for global warming solutions and we believe that the benefits and economic opportunities will far outweigh the costs. We have popularized the terms “green economy” and “green jobs” and we believe that every job in America should turn into a green job.


2001 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
P. W. K. ◽  
Étienne Lamotte ◽  
Sara Boin-Webb ◽  
Etienne Lamotte

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony R Walker

Governments, corporations and individuals all need to take immediate action to help change the global economy toward a circular economy. A circular economy which uses fewer resources and based on renewable clean technologies to help limit global warming to 1.5 °C. The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warned that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels would require current greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions to be cut in half by 2030. Yet actions by governments, corporations and individuals are lagging behind. Many countries are failing their obligations made under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Even the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency set a 50% reduction target of GHG emissions for global shipping by 2050, but this falls short of the IPCC target by 20 years. The United Nations climate summit in New York this week (September 2019) needs to send a strong wake up call to the entire world for us all to change. Change makers like Greta Thunberg has already done that. Individual actions to change consumer behaviour can play a major role to help reduce GHG emissions. Even reducing use of single-use plastics (a petroleum derivative) and incineration can help reduce GHG emissions. GHG emissions from plastics could reach 15% of the global carbon budget by 2050 if not curbed. In Europe, plastic production and incineration emits an estimated ~400 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Therefore, reducing single-use plastic use could curb GHG emissions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaan Agartan ◽  
Alexander Hartwiger

AbstractAs the idea of citizenship has become a token for increasingly exclusionary manifestations of national identity, this article is a call for higher education institutions to honor their commitment to cultivating global citizens, yet with significant caveats. We argue that the proliferation of global learning initiatives in an increasingly neoliberalized university promotes a particular type of global citizen: a well-trained employee with intercultural skills which facilitate access to the global economy, and a global consumer of world cultures with no true commitment to global social justice. By offering a critique of pedagogical principles upon which global citizenship education is currently built, this article aims to demonstrate that the obligation to produce critical and civically engaged global citizens is not only urgent but also possible through novel pedagogical practices. Drawing on a semester-long partnership between two linked courses, we conclude that the interdisciplinary linked-course experience not only helps students delve into a conversation with what it means to be a global citizen in ways not possible through conventional pedagogical practices, but also allows instructors to explore new spaces that humanize abstract formulations of global citizenship for an ethical imperative towards the world and all its inhabitants.


2021 ◽  
pp. 102452942110113
Author(s):  
Andrew Lawrence

This article provides a conjunctural synopsis of both empirical trends and new approaches to analytically and normatively assessing energy markets. The preceding eras of coal and oil entailed not only differing technologies but also historically distinct political geographies, modes of production, and characteristic commodities and systems of value. They also coincided with and helped reinforce several misleading assumptions: of ‘pure’, ‘stateless’ energy markets; of scarcity as a defining feature of all economies; of unlimited growth and of market equilibrium. These assumptions tended to reinforce established approaches to energy markets that were insufficiently historically grounded, abstracted from social, political and ecological relations, and – with particular reference to oil – premised on zero-sum geostrategic calculations of interest. They are inadequate to, or misleading about, fossil fuel markets, and do not adequately address such recent phenomena as unprecedented levels of financialization of the global economy with an unprecedented intensity of ecological crisis entailing, most prominently, global warming. These factors undermine the prior assumptions in several respects: it is not scarcity, but rather abundance of greenhouse gas emissions that is of paramount concern; this in turn necessarily implies that unlimited growth is neither possible nor desirable; and furthermore, that ecological degradation has fundamentally displaced the analytical plausibility of market equilibrium, no less than its normative appeal. An exercise in reconceptualizing energy markets is therefore one that should explore not only what was misperceived and what has changed but also what needs to change in order to restore economic, political and ecological sustainability.


Author(s):  
Lailatul Maskhuroh

Philosophy in the contemporary era has different characteristics from the previous era. Some of its characteristics, namely departing from humans who live in this age are very careful in following scientific development methods as well as examining language, meaning, symbols and emotions, human life attitudes. Technology dominates in this era so that many philosophers who are realists and the human soul experience emptiness. It can be said that the distinctive feature of this contemporary philosophy is that it does not have a flow form but continues to conduct studies and propose solutions that are continuously updated, a school of philosophy emerged in the postmodernism era, namely phenomenology and existentialism, analytical philosophy and philosophy of language, critical philosophy, postmodernism, while those which are used as a discussion in the era of Western contemporary philosophy and its surroundings, namely logical positivism, neomarxism, pragmatism, Neo-kantianism, phenomenology and existentialism, philosophy of life, postmodernism, contemporary atheism, hermeneutics.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony R Walker

Governments, corporations and individuals all need to take immediate action to help change the global economy toward a circular economy. A circular economy which uses fewer resources and based on renewable clean technologies to help limit global warming to 1.5 °C. The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warned that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels would require current greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions to be cut in half by 2030. Yet actions by governments, corporations and individuals are lagging behind. Many countries are failing their obligations made under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Even the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency set a 50% reduction target of GHG emissions for global shipping by 2050, but this falls short of the IPCC target by 20 years. The United Nations climate summit in New York this week (September 2019) needs to send a strong wake up call to the entire world for us all to change. Change makers like Greta Thunberg has already done that. Individual actions to change consumer behaviour can play a major role to help reduce GHG emissions. Even reducing use of single-use plastics (a petroleum derivative) and incineration can help reduce GHG emissions. GHG emissions from plastics could reach 15% of the global carbon budget by 2050 if not curbed. In Europe, plastic production and incineration emits an estimated ~400 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Therefore, reducing single-use plastic use could curb GHG emissions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Victor E. Dike

<p><em>This article explores the place of leadership and management in the</em><em> </em><em>21st century businesses and organizations</em><em>, the role of leaders and managers, leadership styles as well as their levels of efficacy. It also investigates the attributes of an effective leader and manager, differentiates the concepts of leadership and management, leadership and management decision-making and problem-solving processes, and strategies</em><em> </em><em>for effective delegation</em><em> </em><em>of authorities to followers. This article argues that to function effectively and efficiently in today’s new economy, every organization needs effective leaders and managers as well as competent and reliable followers. It also </em><em>posits that the place of leadership and management in today’s organizations are changing because, among other forces, the extreme competition among businesses in the new global economy, the emerging technologies, and globalization spurred by the Internet. </em><em>The seemingly </em><em>uncertainty in today’s organizations</em><em> </em><em>are putting undue pressures</em><em> </em><em>on leaders and managers to adopt</em><em> </em><em>practical approach to leadership and management to motivate their followers</em><em> </em><em>to</em><em> </em><em>enhance their performance, </em><em>share the visions and missions of the organizations so as to realize</em><em> </em><em>their set objectives. </em><em>This article argues that what makes effective leadership and management in the rapidly changing 21st century organizations</em><em> </em><em>include their personality and style of leadership, passion and values, decision-making and problem-solving process</em><em> </em><em>as well as their</em><em> </em><em>expectations and levels of relationship with their followers. L</em><em>eaders and managers require a practical approach to leadership and management to substantially influence and motivate their followers to enhance their performance to achieve set organizational objectives.</em><em></em></p>


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