Ripples on the Great Sea of Life: A Brief History of Existential Risk Studies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Beard ◽  
Phil Torres
Keyword(s):  
Existential Risk ◽  
History Of

Into Indra’s Net

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Culliney ◽  
David Jones
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Existential Risk ◽  
Shared Humanity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Yin And Yang

The last chapter highlights a sagely person whose work in international and intercultural education has exemplified the principles discussed in this book. The yin and yang of American culture and modern religious expression, however, represent uncertainties for constructive societal progress. Reflecting on future chances of success for humanity and human selves, the chapter points to the need for sagely leadership to promote biospheric conservation, environmental sustainability, and social justice. With urgency, the same prescription will help us to navigate the chaotic edge between future promise and existential risk in new fields such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. The chapter concludes with a view of the choice we face at the present moment: an exercise in free will, unique in the history of life. Each human individual has the potential to contribute something worthy and personally satisfying to the future. Our choice is: will we take the cooperative side of our evolutionary past to a new level and embrace the kind of nurturing philosophical wisdom that confirms our shared humanity. Or will we choose to reject that ancestral path in favor of accelerating self-aggrandizement, aggressive religion, and destructive tribal integrity that threatens societal and planetary well-being?

The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Early Career ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

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