scholarly journals Medicine and Manipulation: Aspiration and Ambition

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
José Florencio F. Lapeña
Keyword(s):  
Interest Group ◽  
Operating Theatre ◽  
Lecture Hall ◽  
Professional Lives ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The World ◽  
Or Organization ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
The Way

“And so, light your face up with a smile, Why waste your life on something really not worthwhile, Look up to the stars, take your eyes off the ground, Come, live your life, turn around.”1   As Doctors of Medicine we should be no strangers to aspiration; “a striving after something higher than oneself” that “usually implies that the striver is thereby ennobled.”2   Aspiration in this context truly earns us the full connotation of the title “Doctor,” as eminent, authoritative, learned healers and teachers of the art and science of medicine. Many among us deserve this title in word and deed, and are worthy of emulation. Their personal and professional lives bear witness, not to self-serving accomplishments, but to their improving life and living in the world around them.   Aspiration may be synonymous with ambition, although the latter term which “applies to the desire for personal advancement” may equally suggest “a praiseworthy or an inordinate desire … for rank, fame or power.” 2 Ambition of this sort often resorts to manipulation to achieve its ends, and manipulation in this context is “to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage.” 3 Whether subtly stolen or brazenly grabbed at the expense of others, the means is often distorted to justify the end. In the process, rights are trampled, dreams shattered, alliances betrayed and relationships severed. According to Messina and Messina4, manipulation is a set of behaviors whose goal is to: Get you what you want from others even when the others are not willing initially to give it to you. Make it seem to others that they have come up with an idea or offer of help on their own when in reality you have worked on them to promote this idea or need for help for your own benefit. Dishonestly get people to do or act in a way which they might not have freely chosen on their own. "Con'' people to believe what you want them to believe as true. Get "your way'' in almost every interaction you have with people, places, or things. Present reality the way you want others to see it rather than the way it "really is.'' Hide behind a "mask'' and let people see you in an acceptable way when in reality you are actually feeling or acting in an ``unacceptable'' way for these people. Maintain control and power over others even though they think they have the control and power. Manipulation also means “to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose” or, shameful as it may sound, to “doctor.”3 This derogatory use of the term is not untainted by our actions, whether the arena be laboratory or operating theatre, clinic or lecture hall, hospital or home, interest group or organization, community or society. Blind ambition may delude us into rationalizing dodgy deals and shady maneuverings, convincing even ourselves that they are beneficent and non-maleficent. We get our way, oblivious to the injustice and injury wrought on others. When shameless machinations, “scheming, crafty actions or artful designs intended to accomplish some usually evil end”5 are engaged in by supposed practitioners of the healing art, they do more than validate the colloquial dinu-doktor or dinuktor; they invalidate the rest of us.  

Architecture and memory in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Naomi Stead
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
The Way

Austerlitz was the German expatriate author W. G. Sebald’s last book before his untimely death in 2001. Greeted with great critical acclaim, the novel is a profound meditation on history, memory, and loss. Sebald’s larger attempt to represent and memorialise the lasting trauma of the Holocaust, in an oblique and understated rather than a literal way, led him to a new kind of literary expression described by Eric Homberger as ‘part hybrid novel, part memoir and part travelogue’. What is most interesting about Austerlitz, for the purposes of this article, is that it makes so much use of architecture. In this, it joins a tradition of literary works that treat architecture as a metaphor for human endeavour and artifice, social structures, and attempts to order and construct the world. But, there is more to the buildings in Austerlitz. The book offers insights into the larger meaning – often, but not always, melancholy – of architecture in culture and society, past and present. This is elucidated at a personal level, in the way that surroundings and spatial atmospheres can affect the emotional life of an individual, and also at a collective level, in the way that buildings bear witness to, and last beyond, the trials and duration of a single human life.

Reputation in Democracies

Reputation ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 241-254
Author(s):  
Gloria Origgi
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
Uncritical Acceptance ◽  
Or Organization ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Way

This chapter contains an attempt to understand the implications of reputation for epistemic life and public decisions. It explains the way people think about themselves and their role as informed citizens must adapt to a certain transformation. People need to develop new tools to govern their actions and the circulation of their opinions. The chapter connects the theme of the movie “Birdman” with reputation, which implies that what people say about others and about everything that exists provides the only available window through which we people come to know themselves and recognize the world. Most political and institutional decisions today are made in an irresponsible manner because based on the uncritical acceptance of potentially spurious indicators announcing that the reputation of a certain person or organization, for instance, is merited, even when no one has bothered to examine how such a conclusion was reached. The chapter ends by examining the impact of specific reputational signals and their power of seduction.

Becoming Politicized

2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Beliefs About The Future ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.

Restrained Airs: The Diegetic Surface and Nondiegetic Depth of British Film Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-443
Author(s):  
Paul Mazey
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
The World ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The Way

This article considers how pre-existing music has been employed in British cinema, paying particular attention to the diegetic/nondiegetic boundary and notions of restraint. It explores the significance of the distinction between diegetic music, which exists in the world of the narrative, and nondiegetic music, which does not. It analyses the use of pre-existing operatic music in two British films of the same era and genre: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and demonstrates how seemingly subtle variations in the way music is used in these films produce markedly different effects. Specifically, it investigates the meaning of the music in its original context and finds that only when this bears a narrative relevance to the film does it cross from the diegetic to the nondiegetic plane. This reveals that whereas music restricted to the diegetic plane may express the outward projection of the characters' emotions, music also heard on the nondiegetic track may reveal a deeper truth about their feelings. In this way, the meaning of the music varies depending upon how it is used. While these two films may differ in whether or not their pre-existing music occupies a nondiegetic or diegetic position in relation to the narrative, both are characteristic of this era of British film-making in using music in an understated manner which expresses a sense of emotional restraint and which marks the films with a particularly British inflection.

Profilometry. Using Corneo-scleral topography for scleral lens fitting

The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer
Keyword(s):  
Ocular Surface ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Contact Lenses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.

Los criterios de textualidad en la hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur. Un análisis crítico

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Bertorello
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Material Base ◽  
The World ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Text Writing ◽  
The Way

RESUMENEl trabajo examina críticamente la afirmación central de la hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur, a saber, que el soporte material de la escritura es el rasgo determinante para que una secuencia discursiva sea considerada como un texto. La escritura cancela las condiciones fácticas de la enunciación y crea, de este modo, un ámbito de sentido estable en el que se puede validar una concepción de la subjetividad que está implicada en las dos estrategias de lecturas (el análisis estructural y la apropiación), esto es, un sujeto pasivo que se constituye por la idealidad del significado. Asimismo, el trabajo intentará precisar una serie de ambigüedades en el uso que Ricoeur hace del «ser en el mundo» para sostener la referencialidad del discurso.PALABRAS CLAVETEXTO, ESCRITURA, REFERENCIA, SUBJETIVIDAD, MUNDOABSTRACTThis paper critically examines the main assertion of Paul Ricoeur´s hermeneutics, i.e., that the material base of writing is the determining feature to consider a discursive sequence as a text. Writing cancels the factual conditions of enunciation and creates, in this way, a background of stable meaning where it is possible to validate a conception of subjectivity implicated in the two reading strategies (the structural analysis and the appropriation), i.e., a passive subject constituted by the ideality of meaning. Likewise, this paper aims to clarify some ambiguities in the way Ricoeur uses the «beings in the world» to support the discourse referentiality.KEY WORDSTEXT, WRITING, REFERENCE, SUBJECTIVITY, WORLD

The Role of Music and Allied Arts in Public Writings on Cultural Diversity: “People of Sri Lanka”

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Gisa Jähnichen
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Culturally Different ◽  
The World ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
The Way

The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work “People of Sri Lanka” in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people’s groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.

Causality Then and Now

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Mechanical Model ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...

Vagueness and the World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Bacon
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Logical Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

According to a fairly widespread assumption, there is some definite collection of completely factual or fundamental propositions upon which all truths supervene and which are unaffected by vagueness. This assumption manifests itself in formal models of vagueness as well—for example, the supervaluationist who represents propositions as sets of world-precisification pairs may divide logical space into propositions that only depend on the world-coordinate. This chapter argues that this assumption leads to paradoxes of higher-order vagueness, and, ultimately, should be rejected in favour of a weaker notion of fundamentality or factuality. It suggests an alternative picture in which there is vagueness ‘all the way down’: logical-space can be divided into basic propositions that settle all precise matters, but it is vague where those divisions lie.

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