scholarly journals CULTIVATING SPIRITUALITY A NECESSITY FOR PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2(Ч.1)) ◽  
pp. 270-283
Author(s):  
Д. Пол Шафер
Keyword(s):  
Future Generations ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
Other Substances ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Disastrous Effect ◽  
To Come

We are going through a very challenging period in human history. Not only has the COVID-19 pandemic had a disastrous effect on people and countries in all parts of the world, but also many other dangerous and life threatening problems have to be addressed and overcome, especially the environmental crisis, huge disparities in income and wealth, systemic racism, and conflicts between different genders, groups, regions, countries, and cultures. In order to come to grips with these problems, and others, it is imperative to make transcendental and not just transformational changes in our lifestyles, values, worldviews, actions, behaviour, and ways of life. The key to this lies in creating an effective balance between materialism and spiritualism, as well as placing a much higher priority on the cultivation of spirituality in our lives in the traditional and contemporary sense. Not only will this make it possible to reduce the colossal demands we are making on the natural environment – largely because most spiritual activities are "human intensive" rather than "material intensive" and therefore don’t consume as many natural resources as most other activities – but also it will enable present and future generations to experience a great deal more exuberance, exhilaration, and ecstasy in life without having to resort to drugs and other substances and devices to create "highs" and "peak experiences" because spiritual activities achieve this naturally. Many of these activities involve participating in causes that are greater than ourselves, joining protest movements aimed at creating more equality and justice in the world, going within ourselves to discover who we really are and what we were intended to realize in life, broaden and deepen our experiences in the arts, cultures, and the cultural heritage of humankind, and engage in explorations in nature and the natural realm that are capable of bringing us into contact with the sublime and possibly even the divine.

scholarly journals CULTURE AS THE FOUNDATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR PERSONALITIES AND LIVES

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-268
Author(s):  
Д. Пол Шафер
Keyword(s):  
Racial Violence ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Johan Huizinga ◽  
To Come ◽  
Defined Culture

Given all the problems that exist in the world today - from the COVID-19 pandemic and racial violence and prejudice to the environmental crisis and colossal disparities in income and wealth – people everywhere in the world are being severely challenged and thinking a great deal about the development of their personalities and lives. When Edward Burnett Tylor defined culture as "the complex whole," it was apparent that all people live a "cultural life" as a whole made up of many parts. Matthew Arnold went farther in this regard by contending that the challenge in life is to create a "harmonious cultural life" through the development of all our faculties and powers. Johan Huizinga went even further when he provided a powerful and profound insight into this matter by stating that the challenge is to create balance and harmony between the material and non-material dimensions of life, and therefore all the diverse activities and developments in the world and in life. Given the severe imbalances and disharmonies that exist in this area at present as a result of placing a much higher priority on the former dimension compared to the latter dimension, it is clear that this problem can only be resolved and rectified by placing a much higher priority on the development of non-material activities such as the arts, humanities, education, and spirituality going forward into the future. Not only is this the key to coming to grips with many of the world’s most complicated and life-threatening problems and changing directions in the world and in life in the future, but also it is the solution to developing our personalities and lives as balanced and harmonious wholes. This will result in a great deal more caring, sharing, compassion, cooperation, conservation, and creativity in the world, thereby putting us in a much stronger position to come to grips with the problems we will be confronted with in the future, creating more compatible lifestyles and ways of life, achieving sustainable development, and becoming cultural personalities in the realistic and idealistic sense.

scholarly journals Difference Relates: Allegory, Ideology, and the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-133
Author(s):  
Carolyn Lesjak
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Unconscious ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

Abstract Fredric Jameson’s recent book, Allegory and Ideology, argues that allegory has become a ‘social symptom’, an attempt during moments of historical crisis to represent reality even as that reality, rife with contradictory levels, eludes representation. Mobilising the fourfold medieval system of allegory he first introduced in The Political Unconscious, Jameson traces a formal history of attempts to come to terms with the ‘multiplicities’ and incommensurable levels that emerge within modernity and postmodernity. This article identifies the complexities of Jameson’s understanding of allegory and draws on the brief moments when Jameson references the Anthropocene to argue for an allegorical reading of our contemporary environmental crisis that would allow us to see the problem the Anthropocene names as truly contradictory: at one and the same time, the world we inhabit appears to us as a world of our own making and as a world that has become truly alien to us.

scholarly journals Difference Relates: Allegory, Ideology, and the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Carolyn Lesjak
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Unconscious ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

Abstract Fredric Jameson’s recent book, Allegory and Ideology, argues that allegory has become a ‘social symptom’, an attempt during moments of historical crisis to represent reality even as that reality, rife with contradictory levels, eludes representation. Mobilising the fourfold medieval system of allegory he first introduced in The Political Unconscious, Jameson traces a formal history of attempts to come to terms with the ‘multiplicities’ and incommensurable levels that emerge within modernity and postmodernity. This article identifies the complexities of Jameson’s understanding of allegory and draws on the brief moments when Jameson references the Anthropocene to argue for an allegorical reading of our contemporary environmental crisis that would allow us to see the problem the Anthropocene names as truly contradictory: at one and the same time, the world we inhabit appears to us as a world of our own making and as a world that has become truly alien to us.

The World Against Versatile SARS-Cov-2 Nanomachines; Mythological or Reality?

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shima Tavakol ◽  
Hani Tavakol ◽  
Mo S. Alavijeh ◽  
Alexander Seifalian
Keyword(s):  
Tissue Damage ◽  
Inflammatory Responses ◽  
Therapeutic Strategies ◽  
Cell Entry ◽  
Signalling Pathways ◽  
Cell Surfaces ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
To Come

: Nanomachines hold promise for the next generation of emerging technology; however, nanomachines are not a new concept, viruses, nature’s nanomachines, have already existed for thousands of years. In 2019, the whole world has had to come together to confront a life-threatening nanomachine named “SARS-CoV-2”, which causes COVID-19 illness. SARS-CoV-2, a smart nanomachine, attaches itself onto the ACE2 and CD147 receptors present on the cell surfaces of the lungs, kidneys, heart, brain, intestines, and testes, etc. and triggers pathogenesis. Cell entry triggers a cascade of inflammatory responses resulting in tissue damage, with the worst affected cases leading to death. SARS-CoV-2 influences several receptors and signalling pathways; therefore, finding a biomaterial that caps these signalling pathways and ligand sites is of interest. This research aimed to compare the similarities and differences between COVID-19 and its elderly sisters’, MERS and SARS. Furthermore, we glanced at emerging therapeutics that carry potential in eliminating SARS-CoV-2, and the tissue damage it causes. Simple prophylactic and therapeutic strategies for the treatment of COVID-19 infection have been put forward.

scholarly journals Performance Evaluation of Mobile Charger Using Heating Technology

10.29007/119n ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darshankumar Dalwadi ◽  
Mohit Agarwal ◽  
Sambridhi Priya ◽  
Bhargav Goradiya
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Energy Requirements ◽  
Solar Panels ◽  
The World ◽  
Rapid Pace ◽  
Mobile Charger ◽  
Typical Day ◽  
To Come ◽  
Heating Technology

In today‟s fast growing world, the energy requirements are increasing with a rapid pace. A quick reflection on a typical day revels that majority of our everyday gadgets require energy that is generated either in renewable or non-renewable form. The increased reliance on technology necessitates availability of energy on our planet in a humongous amount; but unfortunately, it is limited, therefore the world is inquisitive about the energy that can last up to decades, such that the resources do not exhaust and are available for our future generations to come. We have made an attempt to unearth the technology of generating the energy from air, water even the sun rays using solar panels, but to a certain extent they are quiet costly and have their respective feasibility limitations. The technology we focus here is using heat as a source to produce electric power sufficient to charge a mobile phone. Since the heat is ubiquitous, it can be collected and converted into the desired form. This technology has vast applications; from charging various gadgets to providing electricity in a distant rural home where the ease of electricity is out of reach. The motive of presenting this paper is to analyze the heating module that can produce the energy when heated and how it can be converted into charge for a mobile phone.

scholarly journals Can the Earth be Sacred Once Again? Christianity and Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-123
Author(s):  
Sean McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Technological Revolution ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Climate Crisis

The following paper takes Pope Francis’ Encyclical on Climate Change as an opportunity to re-open the debate, begun in 1967 by Lynn White Jr., on the theological origins of the environmental crisis. I note that the Pope’s critique of consumerist modernity is strong, but his lack of a genealogical account of modernity remains a weakness of the text. I argue, with White, that the technological revolution which has caused climate change would not have been possible without Christian assumptions. The original disenchantment of the world was the Abrahamic revelation which disjoined divinity and nature, and contra to appearances, the disjunction was only exacerbated by the doctrine of the incarnation. With climate change, modernity is returning to this revelation in the form of the sobering experience of the precarity of the planet. Nature is now experienced as finite once again, and it includes us. Modernity, however, cannot be disavowed any more than disenchantment can easily be forgotten. A return to the Christian roots of disenchantment might help us to remember what we have forgotten: the virtue of contemplation, which could qualify modern attitudes of control and domination, and engender a Christian experience of reverence for nature. While this is a Christian response to the climate crisis, other religious traditions will need to come to analogous forms of earth-centered ethics if we are to achieved the integrated ecological pluralism needed for the future of civilization.

The Instruments of the Stabilization Fund: The Experience and Prospects

2004 ◽  
pp. 65-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mst. Afanasiev
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Oil Prices ◽  
Federal Budget ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
The World

Сreation of the stabilization fund has become the main feature of the Russian federal budget for 2004. This instrument provides the opportunity to reduce the dependence of budget incomes on the fluctuations of oil prices. The accepted model does not consider the world experience in building of such funds as the "funds for future generations", and the increase of other revenues from the growing oil prices as well. That can lead to shortening and immobilization of the financial basis of economic growth.

Book Review

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-389
Author(s):  
Eduardo Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
City Image ◽  
European Capital Of Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
The Olympic Games

Evinç Doğan (2016). Image of Istanbul, Impact of ECoC 2010 on The City Image. London: Transnational Press London. [222 pp, RRP: £18.75, ISBN: 978-1-910781-22-7]The idea of discovering or creating a form of uniqueness to differentiate a place from others is clearly attractive. In this regard, and in line with Ashworth (2009), three urban planning instruments are widely used throughout the world as a means of boosting a city’s image: (i) personality association - where places associate themselves with a named individual from history, literature, the arts, politics, entertainment, sport or even mythology; (ii) the visual qualities of buildings and urban design, which include flagship building, signature urban design and even signature districts and (iii) event hallmarking - where places organize events, usually cultural (e.g., European Capital of Culture, henceforth referred to as ECoC) or sporting (e.g., the Olympic Games), in order to obtain worldwide recognition. 

The Book of Tribulations: The Syrian Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition'

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cook ◽  
Nu'aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
To Come

“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end of the world, the wars against the Byzantines, and the Turks, and the Muslim civil wars. There is extensive material about the Mahdi (messianic figure), the Muslim Antichrist and the return of Jesus, as well as descriptions of Gog and Magog. Much of the material in Nu`aym today is utilized by Salafi-jihadi groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Editorial

2017 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Peter Hoar
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Editorial Team ◽  
Local Market ◽  
Design History ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
New Zealanders

Kia ora and welcome to the second issue of BackStory. The members of the Backstory Editorial Team were gratified by the encouraging response to the first issue of the journal. We hope that our currentreaders enjoy our new issue and that it will bring others to share our interest in and enjoyment of the surprisingly varied backstories of New Zealand’s art, media, and design history. This issue takes in a wide variety of topics. Imogen Van Pierce explores the controversy around the Hundertwasser Art Centre and Wairau Māori Art Gallery to be developed in Whangarei. This project has generated debate about the role of the arts and civic architecture at both the local and national levels. This is about how much New Zealanders are prepared to invest in the arts. The value of the artist in New Zealand is also examined by Mark Stocker in his article about the sculptor Margaret Butler and the local reception of her work during the late 1930s. The cultural cringe has a long genealogy. New Zealand has been photographed since the 1840s. Alan Cocker analyses the many roles that photography played in the development of local tourism during the nineteenth century. These images challenged notions of the ‘real’ and the ‘artificial’ and how new technologies mediated the world of lived experience. Recorded sound was another such technology that changed how humans experienced the world. The rise of recorded sound from the 1890s affected lives in many ways and Lewis Tennant’s contribution captures a significant tipping point in this medium’s history in New Zealand as the transition from analogue to digital sound transformed social, commercial and acoustic worlds. The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly celebrates its 85th anniversary this year but when it was launched in 1932 it seemed tohave very little chance of success. Its rival, the Mirror, had dominated the local market since its launch in 1922. Gavin Ellis investigates the Depression-era context of the Woman’s Weekly and how its founders identified a gap in the market that the Mirror was failing to fill. The work of the photographer Marti Friedlander (1908-2016) is familiar to most New Zealanders. Friedlander’s 50 year career and huge range of subjects defy easy summary. She captured New Zealanders, their lives, and their surroundings across all social and cultural borders. In the journal’s profile commentary Linda Yang celebrates Freidlander’s remarkable life and work. Linda also discusses some recent images by Friedlander and connects these with themes present in the photographer’s work from the 1960s and 1970s. The Backstory editors hope that our readers enjoy this stimulating and varied collection of work that illuminate some not so well known aspects of New Zealand’s art, media, and design history. There are many such stories yet to be told and we look forward to bringing them to you.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document