scholarly journals ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWN: A HOLISTIC REVIEW

Author(s):  
CN Uyo ◽  
KM Iwuji ◽  
CR Asoegwu ◽  
NC Uyo ◽  
CA Acholonu ◽  
...  

As an integral component of human, the environment is affected by every development effort in a particular way. From the very beginning of civilization, human beings gradually started manipulating the nature for their own benefit which has led to the degradation of the environment. As the novel corona virus disease pandemic (COVID-19) hit the world, human life has come to a halt as many Nations shut themselves off from work and other eminent life activities in order to curtail the spread of the virus, this indeed has grim implications for the world. Millions of deaths have occurred, social, economic and religious activities have been affected negatively. On the contrary, since numerous people’s activities and industrial operations have been shut off for several months in many parts of the globe, it is anticipated that there would be a rejuvenating process in the Biosphere, the Atmosphere and the hydrosphere. This study

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Setio

Anthropocentrism has received many challenges since the publication of the famous article by Lynn White, Jr. in 1967. Yet, since then there has been no significant changes with regard to human attitude towards nature. Human beings still perceive nature as their tool whose existence is to serve their own interests. When the COVID-19 pandemic hits the world, the anthropocentrism is once again challenged. It should be a good opportunity to change the anthropocentrism. The novel corona virus has made people look powerless. It is just a tiny thing, but it has caused a great impact on human life. Despite the fact that the virus often outsmarts human beings, there is no sign that human beings want to admit their weakness. Through reading some biblical stories: the creation of human beings, the naming of animals, Job and the lamb in the Book of Revelation this article wants to deconstruct the view that sees human beings as superior to others in nature. This reading will use posthumanism as theory. It will allow us to see in the stories that human can be subjugated to animals. AbstrakPandangan antroposentrisme telah digugat sejak kemunculan artikel Lynn White, Jr. di tahun 1967. Tetapi sejak itu belum ada perubahan yang signifikan. Manusia masih menempatkan alam sebagai sarana untuk meraih kepentingan dirinya. Ketika pandemi COVID-19 melanda dunia, pandangan antroposentrisme kembali ditantang. Seharusnya ini menjadi kesempatan yang baik bagi manusia untuk mengubah pandangannya itu. Virus corona baru telah membuat manusia kalang kabut. Kehebatan manusia menjadi tidak berarti ketika menghadapi virus yang kecil dan tidak kelihatan itu. Tetapi bukannya menyadari akan kelemahan dirinya dan bersedia membuka diri terhadap kekuatan alam, manusia malah berupaya sedemikian rupa untuk meng-atas-i virus itu. Melalui pembacaan terhadap kisah-kisah Alkitab: penciptaan manusia, Ayub dan Wahyu, tulisan ini akan mendekonstruksi pola pikir yang mengistimewakan manusia di hadapan makhluk lainnya. Teori yang digunakan untuk menafsirkan Alkitab itu adalah poshumanisme. Poshumanisme melihat kedudukan manusia tidak lebih besar daripada makhluk-makhluk lainnya. Kebesaran binatang di hadapan manusia akan terlihat ketika kisah-kisah Alkitab itu dibaca dengan memakai teori poshumanisme.


The paper examines the phenomenon of creativity of the Italian writer Eugenio Corti, author of the historical novel Il Cavallo Rosso. Namely, it concerns the specificity of his artistic method and themes. The historical novel Il Cavallo Rosso, describes the 30-year period of Italian history from the pre-war period to the referendum on divorce in post-war Italy in the Seventies, so it points out many different and interesting features. This article will mainly focus the attention on the problems concerning the value of human life and humanity, from the point of view both of the Christian ideal and communist ideology. The novel is especially relevant for modern Ukraine, since it shows how the experience of the war can help rethinking national identity, the significance of history and of human life. Even the war represented for the author the possibility of realizing his own task, i.e. discovering the truth of himself and of the world. He could even say: «War can be an immense advantage. War makes men. The war teaches an infinite number of things because it shows us our fellow men as they are: it teaches us to truly know men». Accepting reality as it is represented to Corti the possibility of realizing its mission to be aware of himself and of man condition in general. The dynamisms of the narration in the novel Il Cavallo Rosso reflect the same dynamisms of life: life never goes on standby, human beings never renounce hope, they keep on looking for new and better answers to their existential questions. In this sense Corti's novel can be considered historical, not only because the author, fond of history, loved to be extremely faithful to the facts, but also because he admirably managed to make the same mechanisms of history and life. Through his great love for reality and his desire to know it better and let it known to everybody, Corti discovered his vocation in the world of literature: the vocation of being a Witness. And the novel we are talking about is a proof of this, as there are narrated his life experiences and those of his generation. Knowing better Man and History, the Life and its meaning, is the main goal of the big novel Il cavallo rosso, this is why the concepts of “experience”, “testimony” and “anti-testimony” will be highlighted as main components of both the author’s life and his literary vocation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 758-762
Author(s):  
Amit Biswas ◽  
KunalChandankhede

Wuhan originated Covid-19 disease is caused by SARC-COV 2 virus. It is a contagious disease it spread all over the world. World health organization declared a global pandemic disease. In Covid-19 immunity plays an important role. In old age people or having other co-morbid conditions the mortality rate is more. Ayurveda has a big role in improved immunity or to intact immunity. The principle of Ayurveda is to keep individual swastha (diseases free). To maintain individual disease-free Ritucharya is one of the important subjects of Ayurveda. Aimed of study is to find out Ritucharya literature from the Ayurveda and modern research specifically Varsha and Sharad ritu. Ritucharya contains dietary regimen, living modification, common medicine, and contraindicated things those changing according to environmental change. Upcoming season in India is Varsha and Sharad ritu. Environmental changes are huge in this season and it directly affected human beings. So this study reveals property of ritu, dietary regimen, living modification, common medicine and contraindicated things in upcoming varsha and sharad ritu.


Coronaviruses ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viney Chawla ◽  
Pooja A Chawla

Background: Corona virus disease (COVID-19) is spreading rapidly at an unprecedented scale across continents and has emerged as the single biggest risk the world has faced in modern times. Some scientists are comparing it to Spanish flu that created havoc around a century ago. The fear of death by COVID-19 looms large at the world today. The disease has reached devastating proportions since its first reports in December 2019. Doctors are having a difficult time dealing with this challenge and the microbiologists are having sleepless nights to bring about an effective vaccine for this disease. Methods: A number of research and review articles have been exhaustively reviewed. The collected data was meticulously analysed and documented. Conclusion: This paper reviews the different types of corona viruses, the structure of SARS-CoV-2 responsible for COVID19, its transmission, virulence. Further, the article discusses the diagnosis, signs and symptoms like fever, breathlessness, cough, potential loss of taste or smell, sneezing, runny nose, fatigue, headache, sore throat and different treatment approaches including drug repurposing being tried by doctors around the globe that may come handy in the management of disease symptoms. The article describes the use of remdesivir, ribavarin, lopinavir, favipiravir, hydoxychloroquine, chloroquine, tocilizumab among others in treating COVID-19.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Bharat Prasad Badal

 Gandhian Model of Community Development (GMCD) is a sustainable development model for governments in the central, provincial, and local levels of democratic federal countries in the world by the scientific analysis of Gandhian ideology in a specified community. Community Development is a method, a strategy, and a campaign to uplift human life settlements and to solve the community problems from a simple local perspective. The human settlement with local communal acceptance, local norms, and values, environmental protection, help and cooperation, trusteeship, health, education, sanitation, training, transportation, marketing, etc. are the major components of the Gandhian Model of Community Development. The global acceptance with local initiation, norms, knowledge and practices in the positive changes on human life is Gandhian Community Development. It is the core ideological view of the great leader of south Asia-Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi is also pronounced as second Buddha of the world. The main objective of the study is to develop a Gandhian Model of Community Development with the incorporation of thoughts and ideologies of Mahatma Gandhi. The study is the collection of Gandhian ideology with a programmatic model for the future development of the human being specified within the boundary with the specified indicators of the Gandhian Model of Community Development. It is a hermeneutic and historical interpretation of three universal truths- Generation, Operation, and Destruction for the liberation of human beings from a sustainable development strategy guided by Mahatma Gandhi. His ideas are herminuted in contemporary sustainable community development. In conclusion, the Gandhian Model of Community development is a model having Balance Sheet of Production and Consumption within the specified municipality and Gandhian Development Indicators for human liberation or development toward ultimate freedom.


Author(s):  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
J. M. Bernstein

“Centric positionality” is a form of organism-environment relation exhibited by animal forms of life. Human life is characterized not only by centric but also by excentric positionality—that is, the ability to take a position beyond the boundary of one’s own body. Excentric positionality is manifest in: the inner, psychological experience of human beings; the outer, physical being of their bodies and behavior; and the shared, intersubjective world that includes other human beings and is the basis of culture. In each of these three worlds, there is a duality symptomatic of excentric positionality. Three laws characterize excentric positionality: natural artificiality, or the natural need of humans for artificial supplements; mediated immediacy, or the way that contact with the world in human activity, experience, and expression is both transcendent and immanent, both putting humans directly in touch with things and keeping them at a distance; and the utopian standpoint, according to which humans can always take a critical or “negative” position regarding the contents of their experience or their life.


Author(s):  
Damien Keown

Is Buddhism truly an ‘eco-friendly’ religion? ‘Animals and the environment’ examines the implications of Buddhist teachings such as that human beings can be reborn as animals and vice versa. While the Buddhist ‘sublime attitudes’ such as kindness and compassion seem at first to favour animals to a greater degree than we find in Christianity, human life still takes precedence in the hierarchy of living beings. Rules about plant life are unclear, with Buddhist writers acknowledging the beauty of both the wilderness and civilization. Vegetarianism is largely seen as a morally superior diet, but meat-eating was common at the time of the Buddha and is widely practised by monks today. Buddhist attitudes toward the natural world are complex and are to some extent overshadowed by the belief that the world as we know it is fundamentally flawed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-29
Author(s):  
John A. Houston

Aristotle's NE X claim that the best human life is one devoted to contemplation (theoria) seems in tension with his emphasis elsewhere on our essentially political nature, and more specifically, his claim that friendship is necessary for our flourishing. For, if our good can be in principle realized apart from the human community, there seems little reason to suggest we 'need' friends, as he clearly does in NE VIII & IX. I argue that central to Aristotle's NE X discussion of contemplation is the claim that our chief good accords with whatever is 'most divine' in us, viz. our rational nature (NE 1177b2-18). Thus, the best human life involves the excellent exercise of our rational capacities. I distinguish two ways in which human beings flourish through exercising their rationality. The first is in the activity of theoria. The second, I argue, can be found in the virtuous activity of complete friendship (teleia philia). For Aristotle the truest form of friendship is an expression of rationality. It is characterized not merely by our living together, but conversing, and sharing one another's thoughts (NE 1170b12-14). Examining Aristotle's notion of a friend as 'another self (alios autos), I argue that through friendship human beings come to better know themselves and the world in which they live. Complete friendship involves a (uniquely human) second-order awareness of oneself in another, and through this awareness our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live is enriched, confirmed, and enjoyed through the presence of other minds. Thus, the highest form of Aristotelian friendship is an intellectual activity through which we attain an analogue of the divine contemplation of the unmoved mover, thereby living with respect to what is most divine in us, but doing so in accordance with our uniquely rational-political nature.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 358-379
Author(s):  
Anthony O. Balcomb

The Western worldview, otherwise known as the modern worldview, has its origins in ancient Greek culture and its best known analyst and critic is Max Weber. Weber described the rationalization processes by which it came about as involving the disenchantment of the world, the disengagement of the autonomous self from the world in order to become its central agent, the objectification of the cosmos and the bureaucratization of all aspects of human life with the intention of mastery and control. This has led to what Weber called the Iron Cage in which modern human beings find themselves, unable to escape the alienation that such disengagement has brought about but equally unable to find an alternative. The exploitative nature of the western project is the basic cause of the contemporary destruction of the environment. Gregory Bateson probes more deeply into the alienating influences of the modern worldview which he says is based on its inability to understand the world holistically, which will inevitably lead to the world’s destruction. At the heart of this condition is his theory of the double bind. His advocacy for a more holistic understanding of the world resonates with postmodern critics in the fields of philosophy, anthropology, and theology, all of whom are advocating engagement, vulnerability, and participation as opposed to separation, prediction, and control.


2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Harvey

AbstractThe practices, habits and convictions that once allowed the inhabitants of Christendom to determine what they could reasonably do and say together to foster a just and equitable common life have slowly been displaced over the past few centuries by new configurations which have sought to maintain an inherited faith in an underlying purpose to human life while disassociating themselves from the God who had been the beginning and end of that faith. In the end, however, these new configurations are incapable of sustained deliberations about the basic conditions of our humanity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology provides important clues into what it takes to make and keep human life human in such a world. The first part of this essay examines Bonhoeffer's conception of the last things, the things before the last, and what binds them together. He argues that the things before the last do not possess a separate, autonomous existence, and that the positing of such a breach has had disastrous effects on human beings and the world they inhabit. The second part looks at Bonhoeffer's account of the divine mandates as the conceptual basis for coping with a world that has taken leave of God. Though this account of the mandates has much to commend it, it is hindered by problematic habits of interpretation that leave it vacillating between incommensurable positions. Bonhoeffer's incomplete insights are thus subsumed within Augustine's understanding of the two orders of human society set forth in City of God.


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