Understanding Wildlife Crime from Eco-Existential and African Perspectives: A Psycho-Philosophical Investigation

Wildlife crime has huge consequences regarding global environmental changes to animals, plants and the entire ecosystem. Combatting wildlife crime effectively requires a deep understanding of human–wildlife interactions and an analysis of the influencing factors. Conservation and green criminology are important in reducing wildlife crime, protecting wildlife and the ecosystem and informing policy-makers about best practices and strategies. However, the past years have shown that wildlife crime is not easy to combat and it is argued in this article that there are underlying existential “givens” and culture-specific aspects that need to be investigated to understand why wildlife crime is still on the rise. This theoretical article explores (eco-)existential perspectives, Greening’s four givens and selected African philosophical concepts, aiming to understand the complexities behind the prevalence of wildlife crime within global and African contexts.

Trust as a leading socio-psychological relationship in the experience of existential given

The understanding of the value of human life and responsibility for everything that happens or can happen to a person is analysed in the article; ways of overcoming alienation and loneliness and building trust in oneself, in the world and in others are identified. A theoretical overview, where the connectivity of existential givens is traced, is presented; in works of psychology, we however do not find scientific-psychological and statistical substantiation of these connections, which were outlined as long ago as at the time of existentialist philosophers. The results of empirical research are obtained by using the following methods – the study of personal trust or distrust in the world, in other people, in oneself by Alla Kupreychenko; Milton Rokeach Value Survey; Multidimensional diagnostic of "responsibility" RESPONSIBILITY-70; Dmitriy Leont'yev’s Meaningful Orientations Test; "Death Attitude" questionnaire by Paul T. P. Wong; Kseniya Chistopol'skaya’s adaptation of the "Fear of Personal Death" questionnaire, Yevgeniy Osin & Dmitriy Leont'yev’s differential questionnaire on the experience of loneliness. 80 people between the ages of 18 and 61 took part in the study. Of these, 54 % were females and 46 %, males. 51 % of the respondents have a family; 49 %, do not; 50 % of the respondents have a higher education. It is established that the level of understanding life, accepting responsibility, loneliness and its consequences are largely determined by the individual's trust in oneself, in others and in the world as a whole; the "optimal measure" of trust allows a person to accept existential given and cope with the feeling of meaninglessness of existence and the fear of death; what becomes the logical continuation of the search and finding meaning in life and the struggle with existential crisis is the attitude towards death, which includes analysis of the reasons for fear.

Existential Givens in the COVID-19 Crisis

COVID-19 confronts humanity with an undeniable, unprecedented crisis. The focus of this article is the opportunities it offers for a proverbial pressing of the reset button by prompting pause and reflection on habitual patterns and serving as an “urgent experience” with the potential to spark revitalizing intentionality. Using Greening’s four dialectical existential givens— life/death, community/isolation, freedom/determinism, and meaning/absurdity—as a guiding framework, I explore imbalances in aspects of life in the United States that have been illuminated by COVID-19. Then, I employ existential–humanistic theorizing and research as a vision of how these dialectical forces can be transcended by confronting paradoxes posed by these givens (vs. simplistically overemphasizing either their positive or their negative aspects) and by activating the creative potential therein. Specifically, COVID-19 offers opportunities for individuals to relinquish an unsustainable and ineffective way of being inherent in and reinforced by the U.S. cultural narrative; to embrace ambiguity and tragedy; to actively identify, remediate, and reconcile underacknowledged and underactualized human capacities; and therefore to heal false dichotomies and become more capable of living fully, authentically, and flexibly. Accordingly, COVID-19 also provides opportunities for collective co-creation of a cultural narrative involving evolution toward enhanced senses of consciousness and caring.

Why Timing Matters

Chapter two makes the case for timing theory’s value. Timing offers a simple but powerful gestalt shift, from taking “times” as existential givens or temporalities as subjective and subordinate constructs to a rigorous framework for tracing how practices and symbolic language interact to produce all the times of our lives—from our innermost experiences to the rhythms of the universe. These only become “real” and “natural” if they work for us almost by second nature. Timing theory also resolves several thorny problems with our grasp of time. Within IR, timing theory offers superior explanatory power while accommodating and often clarifying the way that other time studies approach their subject matter. It further stands apart in its ability to integrate IR’s two dominant cultures of time—Western standard time and the problem of Time. Finally, it exposes basic issues in IR as matters of timing, from concerns with change and surprise, to scholarly practices and knowledge development, to central disciplinary discussions like the “neo-neo debate.”

This is the real “death-line” AND I am still alive: A collaborative reflexivity about life trajectories

In this article, we, Olga Lehmann, Mixo Hansen and Helena Hurme, engage in a process of collaborative reflexivity upon living, aging, and dying as we attempt to make sense of the illnesses of the last author. The companionship that emerged between us in the plurality of our identities as friends, colleagues, coauthors, and women, encouraged us to revisit aspects of the theories in developmental-cultural psychology such as (a) the process of meaning-making, (b) the equifinality model in relation to aging and dying, and (c) the notion of personal life philosophies in relation to virtues. Based on our personal experiences as well as our collaborative reflexivity as scholars, we highlight that developmental-cultural psychology could more explicitly address existential transitions, such as dying and existential givens, such as uncertainty in its theories. We present as well some preliminary integrations between existential and cultural perspectives of meaning-making.

Psychotherapy with two late adulthood children of the colonies

There are a small group of mature adults in their 50s and 60s, members of the so-called third age that arrive at the door for psychotherapy. As clients, they want to explore an overwhelming sense of being dis-located in space and time, and at odds with where they find themselves living. They have a deep and profound sense of not belonging and of being rootless. These older, white, adults are the baby-boomers of post World War II, and I refer to them as the adult children of the colonies because they are of European descent but born in the colonies of Africa. This paper describes the experiences of two clients, Robert and Caitlin, who find themselves feeling progressively psychically dis-located in South Africa and confronting not only their limited future in terms of impending death, but confronting existential givens of life that prevent them at this late stage of life from returning home to their ancestral lands. They present a unique group of older adult clients, and like fish out of water, they have no sense of belonging to Africa, and as a result, they experience a range of emotions such as despair and depression with a concomitant sense of fragmented identities. Discussion of the cases ensues and includes the concept of intergenerational transmission of trauma, fragmented identities, and belonging as linked to ancestral lands.

Tourism and Existential Transformation: An Empirical Investigation

Couched in the context of the experience economy 3.0, this research conceptualized transformations as changes in existential authenticity and anxiety, and phenomenologically explored the essence of a transformative tourist experience and subsequent long-term changes. This research uncovered nine chronologically ordered themes in which existentially oriented concerns were prevalent. It found that tourists did not reflect on existential givens in situ until a triggering episode initiated the meaning-making process. Existential anxiety felt post-trip was found to motivate tourists to resolve pertinent existential dilemmas and to initiate meaningful life changes. Participants sustained enhanced existential authenticity and became more sensitive to existential anxiety in their lives thereafter.

Meaning and existential givens in the lives of cancer patients: A philosophical perspective on psycho-oncology

Objective:Many cancer patients report changes in how they experience meaning in life and being confronted with life's limitations, understanding themselves as being vulnerable, finite, and free beings. Many would like to receive psychotherapeutic help for this. However, psychotherapy for these concerns often either focuses primarily on meaning in life (e.g., meaning-centered/logotherapy) or on existential givens (e.g., supportive–expressive therapy). The relationship between meaning in life and existential givens seems relatively unexplored, and it seems unclear how therapists can integrate them. The present article aims to explore the relationship between meaning and existential givens.Method:Martin Heidegger was a founder of existentialism, inspiring both meaning therapies and supportive–expressive therapies. Therefore, we systematically apply his understanding of these phenomena, elucidated by four elements in his central metaphor of “the house.”Results:(1) Walls: In everyday life, we construct ordinary meanings, like the walls of a house, to protect us from our surroundings, wind, and rain. (2) Surroundings (“existential givens”): Confronted with cancer, the meanings/walls of this house may collapse; people may start seeing their surroundings and understand that they could have built their house at a different location, that is, they understand the broad range of possibilities in life, their responsibility to choose, and the contingency of current meanings. (3) How to design, build, and dwell: People may design, build, and dwell in their house in different ways: they may lock themselves in their house of impermeable “ordinary meanings” and deny the existence of existential surroundings; they may feel overwhelmed by all possibilities and be unable to experience meaning; they may build the house as their true home, use life's possibilities, and listen to their true self by building permeable “existential meanings.” (4). Navigator: People may experience inner guidance to navigate in designing, building, and dwelling in this house.Significance of results:Meaning in life and existential givens are intertwined. Therefore, we suggest that it is necessary for psycho-oncologists to address both. Further clinical validation is required.