The Depersonalized as Vanishing Hero and Heroine in Yorùbá Moral Placards

The paper critically examines the relationship between the idea of moral placards and the existence of Yorùbá heroes and heroines. It takes as its starting point the philosophical import of the Yoruba proverb. Ọjọ́ a bá kú là ń dère, èèyàn ò sunwọ̀n láàyè (It is on the day one dies that one becomes an idol; no one is appreciated when alive). The paper argues that in the imagination, reality, and social constructions of the Yorùbá, desirable existence would make the dead, and not a living person, a deity, hero or heroine. It further argues that because Yorùbá society permits the co-existence and co[1]extensiveness of individual and public moral placards which is not regarded as an entirely closed system, an otherwise depersonalized person can later become a hero/deity/heroine. Basically, therefore, public moral placard can be revised to accommodate new values, give rise to new class of people, and establish for them an enviable status. These arguments are then deployed to the understanding of the nature of heroes and heroines within the Nigerian post-independence polity.

Aneta Dragushanu – The Perusal of the Myth of the Eternal Returning

The article presents a personal, chamber reading of fragments of interviews, stories, paintings, memories of the artist Aneta Dragushanu and her attitude towards man and art. A personal touch to familiar theories related to the eternal gaze, search and returning and their manifestation in the works of the author. There is no doubt that every work of Dragushanu, sketch, drawing, and canvas is its way to share with us, a way to seek the human in of the day. We find this pursuit and search for truth in the attitude towards models as well. The search is not for the ideal, perfect image, but for the living person. The one she knows, without posture and intent, the one she has met, talked to, realized. This insight into seemingly insignificant things, into the small details of everyday life, of the purity of human communication is its pursuit of the impermanent, the eternal.

Assisted Living

I wanted to tell a story from the point of view of a data entry worker, someone not typically considered when the advantages and disadvantages of eldercare technologies are being assessed. The worker, remotely located and unknown to the people she watches, offers a perspective that points out some of the strangeness of watching from a distance a living person being injured, struggling, or just needing human care and attention. As we move into more widespread use of eldercare technologies, it’s worth considering how surveillant and robotic technologies to support independent elder living could change our relationships with and sensitivity to older populations.

Shelley’s Doubles

The contradictions of Shelley’s radical politics and his aristocratic birth and upbringing place him as a potential victim of the revolutionary change he envisages and wishes for. He embodies some of the qualities which his own social critique deplores. This imports a quasi-suicidal logic into his work, where his influence is felt to be most effective once emancipated from his living person and social identity. This contradiction is explored in analysis of passages from Prometheus Unbound, and then in a sustained reading of Julian and Maddalo, where the central figure of the ‘madman’ throws into relief the civilized, gentlemanly manners of the Shelley/Byron characters. The contrast between ‘civilized’ and ‘mad’ is represented not simply in thematic terms but as a contrast in poetic styles.

HINDU COSMOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

This paper tries to comprehend Hindu narrative of creation in the framework of modern cosmology and psychology. The objective is to build a conversation for mutual understanding. The following concordance between the two streams is suggested. The state of the Primeval Being before It desired to become many is not known in the Hindu stream just as the state of the universe before the Big Bang is not known in the modern stream. The Primeval Being desired to grow according to the Hindu stream. Modern psychology says there is an innate desire to grow among human beings that we extrapolate backwards to suggest that the Singularity desired to grow. The Brahman pervades the entire Universe according to the Hindu stream. The panpsychists hold that every particle in the universe has consciousness. Brahman is the fused consciousness of all the particles in the universe according to the Hindu stream. In parallel the panpsychists hold that the fused consciousness is more than the sum of the parts. The collective consciousness of a subset of the universe is “devta” according to the Hindu stream. This concords with the “unconscious substrate” created in social organizations according to modern psychology. The collective consciousness of individuals having their consciousness at the Vishuddhi, Manipur and Anahata chakras is known as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. These concord with the collective consciousness of individuals who have evolved to the needs of cognition, belonging and esteem according to Abraham Maslow. The devtas can descend into a living person who is then called an avatara. This concords with the descent of the libido into the unconscious as said by Carl G. Jung. In conclusion, Hindu Brahman is modern God. Hindu devtas are modern gods. Hindu avataras are modern individuals in whom the gods have descended. In this way we can make the Hindu cosmology understandable to the modern mind and vice versa.

Features of the use of indirect evidence in the investigation of murders «without a corpse»

In cases of murder «without a corpse», the most difficult and responsible task of the investigator and the court is to resolve the question of the guilt of the person accused of murder, when the event of the crime is established only by indirect evidence. In these cases, the question undoubtedly arises whether the accused will not be convicted of «killing» a living person. This consideration imposes additional duties on the investigator to inquire into the versions about the missing person’s presence with exceptional depth, on the one hand, and about the murder committed by the accused, on the other. The entire classification of indirect evidence for its use in proving the guilt of the accused, when the corpse is not found and defendant denies his guilt, can be divided into two large groups: indirect evidence that is not related to the behavior of the accused and evidence related to his behavior. The first group of indirect evidence includes facts that indicate the murder of the victim and the possible guilt of the accused in the murder. The second group involves evidence related to the defendant’s behavior: the behavior of the criminal aimed at evading his responsibility for murder; cases of the suspect (accused) showing awareness of certain elements of the crime mechanism and all other types of behavior that indirectly indicate guilt. The article analyzes the possibilities of their use for obtaining truthful testimony from a suspect (accused) and his conviction by a court in cases of murder without a victim.

Double-Effect Donation Disputed

In “Double Effect Donation,” Camosy and Vukov argue that “there are circumstances in which it is morally permissible for a healthy individual to donate their organs even though their death is a foreseeable outcome”. They propose that a living donor could ethically donate an entire, singular, vital organ while knowing that this act would result in death. In reply, I argue that it is not ethical for a living person to donate an entire, singular, vital organ. Moreover, mutatis mutandis, it is not ethical for surgeons and others to perform such a deadly operation. For to do so is “intentionally to cause the death of the donor in disposing of his organs”. Such an act violates the dead donor rule which holds that an entire, singular, vital organ may be taken only from a corpse. Contrary to Camosy and Vukov’s claims, double-effect reasoning does not endorse such organ donation.

Marginal Performances by Late Medieval Pigs and Blind Men

In 1425, Parisians under Anglo-Burgundian rule during the Hundred Years War enjoyed the spectacle of blind men in armor attempting to club a pig to death, in the process clubbing one another. Marginal images in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264, a Flemish Romance of Alexander copied and illuminated roughly eighty years earlier, closely resemble this so-called game, and a dozen cities recorded iterations beginning in the thirteenth century and continuing into the fifteenth. The repetition suggests the workings of a scenario, which performance studies theorist Diana Taylor defines as a condensation of embodied practice and knowledge reactivated in multiple times and places to transmit culture from person to living person. Reading through the Bodley 264 Romance of Alexander in order to clarify the scenario's specific function in its Parisian context, this article argues that the strategic battering of marginal beings served to transmit a hierarchically ordered culture while forcefully expelling the Armagnac faction from the hierarchy's highest rank. Within this stark example of public violence that performatively materialized political division, the bodies of pigs and blind men resonated with multiple identity categories, and the dominant group whose power and cohesion the entertainment reinforced both ignored and enjoyed their trauma.

The Elements of Supernatural and Magic Realism in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

The present research paper is a study of the elements of Magic Realism and the supernatural elements in the novel, Beloved by the Nobel laureate novelist Toni Morrison. The term Magic Realism was originally applied in the 1920s to the school of surrealist German painters and was later used to describe the process fiction of writers like George Luis Burges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Salman Rushdie etc. These writers weave a sharply etched realism representing ordinary events and details together with fantastic and dream-like elements, as well as with material derived from myth and fairy tales. The German critic Franz Roz introduced the concept of Magic realism in 1920 and it was first used in paintings. The term was introduced in the book Post-expressionism, Magic Realism: Problem of the Most Recent European Paintings in 1925. The purpose here is to analyze the elements of magic realism in the novel, Beloved. We can see supernatural elements in Sethe’s house that bring chaos by haunting everyone through its mysterious presence, and making Sethe’s both the sons Howard and Buglar run away. It appears to be the ghost of a baby which was murdered by Sethe. The ghost causes the things in the house to break and shake mysteriously. In magic realism fiction the ghosts are the central characters generally. In the novel Beloved Morrison has portrayed the ghost as a living person. Thus, the dominance of a unique, mystical and gloomy atmosphere can be seen throughout the novel.

“Human Factors Quality Control” Air Traffic

Every living person, from infants to older people, gets affected by internal and external factors. There are numerous researches and writings related to humans and these various factors. Human factors are recognized since the start of the human race. The awareness of the impacts of our environment is not new to humans. The focus in this chapter is upon those factors which can create an impact on aircraft mechanisms and air traffic controllers. These factors include human, psychological, work conditions, training, health conditions, environment, societal, and training. These factors must be quality controlled to minimize the errors in the critical domain of air traffic. A reduction in the number of errors will allow the performance to be higher and lowers the chances of fatal accidents.