Download or read book Living on Earth in the Sky The human being written by Conradin Perner and published by Schwabe. This book was released on 1994 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anyuak definition of what a human person is appears to be a relatively easy one, at least in theory, because it is based upon purely physical criteria; The metaphysical dimensions of a human being are completely neglected in this definition and are only of importance when needed to exclude a human being from human society. The term "person" is essential in Anyuak language, for it introduces a special category within the large category of "human beings": not all human beings are also persons. The notion of "personality" is, in this context, of no relevance, because it is merely a qualitative extension of the notion of human person, its individual aspect. There is no moral element in the judgement of a human person, at least in this theoretical sense, and even intelligence which elsewhere is considered to be almost exclusively human is not considered when defining the truly human qualities of a person. Because the individual characteristics of a person, his or her mistakes and problems, do not turn into existential questions, Anyuaks hardly ever ask themselves about their "real" identity or meditate about their inner life: Anyuaks know perfectly well who they are and what place they have in existence, and it is with this deep and sober self-knowledge that they face their private destiny. The best, as well as the most complete, answer to the philosophical question "Who am I?" thus is for Anyuak a very easy, self-evident one: "Who I am? - I am a human person!" "Human person" means in Anyuak language "dhano". "Dhano mo dicwo" is a male, "dhano mo dhago" a female person; the plural is "jiy" or "jow", the latter meaning literally "fellows, people". The term "dhano" is positively discriminating and describes a definite sphere of exclusively human values. A human person is of course a human being, the latter being a particular species living on earth an thus clearly different from animals, birds or fish. The differentiation from animals is, as we shall see, of importance, because unlike animals the human being has a spiritual dimension and is conscious of his or her existence. But because of human superiority over animals and because of the usually peaceful coexistence between man an animals on earth, the human being contents himself with stating the differences between man an animals in their physical nature and intellectual capacities; the difference between man an animals is a positive one because it strengthens the position of the human being and is therefore of psychological rather than of truly existential importance to the definition of a "human person". Anyuak existence would probably be much less problematic if their universe were simply divided into a spiritual sphere above (of God) and an earthly sphere of existence below (of humans, animals, etc.). The problem of human society is aggravated by the fact that the nature of human being is not the same in all people, that there exist treacherous elements which side with the spiritual, nonhuman matters and find tremendous pleasure in torturing an killing other human beings. A "human being" is therefore not necessarily a "human person" but can, in spite of his or her human appearance, very well have supernatural, i.e. inhuman qualities. When Anyuaks define a "human person", they primarily think of these cetergories of existence: while the difference to animals and the one to invisible spiritual matters in the sky does not need to be stressed, the differentiation between real human persons and people of mainly spiritual nature has to be emphasised and made perfectly clear because it is a differentiation within the same category of earthly appearances, the category of human beings. The human beings thus are divided into "persons" and "non-persons", the former defined by purely human values, the latter depending upon spiritual attributes. If one wonders "Who is walking over there?", anyuaks never give a precise answer such as "These are people coming from Ajwara" but simply say what in their opinion is the most and the only essential "Be jiy di piny", "These are people of the earth", i.e. earthly, not spiritual existences, they are normal people. This expression shows clearly that a true human person is closely linked to the earth, while spiritual non-persons of course are rather related to the sphere of the sky, to immaterial spirituality. To be a "human person" is the most positive thing an Anyuak can say about her or himself. Here, there is no idea of humanity as a fault of the humans'' imperfection and need for salvation, on the contrary, the human person is the only positive and solid criterion on which all other matters are to be judged. The term "dhano", person, thus qualifies or disqualifies somebody as a human being. Soemtimes, one does hear it in a positive sense, as in the already mentioned examples or when for example a difficult discussion is to be put on a constructive level by saying "yini dhano thuoo", i.e. "you are a human being like me" (and should therefore not argue as if you were a sorcerer); usually, however, one applies the term to disliked or even hated people, by calling them "non-persons", i.e. "pa dhano". A man walking naked in a big village (like Akobo or Otalo) is today considered to be mad (at least if he never wars clothes) and thus said to be "no person any more" ("pa dhano ket") and consequently left in peace (even by the police). In such a context, to be a non-person is synonymous with "to b mad" (bol): when for example my watercarrier in one of his frequent malaria attacks completely lost his mind and even forgot all the obligatory respect due to the king, walking with shoes in royal presence and even disregarding the king''s orders, he was not caught, tied up and slashed as normally would have been the case: "Let him be," the king said calmly, "he is no human person any more" (i.e. he does not know what he is doing).
Download or read book The Uninhabitable Earth written by David Wallace-Wells and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books
Download or read book When They Severed Earth from Sky written by E. J. W. Barber and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-25 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching about storytelling.
Download or read book Under a White Sky written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Crown. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES • SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Smithsonian Magazine, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.
Download or read book Love Letter to the Earth written by Thich Nhat Hanh and published by Parallax Press. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-renowned Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh champions a more mindful, spiritual approach to protecting nature and limiting climate change—one that recognizes people and planet as one and the same. While many experts point to the enormous complexity in addressing issues ranging from the destruction of ecosystems to the loss of millions of species, Thich Nhat Hanh identifies one key issue as having the potential to create a tipping point. He believes that we need to move beyond the concept of the “environment,” as it leads people to experience themselves and Earth as two separate entities and to see the planet only in terms of what it can do for them. Here, Thich Nhat Hanh points to the lack of meaning and connection in peoples’ lives as being the cause of our addiction to consumerism. He deems it vital that we recognize and respond to the stress we are putting on the Earth if civilization is to survive. Rejecting the conventional economic approach, Thich Nhat Hanh shows that mindfulness and a spiritual revolution are needed to protect nature and limit climate change. Love Letter to the Earth is a hopeful book that gives us a path to follow by showing that change is possible only with the recognition that people and the planet are ultimately one and the same.
Download or read book The Human Division written by John Scalzi and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the events of The Last Colony, John Scalzi tells the story of the fight to maintain the unity of the human race. The people of Earth now know that the human Colonial Union has kept them ignorant of the dangerous universe around them. For generations the CU had defended humanity against hostile aliens, deliberately keeping Earth an ignorant backwater and a source of military recruits. Now the CU's secrets are known to all. Other alien races have come on the scene and formed a new alliance—an alliance against the Colonial Union. And they've invited the people of Earth to join them. For a shaken and betrayed Earth, the choice isn't obvious or easy. Against such possibilities, managing the survival of the Colonial Union won't be easy, either. It will take diplomatic finesse, political cunning...and a brilliant "B Team," centered on the resourceful Lieutenant Harry Wilson, that can be deployed to deal with the unpredictable and unexpected things the universe throws at you when you're struggling to preserve the unity of the human race. Being published online from January to April 2013 as a three-month digital serial, The Human Division will appear as a full-length novel of the Old Man's War universe, plus—for the first time in print—the first tale of Lieutenant Harry Wilson, and a coda that wasn't part of the digital serialization. Old Man's War Series #1 Old Man’s War #2 The Ghost Brigades #3 The Last Colony #4 Zoe’s Tale #5 The Human Division #6 The End of All Things Short fiction: “After the Coup” Other Tor Books The Android’s Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts Lock In The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book The Dialogue of Earth and Sky written by Timothy J. Knab and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mexico’s Sierra Norte de Puebla, beliefs that were held before the coming of Europeans continue to guide the lives of modern Aztecs. For residents of San Martín Zinacapan, life in and on the earth is animated by the same forces, through which people seek to maintain a cohesive view of the relationship of mankind, the cosmos, and the natural world. This delicate balance of the human spirit maintains the health and well-being of villagers, and is an essential part of the social and ideological framework that makes a person’s life whole. This book describes the basic elements of a belief system that has survived the onslaught of Catholicism, colonialism, and the modern world. Timothy Knab has spent thirty years working in this area of Mexico, learning of the Most Holy Earth and following what its people there call "the good path." He was initiated as a dreamer, learned the prayers and techniques for curing maladies of the human soul, and from his long association with the Sanmartinos has constructed a thorough account of their beliefs and practices. Learning to recount dreams, forming a dreamtale, and "carrying it on one’s back" to the waking world is the first part of the practitioner’s labor in curing. But dreamtales are shown to be more than parables in this world, for they embody the ethos and cosmovision that link Sanmartinos with their traditions and the Most Holy Earth. Building on this background, Knab describes how the open-ended interpretation of dreams is the practitioner’s primary instrument for restoring a client’s soul to its proper equilibrium, thus providing a practical approach to finding and resolving everyday problems. Many anthropologists hold that such beliefs have long since disappeared into the nebulous past, but in San Martín they remain alive and well. The underworld of the ancestors, talocan or Tlalocan for the Aztecs, is still a vital part of everyday life for the people of the Sierra Norte de Puebla. The Dialogue of Earth and Sky is an important record of a culture that has maintained a precolumbian cosmovision for nearly 500 years, revealing that this system is as resonant today with the ethos of Mesoamerican peoples as it was for their ancestors.
Download or read book Under the Sky We Make written by Kimberly Nicholas PhD and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ** Los Angeles Times bestseller ** It's warming. It's us. We're sure. It's bad. But we can fix it. After speaking to the international public for close to fifteen years about sustainability, climate scientist Dr. Nicholas realized that concerned people were getting the wrong message about the climate crisis. Yes, companies and governments are hugely responsible for the mess we're in. But individuals CAN effect real, significant, and lasting change to solve this problem. Nicholas explores finding purpose in a warming world, combining her scientific expertise and her lived, personal experience in a way that seems fresh and deeply urgent: Agonizing over the climate costs of visiting loved ones overseas, how to find low-carbon love on Tinder, and even exploring her complicated family legacy involving supermarket turkeys. In her astonishing, bestselling book Under the Sky We Make, Nicholas does for climate science what Michael Pollan did more than a decade ago for the food on our plate: offering a hopeful, clear-eyed, and somehow also hilarious guide to effecting real change, starting in our own lives. Saving ourselves from climate apocalypse will require radical shifts within each of us, to effect real change in our society and culture. But it can be done. It requires, Dr. Nicholas argues, belief in our own agency and value, alongside a deep understanding that no one will ever hand us power--we're going to have to seize it for ourselves.
Download or read book A Journey to the Earth s Interior Or Have the Poles Really Been Discovered written by Marshall Blutcher Gardner and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Extraterrestrial written by Avi Loeb and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller | Wall Street Journal Bestseller | Publishers Weekly Bestseller | Publishers Marketplace 2020 Buzz Book | Amazon Best Book of the Year | Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award “Provocative and thrilling ... Loeb asks us to think big and to expect the unexpected.” —Alan Lightman, New York Times bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Harvard’s top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology from a distant star. In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top astronomer, showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit, and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake. There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization. In Extraterrestrial, Loeb takes readers inside the thrilling story of the first interstellar visitor to be spotted in our solar system. He outlines his controversial theory and its profound implications: for science, for religion, and for the future of our species and our planet. A mind-bending journey through the furthest reaches of science, space-time, and the human imagination, Extraterrestrial challenges readers to aim for the stars—and to think critically about what’s out there, no matter how strange it seems.
Download or read book Pale Blue Dot written by Carl Sagan and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-07-06 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time. Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race. “Takes readers far beyond Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanity’s future in the stars.”—Chicago Tribune
Download or read book From Sky and Earth to Metaphysics written by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an exceptional volume which expands upon the World Phenomenology Institute’s recent research: the study of the beautiful intertwining of the skies and the cosmos with the human pursuits of philosophy, literature and the arts. The relationship of humans to the cosmos is examined through the exploration of phenomenology, metaphysics and the arts. The authors of this volume write on a variety of topics which all seek to open the reader’s eyes to the relationship of humans and our perception of our place in the cosmos. This volume offers a framework in which to present a rich panorama; a variety of perspectives illustrating how the perception of the interplay between human beings and the celestial realm advances in common experience and worldviews. This attempt to uncover our cosmic position is a great and worthwhile intellectual challenge. Philosophy as well as literature and the arts are nourished by this human quest for knowledge and understanding.
Download or read book Me You and The God written by Mohan Lal Sharma and published by Bigfoot Publications. This book was released on with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bharat Sanatan Dharam Mandir Trust Registered No. 2546 Vill. & PO Mehchana was established to keep the evidence of the author on the survey report of Govt of Haryana and Govt of India Ministry of Culture Archaeological department on the basis of Petition No. PRSEC/E/2019/15352 and PRESEC/E/2019/15639 duly registered in the secretariate of the President of India forwarded to Deptt. Of Justice Govt of India and to S.C.I. in Shri Ram Janam Bhoomi Teerath Kshetra Trust Ayodhya U.P. Case in S.C.I. Trust is working for the Peace in the world and in Bharat on the basis of Sanatan Dharam of Bharat, for peaceful life of human being on the earth.
Download or read book The End of Nature written by Bill McKibben and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement. More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
Download or read book Earth Sky Gods and Mortals written by Jay B. McDaniel and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative volume, Jay McDaniel creatively weaves various strands of contemporary theology into a vibrant pattern for an ecological spirituality. Influenced by process theology, the author synthesizes core insights of feminism, liberation theology, creation theology, and world religions. He focuses this varied knowledge around the central theme of an ecologically sound and nurturing faith. The work is strengthened by provocative study questions, an insightful appendix on the role of silence in ecological spirituality, and a comprehensive, annotated bibliography.
Download or read book The New World Order written by Vikram S. Bobbili and published by Partridge Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-01 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human history has produced hundreds of epic writers, poets, novelists, and historians to narrate what’s occurred in the past 5,000 years of human beings’ cultural history. There’s abundant information about social habits, religious beliefs, and political and economic institutions established and perfected by the human species through the ages, from the beginning days of human civilization to today. In The New World Order, author Vikram S. Bobbili analyzes this history, concluding that differences among human races are superficial, transitory in nature, and subject to continuous change. He asserts the oneness of human populations by examining the origin of the human species and his journey from the nuclear zone in Africa 1.5 million year ago; his ordeals though different ages (prehistoric, the ancient, the medieval, and the modern times); and his onward journey in the conquest of space. Bobbili also explores the challenges humans have faced in the past, the possible changes and problems he’s apt to address in the future, and the measures he must institute to ensure his continuous survival. The New World Order emphasizes the need to invent new faiths and adopt new policies to see a near homogeneity in political, economic, religious, and social institutions for achieving the ultimate goal—establishment of great human society.
Download or read book The Ordeal of the Longhouse written by Daniel K. Richter and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richter examines a wide range of primary documents to survey the responses of the peoples of the Iroquois League--the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras--to the challenges of the European colonialization of North America. He demonstrates that by the early eighteenth century a series of creative adaptations in politics and diplomacy allowed the peoples of the Longhouse to preserve their cultural autonomy in a land now dominated by foreign powers.
