Download or read book Bodies written by Barry Glassner and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Tyranny of Perfection written by Michael Demkovich and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trust is vital in so many dimension of our private and public life. But why? Well, it is first and foremost about believing. It is a primary attitude one person shows toward another. Before we even learn to understand, our first condition is that of vulnerability which demands trust. Every helpless infant must trust in the good of humanity. Trust, we learn, can be given to persons and things, to an individual or a community, to an ideal, or to an object. It indicates a sense of reliability that both fashions and upholds the relationship. It also names the truth of the relationship, a genuine honesty of things. It can also speak to us of the abilities of another person or of things as trustworthy. That is the question this first in a trilogy on trust explores. It raises for us the question of a kind of default suspicion in society, a trend to assume the negative. Each work in the trilogy will explore the sources of suspicion, the deep seated absolute distrust of all pleasure, wealth, and power regardless of virtuous or noble purpose. The philosophical genesis of this suspicion can be found in the thought of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Together they have been called the "Masters of Suspicion" by Paul Ricoeur for their negative presuppositions in all interpretation. And yet, trust is perhaps as critical to our environment as are clean air and clean water. A climate of trust is vital to human flourishing and skepticism is like a poison that destroys a community's ability to risk and to be vulnerable. We have seen a steady decline in the levels of trust. The Pew Research Center has been studying the question of trust in society for decades. Alarmingly, 71% of adults believe Americans are less confident in each other than they were 20 years ago. "About three-in-four Americans (79%) think their fellow citizens have too little confidence in each other. Relatedly, a fifth of adults (21%) think personal confidence in the country has worsened for little good reason" (29). The question of distrust is alarming and we need to examine its harm and what will heal it. In this work, The Tyranny of Perfection, we see how suspicion has robbed us of the simple delight of being. This Freudian fracturing and critical analysis of the person into id, ego, superego has left us unable to trust pleasure itself. This self-alienation denies that necessary wholeness of life. It compartmentalizes life and how we think about life. Freud is just one player in Modernity's abuse of science, casting it as superior to all other disciplines. Fragmentation and specialization have alienated the disciplines of science, art, and religion. Rather than the three together providing the integration of life and living, science, art, and religion have wrongly been cast as opposed to each other. The tyranny is this undermining of the greatest pleasure, our ability to love life with all its fragile qualities. Wealth and power, we will see, also attack our sense of trust, but for now, we will look at the tragic loss of trust in pleasure. The other two works in this trilogy, The Want of Wealth and The Bondage of Power, examine the seeds of suspicion that have led us to mistrust both economics and politics, both wealth and power. It is this widespread mistrust that has brought us to tragic levels of alienation and isolation, not pleasure, wealth, and power per se. These can be abused as tools of alienation, division and suspicion. As we will see in this trilogy, we must learn to love, to believe, and to hope again as our social corrective. If these three books help to initiate greater interest in our learning to trust once more, then they will have served a good and noble purpose
Download or read book There s a Hole in My Sidewalk written by Portia Nelson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed to inspire self-discovery, "There's a Hole in My Sidewalk" contains more than 100 touching poems that gently guide readers to a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Download or read book The Tyranny of the Ideal written by Gerald Gaus and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Merit written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.
Download or read book Wonder Women written by Debora L. Spar and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years after the Equal Pay Act, why are women still living in a man's world? Debora L. Spar never thought of herself as a feminist. Raised after the tumult of the 1960s, she presumed the gender war was over. As one of the youngest female professors to be tenured at Harvard Business School and a mother of three, she swore to young women that they could have it all. "We thought we could just glide into the new era of equality, with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow," she writes. "We were wrong." Now she is the president of Barnard College, arguably the most important all-women's college in the United States. And in Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection—a fresh, wise, original book— she asks why, a half century after the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, do women still feel stuck. In this groundbreaking and compulsively readable book, Spar explores how American women's lives have—and have not—changed over the past fifty years. Armed with reams of new research, she details how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection. The challenges confronting women are more complex than ever, and they are challenges that come inherently and inevitably from being female. Spar is acutely aware that it's time to change course. Both deeply personal and statistically rich, Wonder Women is Spar's story and the story of our culture. It is cultural history at its best, and a road map for the future.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Experts written by William Easterly and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this "bracingly iconoclastic” book (New York Times Book Review), a renowned economics scholar breaks down the fight to end global poverty and the rights that poor individuals have had taken away for generations. In The Tyranny of Experts, renowned economist William Easterly examines our failing efforts to fight global poverty, and argues that the "expert approved" top-down approach to development has not only made little lasting progress, but has proven a convenient rationale for decades of human rights violations perpetrated by colonialists, postcolonial dictators, and US and UK foreign policymakers seeking autocratic allies. Demonstrating how our traditional antipoverty tactics have both trampled the freedom of the world's poor and suppressed a vital debate about alternative approaches to solving poverty, Easterly presents a devastating critique of the blighted record of authoritarian development. In this masterful work, Easterly reveals the fundamental errors inherent in our traditional approach and offers new principles for Western agencies and developing countries alike: principles that, because they are predicated on respect for the rights of poor people, have the power to end global poverty once and for all.
Download or read book The Anxious Perfectionist written by Clarissa W. Ong and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is your perfectionism causing you anxiety, stress, and worry? If you identify as a perfectionist, you may not see your perfectionism as a problem. But striving for unrealistic standards, basing your self-worth on meeting those standards, and engaging in persistent self-criticism will ultimately lead to anxiety, stress, worry, burnout, and unhappiness. So, how can you distinguish between “helpful” and “hurtful” perfectionism and stop holding yourself and others to unrealistically high standards? Written by two clinical psychologists, The Anxious Perfectionist shines a much-needed light on the hidden costs of “being the best,” and offers essential skills based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you cope with the anxiety that is driven by your perfectionism. You’ll learn how your “need to be perfect” can actually hinder your productivity, and keep you from reaching your goals. You’ll also learn skills to help you gain distance from negative self-talk and criticism, let go of unhelpful and self-limiting labels such as “success” or “failure,” and give yourself and others permission to make mistakes while still honoring your high aspirations. If you’re struggling with feelings of anxiety and stress, and suspect your perfectionism may be to blame, this guide will show you how to stop getting in the way of your own success, and live a life guided by your deepest values.
Download or read book The Case against Perfection written by Michael J Sandel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature—to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature? The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America’s preeminent moral and political thinkers.
Download or read book Tyranny of the Urgent written by Charles E. Hummel and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now thoroughly revised and expanded, this classic booklet by Charles E. Hummel offers ideas and illustrations for effective time management. With over one million copies in print, this classic booklet from Charles E. Hummel has transformed the minds and hearts of generations of Christians. Its simplicity and depth is a foundational resource for all who have felt overwhelmed by the responsibilities of each day, week, month and year. Now thoroughly revised and expanded, Hummel's booklet offers ideas and illustrations for effective time management that will help even the busiest people find time for what's important.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Metrics written by Jerry Z. Muller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens business, medicine, education, government—and the quality of our lives Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself—and this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. In this brief, accessible, and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage metrics are causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But Muller also shows that, when used as a complement to judgment based on personal experience, metrics can be beneficial, and he includes an invaluable checklist of when and how to use them. The result is an essential corrective to a harmful trend that increasingly affects us all.
Download or read book What Doctors Feel written by Danielle Ofri, MD and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician” that explores the doctor-patient relationship, the flaws in our health care system, and how doctors’ emotions impact medical care (Boston Globe) While much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But understanding doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice can make all the difference on giving and getting the best medical care. Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Dr. Danielle Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. Ofri also reveals that doctors cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness.
Download or read book On Tyranny written by Timothy Snyder and published by Crown. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times) “Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha Gessen The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Socialism written by Yves Guyot and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Worriers written by Richard Paul and published by Field Books. This book was released on with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Let's face it, folks. The world is a wild, chaotic place. We're bombarded with news, bombarded with expectations, bombarded with the constant need to be "on" and "productive" and "perfect." It's enough to make even the most zen among us want to scream into a pillow and order a dozen donuts. But here's the thing: worry is a part of life. It's like that annoying roommate who always leaves the dishes in the sink. You can't get rid of it, but you can learn to deal with it. And honestly, sometimes that roommate is just trying to remind you that you're not alone. This book is a sort of guide, a map through the labyrinth of worry. We'll be exploring the bizarre landscapes of our anxieties, taking detours through the forest of "what-ifs" and scaling the treacherous mountain of "but what if I'm wrong?" Along the way, we'll discover a few hidden gems, like the power of humor, the beauty of imperfection, and the surprising solace of poetry (yes, poetry!). So, grab a comfy chair, a cup of calming tea (or a stiff drink, no judgment here), and join me on this journey. Because in the end, maybe, just maybe, we can learn to laugh in the face of our worries and embrace the messy, wonderful, anxiety-ridden journey that is life.
Download or read book The Psychology of Perfectionism written by Joachim Stoeber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This milestone text provides a comprehensive and state-of-the art overview of perfectionism theory, research, and treatment from the past 25 years, with contributions from the leading researchers in the field. The book examines new theories and perspectives including the social disconnection model of perfectionism and the 2 × 2 model of perfectionism. It also reviews empirical findings, with a special focus on stress, vulnerability, and resilience, and examines perfectionism in specific populations. Finally, it considers how perfectionism relates to physical health and psychophysiological processes and introduces new approaches to effective prevention and treatment. By increasing our understanding of perfectionism as a complex personality disposition and providing a framework for future explorations, this landmark publication aims to promote further research in this field. It will be invaluable reading for academics, students, and professionals in personality psychology, clinical and counseling psychology, applied psychology, and related disciplines.
Download or read book Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism written by Walter E. Williams and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this selected collection of his syndicated newspaper columns, Walter Williams offers his sometimes controversial views on education, health, the environment, government, law and society, race, and a range of other topics. Although many of these essays focus on the growth of government and our loss of liberty, many others demonstrate how the tools of freemarket economics can be used to improve our lives in ways ordinary people can understand.
