Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Download or read book The Power of Now written by Eckhart Tolle and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2010-10-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating 25 Years as a New York Times Bestseller — Over 16 Million Copies Sold It’s no wonder that The Power of Now has sold over 16 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 30 foreign languages. Much more than simple principles and platitudes, the book takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light. In the first chapter, Tolle introduces readers to enlightenment and its natural enemy, the mind. He awakens readers to their role as a creator of pain and shows them how to have a pain-free identity by living fully in the present. The journey is thrilling, and along the way, the author shows how to connect to the indestructible essence of our Being, “the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.” Featuring a new preface by the author, this paperback shows that only after regaining awareness of Being, liberated from Mind and intensely in the Now, is there Enlightenment.
Download or read book The Better Angels of Our Nature written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.
Download or read book Summary Analysis of Enlightenment Now written by ZIP Reads and published by ZIP Reads. This book was released on with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you've been feeling like the world has been getting worse off, that violence is on the rise, or that humanity has already "peaked" then this book will challenge everything you've been feeling. Delve deep into the world of data where Pinker presents rock-solid arguments for the betterment of humanity as a whole. Steven Pinker wants to prove that we are living in a world that is better off than it has ever been, and it will only continue to get better. In Enlightenment Now, Pinker argues that the best tools we have come from the 18th century ideals of reason, science, progress and humanism, and we can leverage them in very 21st century ways by using data to tell the story of our modern world. What does this ZIP Reads Summary Include? A synopsis of the original bookAn overview of the core tenets of Enlightenment thinkingDetailed chapter-by-chapter breakdownsKey takeaways including major data points from Pinker's bookA in-depth editorial review of the merits and shortcomings of the original titleEditorial Review of the original bookShort bio of Steven PinkerAbout the Original Book: Enlightenment Now is Steven Pinker’s love letter to the Enlightenment. Knowledge, he argues, is our best tool against the traps set by atrophying political parties, salacious media, and theocratic social norms. With reason, science, and humanism—the foundational principles of the Enlightenment—and our modern ways of measuring progress by way of data, Pinker elegantly proves that the world is in a better place than it used to be, and things will only keep getting better so long as we stay committed to those principles that have served us and still do. DISCLAIMER: This book is intended as a companion to, not a replacement for, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. ZIP Reads is wholly responsible for this content and is not associated with the original author in any way.
Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Jason Gregory and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to uncovering the enlightenment already within us • Builds on Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist wisdom to express the timeless and ever-present nature of enlightenment • Reveals the negative impact of social and cultural conditioning on our psyche and how to counteract this through meditation and reframing our understanding of time • Shows how to uncover the original spontaneous awareness we were born with In this philosophical, psychological, and spiritual exploration of enlightenment, Jason Gregory addresses how to access the original spontaneous awareness we all came into this world with. He exposes the illusion that we must strive to reach enlightenment, uncovering how our yearning for future accomplishments, attachment to the past, and reliance on authority outside the self are social constructs that distract us from the reality of the now. The author explains how our original enlightened nature has been obscured by social, cultural, religious, and egotistical conditioning of the mind caught in time. Building on knowledge from spiritual traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, Gregory expresses the timeless and ever-present nature of enlightenment. He illustrates how rigid practices and initiations can become a form of spiritual postponement, continually putting off our enlightenment because we feel we are doing something good and noble. To chase enlightenment through spiritual practice is to assume it is a quality bound to time. The author helps us see that we are already what we are seeking--once we understand that existing in this world is itself a miracle beyond words, then the magic and beauty of our world will unfold. In the same way we remember someone’s name without thinking about it, we also remember that we are enlightened when we stop searching for the experience. Emerging from the Middle Way of the Buddha, Lao-tzu’s Way of the Tao, Yoga, the Great Work of Gnosticism, the Hermetic Art of Alchemy, and quantum physics, Gregory presents a way to the state of consciousness--enlightenment, nirvana, or samadhi--in which eternity and time are one. He shows us how to counteract the negative impact of social and cultural conditioning on our psyche through meditation and reframing our understanding of time. The author explains how meditation in its truest form takes our awareness of nowness from theory to practice. Guiding us away from a time-bound understanding of enlightenment, Gregory shows us how to find ourselves in the stillness of now where the peace you are is the peace you give to the world.
Download or read book The Seduction of Unreason written by Richard Wolin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the shocking revelations of the fascist ties of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past. In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism’s infatuation with fascism has been extensive and widespread. He questions postmodernism’s claim to have inherited the mantle of the Left, suggesting instead that it has long been enamored with the opposite end of the political spectrum. Wolin reveals how, during in the 1930s, C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot were seduced by fascism's promise of political regeneration and how this misapprehension affected the intellectual core of their work. The result is a compelling and unsettling reinterpretation of the history of modern thought. In a new preface, Wolin revisits this illiberal intellectual lineage in light of the contemporary resurgence of political authoritarianism.
Download or read book How the Mind Works written by Steven Pinker and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life.
Download or read book The Sense of Style written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Charming and erudite," from the author of Rationality and Enlightenment Now, "The wit and insight and clarity he brings . . . is what makes this book such a gem.” —Time.com Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing—and why should we care? From the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now. In this entertaining and eminently practical book, the cognitive scientist, dictionary consultant, and New York Times–bestselling author Steven Pinker rethinks the usage guide for the twenty-first century. Using examples of great and gruesome modern prose while avoiding the scolding tone and Spartan tastes of the classic manuals, he shows how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right. The Sense of Style is for writers of all kinds, and for readers who are interested in letters and literature and are curious about the ways in which the sciences of mind can illuminate how language works at its best.
Download or read book Factfulness written by Hans Rosling and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
Download or read book The Divide Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets written by Jason Hickel and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global inequality doesn’t just exist; it has been created. More than four billion people—some 60 percent of humanity—live in debilitating poverty, on less than $5 per day. The standard narrative tells us this crisis is a natural phenomenon, having to do with things like climate and geography and culture. It tells us that all we have to do is give a bit of aid here and there to help poor countries up the development ladder. It insists that if poor countries would only adopt the right institutions and economic policies, they could overcome their disadvantages and join the ranks of the rich world. Anthropologist Jason Hickel argues that this story ignores the broader political forces at play. Global poverty—and the growing inequality between the rich countries of Europe and North America and the poor ones of Africa, Asia, and South America—has come about because the global economy has been designed over the course of five hundred years of conquest, colonialism, regime change, and globalization to favor the interests of the richest and most powerful nations. Global inequality is not natural or inevitable, and it is certainly not accidental. To close the divide, Hickel proposes dramatic action rooted in real justice: abolishing debt burdens in the global South, democratizing the institutions of global governance, and rolling out an international minimum wage, among many other vital steps. Only then will we have a chance at a world where all begin on more equal footing.
Download or read book American Enlightenments written by Caroline Winterer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative reassessment of the concept of an American golden age of European-born reason and intellectual curiosity in the years following the Revolutionary War The accepted myth of the “American Enlightenment” suggests that the rejection of monarchy and establishment of a new republic in the United States in the eighteenth century was the realization of utopian philosophies born in the intellectual salons of Europe and radiating outward to the New World. In this revelatory work, Stanford historian Caroline Winterer argues that a national mythology of a unitary, patriotic era of enlightenment in America was created during the Cold War to act as a shield against the threat of totalitarianism, and that Americans followed many paths toward political, religious, scientific, and artistic enlightenment in the 1700s that were influenced by European models in more complex ways than commonly thought. Winterer’s book strips away our modern inventions of the American national past, exploring which of our ideas and ideals are truly rooted in the eighteenth century and which are inventions and mystifications of more recent times.
Download or read book The Righteous Mind written by Jonathan Haidt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.
Download or read book The Blank Slate written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-08-26 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.
Download or read book Rationality written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'Punchy, funny and invigorating ... Pinker is the high priest of rationalism' Sunday Times 'If you've ever considered taking drugs to make yourself smarter, read Rationality instead. It's cheaper, more entertaining, and more effective' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower. 'A terrific book, much-needed for our time' Peter Singer
Download or read book Words and Rules written by Steven Pinker and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you are not already a Steven Pinker addict, this book will make you one." -- Jared Diamond In Words and Rules, Steven Pinker explores profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple phenomenon -- regular and irregular verbs -- and examining it from every angle. With humor and verve, he covers an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities, from the history of languages to how to simulate languages on computers to major ideas in the history of Western philosophy. Through it all, Pinker presents a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules. The idea extends beyond language and offers insight into the very nature of the human mind. This is a sparkling, eye-opening, and utterly original book by one of the world's leading cognitive scientists.
Download or read book This Is Enlightenment written by Clifford Siskin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Imanual Kant himself addressed the question, “What is Enlightenment?” The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here—not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between. With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume establishes mediation as the condition of possibility for enlightenment. In so doing, it not only answers Kant’s query; it also poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch? This Is Enlightenment is a landmark volumewith the polemical force and archival depth to start a conversation that extends across the disciplines that the Enlightenment itself first configured.
Download or read book Lunchtime Enlightenment written by Pragito Dove and published by Penguin (Non-Classics). This book was released on 2002 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title attempts demystify the practice of meditation, presenting what it is hoped is an enjoyable and complicated way to enjoy the benefits of meditation into our busy, overstressed daily lives.
