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Author: Benjamin Kovitz, M.D. Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1615921982 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 167
Book Description
In this broad overview of humanity's predicament, psychiatrist Benjamin Kovitz illustrates the parallels between anxiety in the individual and discord in civilization as a whole. Kovitz emphasizes that civilization rests upon the precarious foundation of human nature, with its age-old tendencies toward self-deception, violence, and pursuit of power. He argues that resistance to facing our hidden motives is what lies at the core of political and religious strife as well as individual anxiety. At the heart of the book is an illuminating chapter on the meaning of anxiety, explaining with clarity and detail how the pathology arises, how it is expressed, and how it can be relieved. The complexities of the condition are portrayed in vivid clinical examples, often using the patients' own words. Kovitz takes issue with the current practice of relying solely on psychiatric medication without addressing the patient's understanding of what his or her symptoms mean. On the societal level, Kovitz shows how evasion of reality complicates our efforts at progress and peaceful coexistence, despite the advances of science and democracy, and how defensive behavior among nations can culminate in war. Turning to religion, Kovitz explores the psychological underpinnings of our need for religion and briefly summarizes the major world faiths with an eye to their underlying attitudes and assumptions. While pointing out the contradictions inherent in a literal approach to religious dogma, the author appreciates the need for faith that transcends logic. In a psychiatric evaluation of the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, Kovitz recognizes pathological anxiety yet respects the therapeutic value of her religious visions. Writing with eloquence while avoiding psychological jargon, Kovitz elucidates our human dilemmas with a clarity and depth that can help us move toward sanity in an unpredictable and troubled world.
Author: Benjamin Kovitz, M.D. Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1615921982 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 167
Book Description
In this broad overview of humanity's predicament, psychiatrist Benjamin Kovitz illustrates the parallels between anxiety in the individual and discord in civilization as a whole. Kovitz emphasizes that civilization rests upon the precarious foundation of human nature, with its age-old tendencies toward self-deception, violence, and pursuit of power. He argues that resistance to facing our hidden motives is what lies at the core of political and religious strife as well as individual anxiety. At the heart of the book is an illuminating chapter on the meaning of anxiety, explaining with clarity and detail how the pathology arises, how it is expressed, and how it can be relieved. The complexities of the condition are portrayed in vivid clinical examples, often using the patients' own words. Kovitz takes issue with the current practice of relying solely on psychiatric medication without addressing the patient's understanding of what his or her symptoms mean. On the societal level, Kovitz shows how evasion of reality complicates our efforts at progress and peaceful coexistence, despite the advances of science and democracy, and how defensive behavior among nations can culminate in war. Turning to religion, Kovitz explores the psychological underpinnings of our need for religion and briefly summarizes the major world faiths with an eye to their underlying attitudes and assumptions. While pointing out the contradictions inherent in a literal approach to religious dogma, the author appreciates the need for faith that transcends logic. In a psychiatric evaluation of the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, Kovitz recognizes pathological anxiety yet respects the therapeutic value of her religious visions. Writing with eloquence while avoiding psychological jargon, Kovitz elucidates our human dilemmas with a clarity and depth that can help us move toward sanity in an unpredictable and troubled world.
Author: Karl A. Menninger Publisher: READ BOOKS ISBN: 9781406732955 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 496
Book Description
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Author: Dan Wells Publisher: Balzer + Bray ISBN: 9780062071088 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Author Dan Wells is back with the sequel to the sci-fi blockbuster Partials, which Pittacus Lore called a "thrilling sci-fi adrenaline rush, with one of the most compelling and frightening visions of Earth's future I've seen yet." After discovering the cure for RM, Kira Walker sets off on a terrifying journey into the ruins of postapocalyptic America and the darkest desires of her heart in order to uncover the means—and a reason—for humanity's survival. Dan Wells extends his richly imagined, gritty world and introduces new memorable characters in this second installment in the Partials Sequence.
Author: Charles Eisenstein Publisher: North Atlantic Books ISBN: 1583946365 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 577
Book Description
The author of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self Our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse. Fortunately, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth pangs of an earth in crisis. Our journey of separation hasn't been a terrible mistake but an evolutionary process and an adventure in self-discovery. Even in our darkest hour, Eisenstein sees the possibility of a more beautiful world—not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control but by fundamentally reimagining ourselves and our systems. We must shift away from our Babelian efforts to build ever-higher towers to heaven and instead turn out attention to creating a new kind of civilization—one designed for beauty rather than height.
Author: Donald Harman Akenson Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP ISBN: 0773575677 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
"One of the central arguments presented in Some Family is that there are four basic genealogical forms. The supporting evidence runs from the Solomon Islands to classical China to ancient Ireland. Highly significant on its own, this evidence also provides the information needed to assess the Latter-day Saints' effort to provide a single narrative on how humanity keeps track of itself." --Résumé de l'éditeur.
Author: Bill McKibben Publisher: Henry Holt and Company ISBN: 1250178274 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history -- and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away. Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.
Author: Thomas Ligotti Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0525504915 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
In Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality. "There is a signature motif discernible in both works of philosophical pessimism and supernatural horror. It may be stated thus: Behind the scenes of life lurks something pernicious that makes a nightmare of our world." His fiction is known to be some of the most terrifying in the genre of supernatural horror, but Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction book may be even scarier. Drawing on philosophy, literature, neuroscience, and other fields of study, Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy. At once a guidebook to pessimistic thought and a relentless critique of humanity's employment of self-deception to cope with the pervasive suffering of their existence, The Conspiracy against the Human Race may just convince readers that there is more than a measure of truth in the despairing yet unexpectedly liberating negativity that is widely considered a hallmark of Ligotti's work.
Author: William Strauss Publisher: Crown ISBN: 0767900464 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.
Author: Meghan O'Gieblyn Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0525562710 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
Author: Benjamin Kovitz, M.D.
Author: Benjamin Kovitz, M.D.
Author: Karl A. Menninger
Author: Dan Wells
Author: Charles Eisenstein
Author: Donald Harman Akenson
Author: Alan Weisman
Author: Bill McKibben
Author: Thomas Ligotti
Author: William Strauss
Author: Meghan O'Gieblyn