The Atlantic: There's More to Life Than Being Happy (JAN 9, 2013)

In 1991, the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club listed Man's Search for Meaning as one of the 10 most influential books in the United States. It has sold millions of copies worldwide. Now, over twenty years later, the book's ethos -- its emphasis on meaning, the value of suffering, and responsibility to something greater than the self -- seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning. "To the European," Frankl wrote, "it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'" [...]

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of the study and author, with John Tierney, of the recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Baumeister, a social psychologists at Florida State University, was named an ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003. [...]

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

read the article 

Alternet: Challenging the High-Priced Funeral Industry, More Americans Are Choosing Home Funerals and Death Midwives

The modern Americanized handling of the end of life—plastic body bags minutes after the last breath, injection with chemical preservatives (a.k.a., embalming), impenetrable metallic coffins, expensive burials arranged by strangers on acres of groomed lawn, and funerals that cost between $5,000 and $40,000—is a relatively new thing. Few people realize it’s not the only option.

There is a small but growing movement across the country to re-educate people about alternatives to the big, expensive funeral industry: home funerals and death midwifery. Death midwives almost all of them women, are spearheading the movement. Not unlike the way a birthing midwife works with a pregnant woman, a death midwife (sometimes called an end of life guide, or death doula) supports a person through the process of dying, helping them prepare mentally, emotionally and logistically for the upcoming event. They counsel the dying through their fears, concerns and questions, and help plan the ceremony for after their death. [...]

Death midwives like Ward often offer home funerals as part of their services, meaning instead of turning a loved one over to strangers, families have the option to keep the body at home for one to three days, and host the funeral ceremony on their own terms from home. The home funeral coordinator (often, but not always, the death midwife herself) talks the family through the process, from washing and dressing the body, to laying out dry ice to preserve the body in a designated space if it's staying for more than a day, to carrying out the loved one's burial wishes.

read the article 

Alternet: Trump's Worldview Mirrors the Most Archaic and Apocalyptic of Christian Beliefs

When Donald Trump voices his attitudes, many people are horrified. How can so many Christians find his positions appealing? Rather than simply arguing back or dismissing Trump followers as racist and ignorant or unchristian, it might help to understand Trump and his appeal more deeply on a religious level.

Trump actually represents the worst of what might be called “deep Christianity.” This is the set of deep-seated assumptions in orthodox Christianity, whether explicit or implicit, conscious or unconscious, that are held most clearly by fundamentalist believers but are also embedded in Christianity of all stripes. Importantly, they affect many in the American population who are not church-goers but simply live in our Christianity-infused culture. These assumptions are ancient, but they have modern applications. Over all, they are a threat to a present-day democracy. [...]

These aspects of deep Christianity are decidedly dangerous to a modern democracy. The world is complex, not simply bad and dangerous. A leader needs to appreciate this and avoid simplistic analysis. In a democracy, individuals must think for themselves, not defer to authoritarianism. They need to participate freely and with responsibility rather than expecting to be saved from life’s problems. A democracy needs to include everyone; prejudice, hate and violence have no place. Strength of leadership must be tempered with justice and fairness. Finally, a democratic nation must appreciate its context on Earth. It must strive to treat neighbors with respect and honor the critical needs of the planet’s environment and wildlife.

read the article 

The Conversation: China’s marriage rate is plummeting – and it’s because of gender inequality

After a whole decade of increases in the national marriage rate, China witnessed its second year of decline in the number of newly registered unions in 2015, with a 6.3% drop from 2014 and 9.1% from 2013. This was accompanied by a rise in the age of marriage, which has increased by about a year and a half in the first ten years of this century. [...]

While the traditional practice of arranged marriage has been illegal in China since the 1950s, parents remain heavily involved in their children’s marital decisions. Many Chinese parents relentlessly try to persuade their children to enter wedlock through much-dreaded interrogations during festive family gatherings. [...]

The Chinese government hasn’t sat idly by either. In 2007, the Ministry of Education publicly shamed women who were 27 years or older as “leftover women”, urging them to lower “unrealistic” standards during their search for a partner. While still alive and well in the public discourse to refer to both genders, the term “leftover” has been criticised by scholars and resisted by young women.

read the article 

Political Critique: Visegrád: Turning the Back to the East

Initially, the three member states cooperated rather efficiently in the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Cooperation regarding the economic relations with each other and regarding negotiations with the EU developed to a much lesser extent. Indeed, the relationship with the EU was characterised by competition rather than cooperation. Besides the desire of the Czech and Slovak political leaderships to control the privatisation process in their respective territories, the Czech aspiration to move more rapidly towards the West without the poorer Slovak areas was one of the factors behind the splitting up of Czechoslovakia. The Czech governments led by the national-liberal Občanská demokratická strana (ODS) saw the country as the most advanced in the region and made it abundantly clear that the Czech Republic would negotiate its relationship with the EU structures on its own and without liaising with the neighbors. [...]

In positioning themselves towards the unfolding crisis of the EU integration model and the recomposing of the European power relations, the Visegrád states have shown significant differences. Slovakia with its particularly close links to the German export production sector is the only Visegrád country that joined the euro zone. The (left-)nationalist Smer government took a particularly hard line in the euro zone negotiations with Greece. By showing unflappable loyalty with the German position, it demonstrated its desire to remain within this institutional core of the EU. In the issue of the refugees, the Slovak government, however, took an extremely restrictive stance and offensively combatted any mechanism that would redistribute refugees among EU states. Thus, it challenged both the German position as the then majority inside the EU. [...]

Their joint extremely restrictive position on refugees is rather an exception. And it is informed by the desire to keep off a group of migrants that are forced out of their countries by war which might compete with their “own” labour migrants in the core economies.

read the article 

Quartz: Would you ditch your therapist for a “philosophical counselor”?

Instead of going to traditional psychotherapists for advice and support, growing numbers of people are turning to philosophical counselors for particularly wise guidance. These counselors work much like traditional psychotherapists. But instead of offering solutions based solely on their understanding of mental health or psychology, philosophical counselors offer solutions and guidance drawn from the writings of great thinkers. [...]

Nobis says he became a philosophical counselor after attending therapy himself and noticing the correlations with philosophy. He uses philosophical logic to help his clients reason clearly, which he says is fairly similar to cognitive behavioral therapy. “It’s the techniques often [applied] in ethics classes to moral problems, but you’re applying them to personal problems or relational problems,” he says. [...]

In recent years, both groups report growing interest from young philosophers who want to put their academic knowledge to practical use as counselors. And the demand for philosophically minded therapy matches the rising supply. “There’s more awareness among people that there’s a reason to think philosophically about problems, ethical problems especially,” Cohen says.

read the article 

The Guardian: Aleppo, Ukraine, cyber attacks, Baltic threats: what should we do about Putin?

Just in case Washington had not understood how serious Russia was, officials also declared Putin was considering reopening military bases in Cuba and Vietnam. It is hard to think of a more defiant, taunting message to the Obama administration than conjuring the spectre of a new Cuban missile crisis.

Demonstrating that Moscow has other strategic partnerships that could be turned against Washington, Russian ships joined military exercises with China around the disputed South China Sea islands. It is also busily building up alliances with emerging powers such as South Africa and India, notably at this weekend’s Brics summit in Goa, while courting traditional American allies such as Turkey and the Philippines. [...]

This latter statement was chilling. Putin was plainly saying that Russia, no longer the post-Communist economic and military basket-case it briefly became under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, does not need or seek American approval or agreement to take action in its own interests in Syria or anywhere else. If Barack Obama or his successor want to do business in future, then Russia must be treated as a global equal, not as an irritant or a spoiler or mere regional actor.

Such assertions flatly contradict Washington’s preferred narrative, namely that the west “won” the cold war and Russia is no longer a great power. Hence, perhaps, American slowness to come to terms with a changed situation. But the grave implications of unravelling US-Russia relations are slowly sinking in across Europe, as always the nervous pig stuck in the middle. The German magazine Spiegel recently suggested that Syria was the most prominent battlefront in a new global war, more perilous even than the Cold War because the old power structures and rules are no longer in place. [...]

The challenge presented by Russia is one of the biggest facing the next US president. Some analysts say Putin is taking advantage of Obama’s lame duck status to create “facts on the ground” in Syria. The Russian president is said to anticipate a further deterioration in bilateral relations if Hillary Clinton wins. The two have a history of personal dislike, dating back to Clinton’s time as secretary of state. “She says she sees in him a cold-blooded, self-enriching KGB agent and a bully; he remembers how she appeared to encourage street protests against him in 2011,” said analyst Leonid Bershidsky. Speaking in August, Clinton described Putin as “the grand godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism” – lumping him with Trump, German anti-immigrant xenophobes and hard-right populists such as France’s Marine Le Pen.

read the article 

The RSA: David Graeber on the Value of Work

David Graeber on the Value of Work. Does the world really need neuroadvertisers, PR researchers and branding consultants? Renowned academic and coiner of the ‘we are the 99%’ slogan, David Graeber is a passionate advocate for meaningful work. After famously condemning the 21st century phenomenon of ‘bullsh*t jobs’, in this short animation he investigates the philosophical underpinnings of employment, and calls for a reformulation of what work should be.

The Economist: Will the Nobel prize bring peace to Colombia?

By entering talks the FARC implicitly recognised that they could no longer win the war. But they view themselves as an undefeated army motivated by communist ideology, rather than as the drug-trafficking terrorists other Colombians perceived them to be. They were determined not to be the first guerrilla leaders to disarm in order to serve long prison sentences. And they wanted things they could claim as political conquests, such as a government commitment to land reform. But the FARC’s arrogant insistence on presenting the talks as being between two equally legitimate sides was a political mistake that made the agreement look more generous to them than it actually was—and made winning the plebiscite harder. [...]

Salvaging Colombia’s peace will not be easy. The No campaign and the FARC will have to find common ground. Mr Uribe has adopted a conciliatory tone since the vote, even meeting Mr Santos for the first time in six years. On October 9th he set out the changes he wants to the peace agreement. Some echo what is already the government’s position—that the pace of rural development and land reform will take into account fiscal constraints, for example. Others are points on which, in light of the plebiscite, the government should press the FARC: Mr Uribe wants the “effective restrictions on liberty” that would apply to those who confess to war crimes to involve confinement, though not prison, and for these to be incompatible with a seat in congress. Harder to accommodate is Mr Uribe’s insistence that FARC leaders should be tried by Colombia’s supreme court, rather than by the special tribunal, the centrepiece of the agreement’s chapter on justice. [...]

Whether or not the government holds another plebiscite on a revised agreement, it is clear that peace requires a broader political accord. That is where the Nobel prize might just help. It is encouraging that 400 business leaders this week called for a “swift search for a definitive, inclusive and sustainable peace”. The world is watching Colombia, and thus Mr Uribe’s and the FARC’s next moves. But its attention span is short.

read the article