Terror management theory, as Atlantic writer Olga Khazan explains in this video, posits that whenever you remind someone of dying, they try to manage their fear by regaining a sense of control. What would the benefits be to living forever, and consequently, not fearing death? Would it make us happier, or more generous? In Silicon Valley, some of the country’s wealthiest and brightest minds are pooling their resources behind technologies that promise to extend life. “Our purpose now, in the 21st century, is to become god-like and overcome death,” says Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist and former presidential candidate. This episode of “That Feeling When” explores the growing number of people who have already begun preparing for a life without death.
20 February 2017
The Atlantic: Why right-wing populist parties have failed to flourish in Spain
The huge demonstration is a striking reminder of what Carmen González-Enríquez, a senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, has dubbed “the Spanish exception”(pdf). Following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) last year, there’s been growing anxiety that right-wing populism will gain more ground in Europe. But this populist wave has yet to make much of a splash in Spain, where right-wing populist parties have failed to obtain more than 1% of the vote in national elections in recent years. The working paper is one part of a major new research project led by British think tank Demos on feelings about current policy and politics across six EU member states.
The paper restricts the definition of right-wing populism to a party or a movement that is xenophobic, anti-European, and anti-globalization. González-Enríquez notes that Spain has the conditions that so many right-wing populist parties have successfully exploited across Europe: a massive influx of migrants, economic crisis, and growing dissatisfaction with political elites. In 1998, immigrants accounted for 3% of the population, but this figure jumped to 14% by 2012, the paper notes. The increase in immigrants coincided with a boom in the Spanish economy between 1996 and 2007, which was largely based on a construction bubble. [...]
Using public data (including statistics and opinion polls), interviews with experts and original polling, González-Enríquez gives three-explanations for the absence of an enduring right-wing populist response to the crisis. First, a lack of strong leadership by the far right, then the Spanish electoral system, which tends to favor big parties that have an established presence in electoral districts of differing sizes. Lastly, González-Enríquez cites the dark legacy of Francisco Franco’s 1939 to 1975 dictatorship, which weakened national identity and introduced a strong sense of cynicism in the authoritarian right.
The Conversation: China says it has stopped harvesting organs, but evidence belies its claim
In 2005, China publicly stated what many already believed: that its transplant system was built on harvesting organs from criminals sentenced to death (“executed prisoners”). According to declarations by officials, this practice has been banned since January 2015, with organs now sourced from volunteer citizen donors. [...]
Several articles have drawn attention to the double meaning of the term “executed prisoner”. And independent investigators have identified that they include prisoners of conscience, who are executed for their organs without due process, as well as death-sentence prisoners whose organs are harvested after judicial execution. [...]
Zheng has also written a paper about performing 46 emergency liver transplants, between January 2000 and December 2004. Rather than spending time on a waiting list, these patients received their new livers within one to three days of arriving at the hospital. That again suggests a plentiful supply of organs at short notice.
Motherboard: This Neuroscientist Wants to Know Why People Who See UFOs Feel So Good
In other words, ufologists will always be the first ones to let you know that they don't believe in UFOs, they know they are real. But the gap between belief and knowledge is a large one, a chasm that separates the scientific and the pseudoscientific. Since ufology became something of an organized field of study, albeit a fringe one, in the 1950s, the overwhelming majority of the scientific community hasn't hesitated to label the field as pseudoscientific, much to the ire of ufologists. [...]
Ufologists have always thought that this phenomenon was a negative or hostile experience, but we're finding just the opposite. What we've found is that about 85 percent of the people who are experiencing this phenomenon are being transformed in a very positive behavioral or psychospiritual way. Generally, people become more humane, experience a oneness with the world. They become less interested in organized religion, they become more spiritual, they have less interest in monetary values, and become more sensitive to the ecological welfare of our planet, among many other psychospiritual outcomes. It is a real and powerful outcome that is generally ignored by the UFO community. [...]
The obvious question is whether these individuals might be having an illusion or a fantasy proneness, some aberrant psychological pathology that might give rise to their contentions that they're behaviorally transformed. That's discounted to a large extent because if they were in fact having some type of psychological aberration to begin with, it would be very unlikely that they'd report such positive behavioral outcomes as a result of their interaction with this phenomenon. The fact that so many, about 85 percent, say the same thing, also diminishes the possibility that there is an underlying psychological aberration associated with it. Unfortunately we didn't have the time and money to screen all individuals for some psychological problem. Future research should look at that component of the individual who is reporting this kind of experience.
America Magazine: Finding a way forward for wounded and hurting Catholics
Sadly in so many ways, Catholics are very reluctant to face the devastation that this crisis has unleashed in the church. People want to keep it at arm’s length and believe that the crisis has passed. For many victims, the crisis is still very much alive. In the course of writing the book, I traveled to speak with and interview two survivors of clergy sexual abuse who were willing to share their stories with me. In turn, I’ve included their stories in the book. Telling their stories is of paramount importance for their healing, and—as I argue in the book—listening to their stories is of paramount importance to heal the church as a whole from this great tragedy. [...]
Francis has proven to be an enormously enigmatic figure for many of us—even for those of us who have lived in Latino culture and ministered there. Austen Ivereigh’s The Great Reformer has been a great help in understanding Francis. The pope has been nothing less than prophetic on the message of mercy, and in attempting to shepherd the church into what he calls a “revolution of tenderness”—a theme I build on in my final chapter. I think we’ve gotten that message heard loud and clear, and it will be at the heart of his legacy. But if I could say one thing to him now, I would say, “Your Holiness, now we need to hear you talk more about truth—the truth of the human person, about moral truth and how truth and mercy are not at odds with each other.” That’s something he has, in fact, affirmed, but it seems to get lost in the media accounts of what he says. At any rate, I’d like to hear him develop that line of thinking more.
Bloomberg: Italy's Renzi Quits as Party Leader, Triggers Re-Election Fight
With critics from leftist factions threatening to abandon the Democratic Party, Renzi, 42, told the national assembly of the party in a Rome hotel on Sunday that he had handed in his resignation, acknowledging he was set back by defeat in the Dec. 4 constitutional referendum. [...]
Renzi, who is expected to stand for re-election at a congress in April or May, denounced “blackmail by a minority” and infighting that he called “a gift” to the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. [...]
Renzi has faced challenges to his reformist strategy and leadership especially since losing the referendum, which prompted him to resign as premier and sponsor current Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, a Renzi loyalist and fellow PD member, as his successor.
Renzi, who has pushed for early national elections in June or September, made no such appeal on Sunday and instead urged his audience to support Gentiloni and his government. [...]
The survey credited Five Star with 30.9 percent of the vote, against 30.1 percent for the PD, 13 percent for Forza Italia of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi and 12.8 percent for the anti-immigrant Northern League.
Al Jazeera: Attack on shrines in Pakistan since 2005
Armed groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and others have often targeted shrines for not conforming to their strict, literalistic interpretation of Islam.
On February 16, 2017, at least 88 people were killed when a suicide attacker targeted a famous Sufi shrine in Sehwan.
That attack at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) also injured at least 250 people.
The Economist: Young people and free speech
Overall, the poll conducted by Populus, a research firm, on behalf of the Varkey Foundation, an educational charity, shows that among young people there is broad support for expanding rights to historically marginalised minority groups. In all of the 18 countries surveyed, a majority of 18- to 21-year-olds agreed that there should be equality between the sexes and rights for transgender people. In the United States, three-quarters of respondents are in favour of transgender rights. The young are similarly supportive in India, which introduced a law recognising rights for a “third gender” in 2014.
Even when equal treatment is not enshrined in law, young people tend to support it. More than half of youngsters in 15 countries want safe and legal abortion—even in places where the procedure is currently illegal, such as South Korea. Similarly, respondents in most countries are in favour of same-sex marriage. This pattern includes India, where homosexuality is a crime.
However, there is one right that young people are less keen on extending to others: the right to say what you want. Overall, fewer than half of those polled agreed that people should be allowed to express non-violent opinions even if they offend minorities. In Britain and Germany, for instance, only 46% and 48% did.
The Guardian: Agnieszka Holland: Pokot reflects divided nature of Polish society
The 68-year-old, whose first international hit was in 1990 with Europa, Europa, which concerned a young Polish Jew who disguises himself as a member of the Hitler Youth to survive, said: “There’s a cultural counter-revolution going on, which we see with Jarosław Kaczyński [the de facto leader of Poland], as well as in Russia and the US, which is represented by men who have a populist authoritarian agenda that places women’s rights and nature preservation in the front line of attack,” she said in an interview with the Guardian at the Berlin film festival, where her film had its world premiere this week.
Women’s rights and ecology have been two areas under attack since the rightwing Law and Justice party took power in 2016. Among many controversial moves, the government has sought to introduce an all-out abortion ban, as well as relaxing laws that protect swaths of Europe’s last remaining primeval forests. [...]
Holland said the protagonist embodied many disillusioned women of her generation “who are very rational, working as engineers or scientists, who reject the official religion that became very politically corrupt and has little to do with Jesus Christ. But at some point they start to have the need to connect to something like astrology, yoga or zen. It’s the above-55 generation who believed in progress and in the freedom that came with the collapse of communism, and the fact they could take things into their own hands, but who have now lost this hope.”
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