If there is anything I learned this quarter about contemplative exercises, it is that mindfulness is a state of mind itself and once you think about it, you break the concentration. I determined that being led in a practice in a group setting brought me more individual focus, rather than hearing a practice online on my own. For me, mindfulness… Read more »
Humans are unique in our ability to analyze our own position in the world. This special power comes with its limits, like our denial of our own demise. However, through exercising our own awareness and sense of agency, I believe it is possible to overcome this psychological limitation. Throughout history, art has been a key method for grappling with big-ticket… Read more »
SimoneComments Off on The Concept of ‘Freedom’ and Climate Refugees
Throughout this quarter, my peers and I were invited to complete an action project. This project has three key goals: to create and implement a response to the course material, create an offering to the larger community, and to integrate a reflective component in both inception and implementation. My group’s final product after extensive deliberation is a website about climate… Read more »
SimoneComments Off on Why Gandhi Neurons Mean Hope for the Anthropocene
The constant across all cultures is the factor of the human brain—a three-pound, equally introspective and innovative organ that has the capacity to interrogate its own existence. However, the rate of development across the world has been highly dependent on the geographic limitations of the region each society settles in—at it’s most basic, the growth of the polis is a… Read more »
There is no question in my mind that our political system is fragmented, distorted, and dysfunctional in more ways that can ever be understood from the outside looking in. However, as Senator Jeff Flake put it, “this spell will eventually break.” I commend Senator Flake for the optimism he so wholeheartedly and level-headedly iterated in his speech on the senate… Read more »
The anthropocene is a complex, tentative notion in my mind that is steadily gaining traction. From my first introductions to philosophy to dummy, I bought right into relativity and jumped right off of the nonlinearity train. And so now, the move to systems theory does not seem so far off. A particular point of fascination for me is the aspect… Read more »
