Book picks similar to
The Faces of Intellectual Disability: Philosophical Reflections by Licia Carlson
philosophy
non-fiction
disability
ethics-and-moral-philosophy
Metaphors We Live By
George Lakoff - 1980
Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by", metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.
The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord - 1967
From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth century. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.
Civilized to Death: What Was Lost on the Way to Modernity
Christopher Ryan - 2018
Kids typically no longer expect their lives to be better than their parents’ were. Dystopian scenarios loom ever larger in public consciousness as fisheries collapse, CO2 levels rise, and clouds of radioactive steam billow from “fail-safe” nuclear plants that failed. Despite the technological marvels of our age—or perhaps because of them—these are dark days.As comedian Louis C.K. put it, “Everything’s amazing, but nobody’s happy.”Even for the most fortunate among us, material abundance comes at a very high price. Facebook is a hollow replacement for face time. We produce more food than ever, but hunger and malnutrition are standard in most of the world while the rest of us stuff ourselves quite literally to death. Despair darkens ever more lives as rates of clinical depression and suicide continue their grim climb in the developed world. A third of all American children are obese or seriously overweight, and fifty four million of us are pre-diabetic. Pre-schoolers represent the fastest-growing market for anti-depressants, while the rate of increase of depression among children is over twenty percent, according to a recent Harvard study. Twenty four million American adults are thought to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—mostly attributable to the never-ending wars that have become part of modern life for the swelling underclass with few other employment opportunities.It’s common to wonder how an anthropologist from Mars would view our world or what sage advice an emissary from the future would bring back. But how would a time-traveler from our prehistoric past assess the lives we lead and the future prospects for the path we’re on? Such a visitor from 200 centuries ago would no doubt be impressed by much of what she found here. But once her amazement at iPhones, air travel, and liver transplants subsided, what would she make of our daily lives? Would she ultimately be more impressed by our advances or dismayed by what we’ve lost in our always accelerating rush toward the future?With faith in the future melting like an overheated glacier even as contentment with the present evaporates, it’s high time for a sober reassessment of the past. Ten thousand years since turning from the ancient path our ancestors trod forever, it’s time for a scientifically-informed, multidisciplinary look at the effects of this fateful divergence. It’s time to ask what may be the most subversive question of all: Are modern humans, even the most fortunate among us, living significantly better lives than our pre-civilized ancestors? Taken as a whole, is civilization a net gain for individual human beings?
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
Paul Bloom - 2010
The average American spends over four hours a day watching television. Abstract art can sell for millions of dollars. Young children enjoy playing with imaginary friends and can be comforted by security blankets. People slow their cars to look at gory accidents, and go to movies that make them cry. In this fascinating and witty account, Paul Bloom examines the science behind these curious desires, attractions, and tastes, covering everything from the animal instincts of sex and food to the uniquely human taste for art, music, and stories. Drawing on insights from child development, philosophy, neuroscience, and behavioral economics, How Pleasure Works shows how certain universal habits of the human mind explain what we like and why we like it.
To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
Evgeny Morozov - 2013
But how will these be affected once we delegate much of the responsibility for them to technology? The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything—from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity—by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifiying behavior. But when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical, and civic behavior, we may also change the very nature of that behavior itself. Technology, Evgeny Morozov proposes, can be a force for improvement—but only if we abandon the idea that it is necessarily revolutionary and instead genuinely interrogate what we are doing with it and what it is doing to us.From urging us to abandon monolithic ideas of “the Internet” to showing how to design more humane and democratic technological solutions, To Save Everything, Click Here is a dazzling tour of our technological future, and a searching investigation into the digital version of an enduring struggle: between man and his machines.
The Story of Us
Tim Urban - 2019
I’m Tim. I’m a single cell in society’s body. U.S. society, to be specific.So let me explain why we’re here.As a writer and a generally thinky person, I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about the society I live in, and societies in general. I’ve always imagined society as a kind of giant human—a living organism like each of us, only much bigger.When you’re a single cell in the body of a giant, it’s hard to understand what the giant’s doing, or why it is the way it is, because you can’t really zoom out and look at the whole thing all at once. But we do our best.The thing is, when I’ve recently tried to imagine what society might look like, I haven’t really been picturing this:Giant stick figure: "I am grown up."Based on what I see around me, in person and online, it seems like my society is actually more like this:Giant stick figure throwing a giant tantrum because their chocolate ice cream fell on the ground.Individual humans grow older as they age—but it kind of seems like the giant human I live in has been getting more childish each year that goes by.So I decided to write a blog post about this. But then something else happened.When I told people I was planning to write a post about society, and the way people are acting, and the way the media is acting, and the way the government is acting, and the way everyone else is acting, people kept saying the same thing to me.Don’t do it. Don’t touch it. Write about something else. Anything else. It’s just not worth it.They were right. With so many non-controversial topics to write about, why take on something so loaded and risk alienating a ton of readers? I listened to people’s warnings, and I thought about moving on to something else, but then I was like, “Wait what? I live inside a giant and the giant is having a six-year-old meltdown in the grocery store candy section and that’s a not-okay thing for me to talk about?”It hit me that what I really needed to write about was that—about why it’s perilous to write about society."
Teamwork: A Dog Training Manual for People with Disabilities
Stewart Nordensson - 2007
Explores canine behavior and behavior problems, including recognizing, preventing and correcting them.
Post-Truth
Lee McIntyre - 2018
Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for post-truth. McIntyre also argues provocatively that the right wing borrowed from postmodernism—specifically, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth—in its attacks on science and facts.McIntyre argues that we can fight post-truth, and that the first step in fighting post-truth is to understand it.
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Jerry Mander - 1977
Its problems are inherent in the technology itself and are so dangerous -- to personal health and sanity, to the environment, and to democratic processes -- that TV ought to be eliminated forever.Weaving personal experiences through meticulous research, the author ranges widely over aspects of television that have rarely been examined and never before joined together, allowing an entirely new, frightening image to emerge. The idea that all technologies are "neutral," benign instruments that can be used well or badly, is thrown open to profound doubt. Speaking of TV reform is, in the words of the author, "as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns."
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Susan Cain - 2012
They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society. In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content.
Attaining Your Desires
Geneviève Behrend - 2008
Attaining Your Desires is a simple guide to using the Law of Attraction in your everyday life. Chapters include How to Get What You Want, How to Overcome Adverse Condition, Strengthening Your Will, and making Your Subjective Mind Work for You. Long out of print, this landmark book is now once again available in its original, intended form. PS. For maximal benefit, this book should be read together with Dr Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich
The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World
Sophia Dembling - 2012
This clever and pithy book challenges introverts to take ownership of their personalities...with quiet strength. Sophia Dembling asserts that the introvert’s lifestyle is not “wrong” or lacking, as society or extroverts would have us believe. Through a combination of personal insights and psychology, The Introvert’s Way helps and encourages introverts to embrace their nature, to respect traits they may have been ashamed of and reframe them as assets. You’re not shy; rather, you appreciate the joys of quiet. You’re not antisocial; instead, you enjoy recharging through time alone. You’re not unfriendly, but you do find more meaning in one-on-one connections than large gatherings. By honoring what makes them unique, this astute and inspiring book challenges introverts to “own” their introversion, igniting a quiet revolution that will change how they see themselves and how they engage with the world.
In the Little World: A True Story of Dwarfs, Love, and Trouble
John H. Richardson - 2001
Kopits takes me into an examining room and leans against the stainless steel bench and asks me what I'm writing about this time. When I tell him what I saw in Australia, he immediately starts to nod. "This is a great subject," he says. Then he stops, as if caught by the subject himself.I wait.After a moment, he continues. "What you are looking into is the abyss. This takes you to the very heart of a human being, to the deepest aspect of the soul.He gives me one of his solemn looks. "Because the thing is, you have to confront yourself."(from In the Little World)
In 1997, almost by accident, John H. Richardson found himself sharing a hotel with more than a thousand dwarfs. Over the course of a single week, he witnessed love and anger, fear and bravery, arrogance and humility, even a bizarre romantic deception -- the entire spectrum of human emotion in one concentrated dose. But at the end of the week, he discovered that leaving the "Little World" wasn't as simple as checking out of a hotel. In fact, his journey would last a full two years.At a time when bigger often seems synonymous with better, and physical beauty serves as currency, the world of dwarfs usually passes beneath our notice. Now, in this groundbreaking work, awardwinning author John H. Richardson brings the Little World into focus.He introduces us to characters like a saintly but obsessed doctor and a mother who sacrifices her family to save her dwarf daughter. He follows two dwarf lovers from first meeting through the struggle to overcome their fear and shame and find the confidence to love each other. He becomes personally involved in a tangled and often confrontational friendship with a female dwarf. Through these stories and musings ranging from classic theories of beauty to the history of the disability movement to postmodern theories of difference, Richardson presents a world that is a skewed reflection of our own -- and offers us a glimpse into the essential human condition.
DO NOTHING!
Damian Mark Smyth - 2012
It is the misunderstanding of the ‘function’ of individual thought systems that causes the problems, pain and suffering in the world. This ‘reactive’ thinking interferes with the flow of creative intelligence. When busy thinking subsides, new thought is available, and with it, innovation and resilience. The ‘trick,’ is simply to see how the ‘trick is done’. That’s it, no more. No processes, just an understanding. I point towards this understanding of the ‘human operating system’, which turns cause and effect, completely inside-out.What if you were able to live a perfect, happy life, effortlessly... right now!? What if you discovered the secret that has been talked about by mystics throughout the ages, that was not only incredibly simple but was also accessible to you without doing a thing? What if every area of your life could be improved with one realisation, one thought, one simple understanding? Damian Mark Smyth is a teacher of this understanding and he takes you through the most common misunderstandings and misconceptions to help you realise that humanity has, for the most part, been looking in the wrong direction when it comes to happiness. The ‘outside-in’ world of fame and money is not the way to be fulfilled - just look at the amount of rich and famous people in rehab and therapy. His approach is more in tune with who you really are. From relationships to money, the business environment, parenting to sport and even addiction, Damian will show you where the secret lies and how you too can access it.Here is what readers are saying about ‘DO NOTHING!’: I can’t believe how powerful this book is! “I’m impressed with this book. Read DO NOTHING! The wonders of the internal universe await.” Jack Pransky Ph.D (Author of ‘Somebody Should Have Told Us!’)This book is amazing!This is not the kind of book that teaches you, it is a book that TOUCHES you...I am now a big step closer to loving life.DO NOTHING! goes straight to your heart, it is a piece of music as much as a written text.It is very, very CONTAGIOUS!!! There is a happiness virus somewhere in the text! You open the book & have no choice but to get infected by itDO NOTHING’S chapter on money is one of the more useful things I’ve read in my life.Without this book, my life would be very different right now (and not in a good way!).DO NOTHING! is the missing link! Ever had trouble with stress, depression, anxiety, doubt or fear? This book will revolutionise the way you live.I just wish I’d read it earlier!! This is what the author, Damian Mark Smyth says himself about the Principles outlined within the pages of ‘DO NOTHING!’: “There are three formless facts that create our reality from moment to moment. Like gravity, they exist whether we believe them or not. With them, not only do we create our world through our thoughts, but we also create our world ‘of thought’. Merely by having an understanding of how they work allows us freedom from worry, stress and fear and opens us up to the infinite potential of the universe through creativity, compassion and love. And the way to access this inner source of wisdom is to DO NOTHING! Because we already have it. As the saying goes: “You are already enlightened, you just don’t know it yet...”
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins - 2006
He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.