MATERNAL

PSYCHOLOGY

From the very first stage of the postpartum period, infants show various emotional expressions such as
crying and smiling, and their caregivers typically respond sensitively and automatically to these
expressions. Many studies have investigated maternal physical and mental responses toward infants’
emotional expressions. For example, distress cries of infants evoke physiological responses in mothers,
most of which involve accelerated cardiac activity, increased skin conductance, and a higher rate of
respiration. Several researchers have suggested that this physiological arousal caused by infant cries
functions as ‘preparation for action’. When a mother finds that her infant is crying, her stress response
will prompt her to approach, pick up, and attempt to console her infant.

Given that these stressful responses are a fairly typical feature of parenting, how are such responses
modulated, and can they be decreased? Levenson suggests that positive emotions facilitate the process of
recovery from physiological arousal provoked by negative emotions. This is called the undoing effect.
Indeed, Fredrickson and Levenson showed that cardiovascular activity induced by watching a negative
film returns to baseline more quickly when followed by watching a cheerful film than after a sad or neutral
film. The stimulation of positive emotions associated with the undoing effect may result in the restoration
of homeostatic balance. Homeostasis is dependent on the dual operation of both sympathetic and
parasympathetic autonomic nervous systems. When a person faces a stressful situation, sympathetic
activity becomes dominant, causing an increase in skin conductance and heart rate, which helps prepare
the person for an emergency. After the person is released from the stressful situation, parasympathetic
activity becomes dominant and sympathetic activity decreases, with an associated reduction in skin
conductance and heart rate, which is commonly associated with a person experiencing a (relatively) quiet,
relaxed state.

In the course of daily childrearing experiences, mothers experience stress reactions to their infants’
expressions of negative emotion, and subsequent positive emotional expressions of the infants may
moderate or ameliorate these stress reactions. Although a number of researchers have suggested that
positive infant emotional expressions are important for effective mother-infant interaction, exactly how
infant smiling affects maternal physiological states remains unknown. Some functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported that infants’ positive emotional expressions activate
various maternal brain regions, including those underlying the reward system, motor planning, and
inhibition of negative emotion; the activation of these regions is thought to be necessary to initiate
positive parenting behaviors. However, these studies emphasized the effects of infant smiling on changes
from a calm maternal state. It is possible infant smiling might have stronger recovery effects on

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physiologically negative stressful states, by means of the undoing effect. These studies could therefore
have underestimated the positive effects of infant smiling on maternal physiological states. Thus, it is
necessary to examine whether and how infant smiling brings about positive recovery effects on mothers'
physiologically stressful states, including those states caused by exposure to infants’ distress cries. In the
present study, we investigated whether the happy smiling of infants attenuate their mothers'
physiological responses to their preceding cries.

PURITAN SOCIETY

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with
women, was assembled in front of a wooden prison.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally
project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the
virgin soil as the site of a prison. Before this ugly edifice was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock,
pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation which evidently found something congenial in the
soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But, on one side of the portal was
a wild rose-bush, covered with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and
fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history. It may serve to symbolize some sweet
moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty
and sorrow.

The door of the jail being opened from within, there appeared, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine,
the grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle. He laid his right hand upon the shoulder of a young
woman; until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural
dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will. Hester Prynne bore
in her arms an infant, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day.

When the young woman- the mother of this child- stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be
her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection,

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as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In
moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another,
she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would
not be abashed, looked around her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red
cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the
letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy; and which
was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the
sumptuary regulations of the colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. Those who had before known
her and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished to
perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was
enveloped. But the point which drew all eyes, so that both men and women, who had been familiarly
acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time- was that
SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a
spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

Censorship: An unnecessary evil

Today’s parents face a tough battle. Neighborhoods are a lot more complicated than they were in the
1960s: every culture, every religion, every idea, every different standard, lives right next door.
Information is received at lightning speed via the Internet, and children can be caught up in this
whirlwind, subjected to things that they are still too young to understand or are emotionally unfit to
handle.

Censorship seems to be an answer to the growing problem of how to care for and watch over our children.
But books are meant for exploration, for questioning. Within a book’s pages, children are safe to explore
their feelings and reflect on their own situations. Putting the right book into the hands of the right child
has great value and changes lives. It can be empowering, motivating, and inspiring.

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Here in the United States, an ostensibly free country, one where people are encouraged and given the legal
right to speak their minds, we have been balancing personal freedoms and rights. But our media challenge
this balance every day. As consumers, we respect artists and allow them the freedom of expression. At the
same time, we are aware that children are seeing some unsuitable situations—but we are not always in
agreement about what we want our children to watch, hear, or read.

One political solution is rating systems, intended to help parents pick appropriate material for their
children based on content, theme, violence, language, nudity, sensuality, drug abuse, and other elements.
However, the rating systems have not stopped today’s lyrics from becoming more explicit, our cable
television system from containing more swearing and sexual content, and our movies from becoming
bloodier and more violent. And despite all the warnings and all the ratings, children are still listening to
these songs, watching these television shows, and renting these movies. The rating system may have
convinced politicians, parents, and librarians that it could do the job of protecting their young. It may have
given people a false sense of security. But in reality, it means nothing when no one is there to monitor
children’s actions and discuss appropriate behavior.

Parents have a vested interest in their children. Creating a home in which a child feels safe is their
responsibility. Creating a home where a child can safely make mistakes is their responsibility. Home is the
first place where a child learns right from wrong, good from bad, healthy from unhealthy. It is the parents’
job to give their child a good defense by helping them establish boundaries.
School helps to reinforce these lessons. Teachers help children by challenging them, instructing them, and
helping them move on to the next level of maturity and understanding. A teacher may know, before a
parent, when a child is ready for the next level or is mature enough to handle a theme or topic. When there
is communication and respect between parent and teacher, the child’s development is the winner.
America is a free society and has plenty of forums where people can express their views: newspapers,
radio, billboards, and the Internet. People can discuss their differences and learn from each other. Why
shouldn’t we allow our children that same rich experience? Banning a book is about as helpful as using a
match in a hurricane. It does not shed light on anything and gets blown around by a lot of wind. Nor does
sticking a label on a problem make it go away. Only in discussing, in sharing comments and concerns, is
there growth and understanding. Let us show our children that knowledge is the most empowering censor
they can use.

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Understanding Thomas Hardy
Writer Thomas Hardy fits neatly into the general scheme of the literature of the second half of the
nineteenth century, for he was about midway between writers Matthew Arnold and Walt Whitman. He
believed in the efficacy of the knowledge given to one by an understanding of science; but he felt that new
points of view should be impregnated with the ancient lore of the past. He believed that old wine should
be kept in new bottles. He refused to follow the writers who called themselves realists into the morass of
words that they accumulated in their attempts to portray life and character as they thought they were.
Likewise, he refused to give himself to pure impressionism. He endeavored to preserve a balance between
objective reality and his interpretation of it. He was in the old sense of the word a literary artist.

Hardy, of course, read the events of human life in the light of his conception of the Immanent Will. He
believed that the skein of circumstance, woven blindly and flung forth indifferently, caught up in its web
all human beings from the emperor in his palace to the unconscious lout lying drunk in the ditch. But
Hardy was not satisfied to hold this view conjecturally. He scanned the pages of philosophy, of science,
and of history to be certain that he read life aright. From them he evolved a view of life which has been
called scientific determinism. It seemed to him that men moved as automata, each within his own sphere.
Unseen forces played upon them; unseen powers directed them.

These forces, the physical manifestation of the metaphysical Immanent Will, were three in number, to
which all others were subordinated. They were the power of heredity, the shaping power of education,
and the influence of environment. From them there was no escape, for every choice seemingly made by
the individual, Hardy thought, was dictated by so many thousand unseen circumstances so interwoven
that it was almost impossible to realize the extent to which one was enmeshed in them. For evidence to
substantiate this conclusion he could point to the past and to the present. The Greeks, for example,
believed that the three Fates directed every action, no matter how minute, of mortals, and Immortals- of
the peasant plodding in the field, and of Zeus waving his machinations on the cloud-kissed brow of
Olympus. The Christian era had introduced into the intellectual world the contrary idea of Free Will; but
the world had split on that interpretation of life during the Reformation, when John Calvin gave to the
world from the dark caverns of his mind the gloomy doctrine of Predestination. In the nineteenth century,
the western world was probably equally divided between the theory of Free Will maintained by the
Roman Catholic Church and a few protestant denominations, and the theory of Predestination held by all
churches stemming from Calvinism. Unexpectedly, aid from an unsought source came to those who
maintained that human actions were predetermined, for the evolutionary theory, expounded by Darwin

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and Huxley, and the psychology which grew from it, gave weight to the idea that Predeterminism fitted
better with facts than the theory of Free Will. Once an anthropomorphic God was out of the picture and
His place taken by an evolving Consciousness, or whatever the mind of man chose to substitute, it was
almost necessary to believe in a theory of life similar to that held by Hardy.

Huns and eurasian history

The greatest territorial expansion and the greatest power of the Hun Empire in the West was when the
centre of their activities reached Pannonia under the leadership of Attila. Greek and Latin sources indicate
that Attila was of royal lineage, a line which for generations had ruled the Huns. Attila was a great
statesman who did great deeds. He was a wise ruler, a skilled diplomat, and a fair judge. With good reason
he should be considered a prominent figure in the first millennium AD. The Hun land under Attila’s control
consisted of four areas; the northern border of the kingdom stretched from the Hun’s homeland to the
west of Germany. In the south, both Roman Empires (the Eastern Roman and the Western Roman Empire)
were paying tribute to Attila. In terms of its territory and influence, Attila’s empire covered geographically
almost all the four corners of the known world, from east to west and from north to south. The Hun
territory ran from east to west - from Altai, Central Asia and the Caucasus to the Danube and the Rhine.
The Hun’s Union in Central Asia contributed to the later emergence of the Kazakh nation and other Turkic
peoples. By accumulating and concentrating power, the Hun ruler organized an invasion of Western
Europe, in order to expand the territory of his state. And so the Catalaunian Fields in Champagne (Gaul)
became the place for the decisive (major) battle. Parisians were frightened of Attila’s cruelty and anger,
so they decided to send women and children and some belongings to a safe place. There St. Genovea
turned up and she resolved to persuade women not to leave the city, in which they had been born and
grown up, in the hour of danger and, moreover, to prepare themselves and their men to the defense. St.
Genovea told the women to ask God for help and salvation. They listened to Genovea and decided to stay
in the city and rely on God’s mercy.

In the evaluation of the largest battle, a number of Western history scholars, both modern and
contemporary, drew on information from the chroniclers of the early Middle Ages, and used them
uncritically. The objective evaluation of historical reality is always difficult. A Belgian historian - Pirenn
concluded that Attila, getting through the Rhine in the spring of 451 AD, devastated everything up to the
Loire. Aetius stopped him with the help of the Germans near Troyes. The Franks, Burgundians and
Visigoths and others were good allies. The military art of the Romans and German bravery decided

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everything here. Attila's death in 453 AD resulted in the collapse of Hun power, and thereby saved the
West. In our opinion, the situation in Gaul can be explained by the over-large scale of Attila’s campaigns
and the inability to restrain dozens of tribes and entities that were not related to the Huns socially and
ethnically within the vast territory under the unified leadership. But let us return to the momentous
meeting of 452 AD. In the spring of 453 AD, the ruler of the Hun Empire, Attila, died.

Energy and sustainable development in

Nigeria
Nigeria's energy need is on the increase, and its increasing population is not adequately considered in the
government’s energy development program. The present urban-centered energy policy is deplorable, as
cases of rural and sub-rural energy demand and supply do not reach the center stage of the country's
energy development policy. People in rural areas depend on burning wood and traditional biomass for
their energy needs, causing great deforestation, emitting greenhouse gases, and polluting the
environment, thus creating global warming and environmental concerns. The main task has been to
supply energy to the cities and various places of industrialization, thereby creating an energy imbalance
within the country's socioeconomic and political landscapes. Comparing the present and ever increasing
population with the total capacity of the available power stations reveals that Nigeria is not able to meet
the energy needs of the people. The rural dwellers still lack electric power.

The nature of Nigeria's energy crisis can be characterized by two key factors. The first concerns the
recurrent severe shortages of the petroleum product market of which kerosene and diesel are the most
prominent. Nigeria has five domestic refineries owned by the government with a capacity to process
450,000 barrels of oil per day, yet imports constitute more than 75% of petroleum product requirements.
The state-owned refineries have hardly operated above a 40% capacity utilization rate for any extended
period of time in the past two decades. The gasoline market is much better supplied than kerosene and
diesel because of its higher political profile. This factor explains why the government has embarked on
large import volumes to remedy domestic shortages of the product. The weaker political pressures
exerted by the consumers of kerosene (the poor and low middle class) and diesel (industrial sector) on
the government and the constraints on public financing of large-scale imports of these products, as in the
case of gasoline, largely explain their more severe and persistent market shortages.

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The second dimension of Nigeria's energy crisis is exemplified by such indicators as electricity blackouts,
brownouts, and pervasive reliance on self-generated electricity. This development has occurred despite
abundant energy resources in Nigeria. The electricity market, dominated on the supply side by the state-
owned Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), formerly called National Electric Power Authority
(NEPA), has been incapable of providing minimum acceptable international standards of electricity
service reliability, accessibility, and availability for the past three decades.

Though the peak electricity demand has been less than half of the installed capacity in the past decade,
load shedding occurs regularly. Power outages in the manufacturing sector provide another dimension to
the crisis. In 2004, the major manufacturing firms experienced 316 outages. This increased by 26% in
2005, followed by an explosive 43% increase between 2006 and 2007. Though no published data exist,
the near collapse of the generating system to far below 2,000 MW for prolonged periods of time suggests
a reason for the number of outages in 2008 to be very high. This poor service delivery has rendered public
supply a standby source, as many consumers who cannot afford irregular and poor quality service,
substitute more expensive captive supply alternatives to minimize the negative consequences of power
supply interruptions on their production activities and profitability. An estimated 20% of the investment
into industrial projects is allocated to alternative sources of electricity supply.

Primordial and complex jealousy

While the origins and possible function of jealousy have been debated, most theorists agree on one
defining feature: It requires a social triangle, arising when an interloper threatens an important
relationship. A common assumption has been that the elicitation of jealousy involves, and perhaps
requires, complex cognitive abilities, including appraisals about the meaning of the rival threat to one's
self (e.g., self-esteem) and to one's relationship.

One possibility is that jealousy first evolved in the context of sibling-parent relationships where
dependent offspring compete for parental resources. An implication of this hypothesis is that jealousy
may have a primordial or core form that can be triggered without complex cognition about the self or
about the meaning of the social interaction. This primordial form of jealousy may be elicited by the
relatively simple perception that an attachment figure or loved one's attention has been captured by a
potential usurper, which suffices to elicit a motive to regain the loved one's attention and block the liaison.
Primordial jealousy may serve as the building block for jealousy elicited by more complex cognitive

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processes. For example, in adult human relationships, the experience of jealousy is greatly impacted by
additional appraisals about the meaning of the interaction (e.g., does this mean my mate will leave me?
Am I unloveable?). In both primordial and complex cases of jealousy, there is a motivation to restore the
relationship and remove the usurper. However, in the latter case, interpretations of the situation play a
large role in the elicitation and experience of the emotion.

The theory that jealousy can take a primordial form finds support from the small but emerging body of
research on human infant jealousy. Several studies found that infants as young as 6-months of age show
behaviors indicative of jealousy, for example, when their mothers interacted with what appeared to be
another infant (but was actually a realistic looking doll). The infants did not display the same behaviors
when their mothers attend to a nonsocial item (a book).

The current experiment adapted a paradigm from human infant studies to examine jealousy in domestic
dogs. The idea that dogs are capable of jealousy is congenial to the burgeoning body of research on animal
social cognition that reveals that dogs have sophisticated social-cognitive abilities. For example, dogs can
use a variety of human communicative signals (e.g., pointing, eye gaze) to determine the location of hidden
food, are better at using social cues than chimpanzees, show some sensitivity to reward inequity when a
partner is rewarded and they are not and appear aware of, and actively attempt to manipulate, the visual
attention of their play partners.

To evaluate dogs' jealous behaviors, thirty-six dogs were individually tested and videotaped while their
owners ignored them and interacted with a series of three different objects. In the jealousy condition, the
owner treated a stuffed dog, which briefly barked and wagged its tail, as if it were a real dog (e.g., petting,
talking sweetly). In another condition, owners engaged in these same behaviors but did so towards a novel
object (jack-o-lantern pail). This enabled us to test whether the elicitation of jealousy required that the
owner show affection to an appropriate stimulus (what appeared to be a conspecific) or whether
affectionate behaviors directed to a nonsocial stimulus would be enough to arouse jealous behaviors. In
the third condition, the owner read aloud a children's book, which had pop-up pages and played melodies.
This condition allowed us to test whether dogs' behaviors in the other conditions were indicative of
jealousy per se (arising over the loss of affection and attention towards an interloper) or more general
negative affect due to the loss of the owner's attention.

As discussed earlier, the proposed function of jealousy is to break-up a potentially threatening liaison and
protect the primary relationship. This motivates several types of behaviors including approach actions
such as attempts to get physically or psychologically between the attachment and the interloper, attending

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to the threatening interaction, seeking attention from the attachment figure, as well as indicators of
negative emotion such as aggression, particularly toward the interloper. Across social species, we would
expect to see similar types of behaviors that serve the function of this motivational state.

What is life?
The greatest problem of biology is understanding the divide that exists between life and matter. There
seems to be an unbridgeable gulf between them, but how could life have emerged from matter if it is
fundamentally different from it? The received view, today, is that life is but an extremely complex form of
chemistry, which is equivalent to saying that there is no fundamental divide between them. Primordial
genes and primordial proteins appeared spontaneously on the primitive Earth and gradually evolved into
increasingly more complex structures, all the way up to the first cells, the basic units of life. The problem
of which molecules came first has been the object of countless debates, but in a way it is a secondary issue.
What really matters is that spontaneous genes and spontaneous proteins had the potential to evolve into
the first cells. This however, is precisely what molecular biology does not support.

The genes and proteins of the first cells had to have biological specificity, and specific molecules cannot
be formed spontaneously. They can only be manufactured by molecular machines, and their production
requires entities like sequences and codes that simply do not exist in spontaneous processes. That is what
really divides matter from life. All components of matter arise by spontaneous processes that do not
require sequences and codes, whereas all components of life arise by manufacturing processes that do
require these entities. It is the signalling of these sequences and codes, or semiosis, that makes the
difference between life and matter. It is semiosis that does not exist in the inanimate world, and that is
why biology is not a complex form of chemistry.

The problem of the origin of life becomes in this way the problem of understanding how the first molecular
machines came into existence and started producing new types of molecules. We have seen that chemical
evolution could spontaneously produce ‘bondmakers’, molecules that had the ability to stick subunits
together, and we have also seen that some bondmakers could become ‘copymakers’ by sticking subunits
together in the order provided by a template. The next step was the appearance of ‘codemakers’, and that
is much more difficult to account for, but in principle it has the same logic and we can regard it as a natural
event (ribosomes, for example, can still arise by self-assembly from their components). What really
matters is that molecular machines could arise spontaneously, and once in existence they started

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producing molecules that cannot be formed spontaneously. More precisely, they started producing
specific genes and specific proteins and that is what crossed the gulf that divides inanimate matter from
life.

The genetic code was the first organic code in the history of life, but was not the only one. We have seen
that other organic codes came into existence, and that they account not only for the production of new
biological objects but also for the organization of these objects into higher structures and for their
interactions with the external world. Semiosis, in short, was not limited to the production of specific
molecules. There are at least three different types of semiosis in Nature and we find codes at all levels of
life, from the world of genes and proteins all the way up to mind and language. Physics and chemistry
provide of course the building blocks of life, but what ‘animates’ matter is codes, and that is why there is
a deep truth in the oversimplified statement that “life is semiosis”.

Antenatal depression and anxiety in

Pakistan
An interesting finding in our study of antenatal depression and anxiety among women in Pakistan was the
correlation between the occupation of pregnant women and antenatal depression and anxiety. In contrast
to studies in western populations, which mention employment as a strong protective factor against major
depression in pregnancy, our study found that pregnant women employed outside the home were actually
more depressed and anxious than pregnant housewives. A study in Karachi, Pakistan apparently
contradicts our findings by concluding that housewives, in general, are more depressed than working
women. Several factors might explain this contradiction. Most studies with such findings mention
education as an important protective factor against antenatal anxiety and depression.
Therefore, the lower educational level of housewives compared to working women was associated with
higher levels of anxiety and depression. However, our study included respondents from low and lower-
middle socioeconomic classes, and 54% of the women in our sample were educated to less than the 10th
grade level. So even most of the working women may not have been educated highly enough for their
employment status to have a positive effect on their mental health. Secondly, in recent years inflation has
increased and socioeconomic conditions have deteriorated in Pakistan, and these changes have led to
increased stress and the pressures on working women to meet the economic needs of their household.

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This increased stress, combined with the demands of pregnancy, might be responsible for greater
depression and anxiety in working women compared to housewives, who are relatively protected from
work stress. Finally, another factor might also be operative in the social environment of Pakistan. In many
orthodox Pakistani families, most of which belong to lower and lower-middle social classes, working
women are highly stigmatized. In this socioeconomic setting, the home is considered the appropriate
place for women, and being an obedient wife and a loving mother are considered their appropriate roles.
Negative attitudes among relatives towards their work might contribute to depression and anxiety among
working pregnant women from the lower and lower-middle social classes who participated in our study;
housewives, in contrast, may have been protected from such discrimination.

A novel and important finding in our study is the relationship between the gender of previous children
and the level of antenatal depression and anxiety. Having daughters was significantly associated with
antenatal depression and anxiety, whereas having sons was a protective factor. In Pakistan the family
system is predominantly patriarchal. Women are treated as second-class citizens and denied certain social
rights. Among the consequences of this social structure are honor killings, the bride price and dowry, the
disputed status of female testimony, forced marriages and denial of a woman’s right to have a career.
Parents view their sons as bread-earners and agents of continuation of the family name, and view their
daughters as an economic burden. This is partly due to the tradition of providing a large dowry when a
daughter marries, especially in India and Pakistan. The dowry may be in the form of land, money, jewelry
or household items. Even after birth, sons are given preference over daughters with respect to access to
healthcare and educational opportunities. Considering these societal pressures, pregnant women who
have already given birth to one or more daughters are not only concerned about their future offspring’s
gender, but are also subject to harassment, taunting and stigmatization by their family and relatives.

Utilitarianism ethics
Utilitarianism is a philosophic conception of politics and ethics. For the Utilitarian, politics and ethics are
interwoven into the science of moral duty; in other words, political philosophy and ethics are inseparable.
A political action is valuable only insofar as it keeps in mind the ethical good of the people with which it
is concerned; consequently, the welfare of the people in general was the supreme consideration of the
Utilitarian philosopher.

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To bring about this welfare, two courses of action must be pursued simultaneously: first, all hindrances
to the betterment of the people must be removed; second, ideas and laws which will induce the betterment
of the people must be promulgated. To accomplish these two outcomes there is needed, obviously, an
adequate knowledge of human nature. This knowledge, the Utilitarian says, includes a knowledge of the
motives of human action and of the ideal that animates human beings; and in order that one may acquire
this knowledge correctly, it is necessary that he seek the facts dispassionately and scientifically through
the mechanism of the senses. Superficial analysis should be discouraged, wild flights of the imagination
discountenanced, and unverified assumptions discarded, for such mistaken methods produce only
haphazard views of social life. Observation, experimentation, and sound generalization are absolutely
necessary to the Utilitarian; wishful thinking, random guesswork, and loose generalization must be
studiously avoided. “Utilitarian ethics,” said ethicist William L. Davidson, “is analytic, descriptive, and
inductive, resting on ascertained facts; and its aim has reference to the right use of the facts, so as to
advance social progress and for the concrete purpose of improving the existing conditions of life.” Ethical
facts are of infinitely more importance to the Utilitarian thinker than ethical theories, no matter how ideal
they may be or what their source.

At this point the intuitional thinker takes issue with the Utilitarian; for in denying the power of innate
ideas, the Utilitarian by implication has ignored the Absolute, whether it be in the form of God, a Principle,
or an Ideal. But the Utilitarian is not seriously alarmed by the seeming lack of an Absolute in his
philosophy, for he believes that if all the ascertainable data of life can be found, analyzed, and applied, the
superstructure of Truth will stand forth complete and unassailable. “Know the truth and the truth will set
you free” might well be his motto. In the meantime, while the intuitional thinker elaborates rare webs
from his inner being, the Utilitarian seeks to know the nature of man- his character, his wants, his
limitations, and his possibilities.

The Utilitarian is intellectual. Utilitarians believe: first, that pleasure and pain are the mainsprings of
human action; second, that the five senses give them a reasonably correct and complete account of the
world around them; third, that all relationships between things in the external world are comprehensible
to the human mind; fourth, that cause and effect are natural and not supernatural; and fifth, that ideas are
not innate but acquired through experience and education. Utilitarianism as a mode of thinking is rational
in its procedure; pragmatic in its attitude toward truth; scientific in its method; and skeptical in its
consideration of conclusions. Occasionally he mounts to sublime heights in his perceptions; at times he
descends to aridity and spiritual death. But at all times he keeps before himself one purpose- the scientific
search for truth.

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Reflections on leaving Facebook

On 13 August 2009 I deactivated my Facebook social networking account. The world remained on its axis
but Facebook’s slightly sinister prediction that my friends would miss me turned out to be correct. A
torrent of emails and text messages arrived in the days following, asking where I had gone. Many asked
me to justify why I left, some out of curiosity and some out of shock.

What most concerns me is not primarily a privacy issue, in the sense of concerns about the availability of
one’s private information in the public domain — though this is a part of it. Instead, I will describe a
psychological problem that results from an ontological consideration of identity online and a
phenomenological account of encountering the other. As Ken Hillis argues, the online avatar — and I use
this term loosely to include the Facebook profile — is not identical with the user. Although the user
identifies with this avatar, there is a distance maintained between the two; the avatar is a middle-ground
between image and agent. This is a simple point. However, things start to get more complicated when we
consider what this means for encounters between users. If the user is not identical with their avatar, then
they are in a relation with only that avatar and the other user’s avatar when communicating or interacting
online.

In terms of voyeurism, the result is, I believe, that the main issue is not that of the user being watched, but
of the user doing the watching. First, it is obviously the case that users can control what content they post
on their profiles. Second, given that the avatar is not identical with the user, what is being seen by the
voyeur is not only controlled content but exists at a remove from the other user. As such, the other user
remains out of sight; the user cannot enter into a direct relation with the other user, only with the other
user’s avatar. Given these conditions, the problem of voyeurism lies in the direction of voyeurism from
the user to the other user’s avatar; again: it is the watching not the being watched that is the main cause
of concern.

Facebook allows us to gather substantial amounts of information about other people — people we know
to varying degrees. More than this, it makes possible the monitoring of communications between different
people, communications that may or may not have anything to do with the person who has access to them.
Also, and perhaps the most uncomfortable element, it is possible to see the photograph albums of users
who are not ‘friends’ — in either the traditional or Facebook sense of the word — if they are commented

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upon by those who are. We are in danger of sleepwalking into a state of voyeurism, whereby we cease to
see the difference between what ought to be seen and what can be seen. Without wanting to exaggerate
the point, this somnambulist voyeurism represents a perturbing psychological phenomenon; this
desire/need to watch others is a disturbing anxiety, an unhealthy and inauthentic relationship with
others.

Walt Whitman: poet of the people

The first publication of Leaves of Grass by now famous poet, Walt Whitman, was a failure. People like to
believe that they can recognize excellence when they see it; but the fact remains that they cannot and will
not, unless it assumes a familiar form. It is quite simple for university professors and literary critics to
praise Whitman and his book today; it was impossible for them to do so in 1860.

The first quality in the book to repel readers was the verse form; in the poetry of Whitman there was no
apparent pattern. His poems seemed to be prose passages cut up and arranged to look like verse. After
the academic critics accepted Whitman, many learned justifications were put forward concerning his
verse. One professor argued that in rejecting the rhythm of the line (the usual rhythm in conventional
verse) for the rhythm of the phrase (the rhythm of natural speech), Whitman was simply following a good
American custom of ignoring verse patterns as the eye sees them and following the sound as the ear hears
it. Another maintained that Whitman consciously combined rhythmic features of prose and conventional
verse in order to evolve a new form. A number have expended considerable energy trying to show that
assonance, alliteration, and parallelism (features found in much conventional poetry) are not missing
from Whitman’s verse. But all hasten to argue that the verse form in Leaves of Grass is not as unorthodox
as it appears.

The second quality in the book to repel readers was the obvious confusion shown by Whitman between
nature and art. All great poetry from the golden age of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to the middle
of the nineteenth century is marked by careful discrimination between raw nature and art. Aristotle laid
down the principle that “the most beautiful colors, laid on confusedly will not give so much pleasure as
the chalk outline of a portrait; Longinus said that “Nature fills the place of good fortune, Art that of good
judgement,” and that too many images “make for confusion rather than intensity”; and Demetrius wrote
that “not all possible points should be punctiliously and tediously elaborated, but some should be left for
the comprehension and inference of the hearer.” The great ancient critics, apparently, believed that the

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primary function of the artist was to select from nature certain details which would be representative,
vivid, and coherent, and which could be architectonically organized. The artist had to differentiate sharply
between nature (whether it was human or physical) and art which was the representation of nature,
organized and processed into a coherent art form.

But Whitman made no such fine differentiation. Whitman believed the poet is merely “the channel of
thoughts and things without increase or diminution.” The “absurd error” of considering nature and art as
distinct was never made by Whitman. As a result, Leaves of Grass was definitely something new in the
literary world, for it was an attempt to reproduce life precisely as the poet saw it, with no effort made to
select material or organize it.
The third quality in Leaves of Grass to repel readers was the intense individualism of the poet. Of all arts,
poetry is one of the most egoistic. The world accepts the fact, for no one questions Shakespeare’s bland
assertion that as long as his verse lives his mistress will live. “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” Whitman
wrote in Song of Myself; and from that theme he rarely departed. No poet has used the personal pronoun
I as frequently as has Whitman.

Political attitudes
Studies have found that participants can accurately distinguish political affiliation based on photos of
faces. One study found that these effects seem to have been driven by traits attributed to the faces;
specifically, power (a composite of ratings of dominance and facial maturity) and warmth (a composite of
ratings of likeability and trustworthiness). Republican faces were perceived as more powerful than
Democrats and, to the extent that a face was perceived as powerful, it was more likely to be categorized
as Republican. On the other hand, the warmer a face was perceived, the more likely it was to be
categorized as a Democrat. Other studies have also found relationships between facial traits and perceived
political ideology. For example, one study found that conservative politicians in Finland were more
attractive than candidates on the political left. In yet another study, politicians judged to be conservative
were more attractive, intelligent-looking, and of higher social class than those judged to be more liberal.
These judgments can have electoral consequences.

Although the extant research has provided important information about factors that may underlie
categorizations of faces according to political party affiliation, it may be limited in some critical ways.

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These studies focus primarily on the target in isolation from the perceiver. It is important to note that this
research draws from ideas based in an ecological theory of perception adapted to theories of ecological
social perception. These theories argue that faces signal certain things to perceivers about what the target
may afford. A target may appear, for instance, more or less trustworthy or dominant, which may lead the
perceiver to trust or fear that person, accordingly. However, it is likely that the accuracy of categorizing
ambiguous targets is driven at least in part by the perceivers' identities, dispositions, or states. For
example, it is known that perceptions of ambiguous group members may be influenced by perceivers'
attitudes toward the groups or exposure to members of the group. One study found that heterosexual
perceivers who had more experience with gay men were better at categorizing gay faces. Similarly, it is
plausible that categorizations and trait ascriptions of Democrat and Republican faces may differ based on
the political ideology of the perceiver/judge. There does exist some evidence that other perceiver
identities and ideologies influence categorizations and judgments based on political affiliation. For
instance, one study found that people categorized faces as political ingroup or outgroup members largely
as a function of likeability. Another recent study found that perceiver gender influences ratings towards
male and female politicians.

Target political affiliation may interact with perceiver identity in another important way. In addition to
accurate perceptions of political ideology, one study found that participants were more likely to classify
faces as outgroup members than as ingroup members. These findings are consistent with a more general
ingroup overexclusion effect. The ingroup overexclusion effect is thought to be a result of motivated social
cognitions related to social identity, such that people tend to be protective of the ingroup. As a result of
this protectiveness, perceivers may show a default bias toward categorizing others as outgroup members.
This may be the case especially when groups are perceptually ambiguous. For example, one group of
scholars have observed an ingroup over-exclusion effect for racially ambiguous targets, finding that
Northern Italians (who had strongly identified as such) were more likely to exclude ambiguous targets
that had a mix of Northern and Southern Italian features.

The human footprint in Mexico

Ecological patterns and processes are influenced by human activities in two main ways: directly, by the
transformation of land into infrastructure and productive areas, or indirectly, through the byproducts of
human activities that might disperse away from their causal source and degrade ecosystem functions.
Direct modifications of the land through human infrastructure (human settlements, transportation

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pathways, and power lines) and productive areas (agriculture, aquaculture, forestry, and cattle ranching)
have increased globally during the last century as a result of accelerated human population growth.

Several studies have analyzed the patterns of direct human modification of the land surface as a proxy
measure of human influence on natural ecosystems. Although human modification indices do not convey
the entire human effect expressed as changes historically accumulated over natural ecosystems, they are
useful to infer the spatial pattern and extent of the capacity of humans to transform the earth through
land use. Many studies analyze how diverse ecological regions have different capacity to respond to
landscape transformations, but only a few of them analyze how the physical geography (defined, for
example, as biomes or ecoregions) affects the spatial patterns of human modification.

Mexico is an ecologically heterogeneous country that hosts a diverse array of ecosystems ranging from
hyper-arid deserts to tropical rainforests, which have evolved as a consequence of the country’s complex
topography. Mexico is also one of the biologically megadiverse countries of the world, with high endemism
for birds, mammals, and reptiles. In principle, it would be expected that human developments and land
transformations in Mexico follow the country’s complex environmental mosaic, with regions where
environmental conditions are more favorable for human settlement and occupation (given a particular
level of technological development) showing a larger human footprint.

But land settlements and landscape transformations are not only the result of physical geography; there
are also technological and historical components. The historic dimension is especially relevant in
countries such as Mexico, with a long history of human occupation and well-documented civilization
collapses. Indeed, despite the common misperception that Europeans found a New World that was largely
unoccupied and wild, what Spaniards found in Mexico was a densely populated territory with well-
developed agricultural settlements and large urban centers that heavily impacted their respective
hinterlands. When Europeans arrived to Mesoamerica the population of the larger territory of what we
now call Mexico was in the order of tens of millions of people. Although the native population was
devastated by European diseases, the encomienda system, and 16th Century droughts, its geographical
distribution at the time of Spanish conquest conditioned the subsequent land occupation and landscape
transformations.

The ability of humans to transform the face of the earth has been referred to as the ¨human footprint.¨ The
Human Footprint Index (HF) is calculated by adding all major large-scale anthropogenic transformations
over the land surface. It uses four variables to summarize the effects of human modification: population
density, land use change, access areas, and electric infrastructure. This index has been used and modified

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at different scales, but always following the main idea that the intensity of human influence is the result
of the type of activity, the area that each activity occupies, and the accumulation of activities within large
areas. Its values distributed on a map reveal the major patterns of human influence over the broad
landscape. The advantages of the HF index lie in the fact that it uses publicly available geographic data for
the majority of countries and hence it is easily reproducible by different researchers in different regions,
and its calculations are statistically simple, with an explicative clarity that can be easily understood.

What separates science from art?

I believe the best understanding of the difference between science and art in the nineteenth century is to
be found in a man who was not an artist but a rationalist. Scientist and writer Thomas Henry Huxley
argued that the intellectual content of art is altogether different from the intellectual content of science.
In art it is truth to nature. But this truth is relative for it depends entirely upon the intellectual culture of
the person to whom art is addressed. No man ever understands Shakespeare until he is old, though the
youngest may admire him, the reason being that he satisfies the artistic instinct of the youngest and
harmonizes with the ripest and richest experiences of the oldest. In science, intellectual content is truth
to fact and the deductions and generalizations which can be made from facts.

The pleasures, however, that one receives from either art or science, Huxley said, have a common source.
These pleasures arise from the satisfaction one receives in tracing the central theme of whatever he is
interested in at the moment in all its endless variations as it appears and reappears to demonstrate the
truth of unity in variety. Whether it be a problem in mathematics, an experiment in morphology, a chess
game, a primitive drawing, a sophisticated painting, a simple ballad, a complex poem, a homely refrain, or
a fugue by Bach, the process of comprehending the symbols used to express the idea is both intellectual
and esthetic. The process is intellectual because it is the intellect which comprehends the laws governing
any particular science or art; and it is esthetic because it is the feelings which determine the amount of
emotional pleasure one can derive from them. But the ends of the two are different. Science has as its end
the attainment of truth. Art has for its end the attainment of pleasure. “The subjects of all knowledge are
divisible into the two groups,” said Huxley, “matters of science and matters of art; for all things with which
the reasoning faculty alone is occupied, come under the province of science. And in the broadest sense,
and not in the narrow and technical sense in which we are now accustomed to use the word art, all things
feelable, all things which stir our emotions, come under the term of art.”

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I believe science is slowly destroying art. It can be said that science has created a hard, materialistic
philosophy of life. If it destroyed art only, that would not be so bad; but science also destroys the highest
aspirations of the human soul. Love is reduced to a biologic law; family relationships are explained by
psychology; ideals are resolved into the yearnings of frustration; and God is metamorphosed into a tribal
deity. Once the veil of mystery that enshrouds these great primary instincts of the human soul is ruthlessly
snatched away, life loses the qualities which have made it beautiful and significant in the past. Despair
takes the place of hope; resignation takes the place of resolution; sex takes the place of love; atheism takes
the place of religion. Wise and intelligent men become cynics and common men become hedonists. Duty
and morality are forgotten in the mad struggle to forget a life thus deprived of the ideals which before had
made it endurable. To eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge can be as disastrous today as it was ages
ago in the Garden of Eden.

Post-colonialism in Papuan culture

Vincent Eri’s novel, The Crocodile, is the coming-of-age tale of Hoiri, a member of the Toaripi coastal
people of the Gulf District in Papua, who reaches manhood against the backdrop of Australian colonial
rule. The novel gives the foreigner encyclopaedic information about commerce, education and history of
the tribe, about the vegetation, and village life; about marriage customs and rituals. Indeed, much of the
narrative is devoted to providing the reader with a thick description of Toaripi customs and practices
based in the village of Moveave.

Yet Eri’s novel is much more than a fictionalised anthropological account of Toaripi life. The Crocodile
gives dramatic form to the devastating entry of white man’s civilisation into the Papuan universe, and
presents us with a society at the verge of disintegration. The narrative proceeds along two arcs: one
relating to the tribal laws and their internal contestations and the other, the decomposition of those
already fluid social mores by Australian colonialism. The first arc revolves around the mysterious death
of Hoiri’s young wife Mitoro, presumed to be taken and killed by the eponymous crocodile, and involves
the complex actions and motivations of sorcerers—mesiri men—thought to be tribesmen from a
neighbouring clan. The second arc consists of the hardships endured by the Papuans under the Australian
colonial government. They are exploited as domestic workers and as labour for government officers—
kiaps—who regularly patrol the interior in the effort to ‘pacify’ and ‘civilise’ the natives. The literary
tension produced by the two narrative arcs constitutes the novel’s profound critique of the effects of

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colonial rule. Notably, this is a novel where the enchanted world shares narrative space and ontological
reality with Euro-Australian colonial and capitalist realities. In its most commented upon scene, Hoiri
wages an attack on the evil sorcerer crocodile, where literal and metaphoric crocodiles are somehow the
same. But having only injured the crocodile/sorcerer, Hoiri remains confused about how to deal with the
mesiri he holds responsible for his family member’s death. He cannot pursue a ‘traditional’ course of
action both because of his father’s deaconship—the church frowns upon such ‘superstitions’—and
because white kiap law forbids ‘primitive’ payback law.

Significantly, Australian colonial laws are not the only authority Hoiri encounters. Despite Hoiri’s
suspicion of white ways, he comes under the spell of the white man’s commodity culture on a visit to the
colonial capital of Port Moresby. His father and uncle buy clothing and some canvas sail, in the process
suffering racial harassment from the white store clerk. The episode reveals both an enchantment with
gleaming commodities and resentment at the racist colonial environment. Hoiri’s uncle, meanwhile,
astutely perceives the underlying relationship between things and labour in a colonial economy: ‘White
people are very clever aren’t they? They bring all these wonderful things here and also make the money
that one needs to buy them. We’ve got to work for them to get the money to buy them with’. The money
economy thus functions to erode traditional trading and labour practices and deepen colonial authority.

Film adaptation of Chinese literature

Studies of adaptation tend to privilege literature over film but not the other way around (and assume that
a film adaptation has a certain responsibility to remain faithful to the spirit of the text upon which it is
based). The main purpose of Hsiu-Chuang Deppman’s book, Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics
of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film, I would argue, is to provide some alternative thoughts besides this
assumption of how film and fiction should be viewed in adaptation studies. Deppman is interested in how
filmmakers have gone about the business and art of transposition from one medium to another. This
transposition and the processes involved in it in turn enrich our understanding of the interconnectedness
of the cultural contexts of texts and artists in Chinese films and fictions. In other words, Deppman does
not simply deal with the issue of what can be transferred in moving from fiction to film (namely, narrative)
and what cannot be. More importantly, she investigates the distinctive ideological goals of writer and
filmmaker that contribute to the differences between texts and films.

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Deppman looks at connections between film and fiction in the context of various Chinese communities on
the one hand, and contemplates their differences on the other hand. For example, one case study that
Deppman uses to illustrate ‘gender politics’ is the adaptation of Su Tong’s novel, Wives and Concubines,
into Zhang Yimou’s film, Raise the Red Lantern. Deppman argues that ‘Zhang draws from the strengths of
Su’s plot and reconfigures the story’s narrative codes, notably transforming a key symbolic site in the
novel – a defunct well in a back garden – into a rooftop death chamber’. As a result, ‘Zhang’s new metaphor
illustrates the important directorial option of changing the staging of the story to maximize the cinematic
effect’. The well in the novella and the compound roof in the film not only map out key theoretical
differences between the two texts, but the distinct approaches to the exploitation of women also reflect
profoundly different conceptions of the relationship between art and society. ‘These two metaphorical
spaces’, Deppman suggests, ‘not only juxtapose the fluidity of feminine ambivalence with the solidity of
the patriarch’s iron rule, but also open up very distinct imaginary space for the reader and the viewer’.

Many scholars argue that the one thing that literature and film have in common is narrative. By narrative,
I mean a series of events, sequentially connected by virtue of their involving a continuing set of characters.
Deppman questions this assumption in her book. One example is the adaptation of Liu Yichang’s novel,
Intersection, into Wong Kar-wai’s film, In the Mood for Love. In Deppman’s analysis, Wong appears to
radically distill Liu’s novel into nothing other than three frames containing three separate quotations: the
opening shot, an intertitle, and a concluding still. Instead of reconstructing the literary narrative, Wong
creates a new story line, thereby challenging the assumption shared by many adaptation scholars that
narrative is the property that makes the two media commensurable. Liberating filmic adaptation from
almost every question of fidelity, Wong’s style pushes us to recognise what Deppman calls abstract
adaptation, a style that creates a new theoretical dialogue about how film and literature can intersect to
reproduce aesthetic resonances. Deppman refuses to privilege one reading (or form) over another and
remains focused on the distinct ways in which they have been received.

Disaster risk knowledge in Nepal

Disaster risk is expressed in terms of potential loss of lives, deterioration of health status and livelihoods,
and potential damage to assets and services due to the impact of existing natural hazards. Disaster risk
reduction (DRR) is a systematic approach to identifying, assessing, and reducing disaster risk, and it helps
minimize the vulnerability of a society or community. It also prevents or mitigates the adverse effects of
natural disasters, facilitating a sustainable development process. The Second World Conference on

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Disaster Reduction was held in Kobe (Hyogo), Japan in January 2005, which adopted the Hyogo
Framework for Action (HFA) 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to
Disasters. It has provided a unique opportunity to promote a strategic and systematic approach to
reducing vulnerabilities and risks. HFA states that all countries must use knowledge, innovation, and
education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels. Moreover, it suggests that disasters can
be reduced substantially if people are well informed and motivated about measures they can take to
reduce vulnerability.

Poverty drives people to live in high risk marginal areas of mountains and river valleys, which makes them
vulnerable to disasters. Heavy disaster losses suffered from earthquakes and tsunamis or landslides and
floods create additional poverty among a large number of people by destroying their houses, productive
lands, other personal assets, and livelihood. Hence, poverty is both cause and consequence of disasters in
underdeveloped or developing countries. DRR is particularly important for sustaining the attainment of
all development goals, since it provides a safety net for the hard-earned development gains of a developing
country. In Nepal, it is a great challenge to protect infrastructure and public and individual properties
from frequent landslide, flood, and earthquake disasters. Each year hundreds of people are killed and a
large amount of public and private properties are destroyed in landslide, flood, fire, and avalanche
disasters. Each large-scale disaster sets the country back several years in terms of the development
efforts. When scarce resources such as time, energy, expertise, and funding are suddenly diverted in relief
and recovery work, the overall development activities are delayed significantly.
The disaster statistics of Nepal always motivate and justify the urgent need of DRR works in Nepal.
Therefore, Nepal has also adopted HFA and so far the Government of Nepal has formally adopted policies
guided by DRR and implemented the DRR in its various development as well as education programs. In
Nepal, the World Disaster Reduction Campaign for 2006-2007 was initiated and many programs such as
school curricula for disaster risk education, community based disaster management at the village level,
disaster mitigation plans at the district level etc. have been implemented. Similarly, raising awareness
within school communities is a well implemented program in the schools of Nepal. This awareness activity
includes training of teachers, organizing disaster quiz competitions among schools and local youth clubs,
school contests on disaster risk reduction knowledge, campaigning for disaster safety in communities,
and turning school students into catalysts and initiators in many more community based disaster
awareness activities.

The ethics of drug-induced happiness

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Kant says that one’s duty to oneself consists in a prohibition against making oneself a plaything of mere
inclinations. This is a truly persuasive argument regarding human dignity, because the essence of human
dignity must be considered to be never to deal with a person as a thing. It seems that the domination of a
person by drug-induced happiness should be regarded as a clear violation of human dignity, because it is
equal to debasing a person to a plaything of inclinations. Hence, human dignity is taken away in exchange
for a sense of happiness induced by a drug. Let us go on further. In the case of drug-induced happiness,
those people are deprived of the “freedom to feel unhappiness” and are degraded to a plaything of mere
inclinations; hence, they are considered to be devoid of “human dignity.” This means that a life with dignity
necessarily requires that one’s “freedom to feel unhappiness” be totally guaranteed in one’s actual life. “A
life with dignity” means a life that is not dominated by the sense of happiness.

A life with dignity has two characteristics: First, as has already been discussed above, a life with dignity is
free from domination by a sense of happiness, regardless of whether or not it is acquired by means of
drugs. Moreover, a life with dignity should also be free from domination by our own strong desire to
experience that kind of happiness. The former domination comes from the outside and the latter
originates from inside oneself. Second, a life with dignity is free from domination by the sense of
unhappiness. This idea is more familiar to us than the first. A life with dignity should be free from the
domination of negative thoughts about one’s existence or one’s own value. People sometimes fall victim
to this kind of self-negation when experiencing such hardships as severe and repeated abuse, the death of
loved ones, or devastating disasters. In these cases, human dignity means the belief that whatever their
suffering and hardships, all human beings have a possibility to escape from domination by the sense of
unhappiness and to regain the sense of self-affirmation at some point in their future life. Hence it might
be allowed to use psychoactive drugs like SSRIs to medically support this recovery process for a limited
period of time, paying special attention to the danger of domination by a sense of happiness.

Consider if the heart of a person who was in the depths of despair is filled with a sense of happiness caused
by a perfect happiness drug. As a result, a drug-induced happiness dominates the person, and he/she is
deprived of a life with dignity. A person who was dominated by despair and the sense of unhappiness
becomes able to escape from that mental state and to begin an effort to regain the sense of self-affirmation.
If such medication can provide the person with an opportunity to explore his/her life with a sense of
affirmation, it should be considered good news. This is not deprivation of human dignity, because it
enables that person to escape from the domination of the sense of unhappiness. Hence, I do not claim that
the use of existing psychoactive drugs such as SSRIs immediately deprives us of human dignity, or that its
use ought to be prohibited. What I raise an alarm over is the use of a hypothetical perfect happiness drug
that could fill our heart with complete happiness, and what I have done so far has been a philosophical

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investigation of the relationship between human dignity and the manipulation of the sense of happiness,
using a perfect happiness drug as an example.

The roots of capitalism

The most important opponent with which the spirit of capitalism has historically had to struggle was
traditional views on wealth during the time of Catholic Feudalism. A man does not “by nature” wish to
earn more and more money, and historically simply wished to live as he was accustomed to live and to
earn as much as is necessary for survival. Whenever modern capitalism began its work of increasing the
productivity of human labour by increasing its intensity, it encountered the immensely stubborn
resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labour. The emergence of new religious forces,
specifically Protestantism, and the ethical ideas of duty based upon them, have in the past always been
among the most important formative influences on the formation of rational economic conduct. In this
case, we are dealing with the connection of the spirit of modern economic capitalism with the rational
ethics of ascetic Protestantism. The spirit of capitalism was born out of the Protestant reformation of the
Catholic Church.

In order to understand the connection between the fundamental religious ideas of ascetic Protestantism
and its maxims for everyday economic conduct, it is necessary to understand the religious teachings of
English Puritanism, which were derived from the Calvinist reformation of the Catholic church. Waste of
time was the first and deadliest of sins. Loss of time through sociability, idle talk, luxury, even more sleep
than is necessary for health is worthy of absolute moral condemnation. It did not yet hold, as modern
ethos has it, that time is money, although the proposition was true in a spiritual sense. Time was infinitely
valuable because every hour lost was lost to labor for the glory of God. Wealth was thus bad ethically only
in so far as it was a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life, and its acquisition was bad only
when it was with the purpose of later living merrily and without care. The emphasis on ascetic importance
of a fixed “calling” provided an ethical justification of the modern specialized division of labour. Worldly
Protestant asceticism acted powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions; it restricted
consumption, especially of luxuries. On the other hand, it had the psychological effect of maximizing the
acquisition of goods from the inhibitions of traditionalistic Catholic ethics. It broke the bonds of the
impulse of acquisition in that it looked upon it as directly willed by God. The campaign against the
temptations of the flesh, and the dependence on external things, was not a struggle against rational

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acquisition, but against irrational use of wealth. Over against the glitter and ostentation of Catholic feudal
magnificence which, resting on an unsound economic basis, prefers a sordid elegance to sober simplicity,
they set the clean and solid comfort of the middle-class home as an ideal.

When the limitation of consumption in asceticism is combined with a release of acquisitive activity, the
inevitable practical result is obvious: accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save.
Asceticism condemned the pursuit of riches for their own sake; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour
in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing. The greater simplicity of life, in combination with great wealth,
led to an excessive propensity to accumulation. As far as the influence of the Puritan outlook extended, it
favored the development of a rational bourgeois economic life; it was the most important and consistent
influence in the development of that life. It stood at the cradle of modern economic man.

Adult learning across cultures

In contrast to how Westerners view knowledge as solely for the individual, non-Westerners tend to view
knowledge as communal. What is learnt is meant to be shared. Professor Sharan B. Merriam, an expert in
adult education, gives a wonderful illustration from Islam of this principle: If a village has no doctor, then
the villagers pool together their resources to send one of their youth to medical school so that when he
returns, the community will have a doctor.

Another characteristic of learning cross culturally is that it does not stop once the person has left a formal
institution. In fact, the majority of learning happens outside of formal institutions. One can learn about
nature and the cycles of life through gardening, for instance. Professor Merriam contrasts this type of
learning with learning geared towards bettering one’s vocation which is prevalent in Western culture.
There is a remunerative aspect tied to learning in that the learner acquires skills to help him produce
more or faster. Additionally, in contrast to Western culture, non-Western cultures view learning as
lifelong. It only ends when the person dies. Thus, learning occurs solely for the sake of learning.

Finally, learning is holistic, incorporating the whole person beyond just the mind. Neuroanthropologist
Greg Downey’s article, “Balancing between cultures,” attests to this as he alludes to the fact that learning
the Brazilian martial art of capoeira has influenced the way he carries his body. His sense of balance had
been shaped by the many many hours of training that he spent practicing bananeira, a dynamic handstand
that required the doer to ignore his natural inclination to look down to maintain his balance, instead

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demanding that he keep his eyes on his adversary at all times. The art of yoga is yet another example of
how learning goes beyond the mind-body dichotomy that we have established in Western society. Yoga
seeks to balance the mind, body, and spirit in an effort to move the whole person towards enlightenment.

What it means to be educated even varies across cultures. In one longitudinal study, conducted by
education scholar Esther Prins, for Salvadoran adult learners, being educated encompassed not just book
knowledge, but rather a holistic melding of social knowledge as well. Treating others with respect
regardless of their station in life was considered one of the hallmarks of an educated person. Professor
Prins conducted interviews of 12 Salvadoran adults from rural El Salvador, none of whom had had more
than six years of schooling. One of the participants recounted an incident in which he went into a bank
and was asked by a bank employee to “put his cebolleta here.” Though the term in this case referred to
signature, it is considered insulting and would never have been used with someone of higher status. Thus,
whilst the bank employee was educated in the technical sense, he was not an educated person in the
Salvadoran sense.

Other participants corroborated the importance of learning proper social etiquette as part of their
education. One participant claimed that before the literacy classes, she did not have the correct vocabulary
to address people. She claimed that people often looked down on the campesinos, those from the country,
because of the seemingly brusque way in which they interacted with others.

Sociology of participation
Historically, sociologists have argued that what makes democracies effective is active citizen participation
in civic affairs. They developed what was called a psycho-cultural approach to the study of political
phenomena. According to the psycho-cultural approach, individual values and beliefs explain why some
societies appeared more vibrant than others in creating associations and, consequently, why democracies
differed in efficiency despite sharing similar institutions like universal suffrage, division of power, a
political constitution, free elections, and so forth. Similarly and more recently, the work of sociologist
Robert Putnam on Italian regional and local governments argued that regions in Northern Italy were
better governed because of a longer tradition of civic associations compared to the regions in Southern
Italy. Putnam explains the relationship between strong networks of citizen participation and positive
institutional performance in terms of “social capital” — the informal networks, norms of reciprocity and
trust that are fostered among individual members of the same association.

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While the two studies cited above stress the importance of values and belief systems, several social
scientists have more recently articulated a structural perspective to explain the importance of
associations more broadly. From this perspective, social networks have emerged as a key factor in
understanding modern associations. Within the literature that focuses on associations as networks,
tension has emerged between two approaches. On the one hand, scholars have highlighted the role of
social networks, and of friendship in particular, for explaining why people participate in associations. On
the other hand, scholars have stressed the importance of identity processes in explaining the growth of
associations. People join because the association provides them with a new identity and new circles of
friends that they are interested in acquiring. With some notable exceptions, both approaches draw heavily
from research on social movements.

The research of Sociologist Doug McAdam showed that activists who participated in the 1964 Mississippi
summer camp were more likely to have friends already at the camp. McAdam analyzed the role of
networks by studying the centrality of the people recruited to participate in the summer camp, further
confirming the importance of pre-existing ties. On the other hand, sociologist Eugene Weber has
articulated, on historical and institutional grounds, a view counter to the importance of pre-existing
friendship ties for explaining participation. Weber describes the ways in which the French state facilitated
the creation of a national identity among the locally identified members of the population by enabling
contact among the soon-to-become “French'' individuals from the country's provinces. National
universities, military service, corporations, and administrative bodies all facilitate the meeting of people
from various parts of the state's territory. With contact comes the opportunity for the development of
social relations, and the formation of such relations confirms one's loyalty to the nation. Membership in
these institutions promotes new identities, which in turn influence participation.

While Weber's argument focuses on institutions rather than associations, a similar argument about the
importance of identity has been advanced by another set of social movement scholars interested in
processes of identity formation and collective action. Sociologist Deborah Minkoff, for instance, has
argued that those in certain disadvantaged categories such as gays and lesbians, the elderly, and women,
lacked access to the infrastructure that facilitates generation of ties between members. Mobilization of
these groups creates identities that then produced social ties. Further reinforcing this argument and
providing a more formalized approach to it, some sociologists have used data from online communities to
show the existence of a non-network growth model for communities and, by extension, for associations.
In this case individuals join because they share a common interest with the community. The new

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relationships individuals form with members of the association subsequently helped to promote a new
identity.

Let's stop playing politics with vaccines

Politically motivated fearmongering about vaccination is putting children in our community in danger.
During the Republican presidential primaries leading up to the 2012 election, former representative
Michelle Bachmann criticized Governor Rick Perry’s mandate for the HPV vaccine, which protects against
a cancer-causing virus. She claimed at the time that she had met parents who believed that the vaccine
gave their daughters “mental retardation.” These statements introduced a new precedent of injecting
issues of vaccine safety into presidential politics. The American Academy of Pediatrics made emphatic
statements at the time to clarify that the HPV vaccine does not cause mental retardation, but by this point
the damage had been done: fear had taken hold in parents’ minds.

In 2015, with the presidential election around the corner and a widespread measles outbreak on our
minds, the dangerous mix of immunization paranoia and politics continues. Senator Rand Paul, physician
and presidential hopeful, claims to have met “many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who
wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,” a statement that is dubious at best. His words
are grounded in a fraudulent study that has long since been retracted and its author now discredited.
Governor Chris Christie has also entered into the debate by stating, “parents need to have some measure
of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.” By employing the
rhetoric of individual rights and a fear of big government, those in public office often attempt to score
cheap political points and win public acceptance. Politicians like Senator Paul and Governor Christie are
brandishing discredited ideas as tenable arguments against clear evidence-based recommendations to
vaccinate, sowing confusion amongst parents.
According to the World Health Organization, measles is a leading cause of death worldwide, despite the
universal availability of a widely researched and safe vaccine against it. The disease killed over 145,000
individuals, most of them children under 5 years of age, in 2013. Immunization against diseases like
measles not only protects those that receive the vaccines but also helps to protect those who are not
eligible to receive them, such as young infants and children with deficient immune systems. It is these
children who are also at the highest risk of grave complications ranging from encephalitis to pneumonia,
and depend on the rest of us to protect them.

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It is no secret that vaccination rates across the country are falling. Based on CDC data, the nationwide
measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rate among 19-35 month-olds is 91.9%, down from a rate of
92.3% in 2006. Rates are falling most in Ohio, Missouri, West Virginia, Connecticut and Virginia. More and
more parents will choose to opt out of immunizing their children for fear of side effects, thanks to the
dissemination of groundless claims. In response to the current epidemic, the American Academy of
Pediatrics has released a recent statement once again exhorting parents to vaccinate their children,
reiterating what they have said for decades: the measles vaccine is safe and effective.
We are already burdened with a wide number of celebrities, discredited researchers, and physicians
relying on anecdotes and hearsay who are more than willing to use the vaccine controversy to gain quick
publicity. Politicians should be clear to the public on the proven science of vaccines and should avoid
muddying the waters further. It would be better for the candidates, too: it is widely believed that Michelle
Bachmann lost credibility because of her statements on vaccines in 2008. Senator Paul and Governor
Christie should learn a lesson from her failure and be willing to communicate a clear message to the public:
vaccines are safe and are effective at protecting against dangerous diseases. Unnecessary vaccine
exemptions put our greatest asset – our children – at risk.

Buddhism and pessimism

In the present essay, I understand philosophy as an “immanent practice,” which is found in the work of
the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. This practice is contrary to a philosophy that aims at something
transcendental – beyond or above life. “[T]hought is creation, not will to truth,” writes Deleuze.
Seen in this light, Buddhism is not a philosophy, in the sense that it operates with trans-empirical states
of being: the divine or a God. A Buddhist is one who has woken up or who experiences an enlightened
consciousness. The thinking and practices in Buddhism, therefore, are controlled by will to truth, i.e., by
the demands of this “God” or the reality of an “enlightened consciousness.” On the other hand, a pessimist
claims that suffering is the “immediate object of our life … evil is precisely that which is positive,” as
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer writes. He continues, “… all happiness and satisfaction, is negative, that
is, the mere elimination of a desire and the ending of a pain.” Happiness is the absence of the positive
element, i.e., pain. Thus, pessimism corresponds with Buddhism, since the latter also claims that life is
suffering.

The tragedy is where the pessimist and the Buddhist part. The Buddhist believes that one can find
happiness if one follows the teaching of the Buddha; the pessimist does not share such a belief. However,

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regardless of the similarities and differences, I question the underlying premises of both Buddhism and
pessimism: whether all human beings really seek a predefined meaning; whether the main object of life
really is suffering per se – and, if so, whether this suffering might be overcome by referring to a higher
form of reality. For a simple example, why should the feeling of pain and suffering be more authentic than
the feelings of joy and happiness? The problem is metaphysical. My thesis is that a religion (or a rigid
pessimistic philosophy), in general, is less receptive, less open; that it encourages less vulnerability and
awareness, because of its embedded “will to truth.” Philosopher Deleuze would say, “We write only at the
frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and
transforms the one into the other.” In other words, philosophy as presented here becomes an a posteriori
test of what is in the midst of coming into being.

An immanent philosophy as presented here, therefore, is open to what – at the present moment – is
outside our experience or system of knowledge. It questions its ignorance in order to know more, but it
does not claim that another world exists before it encounters this world. “By and large, it is painful to
think,” says philosopher Arne Næss, which is not the same as saying that life is painful per se. It is painful
to be confronted with one’s ignorance. It is, therefore, through questioning that one moves beyond
pessimism and Buddhism and becomes a philosopher. The philosophical creation begins with inventing a
problem. This questioning is missing in pessimism and Buddhism, because both apparently know what is
true and not true. A true detective does not exclude anything; he remains open to whatever. He questions
what he does not know. Thus, the invention of a problem activates the creation of new solutions. The
mystery is only a mystery due to one’s ignorance. The philosopher (or true detective) questions his or her
ignorance.

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