Author: Richard Heinberg
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1771423579
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Impeccably researched and masterfully written, this book explains how and why humanity is driving itself off the cliff. — Dahr Jamail, author, The End of Ice Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources ― most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it. Has Homo sapiens — one species among millions — become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate? Why have we developed so many ways of oppressing one another? Can we change our relationship with power to avert ecological catastrophe, reduce social inequality, and stave off collapse? These questions — and their answers — will determine our fate.
Author: Claude A. Piantadosi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190290021
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
The range of environments in which people can survive is extensive, yet most of the natural world cannot support human life. The Biology of Human Survival identifies the key determinants of life or death in extreme environments from a physiologist's perspective, integrating modern concepts of stress, tolerance, and adaptation into explanations of life under Nature's most austere conditions. The book examines how individuals survive when faced with extremes of immersion, heat, cold or altitude, emphasizing the body's recognition of stress and the brain's role in optimizing physiological function in order to provide time to escape or to adapt. In illustrating how human biology adapts to extremes, the book also explains how we learn to cope by blending behavior and biology, first by trial and error, then by rigorous scientific observation, and finally by technological innovation. The book describes life-support technology and how it enables humans to enter once unendurable realm, from the depths of the ocean to the upper reaches of the atmosphere and beyond. Finally, it explores the role that advanced technology might play in special environments of the future, such as long journeys into space.
Author: L. Ron Hubbard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788779897472
Category : Scientology
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
Handbook for Preclears follows L Ron Hubbards book Self Analysis. Both books contain easy to do methods of discovering your own mind, and increasing a persons ability to utilise considerably more of his mental potential. Discover why behaviour patterns become so solidly fixed; why habits seemingly cant be broken; how decisions long ago have more power over a person than his decisions today; and why a person keeps past negative experiences in the present.
Author: Brian Hare
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0399590676
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
A powerful new theory of human nature suggests that our secret to success as a species is our unique friendliness “Brilliant, eye-opening, and absolutely inspiring—and a riveting read. Hare and Woods have written the perfect book for our time.”—Cass R. Sunstein, author of How Change Happens and co-author of Nudge For most of the approximately 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have existed, we have shared the planet with at least four other types of humans. All of these were smart, strong, and inventive. But around 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens made a cognitive leap that gave us an edge over other species. What happened? Since Charles Darwin wrote about “evolutionary fitness,” the idea of fitness has been confused with physical strength, tactical brilliance, and aggression. In fact, what made us evolutionarily fit was a remarkable kind of friendliness, a virtuosic ability to coordinate and communicate with others that allowed us to achieve all the cultural and technical marvels in human history. Advancing what they call the “self-domestication theory,” Brian Hare, professor in the department of evolutionary anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University and his wife, Vanessa Woods, a research scientist and award-winning journalist, shed light on the mysterious leap in human cognition that allowed Homo sapiens to thrive. But this gift for friendliness came at a cost. Just as a mother bear is most dangerous around her cubs, we are at our most dangerous when someone we love is threatened by an “outsider.” The threatening outsider is demoted to sub-human, fair game for our worst instincts. Hare’s groundbreaking research, developed in close coordination with Richard Wrangham and Michael Tomasello, giants in the field of cognitive evolution, reveals that the same traits that make us the most tolerant species on the planet also make us the cruelest. Survival of the Friendliest offers us a new way to look at our cultural as well as cognitive evolution and sends a clear message: In order to survive and even to flourish, we need to expand our definition of who belongs.
Author: Arthur Clark
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
ISBN: 1897425686
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
The ABCs of Human Survival examines the effect of militant nationalism and the lawlessness of powerful states on the well-being of individuals, local communities, and global citizenship. Based on the analysis of world events, Dr. Arthur Clark presents militant nationalism as a pathological pattern of thinking that threatens our security, while emphasizing effective democracy and international law as indispensable frameworks for human protection. Within the contexts of history, sociology, philosophy, and spirituality, The ABCs of Human Survival calls into question the assumptions of consumer culture and offers, as an alternative, strategies to improve overall well-being through the important choices we make as individuals.
Author: Carl V. Gisolfi
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262071987
Category : Acclimatization
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
The book traces the story of the brain throughout evolution and shows how the control of body temperature as a survival mechanism was achieved.
Author: Marci Green
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429911033
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
What is it about childhood experiences that influence the kind of adult we become? For John Bowlby and others who developed Attachment theory, much of the answer lies in the quality of early attachments to our primary caregivers. When those attachments are secure, we can develop a safe sense of self. When insecure, we may go on seeking safety throughout our lives, in inappropriate and painful ways. Attachment, argued Bowlby, is a matter for individual and species survival.Using principles pioneered by Bowlby, this volume explores the importance of attachments to individuals and communities. Drawing on the work of leading figures in the field of Attachment research and clinical practice, this book introduces readers to the basic ideas and applications of Attachment theory. Chapters explore, for example, the role of attachment experience in brain development, the cultural and institutional contexts in which attachment systems operate, the political consequences of personal suffering and the uses of Attachment theory in psychotherapy.
Author: Stefan Klein
Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1925113337
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ conjures an image of the most cutthroat individuals rising to the top. But Stefan Klein, author of the international bestseller The Science of Happiness, makes the startling assertion that the key to achieving lasting personal and societal success lies in helping others. Klein argues that altruism is in fact our defining characteristic: natural selection favoured those early humans who cooperated in groups. With their survival more assured, our altruistic ancestors were free to devote brainpower to developing intelligence, language, and culture — our very humanity. As Klein puts it, ‘We humans became first the friendliest and then the most intelligent apes.’ To build his persuasive case for how altruistic behaviour made us human — and why it pays to get along — Klein brings together an extraordinary array of material: current research on genetics and the brain, economics, social psychology, behavioural and anthropological experiments, history, and modern culture. Ultimately, his groundbreaking findings lead him to a vexing question: if we’re really hard-wired to act for one another’s benefit, why aren’t we all getting along? Klein believes we’ve learned to mistrust our generous instincts because success is so often attributed to selfish ambition. In Survival of the Nicest, he invites us to rethink what it means to be the ‘fittest’ as he shows how caring for others can protect us from loneliness and depression, make us happier and healthier, reward us economically, and even extend our lives.
Author: Kevin Corcoran
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801438295
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
How are soul and body related to one another? Are human beings immaterial souls, or complex physical organisms? Will we survive the death of our bodies? Does only the dualist view allow the possibility of life after death? This collection brings together cutting-edge research on the metaphysics of human nature and the possibility of post-mortem survival.Kevin Corcoran's collection, Soul, Body, and Survival, includes chapters from those who embrace traditional soul-body dualism, those who assert person-body identity, and those who propose entirely new views that fall outside the categories of monism and dualism. The first book to connect the metaphysics of persons with the belief in life after death, thus intersecting with theological as well as philosophical inquiry, it blurs the divide between metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.
Author: Michael Brown
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781916446045
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 586
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Book Description
Humanity faces a crisis unprecedented in biological history which will prove catastrophic unless wemake radical changes. It arises from profound incompatibility between our evolutionary background and our socially disconnected, modern life. Modern humans inherit instincts that promoted survival for pre-human apes living with their leaders in small, close groups of about forty in trees. We share these instincts, along with the human impulses towards altruism, empathy, art, sculpture, poetry, music and dance. However, we commonly no longer live in close groups in trees, but in cities of huge populations, typically disconnected from those who lead us. Worldwide, we need to find ways to come together, to recognise and control basic instincts, notably regarding territory, fear of the foreign, including the foreignness of the other gender, and 'alpha' males. Worldwide, we must encourage expression of the human instincts of art, sculpture, poetry, music and dance in every walk of life, and live in ways that foster empathy and altruism. Worldwide we need to learn from the insights of the original cultural and religious sages, rather than edicts from the later corporate institutions emphasising institutional survival. Paradoxically, in our modern world and in defiance of these sages, these edicts serve to protect the religious institution at huge risk to the survival of humanity.
