Showing titles in Society

La presurosa actualidad enfrenta de muy diversas formas a ese gran enemigo que es el aburrimiento: ya sea mediante la hipnosis a manos de una pantalla, el trabajo inagotable, los estados de conciencia alterados o las infinitas formas de entretenimiento a nuestra disposición, se trata ante todo de negarlo, de no aburrirnos nunca, de estar siempre ocupado en algo. No en balde George Steiner consideró a la modernidad como «la supresión sistemática del silencio».

One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance tells the iconic story of a father and son's motorcycle trip across America in the 1960s.

Except most of the ideas that form Western Civilisation are just that—ideas. Taking cues from Greek philosophy and honed in the Enlightenment, certain notions about humanity and human society grew into the tenets we live by, and we haven't questioned them a great deal since. But isn't it time we asked who really benefits from the values at the core of our society? How much truth lies in a science that conjured up 'race'? Who do laws and nations really protect? Why does it feel like time is money? What even is 'art'?

Why are some relationships unstable, while others last a lifetime? Why do the rich keep getting richer, and can it ever be any other way? Why do we make seemingly irrational decisions? For these questions and others, the laws of physics offer new perspectives. Drawing on cutting-edge research and eye-opening insights from quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, chaos and complexity theory, materials science and more, The Art of Physics shows that science offers a rich vocabulary for tackling the chaos, contradictions and unpredictability that often seem to be the hallmarks of daily life.

So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing, rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice and wellbeing, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs and climate.

In this rousing and deeply empathetic book, Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracism Research and Policy Center, shows that when it comes to racism, neutrality is not an option: until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem. Using his extraordinary gifts as a teacher and storyteller, Kendi helps us recognise that everyone is, at times, complicit in racism whether they realise it or not, and by describing with moving humility his own journey from racism to antiracism, he shows us how instead to be a force for good.

Honest happiness and effortless living are possible. You just have to heal from a blame addiction you didn’t know you had. Life is designed to be effortless. It might not seem like it right now, but a deep sense of confidence, freedom, and serenity is attainable regardless of your situation. All you need to do is address ONE habit. One that you didn’t know you had. Anxiety, depression, anger, shame, and guilt are all symptoms of your blame addiction. Spend a month on the BLAME recovery process. Within 30 days…

In an increasingly polarised world, asking better questions in our daily and working lives is a radical shortcut to personal and professional success. It can create space for us to rethink our positions, find answers together and even change our minds for the better.

What is the experience of black men in Britain? With continued conversation around British identity, racism and diversity, there is no better time to explore this question and give black British men a platform to answer it. Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space is that platform. Including essays from top poets, writers, musicians, actors and journalists, this timely and accessible book brings together a selection of powerful reflections exploring the black British male experience and what it really means to reclaim and hold space in the landscape of our society.

By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects.

For most of human history nature was held to be sacred and our God or gods were believed to be present everywhere in nature. When people in the West began to separate God and nature in the 17th century, it was not just a profound breach with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom and experience: it was also the root of how we have come to plunder the natural world and to promote our individual selves in unhealthy and destructive ways. Karen Armstrong argues that if we want to avert the looming environmental catastrophe, it is not enough to change our behaviour.

We all notice when the poor get poorer: when there are more rough sleepers and food bank queues start to grow. But if the rich become richer, there is nothing much to see in public and, for most of us, daily life doesn't change. Or at least, not immediately. In this astonishing, eye-opening intervention, world-leading philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns exposes the true extent of our wealth problem, which has spent the past fifty years silently spiralling out of control.

Philosophy has always been dangerous for philosophers; Friedrich Nietzsche made it dangerous for everyone. His ideas presaged a collective madness which was to ravage Europe throughout the first half of the 20th century, drawing a chilling parallel with the insanity that gripped Nietzsche towards the end of his life. His philosophy is one of aphorisms and penetrating psychological insights, his major concept being the Will to Power - a notion that he saw as the basic impulse for all our acts.

Throughout history, and in numerous forward-thinking communities around the world today, great minds and pioneering spirits have sought and often succeeded at alternative ways of living. Some of these experiments burned brightly and briefly; others are living proof of what is possible. One of those startlingly rare books that upends our assumptions and raises our sights, Everyday Utopia gathers inspiring examples into a radically hopeful vision of how to build more contented and connected societies, as well as a practical guide to what we all can do to live the good life every day.

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.

Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed to challenge the logic of Western society? In this probing volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields.

As a diplomat in turbulent 15th-century Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli knew how quickly political fortunes could rise and fall. The Prince, his tough-minded, pragmatic handbook on how power really works, made his name notorious and has remained controversial ever since. How can a leader be strong and decisive yet still inspire loyalty in his followers? When is it necessary to break the rules? Is it better to be feared than loved?

Male entitlement takes many forms. To sex, yes, but more insidiously to admiration, bodily autonomy, knowledge, power, even care. In this urgent intervention, philosopher Kate Manne offers a radical new framework for understanding misogyny. In clear-sighted, powerful prose, she ranges widely across the culture - from the Kavanaugh hearings and 'Cat Person' to Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Warren - to show how the idea that a privileged man is tacitly deemed to be owed something is a pervasive problem.

Critique of Judgement was published in 1790 and is divided into two parts, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and the Critique of Teleological Judgement. Our ‘judgements of taste’, as Kant describes our aesthetic judgements, have both a personal and a universal function: personal, because we have a subjective aesthetic response to the ‘agreeable’, the ‘beautiful’, the ‘sublime’ and the ‘good’; but also there is a ‘universal’ aspect because our aesthetic response has a ’disinterested’ element. This brings under Kant’s spotlight, for example, the concept of beauty and the perception of beauty.

For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She's been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not. Blending intimate stories with the analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue.