Search results for ""Collective""

This book develops an original theory of group and organizational behavior that cuts across disciplinary lines and illustrates the theory with empirical and historical studies of particular organizations. Applying economic analysis to the subjects of the political scientist, sociologist, and economist, Mancur Olson examines the extent to which the individuals that share a common interest find it in their individual interest to bear the costs of the organizational effort.The theory shows that most organizations produce what the economist calls “public goods”—goods or services that are available to every member, whether or not he has borne any of the costs of providing them. Economists have long understood that defense, law, and order were public goods that could not be marketed to individuals, and that taxation was necessary. They have not, however, taken account of the fact that private as well as governmental organizations produce public goods.The services the labor union provides for the worker it represents, or the benefits a lobby obtains for the group it represents, are public goods: they automatically go to every individual in the group, whether or not he helped bear the costs. It follows that, just as governments require compulsory taxation, many large private organizations require special (and sometimes coercive) devices to obtain the resources they need. This is not true of smaller organizations for, as this book shows, small and large organizations support themselves in entirely different ways. The theory indicates that, though small groups can act to further their interest much more easily than large ones, they will tend to devote too few resources to the satisfaction of their common interests, and that there is a surprising tendency for the “lesser” members of the small group to exploit the “greater” members by making them bear a disproportionate share of the burden of any group action.All of the theory in the book is in Chapter 1; the remaining chapters contain empirical and historical evidence of the theory’s relevance to labor unions, pressure groups, corporations, and Marxian class action.

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This book presents a powerful new argument for how and why the Greek city-states, including their distinctive society and culture, came to be - and why they had the highly unusual and influential form they took. After reviewing early city-state formation, and the economic underpinnings of city-state society, three key chapters examine the way the Greeks developed their unique society. The spear, scroll and pebble encapsulate the book's core ideas. The Spear: city-state Greeks developed a citizen-militia military system that gave relatively equal importance to each citizen-warrior, thereby emboldening the citizen-warriors to demand political rights. The Pebble: the resultant growth of collective political systems of oligarchy and democracy led to thousands of citizens forming the sovereign element of the state; they made political decisions through communal debate and voting. The Scroll: in order for such systems to function, a shared information base had to be created, and this was done by setting up public notices of laws, proposed policies, public meeting agendas, and a host of other information. To access this information, these military and political citizens had to be able to read. Billows examines the spread of schools and literacy throughout the Greek world, showing that the male city-state Greeks formed the world's first-known mass literate society. He concludes by showing that it was the mass-literate nature of the Greek city-state society that explains the remarkable and influential culture the classical Greeks produced.

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Collective action is one of the core mechanisms of social change, and thus of major importance to social scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers. This book brings together recent insights on the social and psychological dynamics of collective action and social change, with contributions from around the world. The key theme in this book is that there is considerable diversity in collective action, and that understanding this diversity facilitates a better understanding of collective action and social change.

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This book helps you to become the leader of your own swarm by building its collective consciousness. A successful swarm business channels the competitive energies of all stakeholders towards collaboration. The journey from homo competitivus to homo collaborensis starts with recruiting and building an intrinsically motivated group of early enthusiasts, the Collaborative Innovation Network. These teams of homo collaborensis combine the four principles of social quantum physics to create collective consciousness: empathy that builds entanglement, and reflection that leads to personal reboot and refocus. Once the team is operational, its collaboration can be tracked and boosted using the "six honest signals of collaboration", patterns of collaboration, which will further increase the performance of the swarm. The six honest signals are central leadership, rotating leadership, balanced contribution, responsiveness, honest sentiment, and shared context. These concepts are illustrated with examples from leading organizations based on decades of research by the author at MIT, ranging from the creation of the Web, Uber and Airbnb to Fortune 500 high tech firms and healthcare organizations.

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How to Make It as a Woman outlines the history of prosopography or group biography, focusing on the all-female collections that took hold in nineteenth-century Britain and America. The queens, nurses, writers, reformers, adventurers, even assassins in these collective female biographies served as models to guide the moral development of young women. But often these famous historical women presented untrustworthy examples.Beginning in the fifteenth century with Christine de Pizan, Alison Booth traces the long tradition of this genre, investigating the varied types and stories most often grouped together in illustrated books designed for entertainment and instruction. She claims that these group biographies have been instrumental in constructing modern subjectivities as well as relations among classes, races, and nations.From Joan of Arc to Virginia Woolf, Booth examines a host of models of womanhood—both bad and good. Incorporating a bibliography that includes more than 900 all-female collections published in English between 1830 and 1940, Booth uses collective biographies to decode the varied advice on how to make it as a woman.

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The third decade of the 21st century brings new and expansive global sustainability challenges. Managers, policymakers, academics, citizens, and consumers will have to make seemingly contradictory decisions to accelerate demand, and at the same time promote savings. For this reason, it is necessary to clarify that it is not a process of recovery but of regeneration, adaptation and reprioritization. Regenerative and Sustainable Futures for Latin America and the Caribbean: Collective action for a region with a better tomorrow offers a systematic review of past efforts to recover from global crises providing an analysis of the sustainable development challenges faced by Latin America and the Caribbean. Featuring contributions from researchers in seven different Latin American and Caribbean countries, this volume reflects primary data perspectives from government, business, academe and civil society leaders in each specific country. Regenerative and Sustainable Futures for Latin America and the Caribbean explores how to build sustainable futures for Latin America and the Caribbean, presents recommendations for policy and decision-makers to thrive sustainable futures for Latin America and the Caribbean and reflects on the value of collective action for a region that deserves a better tomorrow.

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence, ICCCI 2022, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in September 2022. The 56 full papers and 10 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 420 submissions. The papers are grouped in topical ​sections on collective intelligence and collective decision-making; deep learning techniques; natural language processing; data minning and machine learning; knowledge engineering and semantic web; computer vision techniques; social networks and intelligent systems; cybersecurity and internet of things; cooperative strategies for decision making and optimization; computational intelligence for digital content understanding; applications for industry 4.0.

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CARL JUNG MADE EASYJung - the Key Ideas is designed to quickly familiarize you with the revolutionary thinking of Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. Explaining Jung's complex ideas in simple terms, and backing it up with references to his own texts, you will learn all the essential concepts, from the collective unconscious to archetypes in dreams. You will learn about Jung's upbringing and the development of his thinking. Discover his early work and influences and how they came to shape his ideological and spiritual development. The intricacies of Jung's complex systems of thought are discussed in a straightforward and jargon-free way with particular focus on his lifelong fascination with the spiritual, the numinous, the inner world and the self-realization of the unconscious. Jung's exploration of mythology, dreams, visions and fantasies, as well as his studies into the journey of the psyche, are all explained, making often complex theories easy to get to grips with and the book also looks at his legacy and how his work and ideas have shaped psychology with many therapists still trained in the Jungian method.

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Essays which state the fundamentals of Jung's psychological system: "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" and "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious," with their original versions in an appendix.

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The Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy is a comprehensive reference text that explores how the social and solidarity economy (SSE) plays a significant role in creating and developing economic activities in alternative ways. In contrast to processes involving commodification, commercialisation, bureaucratisation and corporatisation, the SSE reasserts the place of ethics, social well-being and democratic decision-making in economic activities and governance. Identifying and analysing a myriad of issues and topics associated with the SSE, the Encyclopedia broadens the knowledge base of diverse actors of the SSE, including practitioners, activists and policymakers.Analysing the role of SSE organisations and enterprises in enhancing wellbeing, planetary health and democracy at various levels and their contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the Encyclopedia invaluably summarises knowledge about the key aspects of the SSE. Accomplished researchers depart from traditional nationalistic, Eurocentric and trans-Atlantic perspectives to explain the SSE from a global perspective with a focus on untold stories of its development in both developing and developed countries.A collective work of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on SSE (UNTFSSE), this Encyclopedia will serve as an essential tool for scholars and students of comparative social policy, international economics, management studies and economic sociology.Key Features: 57 entries Clearly organised into thematic sections addressing histories, concepts and theories, actors and organisations, development, and environment and governance Breaks down the complex relationship between economic, social and political dimensions in an accessible way

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A practical resource for those leading Collective Worship in primary schools Collective Worship for Primary Schools contains 50 assembly outlines, each based on a key theme and including an interactive game, a thought for the day, a Bible story, questions, a reflection time, a prayer and a music suggestion. Each school month has been matched to Christian festivals, topics and themes, as well as exploring traditional Christian values, such as caring for the poor and speaking out for others, in the context of school issues. Cultural issues and world focus are also included. An appendix provides a suggested calendar of assemblies to use throughout the Christian year and a list of themes linked to world international days or other significant events for the school year.

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Does your organization support creativity—or squash it?If you read nothing else on cultivating creativity at work, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you ignite the creative spark across your organization.This book will inspire you to: Discover the elements of creativity and learn how to influence them Harness the creative potential of a diverse team Encourage curiosity and experimentation Avoid breakdowns in creative collaboration Overcome the fear that blocks your innate creativity Bring breakthrough ideas to life This collection of articles includes "Reclaim Your Creative Confidence" by Tom Kelley and David Kelley; "How to Kill Creativity" by Teresa Amabile; "How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity" by Ed Catmull; "Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work" by Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus; "Find Innovation Where You Least Expect It" by Tony McCaffrey and Jim Pearson; "The Business Case for Curiosity" by Francesca Gino; "Bring Your Breakthrough Ideas to Life" by Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade; "Collaborating with Creative Peers" by Kimberly D. Elsbach, Brooke Brown-Saracino, and Francis J. Flynn; "Creativity Under the Gun" by Teresa Amabile, Constance Noonan Hadley, and Steven J. Kramer; "Strategy Needs Creativity" by Adam Brandenburger; and "How to Build a Culture of Originality" by Adam Grant.HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

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In this landmark work, NEW YORKER columnist James Surowiecki explores a seemingly counter-intuitive idea that has profound implications. Decisions taken by a large group, even if the individuals within the group aren't smart, are always better than decisions made by small numbers of 'experts'. This seemingly simply notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organised and how nation-states fare. With great erudition, Surowiecki ranges across the disciplines of psychology, economics, statistics and history to show just how this principle operates in the real world. Along the way Surowiecki asks a number of intriguing questions about a subject few of us actually understand - economics. What are prices? How does money work? Why do we have corporations? Does advertising work? His answers, rendered in a delightfully clear prose, demystify daunting prospects. As Surowiecki writes: 'The hero of this book is, in a curious sense, an idea, a hero whose story ends up shedding dramatic new light on the landscapes of business, politics and society'.

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Does your organization support creativity—or squash it?If you read nothing else on cultivating creativity at work, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you ignite the creative spark across your organization.This book will inspire you to: Discover the elements of creativity and learn how to influence them Harness the creative potential of a diverse team Encourage curiosity and experimentation Avoid breakdowns in creative collaboration Overcome the fear that blocks your innate creativity Bring breakthrough ideas to life This collection of articles includes "Reclaim Your Creative Confidence" by Tom Kelley and David Kelley; "How to Kill Creativity" by Teresa Amabile; "How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity" by Ed Catmull; "Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work" by Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus; "Find Innovation Where You Least Expect It" by Tony McCaffrey and Jim Pearson; "The Business Case for Curiosity" by Francesca Gino; "Bring Your Breakthrough Ideas to Life" by Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade; "Collaborating with Creative Peers" by Kimberly D. Elsbach, Brooke Brown-Saracino, and Francis J. Flynn; "Creativity Under the Gun" by Teresa Amabile, Constance Noonan Hadley, and Steven J. Kramer; "Strategy Needs Creativity" by Adam Brandenburger; and "How to Build a Culture of Originality" by Adam Grant.HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

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With a theoretical trajectory beginning in efforts to combine Marxism and Indianism, then developed in reaction to the neoliberal turn of the 1980s and in contact with the mass social movements of recent years, Garcia Linera's Plebeian Power can be read as both an evolving analysis of Bolivian reality through periods of great social change, and as an intellectual biography of the author himself. Informed by such thinkers as Marx, Bourdieu and Ren Zavaleta, Garcia Linera reflects on the nature of the state, class and indigenous identity and their relevance to social struggles.

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In 2002, the national spotlight fell on Boston’s archdiocese, where decades of rampant sexual misconduct from priests—and the church’s systematic cover-ups—were exposed by reporters from the Boston Globe. The sordid and tragic stories of abuse and secrecy led many to leave the church outright and others to rekindle their faith and deny any suggestions of institutional wrongdoing. But a number of Catholics vowed to find a middle ground between these two extremes: keeping their faith while simultaneously working to change the church for the better.Beyond Betrayal charts a nationwide identity shift through the story of one chapter of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), an organization founded in the scandal’s aftermath. VOTF had three goals: helping survivors of abuse; supporting priests who were either innocent or took risky public stands against the wrongdoers; and pursuing a broad set of structural changes in the church. Patricia Ewick and Marc W. Steinberg follow two years in the life of one of the longest-lived and most active chapters of VOTF, whose thwarted early efforts at ecclesiastical reform led them to realize that before they could change the Catholic Church, they had to change themselves. The shaping of their collective identity is at the heart of Beyond Betrayal, an ethnographic portrait of how one group reimagined their place within an institutional order and forged new ideas of faith in the wake of widespread distrust.

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This resource aims to introduce, explain and explore the Christian faith, providing familiarity with the Bible story and context for widely used references in popular culture such as David and Goliath, the great flood or the good Samaritan. It covers 36 key Bible passages in a year, each accompanied by a readable, ready-prepared thought for the day, including interactive questions, a prayer and a song suggestion. Each assembly offers a choice of traditional and contemporary versions of the Bible and of classic and modern Christian prayers to suit the school's preference.

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This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Pervasive Knowledge and Collective Intelligence on Web and Social Media, PerSOM 2022, which was held in Messina, Italy, in November 2022. The 9 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions and present findings of research from the fields of pervasive computing, web, and social media to promote ideas and practices about pervasive knowledge and collective intelligence in this fields. The conference targeted a wide variety of topics including new perspectives in social theories, complex networks, data science, knowledge management, web and social media.

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As a leader, it's your job to extract maximum talent, energy, knowledge, and innovation from your customers and employees. But how? In The Social Organization, two of Gartner's lead analysts strongly advocate exploiting social technology. The authors share insights from their study of successes and failures at more than four hundred organizations that have used social technologies to foster--and capitalize on--customers' and employees' collective efforts. But the new social technology landscape isn't about the technology. It's about building communities, fostering new ways of collaborating, and guiding these efforts to achieve a purpose. To that end, the authors identify the core disciplines managers must master to translate community collaboration into otherwise impossible results: * Vision: defining a compelling vision of progress toward a highly collaborative organization. * Strategy: taking community collaboration from risky and random success to measurable business value. * Purpose: rallying people around a clear purpose, not just providing technology. * Launch: creating a collaborative environment and gaining adoption. * Guide: participating in and influencing communities without stifling collaboration. * Adapt: responding creatively to change in order to better support community collaboration. The Social Organization highlights the benefits and challenges of using social technology to tap the power of people, revealing what managers must do to make collaboration a source of enduring competitive advantage.

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A powerful and practical guide to help you navigate racism, challenge privilege, manage stress and trauma, and begin to heal. Healing from racism is a journey that often involves reliving trauma and experiencing feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety. This journey can be a bumpy ride, and before we begin healing, we need to gain an understanding of the role history plays in racial/ethnic myths and stereotypes. In so many ways, to heal from racism, you must re-educate yourself and unlearn the processes of racism. This book can help guide you. The Racial Healing Handbook offers practical tools to help you navigate daily and past experiences of racism, challenge internalized negative messages and privileges, and handle feelings of stress and shame. You'll also learn to develop a profound racial consciousness and conscientiousness, and heal from grief and trauma. Most importantly, you'll discover the building blocks to creating a community of healing in a world still filled with racial microaggressions and discrimination. This book is not just about ending racial harm--it is about racial liberation. This journey is one that we must take together. It promises the possibility of moving through this pain and grief to experience the hope, resilience, and freedom that helps you not only self-actualize, but also makes the world a better place.

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Large scale changes in work and education are a key feature of contemporary global transformations, with a pervasive politics that affects people’s experiences of workplaces and learning spaces.This thought-provoking book uses empirical research to question prevailing debates surrounding compliance at work, education and lifelong learning, and emphasises the importance of debate and dissent within the current terms and conditions of work. Examining a number of types of work, including teaching, nursing and social work, through a transnational research space, the contributors investigate how disturbances in work both constrain and enable collective identities in practical politics. Structured around three main themes, the book covers: Disturbed work: with cases of occupational reform in nursing and vocational teaching in Finland and re-regulating work in Australia Disturbing work: examining contested occupational knowledge in German school to work transitions, paraprofessional healthwork in the UK, social work in Finland, and mobilising professional expertise in US Community College faculty and Australian adult literacy Transforming politics: negotiating an ageing workforce in Germany, young adults moving through identities and careers, building a politics of ‘we’ through a global book project An enlightening collection of international contributions, this book will appeal to all postgraduate students, researchers and policy makers, in education, work, and lifelong learning.

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A history of the women at the center of Chicago’s dynamic artist-run culture Collective projects are the lifeblood of Chicago’s art scene. Where the Future Came From expands upon previous research by refocusing the narrative around the work of women and women-identified makers from the late 19th century to the present. The book documents a 2018–19 open-source participatory exhibition, symposium and series of accompanying programs at Columbia College Chicago that explored the roles of feminism and intersectionality in approaching this history. In addition to a chronology, transcripts and essays, the book features personal and scholarly accounts of feminist cultural work. With contributions by TJ Boisseau, Estelle Carol, Daisy Yessenia Zamora Centeno, Carol Crandall, Mary Ellen Croteau, Jory Drew, Meg Duguid, Courtney Fink, Luz Magdaleno Flores, Jeffreen M. Hayes, Tempestt Hazel, Joanna Gardner-Huggett, Sam Kirk, Rana Liu, Sharmili Majmudar, Nicole Marroquin, Meida McNeal, Beate Minkovski, Lani Montreal, Neysa Page-Lieberman, Melissa Potter, Amina Ross, Jennifer Scott, Kate Sierzputowski, Jennifer Sova, Gloria Talamantes, Kate Hadley Toftness, Arlene Turner-Crawford and Lynne Warren.

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The present volume originated in session A25b (‘Current Approaches to Collective Burials in the Late European Prehistory’) of the XVII World Congress of the International Union of the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), held in Burgos in September 2014. Collective burials are quite a common feature in Prehistoric Europe, with the gathering of multiple individuals in a shared burial place occurring in different types of burial structures (natural caves, megalithic structures, artificial caves, corbelled-roof tombs, pits, etc.). Such features are generally associated with communities along the agropastoralist transition and fully agricultural societies of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic. For a long time, human skeletal remains exhumed from collective burials were dismissed as valuable sources of information, their studies being limited mostly to morphological assessments and subsequent classification in predefined ‘races’. They currently represent a starting point for diversified, often interdisciplinary, research projects, allowing for a more accurate reconstruction of funerary practices, as well as of palaeobiological and environmental aspects, which are fundamental for the understanding of populations in the Late Prehistory of Europe and of the processes leading to the emergence of agricultural societies in this part of the world. The articles in this volume provide examples of different approaches currently being developed on Prehistoric collective burials of southern Europe, mostly focusing on case studies, but also including contributions of a more methodological scope.

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Technology, politics and entertainment have merged to the point of confusion. Politactics, the third book from the Everyday Analysis collective, is a set of conversations about how to sift through this organized but disordered mess and create a framework which could enact change against political and corporate hegemony. An internationalist collection of essays, articles, responses and letters, the book argues that we need a 'politactical' mindset in order to develop tactical and practical responses to the situations in which we are politically finding ourselves (in every sense of the phrase).

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In this follow-up to the first volume of Everyday Analysis articles, Why are Animals Funny?, the EDA Collective tracks through an ABC of modern phenomena ordered by analytic theme, widely ranging from Advertising to Language, Sport to Education, Film and TV to Work and Play, and Politics to Comic Universes. Punctuating these phenomenal pieces are illustrations from a range of artists and cartoonists, including Martin Rowson of the London Guardian.

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This is a book about giving people power. It is written in a style that makes community development, adult education and collective action accessible to community workers, adult education tutors and students as well as committed citizens. The author, with extensive experience of adult education and community action, examines how teaching via logical discourse, storytelling, critical thinking - and the linking of the ideas of social theorists such as Freire, Alinsky and Gramsci with community concerns about the changes driven by neoliberal policies - can generate political awareness and collective change. By providing examples of group development processes, listening skills, constructive conversation, question posing, and group focused analyzes of community work problems, the author delivers an understanding of how educators and students can learn effectively together to stimulate insight, combat power structures, assess and realize community needs, manage conflict, generate leadership and work in partnership to implement successful regeneration strategies.

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In 1960, Paul Goodman argued that the Fordist system that treated people as mere cogs in a machine had created a profound unhappiness in young people and in American society as a whole. More than half a century later, professor David Blacker recognizes that decades of neoliberalism have pushed young people beyond unhappiness and into a collective identity crisis. Overall, Americans no longer feel needed to do jobs that had previously anchored them in society and are becoming disconnected and purposeless. The proliferation of new identities, based not on work but on consumption, is symptomatic of neoliberalism and its hyper-commodification and deregulation of everyday life.

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Our world is increasingly sceptical of happy endings. Notions of resistance or alternatives - of hope - seem evermore ill-fated as we resign to a slow and painful descent further into capitalism. However, from a critical position, one that does not shy away from the scale of the horror facing us, we can begin to rethink utopianism, and plot new and speculative pathways for collective escape. Through quiet acts of naysaying to the world, of nihilistic or self-destructive events, or in wider-ranging renegotiations of what’s acceptable and possible at the limits of reason, pessimism revives the possibility for radical change. It calls for a disentanglement from the world and, in so doing, offers a glimpse at the utopian impossible. Against the pernicious machinations of modern-day capitalism and a perverse optimism that sustains it, Disconsolate Dreamers explores the extent to which pessimism is compatible with a radical utopian goal - namely, a collective escape from the misery of modern existence. It shows that, in a thoroughly hopeless world devoid of rational alternatives, it is time for the Left to consider the pessimist a helpful guide out of the somnolence of capitalist realism, revealing how pessimism necessitates a radical revision of utopian alterity.

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It’s widely accepted that Transcendental Meditation (TM) can create peace for the individual, but can it create peace in society as a whole? And if it can, what could possibly be the mechanism? In An Antidote to Violence Barry Spivack and Patricia Saunders examine the peer-reviewed research and suggest that TM can influence the collective consciousness of a society which leads to a decrease in negative social trends, such as a decline in war fatalities, and to an increase in cooperation between nations. Weaving together psychology, sociology, philosophy, statistics, politics, physics and meditation, An Antidote to Violence provides evidence that we have the knowledge to reduce all kinds of violence in society.

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We live at a time when societies are riven with division and strife. What hope is there for us to heal? Healing Social Divisions�provides a radically new, non-ideological and effective consciousness- based approach for transforming our societies. Peer-reviewed research provides evidence that it is possible to neutralise stress in the collective consciousness of a society. This then promotes life, liberty, happiness, heals social divisions and creates the platform for good governance. The research challenges the conventional wisdom that consciousness is only a by-product of brain functioning. Along the route it examines our self-concept, freeing us from the biases of reductionism that impede the development of morality in our public life.

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Woven into his odd, chatty Yelp reviews of restaurants, stores and services, 22-year-old Aspie Marcus Katz chronicles in vivid detail how, after the death of his doting mother, he is railroaded by the Los Angeles probate court into an abusive conservatorship. When his bullying conservator tries to warehouse him in a run-down, dead-end group home, intending to drain his inheritance, Marcus runs away to Oregon, pursued by his conservator, on a risky, ill-advised road trip to meet up with fellow Aspie Durinda, a devoted fan of his now viral Yelp reviews. She lives with others also on the autism spectrum on a collective farm in rural Oregon. It is here that Marcus hopes to make a stand and finally take control of his life.

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Life under capitalism. Rampant debilitating denial for the many next to vile enrichment of the few. Material deprivation, denial, and denigration. Dignity defiled. Michael Albert's book No Bosses advocates for the conception and then organization of a new economy. The vision offered is called participatory economics. It elevates self-management, equity, solidarity, diversity, and sustainability. It eliminates elitist, arrogant, dismissive, authoritarian, exploitation, competition, and homogenization. No Bosses proposes a built and natural productive commons, self-management by all who work, income for how long, how hard, and the onerousness of conditions of socially valued work, jobs that give all economic actors comparable means and inclination to participate in decisions that affect them, and a process called participatory planning in which caring behavior and solidarity are the currency of collective and individual success.

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Looking Back on the Future takes the reader on a mystical journey into the Andean Cosmo-Vision, the ancient teachings of Andean spirituality, and their relevance for our current world. As a bridge to awakening, and our collective evolution, this body of knowledge is timeless and essential in nature, holding keys to guiding our global family back into Ayni (sacred reciprocity), and harmony with each other, the Earth, Stars, and all Life. In this book you will learn about the 7 Saiwas, Universal Laws that lead to the transformation of consciousness and reconnection with our origins. Traditionally, these teachings and transmissions are passed down to the initiate and Paqo, (Masters of the Living Energy), during their training, which is how I received them. I've been given permission by my teachers to bring this timeless wisdom forward, and share these gifts with those ready to anchor the Light of the Golden Age here on Earth. It is my prayer that this book assists you and all beings to attain Unity within and without as we pass through this portal and Shift of the Ages.

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We are facing a failing economy, unstable banking institutions, closing businesses and rampant home repossessions. There is war, crime, environmental damage and general unhappiness. The cause of all our problems is our current financial system, which is wasteful, cruel and brings out the worst in human nature. Money affects the quality of the food we eat, the relationships we pursue or end, the way we treat animals, motivates the destruction of our planet and supports a neo-feudal social structure. There is a viable alternate to our money based economy and only now, with the technology and knowledge we have, can we sweep away the terrible problems of the world by dealing with the cause. All it takes is a collective resolve, a willingness to challenge convention and the maturity to make it happen. This book not only explains the reasons for war, starvation and our sham democracy ignoring our wishes, but reveals how the public can take back control of politics and change society for the better.

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The human imagination gives rise to the most beautiful man-made structures and creations on Earth: architecture, literature, theatre, music, art, humanitarian initiatives, moon landings and space exploration, mythology, science, they all require a large dose of imagination. We all live surrounded by the results of the imagination of our peers, and the creations of our ancestors. Without imagination there is no compassion, no moral compass and no progress. But without imagination there is also no fear of death. There are no premeditated murders or terrorist attacks; these rely on the human ability to imagine, to call up images and test-drive possible scenarios in the human mind. Once we get out the magnifying glass, we discover that the imagination is a double-edged sword. All of us together, humanity as a collective, are creating very confused and mixed outcomes: world peace remains elusive, wars rage and children starve. Addictions and pollution proliferate. Medicine of the Imagination: Dwelling in Possibility examines these issues and suggests that if we are to transcend religious wars, homophobia and medical “cures” worse than the diseases we face then it that it is our moral duty to engage our imagination in service to other people.

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