Altering States

Altering States PDF

Author: Daphne Berdahl

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9780472086177

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Analyzes the social and cultural aspects of transition

Altered States of Consciousness

Altered States of Consciousness PDF

Author: Marc Wittmann

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0262546086

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What altered states of consciousness—the dissolution of feelings of time and self—can tell us about the mystery of consciousness. During extraordinary moments of consciousness—shock, meditative states and sudden mystical revelations, out-of-body experiences, or drug intoxication—our senses of time and self are altered; we may even feel time and self dissolving. These experiences have long been ignored by mainstream science, or considered crazy fantasies. Recent research, however, has located the neural underpinnings of these altered states of mind. In this book, neuropsychologist Marc Wittmann shows how experiences that disturb or widen our everyday understanding of the self can help solve the mystery of consciousness. Wittmann explains that the relationship between consciousness of time and consciousness of self is close; in extreme circumstances, the experiences of space and self intensify and weaken together. He considers the emergence of the self in waking life and dreams; how our sense of time is distorted by extreme situations ranging from terror to mystical enlightenment; the experience of the moment; and the loss of time and self in such disorders as depression, schizophrenia, and epilepsy. Dostoyevsky reported godly bliss during epileptic seizures; neurologists are now investigating the phenomenon of the epileptic aura. Wittmann describes new studies of psychedelics that show how the brain builds consciousness of self and time, and discusses pilot programs that use hallucinogens to treat severe depression, anxiety, and addiction. If we want to understand our consciousness, our subjectivity, Wittmann argues, we must not be afraid to break new ground. Studying altered states of consciousness leads us directly to the heart of the matter: time and self, the foundations of consciousness.

States and Nature

States and Nature PDF

Author: Joshua Busby

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-03-24

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1108832466

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Busby explains how climate change can affect security outcomes, including violent conflict and humanitarian emergencies. Through case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, the book develops a novel argument explaining why climate change leads to especially bad security outcomes in some places but not in others.

Altered States

Altered States PDF

Author: Ken Russell

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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At age thirty-two, there was still no sign of Russell's talent as a movie director--until all these disjointed efforts of his youth fell into place after an unnerving but ultimately successful interview with the BBC for a position with the ground-breaking television film program Monitor. The show made Russell's career. Thirty years and fifty films later, Ken Russell looks back on a life filled with more than its share of highs and lows--a direct consequence of his inability to do anything in moderation. Written in the flowing, intercutting style of his films, this autobiography peels back the layers to explore the core Ken Russell. This is a man not instantly known on the streets as the director of the latest action sequel...but as a playful, sometimes serious, always inventive expander of the cinematic realm.

Outlier States

Outlier States PDF

Author: Robert S. Litwak

Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press / Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2012-07-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781421408118

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Outlier States examines the role of the United States as an enforcer against the development of nuclear weapons in the international community. In the Bush era Iran and North Korea were branded “rogue” states for their flouting of international norms, and changing their regimes was the administration’s goal. The Obama administration has chosen instead to call the countries nuclear “outliers” and has proposed means other than regime change to bring them back into “the community of nations.” Outlier States, the successor to Litwak’s influential Regime Change: U.S. Strategy through the Prism of 9/11 (2007), explores this significant policy adjustment and raises questions about its feasibility and its possible consequences. Do international norms apply only to states’ external behavior, as it might relate, for example, to nuclear proliferation and terrorism, or do they matter no less for states’ internal behavior, as it might affect a population’s human rights? What is the appropriate role for the United States in the process of reintegration? America’s military power remains unmatched, but can the nation any longer shape singlehandedly an increasingly multi-polar international system? What do the precedents set in Iraq and Libya teach us about how current outliers can be integrated into the international community? And perhaps most important, how should the United States respond if outlier regimes eschew integration as a threat to their survival and continue to augment their nuclear capabilities?

Teaching Climate Change in the United States

Teaching Climate Change in the United States PDF

Author: Joseph Henderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-23

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 0429603789

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This book highlights best practices in climate change education through the analysis of a rich collection of case studies that showcase educational programs across the United States. Framed against the political backdrop of a country in which climate change denial presents a significant threat to global action for mitigation and adaptation, each case study examines the various strategies employed by those working in this increasingly challenging sociopolitical environment. Via co-authored chapters written by educational researchers and climate change education practitioners in conversation with one another, a wide range of education programs is represented. These range from traditional institutions such as K-12 schools and universities to the contemporary learning environments of museums and environmental education centres. The role of mass media and community-level educational initiatives is also examined. The authors cover a multitude of topics, including the challenge of multi-stakeholder projects, tensions between indigenous knowledge and scientific research, education for youth activism, and professional learning. By telling stories of success and failure from the field, this book provides climate change researchers and educators with tools to help them navigate increasingly rough and rising waters.

Altered States

Altered States PDF

Author: Andrew P. Cortell

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780739106068

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Challenging dominant assumptions in international relations, Altered States demonstrates that national political institutions change more frequently--and less dramatically--than is commonly thought and with important consequences for the political landscape. Combining theory with solid empirical research--including archival evidence and interviews--the contributors explore the causes and consequences of institutional transformation in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, Russia and the former Soviet Republics, and Cuba. Altered States highlights the dynamic and interactive relationship between national political institutions and reform-minded policy entrepreneurs, a perspective that will interest scholars and policy makers alike.

Cultural Producers In Perilous States

Cultural Producers In Perilous States PDF

Author: George E. Marcus

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1997-03-02

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9780226504391

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Ten innovative interviews explore how producers of documentary media—filmmakers, journalists, and artists—located in societies considered marginal to the high-tech global centers respond to local and international audiences in creating their works. We meet a South African playwright who is shaping a distinctive form of activist journalism; a New Guinean producer who manages several media careers; Polish and German filmmakers developing critical documentaries on compromised new orders; a Columbian artist who provides powerful representations of endemic violence in her society; and writers from Martinique and Argentina with varied careers in the arts, media, and politics who provide tragicomic accounts of the marginal situations of their societies. Cynical, hopeful, ambivalent all at once, these cultural producers in perilous states share a keen awareness of the marginality of their societies in the broader context of global change, and associate integrity in the reporting of local events with a critical politics of representation.

Altering American Consciousness

Altering American Consciousness PDF

Author: Caroline Jean Acker

Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13:

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Virtually every American alive has at some point consumed at least one, and very likely more, consciousness altering drug. Yet, if the use of drugs is a constant in American history, the way they have been perceived has varied extensively. Just as the corrupting cigarettes of the early twentieth century ("coffin nails" to contemporaries) became the glamorous accessory of Hollywood stars and American GIs in the 1940s, only to fall into public disfavor later as an unhealthy and irresponsible habit, the social significance of every drug changes over time. The essays in this volume explore these changes, showing how the identity of any psychoactive substance -- from alcohol and nicotine to cocaine and heroin -- owes as much to its users, their patterns of use, and the cultural context in which the drug is taken, as it owes to the drug's documented physiological effects. Rather than seeing licit drugs and illicit drugs, recreational drugs and medicinal drugs, "hard" drugs and "soft" drugs as mutually exclusive categories, the book challenges readers to consider the ways in which drugs have shifted historically from one category to another. -- From publisher's description.