involves the meaning and role of sex in today’s changing world. To say that we live in an era where the understanding of sex is skewed in favor of a utilitarian and individualized concept, is simply to state the obvious (Woodhead 1997, 98-99). The axiom, “sex is fun” has become the popular slogan that drives sexual activities among the young, as well as the old. And so, whenever the fun disappears, the relationship is brought to an abrupt end and the individuals move on to the next person they…
Many analysts and historians claim that the current era is an era of science. Scientific innovation occurs at an almost startling pace and no ideas are safe from criticism. With this context in mind, it is sometimes hard to grasp the fact that until recently, human inspiration was not primarily derived from the possibilities of the future. Instead, it came from tradition. This article will review the works of Andreas Vesalius, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Francis Bacon to explain how their…
In the excerpt Cheating in a Bottom-line Economy from his book The Cheating Culture, David Callahan takes a close look at the changing moral values of workers when they are forced to worry about profit over anything else. When upper management puts the pressure of making money on the workers instead of handling it themselves unintended consequences can happen. For many people, work has taken up most of their lives. Most interact with coworkers more than they see their family. They spend more…
relationships between the spheres of politics and economics. These two concepts can be seen as being linked. However, interconnectedness does not necessarily mean analytical concurrence and the field of PE does not always regard the interconnectedness as an axiom. Moreover, the field of PE is often presented as International Political Economy. Thus, a central question of PE is: Should Political Economy make analytical distinctions between the spheres of politics and economics and the national…
The terms ‘conservation’ and ‘environmentalism’ often bear negative stigmas: images of activists chained to trees and of people engaging in physical conflicts over the practice of whale harvesting sometimes come to mind when we hear words associated with environmental protection. As Christians, we recognize that human life is far more important in the eyes of the Creator than is the life of any other creature, no matter how rare. Yet does this truth immediately release us from responsibility to…
How effective were the Late Qing Reforms of Empress Dowager Cixi in modernizing early 20th century China 1902-1908 INTRODUCTION Empress Dowager Cixi (alternatively Tz’u-his) has traditionally been characterized as a powerful obstacle to reform; promulgating Qing conservatism, Manchu values and neo-Confucianism, and, throughout the second half of the 19th century, stolidly resisting political reform. However, from her return to court in 1902 to her death, a dramatic revolution in Cixi’s approach…
The relationship between Vitalism, and the opposing Mechanism in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries was complex, and often fraught with the confounding effects of religion. Depending on the social and historical context, vitalism has either been radically opposed to accepted Christian teachings, or a very quaint, and somewhat religious pseudo-scientific explanation for biological phenomena. In some sense, it seems as though the very concept of vitalism is analogous to the belief in…
Throughout United States history, slavery, discriminatory laws, and overt institutional racism have forced African Americans to seek alternatives that would empower them to fulfill their highest potential. As a result, the Black Nationalist ideology emerged as a response to the economic exploitation and political abandonment endured by the people of African descent throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Though Black Nationalism developed in the United States it is not a unique…
The World’s Most Centered and Compassionate Spirituality Unveiled! The roots of the Buddhist tradition are humble, akin to many other religions and spiritualities; its fundamental ideals were established by a simple dissatisfied man with a burning desire for greater fulfillment. When the Hindu brahman Prince Siddhartha Gautama embarked on his journey for answers, it took him on the path of two extremes: the life experience he had gleaned from princehood and that of asceticism, the bare minimum…
Time is precious. We are inundated with this message from infancy. Some of the most common axioms in the western world revolve around this idea, such as “time is money” and “a stitch in time saves nine.” Above all though is the belief that we must not waste time. Yet we do, and often. Perhaps the reason the idea is so pervasive is because we don’t heed it. People lose time in so many ways. They lose hours binge watching a television show on Netflix or surfing the internet. More insidiously are…