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"From a Christian point of view, Ephesians 2:3 says that we are all “by nature children of wrath.” God did not create the man as sinful; but man fell into sin and became sinful due to the original sins made by Adam. If one believes that man, himself, is imperfect, how can man build a Utopia?
Dystopia is defined as, “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.” Dystopias are characterized by an overzealous governing body who strives on the inhumanity that it creates. While dystopic societies seem easy to build, Utopian thought always rise from the hearts of individuals living in them. From squalor arises a champion, a champion of the masses. Dystopia actually helps society grow into a more civil peaceful version of itself. It is much a self correcting state of being, as human nature defies a state of misery looking towards new horizons to achieve balance."
"Undeterred by the mess that it created with securitization of mortgages (the Subprime crisis), Wall Street is now working on a new kind of securitization, that of life insurance policies.
The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
... And investors are not interested in healthy people’s policies because they would have to pay those premiums for too long, reducing profits on the investment..."
"Before making large investments in advertising and other marketing, companies seek to identify and segment potential customers. Such knowledge is vital in evaluating market opportunities and differentiating messages, product offerings, media strategies, and even pricing. Today, a community-based approach to segmentation — which is both less expensive and more effective than the traditional methodologies based on customer relationship management (CRM) systems — is becoming possible as consumers flock to the Web.
Ever since the rise of the mainframe, companies have relied on CRM systems for segmentation. These systems slice and dice market and customer data, placing customers and prospects into different “buckets” based on demographic, behavioral, attitudinal, and other insights. Such segmentation enables companies to tailor product development and marketing."
"Neuroanthropology places the brain and nervous system at the center of discussions about human nature, recognizing that much of what makes us distinctive inheres in the size, specialization, and dynamic openness of the human nervous system. By starting with neural physiology and its variability, neuroanthropology situates itself from the beginning in the interaction of nature and culture, the inextricable interweaving of developmental unfolding and evolutionary endowment.
Our brain and nervous system are our cultural organs. While virtually all parts of the human body—skeleton, muscles, joints, guts—bear the stamp of our behavioral variety, our nervous system is especially immature at birth, our brain disproportionately small in relation to its adult size and disproportionately susceptible to cultural sculpting. Compared to other mammals, our first year of life finds our brain developing as if in utero, immersed in language, social interaction, and the material world when other species are still shielded by their mother’s body from this outside world. This immersion means that our ideas about ourselves and how we want to raise our children affect the environmental niche in which our nervous system unfolds, influencing gene expression and developmental processes to the cellular level.
Increasingly, neuroscientists are finding evidence of functional differences in brain activity and architecture between cultural groups, occupations, and individuals with different skill sets. The implication for neuroanthropology is obvious: forms of enculturation, social norms, training regimens, ritual, and patterns of experience shape how our brains work and are structured. But the predominant reason that culture becomes embodied, even though many anthropologists overlook it, is that neuroanatomy inherently makes experience material. Without material change in the brain, learning, memory, maturation, and even trauma could not happen. Neural systems adapt through long-term refinement and remodeling, which leads to deep enculturation. Through systematic change in the nervous system, the human body learns to orchestrate itself as well as it eventually does. Cultural concepts and meanings become anatomy."
"Articles
Keep in touch with contemporary views in Rational and Vedantic thought thru these essays by prominent scholars and philosophers of the day — sometimes controversial but always interesting and thought provoking."
Biographies
These biographies look into the lives and philosophies of some of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known both eastern and western; Vyasa, Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Chaitanya, Saraswati, etc — Pythagoras, Plato, Spinoza, Hegel, Freud, Sagan, etc. Explore what their contributions have been and how they have influenced our concepts of life today. Discover the similarities and differences between the eastern and western minds of the ancient and modern worlds.
"Guy Kawasaki last week wrote an item describing 'ten things you should learn this school year' in which readers were advised to learn how to write five sentence emails, create powerpoint slides, and survive boring meetings. It was, to my view, advice on how to be a business today. My view is that people are worth more than that, that pleasing your boss should be the least of your concerns, and that genuine learning means something more than how to succeed in a business environment...Here, then, is my list...And to educators, I ask, if you are not teaching these things in your classes, why are you not?"
