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Pride is an emotional state deriving positive affect from the perceived value of a person or thing with which the subject has an intimate connection. It may be inwardly or outwardly directed. With a negative connotation pride refers to a foolishly and irrationally corrupt sense of one's personal value, status or accomplishments, used synonymously with hubris. With a positive connotation, pride refers to a content sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, and a fulfilled feeling of belonging. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g. that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others. Some social psychologists identify the nonverbal expression of pride as a means of sending a functional, automatically perceived signal of high social status. In contrast, pride could also be defined as a lowly disagreement with the truth. One definition of pride comes from St. Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence". A similar definition comes from Meher Baba: "Pride is the specific feeling through which egoism manifests." Pride is sometimes viewed as corrupt or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. While some philosophers such as Aristotle (and George Bernard Shaw) consider pride (but not hubris) a profound virtue, some world religions consider pride's fraudulent form a sin, such as is expressed in Proverbs 11:2 of the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, pride is called the root of all evil. When viewed as a virtue, pride in one's abilities is known as virtuous pride, greatness of soul or magnanimity, but when viewed as a vice it is often known to be self-idolatry, sadistic contempt, vanity or vainglory. Pride can also manifest itself as a high opinion of one's nation (national pride), ethnicity (ethnic pride) and sexual identity.

2.9K
02 Nov 2022

Topic Review

A utopia (/juːˈtoʊpiə/ yoo-TOH-pee-ə) is an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The term was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia, which dominates the fictional literature from the 1950s onwards, chiefly because of the impact of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. However, the term can also denote actual experiments in what participants regard as a vastly superior manner of living, generally in what are termed intentional communities. In common parlance it is synonymous with "impossible", "far-fetched", and "deluded". Literary utopias focus on, amongst other things, equality, in such categories as economics, government and justice, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology. Lyman Tower Sargent argues that the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. According to Sargent:

2.9K
08 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Sannyasa (saṃnyāsa) is the life stage of renunciation within the Hindu philosophy of four age-based life stages known as ashramas, with the first three being Brahmacharya (bachelor student), Grihastha (householder) and Vanaprastha (forest dweller, retired). Sannyasa is traditionally conceptualized for men or women in late years of their life, but young brahmacharis have had the choice to skip the householder and retirement stages, renounce worldly and materialistic pursuits and dedicate their lives to spiritual pursuits. Sannyasa is a form of asceticism, is marked by renunciation of material desires and prejudices, represented by a state of disinterest and detachment from material life, and has the purpose of spending one's life in peaceful, love-inspired, simple spiritual life. An individual in Sanyasa is known as a Sannyasi (male) or Sannyasini (female) in Hinduism, which in many ways parallel to the Sadhu and Sadhvi traditions of Jain monasticism, the bhikkhus and bhikkhunis of Buddhism and the monk and nun traditions of Christianity, respectively. Sannyasa has historically been a stage of renunciation, ahimsa (non-violence) peaceful and simple life and spiritual pursuit in Indian traditions. However, this has not always been the case. After the invasions and establishment of Muslim rule in India, from the 12th century through the British Raj, parts of the Shaiva and Vaishnava ascetics metamorphosed into a military order, to rebel against persecution, where they developed martial arts, created military strategies, and engaged in guerrilla warfare. These warrior sanyasis (ascetics) played an important role in helping European colonial powers establish themselves in India.

2.9K
08 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Dromomania was a historical psychiatric diagnosis whose primary symptom was uncontrollable urge to walk or wander. Dromomania has also been referred to as travelling fugue. Non-clinically, the term has come to be used to describe a desire for frequent traveling or wanderlust.

2.8K
01 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Enlightenment in Buddhism

The English term enlightenment is the western translation of the abstract noun bodhi, (/ˈboʊdi/; Sanskrit: बोधि; Pali: bodhi), the knowledge or wisdom, or awakened intellect, of a Buddha. The verbal root budh- means "to awaken," and its literal meaning is closer to "awakening." Although the term buddhi is also used in other Indian philosophies and traditions, its most common usage is in the context of Buddhism. The term "enlightenment" was popularised in the Western world through the 19th century translations of Max Müller. It has the western connotation of general insight into transcendental truth or reality. The term is also being used to translate several other Buddhist terms and concepts, which are used to denote (initial) insight (prajna (Sanskrit), wu (Chinese), kensho and satori(Japanese)); knowledge (vidhya); the "blowing out" (Nirvana) of disturbing emotions and desires and the subsequent freedom or release (vimukti); and the attainment of supreme Buddhahood (samyak sam bodhi), as exemplified by Gautama Buddha. What exactly constituted the Buddha's awakening is unknown. It may probably have involved the knowledge that liberation was attained by the combination of mindfulness and dhyāna, applied to the understanding of the arising and ceasing of craving. The relation between dhyana and insight is a core problem in the study of Buddhism, and is one of the fundamentals of Buddhist practice. In the western world the concept of (spiritual) enlightenment has taken on a romantic meaning. It has become synonymous with self-realization and the true self and false self, being regarded as a substantial essence being covered over by social conditioning., , ,

2.8K
28 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Grandfather Paradox

The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past. The name comes from the paradox's description: a person travels to the past and kills their own grandfather before the conception of their father or mother, which prevents the time traveller's existence. Despite its title, the grandfather paradox does not exclusively regard the contradiction of killing one's own grandfather to prevent one's birth. Rather, the paradox regards any action that alters the past, since there is a contradiction whenever the past becomes different from the way it was.

2.7K
18 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Saṅkhāra (Pali; सङ्खार; Sanskrit: संस्कार or saṃskāra) is a term figuring prominently in Buddhism. The word means 'formations' or 'that which has been put together' and 'that which puts together'. In the first (passive) sense, saṅkhāra refers to conditioned phenomena generally but specifically to all mental "dispositions". These are called 'volitional formations' both because they are formed as a result of volition and because they are causes for the arising of future volitional actions. English translations for saṅkhāra in the first sense of the word include 'conditioned things,' 'determinations,' 'fabrications' and 'formations' (or, particularly when referring to mental processes, 'volitional formations'). In the second (active) sense of the word, saṅkhāra refers to karma (sankhara-khandha) that leads to conditioned arising, dependent origination. According to the Vijnanavada school, there are 51 samskaras or mental factors.

2.7K
09 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Relational Theory

In physics and philosophy, a relational theory (or relationism) is a framework to understand reality or a physical system in such a way that the positions and other properties of objects are only meaningful relative to other objects. In a relational spacetime theory, space does not exist unless there are objects in it; nor does time exist without events. The relational view proposes that space is contained in objects and that an object represents within itself relationships to other objects. Space can be defined through the relations among the objects that it contains considering their variations through time. The alternative spatial theory is an absolute theory in which the space exists independently of any objects that can be immersed in it. The relational point of view was advocated in physics by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Ernst Mach (in his Mach's principle). It was rejected by Isaac Newton in his successful description of classical physics. Although Albert Einstein was impressed by Mach's principle, he did not fully incorporate it into his general theory of relativity. Several attempts have been made to formulate a full Machian theory, but most physicists think that none have so far succeeded. For example, see Brans–Dicke theory. Relational quantum mechanics and a relational approach to quantum physics have been independently developed, in analogy with Einstein's special relativity of space and time. Relationist physicists such as John Baez and Carlo Rovelli have criticised the leading unified theory of gravity and quantum mechanics, string theory, as retaining absolute space. Some prefer a developing theory of gravity, loop quantum gravity for its 'backgroundlessness'. A recent synthesis of relational theory, called R-theory, continuing the work of the mathematical biologist Robert Rosen (who developed "relational biology" and "relational complexity" as theories of life) takes a position between the above views. Rosen's theory differed from other relational views in defining fundamental relations in nature (as opposed to merely epistemic relations we might discuss) as information transfers between natural systems and their organization (as expressed in models). R-theory extends the idea of organizational models to nature generally. As interpreted by R-theory, such "modeling relations" describe reality in terms of information relations (encoding and decoding) between measurable existence (expressed as material states and established by efficient behavior) and implicate organization or identity (expressed as formal potential and established by final exemplar), thus capturing all four of Aristotle's causalities within nature (Aristotle defined final cause as immanent from outside of nature). Applied to space-time physics, it claims that space-time is real but established only in relation to existing events, as a formal cause or model for the location of events relative to each other; and in reverse a system of space-time events establishes a template for space-time. R-theory is thus a form of model-dependent realism. It claims to more closely follow the views of Mach, Leibniz, Wheeler and Bohm, suggesting that natural law itself is system-dependent.

2.6K
21 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Inedia (Latin for "fasting") or breatharianism /brɛθˈɛəriənɪzəm/ is the belief that it is possible for a person to live without consuming food. Breatharians claim that food, and in some cases water, are not necessary for survival, and that humans can be sustained solely by prana, the vital life force in Hinduism. According to Ayurveda, sunlight is one of the main sources of prana, and some practitioners believe that it is possible for a person to survive on sunlight alone. The terms breatharianism or inedia may also refer to this philosophy when it is practiced as a lifestyle in place of the usual diet. Breatharianism is considered a deadly pseudoscience by scientists and medical professionals, and several adherents of these practices have died from starvation and dehydration. Though it is common knowledge that biological entities require sustenance to survive, breatharianism continues.

2.5K
25 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Sexual Identity

Sexual identity is how one thinks of oneself in terms of to whom one is romantically or sexually attracted. Sexual identity may also refer to sexual orientation identity, which is when people identify or dis-identify with a sexual orientation or choose not to identify with a sexual orientation. Sexual identity and sexual behavior are closely related to sexual orientation, but they are distinguished, with identity referring to an individual's conception of themselves, behavior referring to actual sexual acts performed by the individual, and sexual orientation referring to romantic or sexual attractions toward persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, to both sexes or more than one gender, or to no one. Historical models of sexual identity have tended to view its formation as a process undergone only by sexual minorities, while more contemporary models view the process as far more universal and attempt to present sexual identity within the larger scope of other major identity theories and processes.

2.5K
25 Oct 2022

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