The thought of contemporary North American theologian and ethicist Wendy Farley is an unflinching clarion call to justice and compassion. Farley invites us to discover ways of embodying the deep compassion capable of resisting pernicious distortions and traumatizing injustices that harm and dehumanize us all. This volume of essays embodies her invitation to awaken as beloved community. And when we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of struggle and despair, Farley reminds us that the powerful longing of hope, at times against (...) all evidence, refuses to give up on seeking justice and wholeness. Compassionate justice, radical hospitality, creative liberation, and deep listening emerge as more than ethical values for Farley; they are expressions of erotic faith, a praxis of faithfulness born of divine desire. These writings explore transformative perspectives and practices that have the capacity to help us recover and author our identity as the "god-bearers" we are. Erotic faith embodies the love-seeking persistence of divine faithfulness necessary to transform us from within; it meets the truth of human harm, vulnerability, and suffering by offering a complex, struggling, unscripted creativity capable of remaking us, and our world, until the beloved community is whole. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration (...) as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

Religious and Ethical Perspectives on Global Migration examines the complicated social ethics of migration in today's world. Editors Elizabeth W. Collier and Charles R. Strain bring the perspectives of an international group of scholars toward a theory of justice and ethical understanding for the nearly two hundred million migrants who have left their homes seeking asylum from political persecution, greater freedom and safety, economic opportunity, or reunion with family members.

BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (...) (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)

I dispute the claim that the disclosure of the life-world by phenomenology is an accomplishment of 'permanent' significance. By briefly reviewing the meaning of the "world" and "life-world" in the writings of Husserl, Gurwitsch, Schutz-Luckmann, Ortega, Heidegger, Jonas, Straus, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, I show that they all treat the world, or rather the affairs which comprise it, as passively present whether viewed as a mental acquisition or as the "Other." But the meaning of the world-as that wherein are met physical (...) demands upon us which must be satisfied if we are to continue living-cannot be considered either as a mental acquisition or as something that is "other" and over against us. A living being as living cannot fail to attend to the agency of the affairs of which the life-world consists, as well as one's own exploring and coping actions. If we are to really speak of life, then we must acknowledge the mutual and reciprocal activities of living beings and world. (shrink)

If within the borders of human life the truth is, as Vico has said, what is made, then the task of a student of human life can be and should be to find out from what human beings have made what manner of makers they are and what sorts of production their circumstance allows.

This essay offers a theoretical analysis of the changes which are taking place in the musical consciousness of listeners in the present phase of society. The author seeks rather to deduce the conditions of musical reception from the present stage of musical production. The first part of the article deals with changes in production as they affect the general consciousness of listeners. Light music is discussed as well as serious music insofar as it reaches the consumer. Changes in reception are (...) revealed in certain characteristics like the cult of the melody, of the voice, of the master violin, and they are tied up with specific economic concepts. Success plays a particularly important role in this connection.The second part is devoted to the retrogression in listening, analyzed psychologically. Docile passivity, imitation of pre-given patterns, and bitter resentment of the „abnormal“ have become characteristic for the listener. The author shows how this retrogression has become concretized in the formation of a „musical child’s language.“Many listeners seek to overcome passivity by a pseudo-activity. The social function of certain types like the jitter-bug, the radio amateur, or the man with a knack for jazz, are discussed.L’article entreprend d’interpréter sous forme d’une esquisse théorique les transformations qu’a subies la conscience musicale des auditeurs dans la phase actuelle de l’évolution sociale.On n’analyse pas psychologiquement les réactions des auditeurs ; mais on prend pour point de départ Tétât de la production, et de celui-ci on déduit celui de la réception.La première partie traite de la transformation de la production dans la mesure où celle-ci atteint la conscience commune des auditeurs. L’auteur considère aussi bien la musique légère que la soi-disant musique sérieuse et les modifications que connaît celle-ci pour parvenir à la consommation.Ces modifications font de la musique un fétiche. On en prend pour exemple le culte des „idées“ musicales, de la voix et des „violons de maître“. Le caractère fétiche de la musique se mesure au succès accumulé.Ensuite, on développe quelques catégories du fétichisme musical : dépravation, arrangement, „divertissement élevé“, idolâtrie de la perfection.Au fétichisme de la musique correspond du côté de l’auditeur une régression de la faculté d’entendre — phénomène qui fait l’objet de la deuxième partie de l’étude. On l’interprète comme l’attitude auditive caractéristique des „régressifs“. Soumission passive, imitation de l’antérieurement donné, fureur contre ce qui sort de la norme — définissent cette attitude, qui s’objective en un langage musical puéril en formation et dont quelques éléments sont esquissés.A cette passivité, de larges groupes d’auditeurs cherchent vainement à échapper par une pseudo-activité. Quelques types de pseudo-activité sont décrits : l’enthousiaste, le bricoleur et le „chic type“. On montre la fonction sociale de ces types.Enfin, on traite des possibilités dialectiques de l’audition du régressif. Une confrontation de l’expérience fondamentale de la musique radicalement neuve avec le mode régressif d’entendre termine l’article. (shrink)

The world appears to conscious creatures in terms of experienced sensory qualities, but science doesn't find sensory experience in that world, only physical objects and properties. I argue that the failure to locate consciousness in the world is a function of our necessarily representational relation to reality as knowers: we won't discover the terms in which reality is represented by us in the world as it appears in those terms. Qualia -- arguably a type of representational content -- will therefore (...) not be found in the physical world as characterized in experience or science. Instead, consciousness constitutes a subjective, representational reality for cognitive systems such as ourselves, and the physical world is a represented objective reality. I suggest that naturalistic approaches to explaining consciousness should acknowledge the non-objectivity of experience, and be constrained by evidence that consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behaviour-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically instantiated mind-systems. I evaluate a variety of current hypotheses about consciousness, and suggest that a mature science of representation may help explain why, perhaps as matter of representational necessity, experience arises as a natural but not objectively discoverable phenomenon. (shrink)

The article consists of four chapters taken from a comprehensive study on Wagner.The first chapter discusses the character of the man Wagner. The author undertakes a social analysis which reveals Wagner to be a bourgeois figure who is no longer able to fulfill the monadological claims of bourgeois society, and who actually deserts to the ruling powers while seemingly in conflict with the society of his day. This analysis is made particularly clear through a study of Wagner's anti-Semitism.The following sections, (...) only excerpts of which appear in the present essay, study the relationship between Wagner’s social character and the technical structure of his works, using concepts such as the conductor- composer and the,,gestural type“ of composition. This approach involves minute analyses of certain essential elements of Wagner's technique : the leitmotif, the infinite („unendliche“) melody, his harmonization and scoring.From the principle of Wagner's instrumentation the author derives the concept of phantasmagoria, which is the subject of the sixth chapter of the larger wrork (reprinted here). Phantasmagoria is defined as the aesthetic phenomenon that tends to hide the mode of its genesis and to appear as „nature“.The seventh and eighth chapters have not been included. They deal with the notion of the music drama as the phantasmagoric form, developed primarily from Wagner's theoretical writings, and with the mythical element in his work. The mythical in Wagner is two-sided, for it seeks to interpret the unconscious and in turn to dissolve the real into the unconscious.The two final chapters are devoted to the philosophy inherent in the works of Wagner and to a philosophical interpretation of his work. Chapter nine discusses the Ring from the standpoint of the betrayal of the revolution by the „rebel“. The canon is given by analysis of Wotan as the unity of Impotent old god and beggar. Chapter ten describes Wagner's pessimism. It shows the fundamental difference between Wagner and Schopenhauer, analyzes the Wagnerian concept of the nil as that of the chimaerical, and concludes by „rescuing“ his nihilism as the form adopted by Utopia in the early period of bourgeois decay.L'article se compose de quatre chapitres extraits d’un vaste travail consacré à Richard Wagner.Le premier chapitre étudie la personnalité de Wagner : son caractère est défini comme étant celui du bourgeois désormais incapable de répondre aux exigences monadologiques de la société bourgeoise. L’apparence d’un conflit avec la société masque la soumission de fait aux puissances établies : c’est ce qui est étudié de près dans l’analyse de l’antisémitisme wagnérien.Les chapitres suivants, desquels la présente publication n’offre que des extraits, établissent d’abord — grâce aux concepts du chef d’orchestre et du mode „gestique“ de la composition — le rapport entre le caractère social de Wagner et la complexité technique de son oeuvre. Viennent ensuite des analyses détaillées de quelques éléments essentiels du mode wagnérien de composition, tels que la technique du leitmotiv, de la mélodie infinie, de l’harmonique et de l’instrumentation.Le concept de la fantasmagorie est déduit du principe de l’instrumentation wagnérienne : voilà le thème central du sixième chapitre que notre texte présente, de nouveau, intégralement. La fantasmagorie est définie comme le phénomène esthétique qui renie le mode de sa production.Les chapitres VII et VIII encore, manquent dans la présente publication. Ils traitent du concept du drame musical en tant que forme fantasmagorique. Ce sont surtout les écrits théoriques de Wagner qui servent à développer ce concept. On en vient à examiner l’élément mythique de l’oeuvre wagnérienne — élément équivoque en ce qu’il tend à interpréter l’inconscient en même temps qu’il voudrait le dissoudre dans un inconscient plus profond encore.Les deux derniers chapitres étudient la philosophie inhérente de Wagner, et tâchent de donner une interprétation philosophique de son oeuvre. Le neuvième chapitre donne une analyse du „Ring“ — la trahison de la révolution par le „rebelle“. Le „canon“ du raisonnement est, ici, la figure de Wotan — à la fois vieux dieu rendu impuissant et mendiant. Le chapitre X décrit le pessimisme wagnérien. Il expose la différence fondamentale entre Wagner et Schopenhauer, la reconstruction méthodique du concept wagnérien du néant montre que ce néant est chimérique. La conclusion est, en quelque sorte, une réhabilitation du nihilisme wagnérien en ce que ce nihilisme fut la forme que revêtit l’utopie au début de la décadence bourgeoise. (shrink)