THE COLLAPSE OF OLIGARCHIC CAPITALISM AND THE RISE OF REGENERATIVE LEARNING: HOW THE SCIENCE OF ENERGY SYSTEMS CLARIFIES WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY AND WHAT COMES NEXT

We live in a head-spinning, gut-wrenching time of multiplying crises. At home we face outsourced jobs, crumbling cities, underpaid teachers, unaffordable healthcare, endless wars, political corruption, a co-opted corporate media, skyrocketing inequality, and public “austerity” measures whose main purpose is to make tax-breaks for the rich more affordable. Working-class stagnation is producing widespread anxiety, mounting debt, and “despair deaths” from opioid abuse. Fear is fueling populist outrage, along with extremism, authoritarianism, and the conditions for a fascist takeover. Meanwhile, climate change poses an existential threat to humanity itself. All of these calamities spring from the same root cause: an oligarchic capitalism that puts short-term profit for owners over people and planet. While this system seems immutable, upheavals from Occupy Wall Street to the rise of right-wing populism signal a backlash to a political–economic establishment that treats people and planet as resources to be pillaged and expenses to be minimized. Its failures have also been driving the development of new possibilities in the form of more systemic approaches. Still, while systems thinking has improved approaches in fields from agriculture to medicine, so far none of these reforms have been able to channel public frustration into true transformation because none addresses the root problem: oligarchy. The science of systemic vitality we need is also being born, but so far, its findings are diffuse. This article shows how the science of energy systems can galvanize today’s economic reformation by articulating the common sense rules and rigorous measures of systemic vitality, while anchoring them in an evidence-based vision of humanity as a collaborative learning species. The result is a practical path to building systemic socioeconomic vitality by revitalizing human networks, energizing collective learning, and clarifying why oligarchic capitalism is a distortion of our original democratic free-enterprise dream, which is now careening toward collapse.     

IN PRAISE OF FOLLY? THEOLOGY AND THE UNIVERSITY

To suppose the possibility of dialogue between theology and science is to suppose that theology is an intellectually worthy partner to engage in dialogue with science. The status of theology as a discipline, however, remains contested, one sign of which is the absence of theology from the university. I argue that a healthy theology‐science dialogue would benefit from the presence of theology as an academic discipline in the university. Theology and theologians would benefit from the much closer contact with university disciplines, including the sciences. The university and the sciences would benefit from the presence of theology, providing a department of ultimate concern, where big questions may be asked and ideologies critiqued. A university theology would need to meet standards of academic integrity.     

“FROM THE UTTER DEPTH OF DEGRADATION TO THE APOGEE OF BLISS”: THE GENDERINGS OF DIASPORIC ZIONISM AND JEWISH HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

This article examines some of the memories of the Holocaust produced in Holocaust education in a selection of Jewish high schools in Melbourne and New York at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is being suggested here that the narratives about the Holocaust being taught in these schools are in part shaped by a gendered Zionist outlook. This article takes up the question of why this is, and in doing so provides an explanation of these types of narratives. In particular, this article explores the ways that this pedagogy places the story of the creation of the sovereign Jewish State of Israel at the end of a unit of study on the Holocaust, thus linking these two “events” in an important way. This article also explores what it is that makes these narratives gendered, and what work such narratives, and collective memories, do in the formulation of particular notions of diasporic Zionist thinking.     

GOD OF THE GAPS OR THE GOD OF “DESIGN AND DOMINION”? RE-VISITING NEWTON'S THEOLOGY

Starting with Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton's theology has often been caricatured as putting forward a “God of the gaps” argument for God's existence and continued involvement in the world. Peter Harrison has pointed out that this characterization of Newton's theology is “not entirely clear.” A closer look at Newton's letters and the drafts to the Opticks reveals that, rather than arguing God's providential ordering and care over the world, he takes these for granted and is reluctant to specify instances of this order and care based on his physical research. He certainly believes in gaps in mechanical causes but is more eager to fill those gaps with nonmechanical natural causes than with God. Further, his system does not exhibit the two most prevalent weaknesses attributed to “God of the gaps” theologies: (1) that by describing God as intervening in natural causes his skill as a designer is maligned and (2) that by describing the physical details of God's involvement in the world one puts too much weight on theories likely to be replaced as science advances. Newton avoids the former weakness because it is only God's masterfulness as designer that he ties in any way to his theories of the physical world. He avoids the latter because he never points to God as the direct cause of any specific physical processes. Newton hoped that his system would cause his readers to marvel not only at God's providence but also at humankind's inability to sufficiently understand it.     

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS. GENDER, ‘YOUTH’, AND THE DELHI GANG RAPE CASE OF 2012

Following the Delhi gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandhey in New Delhi and the unprecedented levels of protest that followed, high numbers of young people in the subcontinent and specifically urban India were blamed for sexual violence, while also heralded as a progressive vanguard.¹1 The Justice Verma Commission report that followed the Delhi gang rape described a ‘…?mass of young, prospectless men’ who were blamed for violent assaults of women in urban India. The report further concluded that ‘?…?large scale disempowerment of urban man is lending intensity to a pre-existing culture of sexual violence’. Paradoxically, Justice Verma also praised the young for their political activism following the Delhi gang rape and murder case. Justice Verma specifically praised the Youth Movement, stating that:Much to Learn from the youth, not possible to name everyone who contributed. Even when there was provocation, they did not react and continued to maintain calm. It was the young men who were conscious that this gender inequality has to be done away with.One can see how discourses concerning young urban Indians are fraught with contradictions that gesture to how political leaders want to cease on the energies of young people to support national interests, while also blaming them for their insecurity within a neoliberal economy. In this piece, I discuss the paradoxical discourses that surround the Delhi gang rape and the unprecedented levels of protest that followed in relation to global austerity and anxieties concerning youth. While ‘idle young men’ are blamed for sexual violence and ‘young’ women are subject to paternalistic protectionism, I suggest that gendered violence in urban India must be thought of in relation to a wider moment of global recession and austerity. I use the Delhi gang rape case and discursive constructions of ‘youth’ as both deviant and politically progressive to discuss the gendered effects that increased forms of global precarity supports.     

DO FALLIBILIST ACCOUNTS OF THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE UNDERESTIMATE AND ENDANGER SCIENCE?

All fallibilist theories may appear to be defective, because they allegedly underestimate the security of at least some scientific knowledge and thereby leave science less defensible than it otherwise might be. When they call all scientific knowledge conjectural they may seem at first blush to underestimate the superiority of science vis a vis pseudo‐science. Fallibilists apparently fail to account for the fact that science turns theory into facts, because even “facts” are held only provisionally. This impression is false: the relatively secure establishment of facts can be accounted for with a fallibilist view. After theories have been honed through sharp criticism, there is often no reason to doubt some aspects of them. These aspects are what we regard to be factual knowledge, even though these facts are also provisionally accepted as such. We then explain the newly won factual knowledge with deeper theories, which often correct our factual knowledge in spite of its apparent security. Theories of justification add nothing useful to the fallibilists' observation that science finds the best theories because it has the highest standards of criticism. Fallibilist theories today give the best account and defence of science. We may abandon the quest for some kind of assurance that goes beyond the determination that some theory can answer all known objections to it and take up more interesting problems, such as how we can find new objections and how criticism may be improved and made institutionally secure. ¹ 1 I am grateful to Joseph Agassi and an anonymous referee of this journal for comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
     

“THE GOD WITH CLAY”: THE IDEA OF DEEP INCARNATION AND THE INFORMATIONAL UNIVERSE

This article explores the relations between the idea of deep incarnation and scientific ideas of an informational universe, in which mass, energy, and information belong together. It is argued that the cosmic Christologies developed in the vein of Cappadocian theology (fourth century) and the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure (thirteenth century) can be interpreted as precursors of an informational worldview by consistently blending “formative” and “material” aspects of creativity. Reversely, contemporary sciences of information can enlarge the scope of the contemporary view of deep incarnation. I propose three hypotheses for showing how and why. First, mass, energy, and information have an equal causal importance for explaining reality. Second, just as transformation presupposes communication, so communication presupposes information. Third, contemporary science can elucidate seminal concerns of the idea of deep incarnation, insofar as informational structures pave the way for information capture, communication, and transformation. At the level of organismic life, new features of embodied cognition and emotion come up, important for understanding the organismic depth of the concrete incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth.     

IS THE UNIVERSE OPEN FOR SURPRISE? PENTECOSTAL ONTOLOGY AND THE SPIRIT OF NATURALISM

Given the enchanted worldview of pentecost‐alism, what possibility is there for a uniquely pentecostal intervention in the science‐theology dialogue? By asserting the centrality of the miraculous and the fantastic, and being fundamentally committed to a universe open to surprise, does not pentecostalism forfeit admission to the conversation? I argue for a distinctly pentecostal contribution to the dialogue that is critical of regnant naturalistic paradigms but also of a naive supernaturalism. I argue that implicit in the pentecostal social imaginary is a distinct conception of nature that is amenable to science but in conflict with naturalism.     

ARE ANIMALS MORAL? A THEOLOGICAL APPRAISAL OF THE EVOLUTION OF VICE AND VIRTUE

I discuss controversial claims about the status of non‐human animals as moral beings in relation to philosophical claims to the contrary. I address questions about the ontology of animals rather than ethical approaches as to how humans need to treat other animals through notions of, for example, animal rights. I explore the evolutionary origins of behavior that can be considered vices or virtues and suggest that Thomas Aquinas is closer to Darwin's view on nonhuman animals than we might suppose. An appreciation of the complexity of the emotional lives of social animals and their cooperative behaviors in light of the work of animal ethologists such as Frans de Waal and Marc Bekoff suggests that social animals can be considered moral in their own terms. I discuss the charge of anthropomorphism, drawing on the work of archaeologist Steven Mithen, and consider arguments for the evolution of conscience in the work of anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Only the biological basis for the development of conscience and religion has evolved in nonhuman animals, and this should not be confused with sophisticated moral systems of analysis or particular religious beliefs found in the human community.     

WHO DESIRES THE RHINOCEROS? PROSAIC POETICAL AND MNEMONIC VISUAL REFRACTIONS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WAKE OF OPERATION BLUE STAR

This paper seeks to bring together artistic and poetic productions as sites of historical memory wherein forgetting and remembering occur so as to forge dominant narratives as well as resistance and alterity through their mutual relation to the modern postcolonial technocratic state. Twenty-five years have passed since the armed altercation between a group of so-called ‘Sikh Separatists’ and the Indian Military within the confines of the Golden Temple, Amritsar, in Panjab. This watershed moment signalled a shift in the typically amicable relations between nationalist Hindus and Sikhs. It also led to a decade-long ordeal of reckless, unmitigated violence and torture of ‘men with beards’ being taken categorically to represent a national threat. I posit that art and poetry serve as a sites where the cathexis of Sikh desires are continually projected upon an imaginal canvas; it is here that the longing for a form of sovereignty in relation to the nation-state may potentially and partially begin to be engaged. This paper examines a small number of such emanations as latent resurrections of sublimated desires that challenge subjectivity as limited solely to a single purview but is rather mitigated through a process of altercation, contestation, continuation and re-association.     

THE ‘VOLATILE’ MARXIAN CONCEPT OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT

The thesis of this paper is that even some of the most fundamental concepts of Marxism have been used and abused to fit their advocates' purposes. More specifically, the interpretation of the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" has been subject to a dual development. First, the dictatorship of the proletariat has come to denote an increasingly violent regime. Second, the term has been used to refer to a rule exercised by an ever smaller segment of society. This paper seeks to analyze and elucidate this much disputed and frequently misunderstood Marxist concept. In the first part Marx's use of the term is examined. The second section explores how the same concept was explicated in the writings of some of the most important first generation Marxist thinkers and "practitioners" like Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Stalin. Following the summary of my findings I attempt to formulate some meaningful generalizations about the usage of the concept by Marxist thinkers.     

THE CONFLICTING LOYALTIES OF STATISM AND GLOBALISM: CAN GLOBAL DEMOCRACY RESOLVE THE LIBERAL CONUNDRUM?

Abstract: The cosmopolitan ideal of liberal universalism seems to be at odds with liberalism's insistence on national borders for liberal democratic communities, creating disparate standards of distributive justice for insiders and outsiders. The liberal's dilemma on the question of cosmopolitan justice would seem to be an extension of this broader conundrum of conflicting loyalties of statism and globalism. The challenge for liberalism, then, seems to be to show how the practices of exclusive membership embody the principle of moral equality. While discerning a variety of liberal reasons to give some scope to the claim that statism and globalism need not be an irreconcilable dilemma within liberalism, the essay argues that these reasons fail to provide a satisfactory resolution. Instead, the essay points out, global democracy can be the direction for both a statist and a cosmopolitan liberal, and the two camps a case not of conflicting loyalties but of multiple loyalties.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ABSENTEEISM AND TURNOVER: A FUNCTION OF THE MEASURES?

Several investigations have examined the relationship between absenteeism and turnover. These behaviors have been variously found to be correlated positively, negatively, or not at all. The present investigation studied this relationship using multiple measures of both absenteeism and turnover. The findings showed that different types of relationships were present depending on the measures used. A search for invariant relationships, using mutually exclusive models, does not seem useful. The absenteeism-turnover relationship appears to be a variable process over time, people, situations, and measures.     

GUILT AND THE SCIENCE OF EMOTION: HOW DOES PRAYER FIT?

This article engages sources regarding evolutionary development of guilt (Richard Joyce's The Evolution of Morality, Jesse Prinz's Gut Reactions, and others) and how they can be used to dialogue with material on the alleviation of guilt in the Christian tradition using examples in the work of Anselm of Canterbury and John Chrysostom. This raises a few key questions. If guilt is an evolutionary trait created to build reputation and relationship, how does this mesh with some theological approaches to solutions for guilt? To be more precise, guilt possibly evolved to create a motivation for beneficial communal actions, and necessitates belief in the authority of the rules that one breaks to induce it. That said, does religion play a role in awareness of one's guilt, while also providing a solution to that guilt? The possibilities are explored in this article as they relate to issues of repentance, atonement, and prayer.     

“JEWISH TRAFFICKING” AND LONDON JEWS IN THE AGE OF MIGRATION

There are excellent accounts of the Jewish response to “trafficking” in women for prostitution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but recent analyses of the white slavery phenomenon have raised new questions. This article concerns the response of Jews in England, and specifically the motivations and activities of those who founded the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW). The JAPGW set the model for initiatives carried out by Jewish communities throughout the British Empire and was a primary contributor to internationalisation of the issue on the part of the League of Nations after the First World War. The JAPGW’s motivations were complex: they involved a particular religious outlook, the response to antisemitism and assumptions along lines of class and gender. In addressing “Jewish trafficking”, Britain’s established Jewish community sought to take ownership of what it meant to be a Jew in British society.     

MİLLİ İNKILAP AND THE THRACE INCIDENTS OF 1934

While anti-Semitism had been manifested in Europe since the Middle Ages, the emergence of the Nazi regime raised that phenomenon to a new level. Some publications supported by Nazi Germany tried to effect public opinion in Turkey regarding “scientific” anti-Semitism. The authors of this study support the view that this ideology has not been able to achieve broad support from the Turkish nation or its government. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism did reach Turkey through foreign publications. The specific anti-Semitic events that occurred in the Thrace Region of Turkey in 1934 and the anti-Semitic Milli ?nk?lap (National Revolution), which had a pivotal role in those events, were inspired by Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, Germany does not seem to have played an active role during the events. This article will examine the issues of the openly anti-Semitic Milli ?nk?lap, published from 1 May 1934 to 1 July 1934 and try to compare the influence of Julius Streicher's infamous Der Stürmer on the ideology and content of Milli ?nk?lap.     

BEING DRIVEN MAD: TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING BORDERLINE AND OTHER DISTURBED STATES OF MIND THROUGH THE USE OF THE COUNTER‐TRANSFERENCE

In this paper material is presented from supervision groups run for nurses and other mental health professionals. The patients presented to the group came from different mental health settings with a diagnosis that included borderline features and/or other disturbed states of mind. All of the patients described caused strong counter‐transference feelings of sympathy, confusion, anger, hopelessness and guilt. Although these views were not expressed in formal ward rounds or recorded in clinical notes, evidence of their influence could be seen in the staff's attitude toward these patients. In supervision groups staff would either say that the patients were victims of mistreatment or they adopted a rather moralistic tone saying, ‘the patient is attention‐seeking’, ‘manipulative’ or ‘not mentally ill’. Psychoanalytic supervision which puts the transference and counter‐transference relationship at the centre of practice can help staff to think about their feelings and digest them in a way that makes use of them as evidence rather than discarding them as purely subjective. It also helps to reduce the toxic effects of the patient's projections upon the clinician's mind and this in turn helps to reduce retaliatory or manic clinical decisions. In this paper I argue that staff teams need time to reflect on their practice in handovers and clinical meetings and that psychoanalytic supervision can offer a particularly valuable clinical perspective on patients with Borderline features. This sort of support should be seen as an essential part of the work of nurses and other mental health professionals rather than an unaffordable luxury.