A family tree is an interesting metaphor. Each new generation inherits something from its ancestors through genetic connections, just like every new branch grows out of the one before it. While each branch is different from the rest, just like any family member is unique, all are linked through the tree trunk to their shared … Continue reading Spreading the Word: Healing Inherited Traumas
Spreading the Word: Philosophy of Art
What can we learn about art from philosophy? What does the concept of 'aesthetics' mean? How can we evaluate art, compare different artworks to each other, and should we do it at all? Philosophers have engaged with the question of beauty for centuries. Earlier this week, I posted a selection of beautiful lines from some … Continue reading Spreading the Word: Philosophy of Art
Spreading the Word: Art of Close Looking
What is visual literacy? What is the value of close looking? In her recent article for Psyche, writer and art historian Grace Linden explores the idea of visual literacy as a skill that needs to be learned (and taught). We do not just see what is out there, fully and objectively. We see what we … Continue reading Spreading the Word: Art of Close Looking
Spreading the Word: Human Search for Meaning and Artificial Intelligence
Can we create a human-like artificial intelligence? It is a profoundly philosophical question before being a purely technical one. If it was just a matter of technological possibility, I suspect we would have done it already. However powerful and advanced, disembodied computation is not the sort of ‘human-like’ intelligence that we - actual living embodied people - … Continue reading Spreading the Word: Human Search for Meaning and Artificial Intelligence
Spreading the Word: What Is Continental Philosophy?
During the 20th century, many things happened. It was a busy century. Among all that busyness, disenchantment with long-lasting traditions, and rapid technological advancement, one divide emerged that still holds strong today - the divide between analytic and continental philosophy. Why did it happen, and what does it mean? Today I share a video by … Continue reading Spreading the Word: What Is Continental Philosophy?
Spreading the Word: What Is Bibliotherapy?
Can books help us heal? The author of this recent article on Psyche shares his experience of bibliotherapy: "Reading books is not just a pleasure: it helps our minds to heal". Here is the link to the article: Reading Books as a Therapy. Enjoy! Keeping up the "Spreading the Word" tradition, I hope to share … Continue reading Spreading the Word: What Is Bibliotherapy?
Spreading the Word: What Is Lived Experience?
People use the expression 'lived experience' with increasing frequency. We usually mean it as the first-person privileged access to a particular way of experiencing something. Usually, this particular way is intertwined with and expressed in various social identity terms. My lived experience as a woman, as a migrant, as an Eastern European, and so on. … Continue reading Spreading the Word: What Is Lived Experience?
Spreading the Word: Being Ashamed Of Your Accent
Immigrants are often ashamed of their accents or feel uncomfortable because of how they sound. Why? Because language is not just a tool, it contains a world of implied social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and presuppositions. In many languages, there is one way of speaking it that is considered 'proper'. I have read and … Continue reading Spreading the Word: Being Ashamed Of Your Accent
Spreading the Word: Deep Reading in the Digital Age
We live in an increasingly digital world where the race for our attention is growing ever faster. Messages, notifications, updates, comments, and on and on and on the eternal scroll goes. This environment influences us even when we don't realise it. Distraction happens also when I do not pick up my phone to check the … Continue reading Spreading the Word: Deep Reading in the Digital Age
Spreading the Word: No Such Thing as Absolute Clarity
Many of us are taught at school that we should know the right answers, that that is a sign of knowledge. As children grow, they learn that society expects certain things of them and that those are the right things. Right answers, right behaviour, right thoughts. And the opposite is, of course, wrong. This approach … Continue reading Spreading the Word: No Such Thing as Absolute Clarity
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