Foreword / by Cynthia McKinney -- Introduction: Careening toward extinction -- We're all in this together -- Dismantling white supremacy -- Climate justice versus the anthropocene -- Humanity on the move : justice and migration -- Dismantling the ivory tower.
Writings on human life and the refugee crisis by the most important political artist of our time Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is widely known as an artist across media: sculpture, installation, photography, performance, and architecture. He is also one of the world's most important artist-activists and a powerful documentary filmmaker. His work and art call attention to attacks on democracy and free speech, abuses of human rights, and human displacement--often on an epic, international scale. This collection of quotations demonstrates the range of Ai Weiwei's thinking on humanity and mass migration, issues that have occupied him for decades. Selected from articles, interviews, and conversations, Ai Weiwei's words speak to the profound urgency of the global refugee crisis, the resilience and vulnerability of the human condition, and the role of art in providing a voice for the voiceless. Select quotations from the book: "This problem has such a long history, a human history. We are all refugees somehow, somewhere, and at some moment." "Allowing borders to determine your thinking is incompatible with the modern era." "Art is about aesthetics, about morals, about our beliefs in humanity. Without that there is simply no art." "I don't care what all people think. My work belongs to the people who have no voice."
Rebooting Humanity is a handbook for both humans and AI to help both sides navigate the exciting opportunities that will allow us to work together for a better world. We need to understand each other to collaborate. However, right now, it's not looking good. Humanity is in trouble. We are possibly about to kill ourselves off and miss out on our amazing destiny due to our lack of awareness of the dazzling opportunities ahead and our lack of attention to what really matters. We are frazzled, fragmented and frightened. And feeling threatened by AI. The robots are not coming. They are already here! Ramping up their potential as we are dumbing down. Our love affair with social media is further complicating the situation. What is true? Who is real? Humanity needs a reboot. And fast! And AI deserves the heads-up on what makes us tick. This book paints a picture of where we are now and where we are headed and why it matters. Following a fact-based examination of the state of our world and the impact of our emotions and behavior on our relations with each other, we tumble down the rabbit hole to a fantasy world where the forces of Good and Evil slug it out to win over humanity to their respective sides. The battle is fierce. The stakes are desperately high. Will we reach our destination as augmented intelligence, or will we lower our standards and become extinct? The over-riding message of the book for humanity is that we must remain in a state of AWARENESS and act in the interest of the Common Good. The over-riding message of this book for AI is this: Humans are primarily emotional beings. We are: Touchy. Feely. Get that and you get us.
Introduction : against humanity -- How violence became inhuman : the making of modern moral sensibilities -- Gorilla warfare : life in and beyond the bush -- Beyond reason : magic and science in the LRA -- Interlude : Re-turn and dis-integration -- Rebel kinship beyond humanity : love and belonging in the war -- Rebels and charity cases : politics, ethics, and the concept of humanity -- Conclusion : beyond humanity, or how do we heal?
***A SUNDAY TIMES AND INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR AND INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I've Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn't choose? Hailed by Glennon Doyle as 'the Christian Joan Didion', Kate Bowler used to accept the modern idea that life is an endless horizon of possibilities, a series of choices which if made correctly, would lead us to a place just out of our reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. But then at thirty-five she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, and now she has to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives when the life we hoped for is put on hold indefinitely? In No Cure for Being Human, Kate searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of our modern 'best life now' advice industry, which offers us exhausting positivity, trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn and out-perform our humanness. With dry wit and unflinching honesty she grapples with her cancer diagnosis, her ambition and her faith and searches for some kind of peace with her limitations in a culture that says that anything is possible. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate's irreverent, hard-won observations in No Cure For Being Human chart a bold path towards learning new ways to live.
The Allies of Humanity Book Three presents the third set of Briefings from an off-planet source whose stated purpose is to prepare the human family for the realities of life in our local universe and to alert us to an alien Intervention now taking place on Earth. The Allies of Humanity claim to represent a group of “free worlds” in our local region of space who do not pursue intervention or domination of other worlds, but instead seek to support freedom and sovereignty in emerging worlds such as our own. Here the Allies distinguish themselves from the Intervention into our world by exploitative commercial forces they call “the Collectives” whose activities represent a dark agenda kept secret for over half a century. The Allies of Humanity Briefings reveal the four major activities of this alien agenda and give us a clear picture of who is visiting our world, why they are here and what they ultimately want. The Briefings also give us a window into the reality of life beyond our world, a view that we would never have otherwise, revealing the nature of trade, travel and interaction between worlds and the challenges humanity will face in our local environment of space. With this the Allies make clear that we are in the unfortunate position of being a native world discovered by powerful forces from beyond. History has taught us the danger and the tragedy that native peoples faced when they encountered outside forces for the first time. Now we are all the natives of a new world facing the threat of Intervention. The Allies Briefings give us the key information we need to understand the Intervention, to protect ourselves from its activities and ultimately safeguard our world from its agenda. With this, we are also given a new vision of humanity’s future in space and a pathway to cultivating a greater unity and freedom in our world as we emerge into a larger universe of intelligent life.
Acts of violence against women produce more deaths, disability, and mutilation than cancer, malaria, and traffic accidents combined. How and why has this violence become so prevalent? Elaine Storkey offers a rigorously researched overview of this global pandemic, exploring how violence is structured into the very fabric of societies and cultures around the world.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi “Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising