While never losing sight of the rational, cultured mind, Jung speaks for the natural mind, source of the evolutionary experience and accumulated wisdom of our species. Through his own example, Jung shows how healing our own living connection with Nature contributes to the whole.
In Windows into the Soul, Gary T. Marx sums up a lifetime of work on issues of surveillance and social control by disentangling and parsing the empirical richness of watching and being watched. Ultimately, Marx argues, recognizing complexity and asking the right questions is essential to bringing light and accountability to the darker, more iniquitous corners of our emerging surveillance society.
The subject is the dark side of the Internet and computers and the negative impact they have on individuals and society-- an interesting offering from a computer books publisher (the author is a senior editor at O'Reilly, and the editor is O'Reilly himself). The subject certainly merits plenty of discussion, but Talbott's prose is scattershot. Though he sounds some alarms, he doesn't offer the clear, incisive thinking that is an antidote to the frustration and alienation caused by machines. Maybe those whirling electrons have already done some damage. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
A perennial problem for spiritual traditions of all sorts is dualism—either a positing of a false distance between the Divine and the created or a rejection of creation and the human body. Many contemporary spiritual seekers have sensed this problem and sought to remedy it through myriad solutions drawn from various spiritual traditions and secular wisdom, both Eastern and Western. Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam, explores Christianity’s contribution to the discussion. He offers a revisioning and rearticulation of this teaching, based on the prophetic seminal work of Bede Griffiths, toward a practical and integral spirituality that reverences all aspects of our being human—spirit, soul, and body.
First published in 1652, Thomas Brooks' "Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices" offers insights into the snares and schemes of the devil which are timely and relevant for today. Though centuries have passed since its writing, this timeless classic remains an amazing work of teaching on the thousands of ways Satan seeks to destroy every Christian and the thousands of ways God has provided every Christian to defeat Satan's nefarious schemes. In true Puritan style, this book is a serious tome in which the author minces no words and gets straight to the point. The good news is that, though Satan is vicious in his drive to destroy God's people, he can and must be withstood! As this book explain, God makes victory possible by strengthening His people to overcome the Tempter. An earnest, passionate, and deadly serious author, Brooks spared no effort or source to persuade and plead with his readers. His method is to lead off with one of Satan's devices (some lie that Satan seeks to impress upon us) and then show the reader various ways to combat that particular device (the remedies). Like other Puritan books of his day, Brook's writing is solidly Biblical. Almost every remedy Brooks offers reminds the reader of some Biblical truth-urging them to think on it, consider, ponder and soak it in. Instead of some magic mantra or special prayer tactic, Brooks simply shines the light of Scriptures on the problems each Christian will face. Brooks was fond of quoting "wise heathens" (such as Zeno and Seneca) in his writing. His willingness to draw from non-Biblical sources is a good example of just how broadminded the Puritans really were, even as they walked the straight and narrow. The free use of Biblical truth from the lips of pagan authors shows a breadth of thinking and outlook often unattributed to Christian authors of such unbending theology and purpose.
Tracy Kidder's "riveting" (Washington Post) story of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech industry. Computers have changed since 1981, when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations. The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the twentieth century. "Fascinating...A surprisingly gripping account of people at work." --Wall Street Journal
These past two decades, modern technology has brought into being scores of powerful challenges to our interior peace and well-being. We’re experiencing a worldwide crisis of attention in which information overwhelms us, corrodes true communion with others, and leaves us anxious, unsettled, bored, isolated, and lonely. These pages provide the time-tested antidote that enables you to regain an ordered and peaceful mind in a technologically advanced world. Drawing on the wisdom of the world’s greatest thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, these pages help you identify – and show you how to cultivate – the qualities of character you need to survive in our media-saturated environment. This book offers a calm, measured, yet forthright and effective approach to regaining interior peace. Here you’ll find no argument for retreat from the modern world; instead these pages provide you with a practical guide to recovering self-mastery and interior peace through wise choices and ordered activity in the midst of the world’s communication chaos. Are you increasingly frustrated and perplexed in this digital age? Do you yearn for a mind that is more focused and a soul able to put down that IPhone and simply rejoice in the good and the true? It’s not hard to do. The saints and the wise can show you how; this book makes their counsel available to you.
If you had time to slow down, you’d notice: You’re more easily distracted lately. You forget the details of your life more often than you used to. You get easily agitated and have trouble resting, even though you’re more tired than you remember ever being. Even your spiritual life is not immune: You struggle to pray, to read the Scriptures, to be still and know that God is God. Welcome to now. Our technology has greatly improved much of our lives, but in the process our brains are being rewired on a daily basis, and our capacity to be centered in our souls, in our lives, is at risk. Brain scientists are aware of this unprecedented change, but the solutions aren’t found in science: They’re found in the ancient practices of the faith. Tricia McCary Rhodes reintroduces us to the classic disciplines of Scripture reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation, not just as technologies to aid our faith but as tools to keep us focused and mindful in an increasingly disorienting digital age.