The Saybrook Forum

Join us for the launch of: Peace Movements World Wide

AHIMSA, the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education, and Saybrook University are proud to present a free public forum featuring some of the leading voices in the global peace movement. 

"Taking stock of peace:  Inspiration from Peace Movements World Wide" launches the recent publication of Peace Movements Worldwide, a three volume anthology of the global peace movement.  Its chapters cover the history, culture, strategies, and successes of the worldwide peace movement, among other topics.

Co-editors Marc Pilisuk, a member of the Human Science faculty at Saybrook university and longtime peace advocate, and UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Michael Nagler, will be joined by some of the peace anthology’s other contributors to discuss the state of the peace movement around the world.

 

Taking stock of peace: Inspiration from Peace Movements Worldwide
Sunday, October 30, 20112:30-5:30pm
Berkeley Society of Friends -
2151 Vine St. in Berkeley

Saybrook Dean bringing support to children suffering from PTSD in Gaza

James Gordon, M.D., Dean of Saybrook University’s College of Mind-Body Medicine, has announced that he will launch a training effort for over 300 health and mental health professionals, community leaders, and educators in Gaza City. 

This training in Mind-Body Medicine techniques is designed to help address the overwhelming mental health needs of children in the Palestinian territories. 

The trainings will be provided by the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, which Dr. Gordon founded and directs. 

The training program focuses on psychological self-care, community building, and spiritual renewal.  Participants will bring what they learn personally and professionally back to the communities they serve to create a sustainable system of psychological self-care and support, and to help alleviate the posttraumatic stress disorder, stress, depression and anxiety that plague Gaza’s children and youth.

During this visit, Dr. Gordon and his CMBM team will meet with their local Israeli and Palestinian leadership teams, including CMBM-trained clinicians and educators, and visit some of the 160 ongoing groups practicing self-care techniques of mind-body medicine.

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Does our "work self" need therapy too?

Anybody who's had to work for a living knows that we have a "work self" that is noticeably different from who we are outside of work. 

Maybe we're more guarded, or more serious;  maybe there are important parts of our lives we don't talk about. 

At Rethinking Complexity, Dennis Rebelo has an interesting post asking about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are at the office.  It's a great piece, work a read.  It also raises the question:  how do we integrate our work selves with who we are the rest of the time?  Do we like it's a seperate person?  Or a costuem?  Or a side of ourselves? 

How do we navigate our professional obligations while maintaining personal integrity?

If you have some thoughts or advice, leave them in the comments section below.

Neuroscience is starting to sound suspiciously like the 21st century's version of phrenology

You know a scientific field has turned into a scientific fad when it says it’s changed EVERYTHING. 

Real scientific breakthroughs of that scope don’t have to announce themselves.  Fake ones do, because evolutionary psychology never produced a lightbulb and “artificial intelligence” never built a car.  They certainly made advances, they contributed, but the wild claims that they would change everything about human society were the lonely mating call of scientists out on a limb.

If your ears are open, you can hear neurobiology making that same sound. 

In this month’s Atlantic, neuroscientist David Eagleman is crowing about the way his field is going to forever change the criminal justice system. Apparently it has proven … or is on the verge of proving … or probably will eventually prove … or could in theory at some point arguably argue … that there is no free will, only differences in biology. 

Eventually, at some point, probably, possibly, maybe … let’s hypothesize … this will have a huge impact on the way we assign blame in criminal cases.

The fact that it hasn’t done so yet is merely an accident of timing.  Science, Eagleman tells us, will come through:  We’ll get those flying cars eventually.  We always have. 

The trouble is that the case he builds is based on two premises – one of which is indisputably true, and one of which is horrifically wrong. 

What's the "true self?" 21st century experts disagree

“To thine own self be true.”

Great advice, Shakespeare, but could you help us a bit with that first part?  What’s a “True self?”

“Experimental philosopher” Joshua Knobe recently wrote a New York Times blog in which he suggested that the true self is whatever one is ideologically disposed to believe it is:  conservatives think it’s the rational self which tames the impulses, liberals think it’s the romantic impulses that chafe at rationality.

A blog in The Economist, meanwhile, responded that the “true self” is in fact an illusory product of evolution:  it’s adaptive if we have “selves” that others can trust, therefore we create the image of selves:

Taking collaboration to the fourth dimension

We used to know what "collaboration" meant.  But in the 21st century we can collaborate "in person," or through chat, or video chat, or through email, or "waves," or 3D avatars in a virtual environment.

Are they all the same thing?  Or does the new technology for collaboration mean new kinds of collaboration? 

Organizational Systems PhD student Jan Spencer has looked at the issue, and has an answer.

Let us know what you think.  Has technology changed the way you work with others?  Is it for the better?

The power of place -- in Cuba

Saybrook OS PhD student Aimee Juarez recently returned from a trip to Cuba -- and has thoughts about how "place" impacts "consciousness."

Read Part 1

Read part 2

 

How have specific places affected you?  Do you think differently in certain spots?  Tell us about it in the comments section below. 

How should we feel about killing a monster?

At the LIOS blog, David Franklin wants to know if celebrating is an appropriate response to the death of Osama bin Laden. 

Do we give ourselves a pat on the back, or do we recognize that we have to take our moral obligation to be better just as seriously in victory? 

Read the post, and tell us what you think.