With growing awareness that the information we get is filtered through human viewpoints, we begin to question what we read, hear, and watch. How do we explain our identification with French suffering and our apparent indifference to Lebanese suffering?
The Politics of Medicalization
There is a continuous expansion of medical jurisdiction on life as conditions and behaviors are medicalized. That is, as medicine is commodified, medicalization involves profit-making medical marketing
The Overseer: On Myths and the Search For Truth
If only certain types of crimes are reported by the media, then there is the mistaken impression that the rates of these reported crimes are rising; not having to do with how the data is gathered and disseminated
Label Me YOUth: On Young People and the Justice System
It is commonly understood that people of all kinds break the law: female, male, white, black, old, young… Yet not all of them are caught, accused, and stigmatized bearing the label of criminal. Not all.
On Emotions and Facts and the Evidence Within
After the Holocaust, the survivors truly believed that when the ‘world’ saw what had happened to them, surely it would never happen again. But it did… There is much work to be done by all of us to make those words a reality.
On Right and Wrong in the Particular Context of an Act
How can we tell what is moral from what is not? Is there something within us that lets us know? Is the difference between right and wrong free from situationism: the particular context of an act?
The Fluidity of Meaning in the Realm of the Social
One important thing to remember is that the meaning of words – what they come to signify – needs to be understood in context. Meaning is always part of specific social and theoretical dynamics that condition the sense we give to words.
Recognizing Fallacies: Freedom of Thought
We would not become who we are by ourselves. It is through the interaction with others – e.g. family, peers, educational and religious institutions – that we are always becoming. In every society, ways of life – e.g. moral standards, sets of laws and knowledge – direct us.
Love Wins: On the Redefinition of Marriage
The recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in the redefinition of marriage is the result of a dynamic cultural, social, historical process of constant redefining and questioning of the way we organize ourselves and co-exist as human beings
On Social Consciousness and the Perception of Difference
Social awareness, indignation, and compassion do not begin in any one’s singular, isolated consciousness. These move toward each one of us from everyone everywhere, gather strength within us and lift us up beyond ourselves.