Considers the contributions and contemporary significance of Alan Watts.

Economic games provide models of real-world contexts in which researchers can probe dispositional and structural determinants of intergroup relations. Most intergroup games focus on determinants of aggression between groups and constrain the possibilities for peace. However, paradigms such as the intergroup parochial and universal cooperation game allow for peaceful intergroup relations and can be adapted for the study of peace.

This book is an anthology of commentary and criticism written within the transitional period between Alan Watts' 1973 death and the twenty-first century intellectual horizon. Comprised of 16 essays written and published between 1974 and 1994, with up-to-date introductions from the essayists and other contemporary thinkers, this volume opens a window onto unexplored grounds of Alan Watts' impact within late-twentieth-century discourse - an intermediate space where scholars reoriented their bearings through changing times and emerging academic trends. Offering varied explanations and (...) assessments of Alan Watts, including his influence on the Beat and Hippie generations, and his popularization of Zen Buddhism in America, it tackles unaddressed questions within the milieu of late-twentieth century America from the Reagan Revolution and religious conservatism, to paradigm shifts in Buddhist studies and the rise of post-colonial theory. Contributors' post-mortem analyses and critiques of Watts allow for a thematic rendering of their consonance or dissonance with noted Beat, Hippie, and Zen Buddhism themes of his lifetime. This volume will appeal to scholars and students of humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, the psychology of religion, comparative religion, and American studies. (shrink)

When nature's energies communicate what human beings do not want to hear and when human beings experience the pressures of this communication as reality, they confront discursive practices from nature and in nature. The Peruvian myth of Cavillaca, although a cultural artifact, nevertheless expresses what human beings cannot change or mediate in nature; nature presents grades of reality larger than human constructions of the real.

Over the past couple of decades, both the news media and mainstream literature have been awash with stories of some sort of renascent nationalism and populism. Some citizens have begun to express lack of confidence in core representative institutions, accusing politicians and entrepreneurs of having lost touch with the concerns of ordinary people. They demand protection from transnational economic forces undercutting their access to jobs, wages, and benefits, and in addition, from the threats of terrorism associated with Islamic extremism. In (...) this piece, their questioning of liberal civil rights was reviewed. Efforts at liberal homogenization were examined, and the charge that conservative views trivialize the ethics of universal human care, love and collaboration, which are at the heart of creating enduring peace in the world, was considered. (shrink)

People often appear to conflate anger and disgust, seemingly using expressions of both emotions interchangeably in response to moral violations. Yet, anger and moral disgust differ in their antecedents and consequences. These empirical observations are associated with two broad theoretical perspectives: one describes expressions of moral disgust as metaphors for anger, whereas the other describes moral disgust as functionally distinct from anger. Both accounts have received empirical support from separate and seemingly inconsistent literatures. The present study seeks to resolve this (...) inconsistency by focusing on the different ways moral emotions have been measured. We formalise three theoretical models of moral emotions: one in which expressions of disgust are purely associated with anger (but not physiological disgust), one in which disgust and anger are fully separated and have distinct functions, and an integrative model that accommodates both metaphorical use in language and distinctive function. We test these models on responses to moral violations (four studies; N = 1608). Our results suggest that moral disgust has distinct functions, but that expressions of moral disgust are sometimes used to convey moralistic anger. These findings have implications for the theoretical status and measurement of moral emotions. (shrink)