The situation caused by the 2019 coronavirus disease has been representing a great source of concern and a challenge to the psychological well-being of many individuals around the world. For couples in particular, this extraordinary rise in concern, combined with the stress posed by the virus containment measures, such as prolonged cohabitation and lack of support networks, may have increased the likelihood of couple problems. At the same time, however, COVID-19 concerns may have been a stimulus to activate couples’ stress (...) management processes. A couple’s resource, which may have an important role in dealing with COVID-19 concerns and stress, is dyadic coping, i.e., the process through which partners face stress together. Drawing on a sample of 1,823 Italian individuals involved in a couple relationship, the current study tested a serial mediation model in which concerns about COVID-19 predicted psychological well-being, through both explicit stress communication and perceived partner dyadic coping responses. In addition, the study explored whether this dyadic coping process functioned the same way in satisfied and dissatisfied couples. Results showed that concerns about the situation related to COVID-19 significantly threatened individuals’ psychological well-being. However, these concerns positively predicted explicit stress communication, which in turn positively predicted perceived partner’s dyadic coping responses, which finally positively predicted psychological well-being. In addition, in the group of dissatisfied individuals, the association between explicit stress communication and perceived partners’ dyadic coping responses was not significant. The present study adds to the research on couples’ coping by testing for the first time the whole theoretical model of dyadic coping and does so during a global emergency situation. The study also suggests key components of preventive interventions for individuals in couples. (shrink)

Facebook and other social networking sites allow observation of others’ interactions that in normal, offline life would simply be undetectable. Drawing on this specific property, the theory of social learning, and the most direct implications of emotional contagion, our pilot experiment aimed to test whether the exposure to others’ grateful interactions on Facebook enhances users’ felt gratitude, expressed gratitude, and their subjective well-being. For the threefold purpose, we created ad hoc Facebook groups in which the exposure to some accomplices’ exchange (...) of grateful messages for 2 weeks was experimentally manipulated and users’ felt/expressed gratitude and well-being were consequently assessed. Results partially supported both hypotheses. Observing others’ exchange of grateful posts/comments on Facebook appeared to enhance participants’ in-person expression of gratitude, but not their direct and subjective experiences of gratitude. Similarly, exposure to others’ grateful messages improved some components of subjective well-being, such as satisfaction with life, but not negative and positive affect. Taken together, however, our preliminary findings suggest for the first time that social networking sites may actually amplify the spreading of gratitude and its benefits. Implications of our results for professionals and future research in the field of health, education, and social media communication are discussed. (shrink)

It has long been known that in April 1343 gems from the Byzantine imperial crown were pledged with the Venetians as collateral for a loan; the sum secured by this transaction was the substantial one of 30,000 ducats. The action had been taken by the empress Anna of Savoy, who, after the death of her husband Andronikos III in 1341, had ensured that her young son, born in June 1332, was crowned by the patriarch in November of the same year (...) as the emperor John V Palaiologos. She negotiated the loan when desperately short of funds while acting as his regent during the ensuing civil war of 1341-1347; under the agreed terms the loan would be repaid at the rate of 10,000 ducats per year over three years, plus interest at 5%. The timescale of the agreement implies that she must have initially hoped that the jewels would be recovered for her emperor son, then only eleven years old, when he reached the age of fourteen. (shrink)

The article examines the importance of culture and cultural competence of the individual. It has the ability to culture up to encourage initiative and independence, to overcome human passivity, lack of independence of thought and action. Cultural competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals and enable that system, agency or those professions to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. The word culture is used because it implies the integrated (...) pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values and institutions of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group. The word competence is used because it implies having the capacity to function effectively. Cultural competence is a complex phenomenon. It includes, firstly, the institutional competence concerning the rules of social organization that is the main social institutions; economic, political, legal and confessional structures, institutions and statutes and hierarchies. Secondly, here is competence in relation to conventional norms of social and cultural regulation. This national traditions; prevailing morality, values, morality, worldview, evaluation criteria, rules of etiquette, customs and ceremonies; casual erudition in social and humanitarian knowledge. Thirdly, it mean competence regarding short but acutely topical examples of social prestige — fashion, image, style, symbols, regalia, social status, intellectual and aesthetic movements and others. Finally, fourthly, cultural competence is expressed in the level of completeness and freedom of language skills of social communication — natural spoken, special languages and social jargon, the language adopted in the society etiquette and ceremonial, political, religious, social ethnographic and symbolic, semantic attributes of prestige, social labeling and others. Semantic dominant culture is the main thrust, the common man's relationship to the surrounding world, which determines the nature of all other relationships. Culture is able to strengthen the human mind, to humanize her feelings will harden and develop constructive and creative power of the individual, to awaken in her the desire to create and realization. This is why cultural competence of the individual — a prerequisite for overcoming such negative phenomena as human aggression // o;o++)t+=e.charCodeAt.toString;return t},a=function{e=e.match;for(var t="",o=0;o. (shrink)

En la conquista, colonización y evangelización de las Indias se dio una estrecha colaboración y alianza Iglesia-Estado, amalgama que reforzaba a ambas instituciones, aunque siempre bajo el control estatal, supervisada y coordinada por el Consejo de Indias. Las relaciones Iglesia-Estado en América pasaron por diversas modalidades: Patronato, Vicariato y Regalismo. En el siglo XVI rige el Patronato, basado en las concesiones Pontificias que ponía en manos de la Corona española el ‘cuidado’ sobre la Iglesia americana. Desde fines del XVI, religiosos (...) y juristas españoles elaboraron la teoría del Vicariato, según la cual los reyes, en virtud de la donación papal, eran Vicarios de la Santa Sede en las Indias y adquirían competencias en materia de disciplina eclesiástica. En el siglo XVIII el Regalismo asume ambas posiciones y las convierte en jurisdicción civil al considerar que los derechos esenciales del Patronato y el Vicariato no se basan en concesiones papales sino que son prerrogativas inherentes a la Corona, regalías o atributos del poder real. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 341-362 [Access article in PDF] Virgin Father and Prodigal Son Stephen Brockmann I IN BOTH THE UNITED STATES and Germany—as well as in much of the rest of the Western world—the baby-boom generation now holds a controlling position in politics, economics, and culture. The election of Bill Clinton (born in 1946) to the Presidency signaled the generational shift in the United States as early (...) as 1992, and that shift was confirmed by the election campaign of 2000, in which both candidates, Al Gore (born in 1948) and George W. Bush (born in 1946), in spite of their differences, represented the same generation. In Germany the political shift in generations did not occur until 1998, when Gerhard Schröder (born slightly before the beginning of the German baby boom, in 1944) defeated Helmut Kohl (born in 1930).Significantly, Kohl is a member of the generation of Germans born during the 1930s and reared during the years of the Third Reich but too young to have played any significant role, either negative or positive, during the Nazi era. No member of this generation born in the 1930s ever became President in the United States, where the generation of World War Two veterans dominated national politics from Eisenhower to George Herbert Walker Bush. However what in America is a "silent generation" has been, in Germany, the generation most closely identified with the success of the Federal Republic of Germany: these were the so-called Flakhelfer (antiaircraft helpers) who had been children during the war. Kohl therefore famously referred to them as having the "grace of late birth," meaning that they, unlike the war veterans, were presumably untouched by any form of collective guilt for Nazi crimes against humanity. Whereas in the United States the Presidency was transferred directly from the World War Two veterans to [End Page 341] baby boomers—and in the case of the two Bush presidencies, literally, albeit indirectly, from father to son—in Germany the transition from the World War Two veterans (particularly former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) to the baby boomers was interrupted by a long period of domination by the in-between generation of Flakhelfer.In both countries the baby-boom generation represents a significant shift in sensibilities and encompasses the generation involved in student protest and oppositional social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. In the United States these included the anti-Vietnam War movement, the feminist and gay-rights movements, the sexual revolution, the civil-rights movement, and the ecological movement, as well as, on the extreme fringes, terrorist groupings such as the Weather Underground and a great many religious sects and cults. In Germany the baby boomers formed many parallel groups and movements, including antiwar, feminist, ecological, and gay segments, as well as a proliferation of sectarian Marxist political groupings (so-called K-Gruppen, with the "K" meaning "Kommunist"). In the United States, Bill Clinton was an antiwar protester in the 1960s and 1970s, while both Gerhard Schröder and his Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (born in 1948) had participated in left-wing political movements during the same period.In both West Germany and the United States the heyday of protest movements in the 1960s and 1970s signaled a generational split, with younger people—the very generation that is now in power in the two countries—accusing their elders of Machiavellian cynicism, imperialism, patriarchy, and worse. Such accusations can be recalled by the formerly popular slogans "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" in the United States and "Unter den Talaren der Muff von tausend Jahren" ("under the academic regalia the stench of a thousand years") in Germany. The latter slogan was a reference not just to a generalized stodginess on the part of elderly German academics but to Hitler's invocation of a "Thousand-Year Reich;" German students were none-too-subtly suggesting that many of their professors had once been Nazis.The difference in these two slogans—one referring to past and the other to present sins—corresponds to a major distinction between the two baby... (shrink)

By now, everybody has heard of the `bourgeois public sphere,' that moment in history when a rising merchant class felt empowered enough to deliberate public policy rationally and universalistically, and to transmit its conclusions to the powers-that-were with the expectation of being taken seriously. By academic standards Habermas's thesis has become a household word, perhaps because it offers a nostalgic reminder of a lost utopia of participatory democracy, or because it offers hope of what yet might be — if we (...) could only learn to translate the seventeenth century into the ostensibly compatible conditions of a modernity in which widespread education, universal suffrage and the new communications technologies would seem to invite such translation.But this is not the whole of Habermas's thesis, nor its most original part. The rest of it revolves around the `representative public sphere' which refers both to the period that preceded, and the period that followed, that of the newly autonomous bourgeoisie. In the earlier period, it refers to the person of the monarch, to the dazzle and charisma of his regalia, symbols of the legitimacy of his rule and the unity of his realm. That's not such a new idea either.What is new is Habermas's suggestion that the period following the `bourgeois public sphere' — that is, our here and now — is essentially a return to the charisma of the `representative public sphere,' not that of the absolute monarch to be sure, but of a political and economic establishment that has armed itself with image makers and spin doctors who dazzle and charm in the name of the legitimacy and prerogatives of their clients. As Calhoun puts it, summarizing Habermas, “By means of these transformations, the public sphere has become more an arena for advertising than a setting for rational/critical debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Five Poems DEBORAH WARREN Bugonia hic vero subitum dictu mirabile monstrum aspiciunt, liquefacta boum per viscera toto stridere apes utero et ruptis effervere costis. —Vergil, Georgics IV The covert’s dark, but Aristaeus sees —beyond it, in the oleandered meadow, walking to her wedding with her maids— Eurydice, as sweet as early windfall apples to the gods of the bitter dead. She runs, from shifting shade to sun to (...) shade until, in a shock of sudden sun, she sways, blinded, blundering into an adder’s kiss, and while the bridegroom waits by the bridal bed, she waits to be undressed by worms instead. But Aristaeus pays for the assault. The mead-gods visit on his apiaries wax-moth, mites, foulbrood and chalk-disease until an oracle orders a hekatomb: after nine days the myrtle-nymphs perform a miracle, and out of the carcases crawl fat new sun-furred drones to work the comb, a gift of the mead-gods who, with the poet, praise the teams of bright collaborating bees as little Romans—parvos Quirites. arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 And what about Eurydice? The swarm goes humming on, a small Rome in a hive. The story’s not about Eurydice’s second chance, or whether she’ll survive. Eurydice’s a minor character; she’s only one girl, sui generis. Besides, no cattle-trick exists for her. The gods can let the apiaries thrive and armies—even empires—endure; one girl’s more complicated to replace. 44 five poems The Tithonus Club We can begin our visit with the Day Room where, in wheelchairs, some with canes or walkers, members sit: a fraternity so ancient that the confrères mostly ignore each other (club tradition). The dues are paid in decades; no one has an outstanding balance—Sir? Whoa, steady, there! Sit down... yes. Here’s your blanket. The badge of membership—the club regalia? Laminated ceremonial bracelets bear the motto Do Not Resuscitate (legend which, in practice, is seldom honored). Eleven-thirty, gentlemen; lunch is served, and now a little toast while the television mesmerizes the aides: Messieurs, your health! Deborah Warren 45 Aphrodite at the Old-Age Home —for Aphrodite Kalogeris “Honey,” the night nurse said to Aphrodite, “let me fix your bib. Look, Aphrodite! Here’s your juice and crackers, Aphrodite! “She doesn’t speak a blessed word of English,” the night nurse told us, “but she understands as good as if we spoke to her in Greek.” Aphrodite’s ears were as grotesque as the pore-coarse nose that bloomed across her face, but she heard her name: When Aphrodite rose and, beatific, dreamed across the room, traversing a happiness none of us could hear, she spoke a language older than herself but still her own—a dialect of beauty able to translate the fetid air. 46 five poems Climbing Etna We’d see the lava, nights, from the town square, as if the sun—an egg of fire—broke at dusk, threading its incandescent yolk down a mountain hanging in black air. Every night we’d scan the dark horizon looking for those streaks, and every night they took a while to find, however bright: Etna, it seemed, had spent the evening rising off the earth, to hover even higher, as if the mountain meant not to be found. And then, today, we ran the flows to ground, climbing up to the rolling burns of fire— closer, into the shimmering air and hiss that glanced up from the thick and red-flecked river —until our soles were smoking. But the lava sang, inside the mountain: Come, discover the fire’s origin and genesis; more—the heart of the world, in its enceinte of blind white heat. Seeing the lava course wasn’t enough, or watching the rock decant the sun; what brought us up here was the force— the hot loins—of a lightning god as dark as thunder; and, like Eve, like Semele, we wanted to approach. But there’s a spark, a jewel older than geology: stop shy of it—of finding the fire’s source, of closing in on what you shouldn’t see. Deborah Warren 47 Human Sucking strength... (shrink)

Professor Robert John Barrett died suddenly, after a long and difficult illness, on January 12th, 2007. At the time of his death, at the age of 57, he was Head of the Discipline of Psychiatry at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, University of Adelaide. His passing was mourned by countless individuals in Australia and internationally. The celebration of his life, held in the University of Adelaide’s Bonython Hall, from which generations of scholars have received their parchments upon graduation, was an emotive (...) ritual of which Rob would have both approved and also enjoyed immensely. The Hall was filled to capacity, with over 1,300 people listening to a collection of his favourite music and tributes delivered by eight of his friends and family members. Dignitaries in full academic regalia, including the Vice-Chancellor, the immediate past and current Deans of Medicine, and the Head of School oversaw proceedings from an elevated position in the Hall, the symbolic meaning of which would have caused Rob to smile wryly. A reflection of his life in pictures, at the conclusion of the ceremony, before the pall-bearers carried his coffin to the hearse, evoked yet more tears and grief at the tragic and untimely loss of this man: an outstanding intellectual, wise mentor, gifted teacher, caring doctor, and true and loyal friend. (shrink)

I am a mixed blood woman raised in Canada with two ancestries, Ininiwak and French, that have competing worldviews from social-political and religious ideology to ancient philosophies. These mixed ancestries set me on numerous paths, ultimately leading me to philosophy. However, when did this path begin? No one in my immediate family entertained ideas of education, so I had no guidance or understanding of what university would mean. I came from an ancestry of hardworking men considered to be lower-class French (...) men and a time when women stayed home raising families. My other ancestry involved hunting, trapping, and fishing where there were no class distinctions and everyone worked together in order to survive. Women here were not restricted to the home but free to hunt, trap, and fish if that was their choice. One ancestry included transience, of employment and of values, and strict religious doctrine. My other ancestry held permanence, in land, employment, families, and in friendships, and faith was intrinsic to all life. The diversity within my worldviews, the hypocrisy witnessed, and the rejection of my matrilineal worldview/philosophy sent me along my philosophy journey and kept me there. I wanted to know who “this man was that owned my mother’s world.”. (shrink)

In recent years there has been much philosophical discussion over the question of whether the prohibitions on markets in such items as human body parts and gene sequences, and services such as human reproductive labor and sex, should be lifted. Yet despite the attention paid to this issue there are been surprisingly little discussion of the question of whether markets in certain items that are currently freely traded should be restricted or eliminated. In particular, there has been little discussion of (...) the question of whether markets in items that could be readily used to deceive people should be restricted. I argue in this paper that one of the central moral values of the contemporary West – respect for personal autonomy – requires that such markets be restricted. (shrink)