Context Is Key Quotes

Witness.

If Hell is where nothing connects, then being in the field of English must be the key to heaven's door! We are in the business of finding connections--within texts, between texts and contexts, between texts and ourselves, between our readings and the readings of other interpreters.

No matter what your job is, the key is your context, your beliefs about your responsibility to customers and the relationships you intend to enjoy or endure with them.

Separate text from context and all that remains is a con.

Commandment 2: Observing in context is key to understanding nonverbal behavior.

I thought it best, finally, to start seeing where I've been rather than where I'm going.

Life does not change if you only modify the content, your life will change if you will dare to alter the context.

To put Göbekli Tepe in context, its megaliths predate Stonehenge by at least six thousand years. They predate the first literate civilizations of Egypt, Sumer, India, and Crete by even more. Unearthing this kind of Stone Age sophistication so deep in our past is like finding out your great-grandparents have been secretly coding apps and trading cryptocurrency behind everyone’s back.

Mindfulness involves two key strategies for improving health: attention to context and attention to variability.

Time’s existence cannot be found between the tick and the tock of a clock. It is the language of life and, as such, is most powerfully felt in the context of human experience.

I should have been put down at birth.

Good Heaven! That is enough to drive away all my pains; I could mount him with thirty balls in my body. On my soul, handsome stirrups!

He wanted me to play Scrabble with him, and kiss him as if I meant it. This is one of the most bizarre things that's happened to me, ever. Context is all.

Family life is the normal context in which we can learn that a life filled with thinking about others instead of ourselves is the sure road to the most fulfilling joys and satisfactions.

Always remember, women care less about the content of what’s being communicated and more about the context (the how) of what’s being communicated. Never buy the lie that good communication is the key to a good relationship with out considering how and what you communicate. Women are naturally solipsistic. Your ‘feelings’ aren’t important to her until you make them important for her.

It is no longer just engineers who dominate our technology leadership, because it is no longer the case that computers are so mysterious that only engineers can understand what they are capable of. There is an industry-wide shift toward more "product thinking" in leadership--leaders who understand the social and cultural contexts in which our technologies are deployed. Products must appeal to human beings, and a rigorously cultivated humanistic sensibility is a valued asset for this challenge. That is perhaps why a technology leader of the highest status--Steve Jobs--recently credited an appreciation for the liberal arts as key to his company's tremendous success with their various i-gadgets.

You know, Junie, you're fourteen now. I think you can certainly manage to put together a sandwich. ... The thing is, if my mother had any idea what I had in my backpack, she would have made me that sandwich. If she knew that I'd searched and searched the house until I finally found the little key to the fireproof box buried in the bottom of her underwear drawer, if she knew that I'd unlocked the box and taken my passport out, that I had it with me right that very second in a Ziploc bag in the bottom of my backpack, if she knew why I had it there, if she knew even a bit of all that, she might have made me that PBJ. She wouldn't have said, "You're fourteen now," like she thought I was some kind of responsible adult. No. If she knew about my plan, she would have said, "you're only fourteen." She would have told me that I was crazy to think about going to England with I was only fourteen.

Separateness" does not mean emotional distance, which is simply one means of managing anxiety or emotional intensity. Rather, separateness refers to the preservation of the "I" within the "we" - the ability to acknowledge and respect differences and to achieve authenticity within the context of connectedness.

Peter Koestenbaum also elaborated on the importance of others, particularly romantic lovers, in the existential context. Love is the choice to create and reflect each other mutually, verifying and illuminating each other's uniqueness because this is how we learn that we exist and who we are. A key theme of authentic love is resistance between, but welcoming of, two independent consciousness acting like positive and negative magnets within a single magnetic field.

Words are never good or bad on their own, context makes them so.

A structure located in the left and right sides of the brain, called the amygdala—a key hot spot for triggering strong emotions such as anger and rage, and linked to the fight-or-flight response—showed well over a 60 percent amplification in emotional reactivity in the participants who were sleep-deprived. In contrast, the brain scans of those individuals who were given a full night’s sleep evinced a controlled, modest degree of reactivity in the amygdala, despite viewing the very same images. It was as though, without sleep, our brain reverts to a primitive pattern of uncontrolled reactivity. We produce unmetered, inappropriate emotional reactions, and are unable to place events into a broader or considered context.

The Mysteries are teachings that cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, but only by the deep mind made accessible in trance. They may be conveyed by an object—a shaft of wheat, as in the Eleusinian Mysteries—by a key phrase, or symbol. The secret itself may be meaningless when out of context: only within the framework of the ritual does it take on its illuminating power.

Choral reading opens up the possibility of using newspapers, magazines, all manner of high interest books, comic books, and personal letters…it makes reading accessible to adults and students who are completely unmotivated by the simplistic fare at their tested reading level. While participating in choral reading, the student repeatedly sees words in context. Repetition in context is a key to dyslexic reading. Practicing

Developer Relations, and more broadly how we engage and build culture in communities, is a remarkably nuanced, complex, and context-specific discipline. There simply isn’t a one-shot recipe that works well for everyone.

Yale researchers found that a key difference in the hallucinatory experiences of psychics and of people with schizophrenia was that the psychics placed the voices in the context of a spiritual or religious experience, and were less disturbed by them.

first, that co-created relationships of attachment are the key context for development; second, that preverbal experience makes up the core of the developing self; and third, that the stance of the self toward experience predicts attachment security better than the facts of personal history themselves.

I must always seem so reserved and remote to them. Once in a while they ask questions that seem to call for a statement of what the hell I'm always thinking about, but if I were to babble what's really on my mind about, say, the a priori presumption of the continuity of a motorcycle from second to second and do this without benefit of the entire edifice of the Chautauqua, they'd just be startled and wonder what's wrong. I really am interested in this continuity and the way we talk and think about it and so tend to get removed from the usual lunchtime situation and this gives an appearance of remoteness. It's a problem.

I am giving you the key to get out of frustration. Listen! Any situation you are in, when you are frustrated, look in and find out ‘What must be the best thing in this situation for which I have aspired this situation in my past? Let me look from that context at this situation.’ You will see you are enjoying exactly what you wanted!

So from the context of 1 Thessalonians 5 I say that the key to “rejoice always” is to “pray without ceasing.” Lean on God all the time for the miracle of joy in your life. Never give up looking to him for help. Come to him repeatedly during the day and often. Make your default mental state a Godward longing for all that you need, especially for spiritual desires.

[The Chinese here is tricky and a certain key word in the context it is used defies the best efforts of the translator. Tu Mu defines this word as “the measurement or estimation of distance.” But this meaning does not quite fit the illustrative simile in ss. 15. Applying this definition to the falcon, it seems to me to denote that instinct of SELF RESTRAINT which keeps the bird from swooping on its quarry until the right moment, together with the power of judging when the right moment has arrived. The analogous quality in soldiers is the highly important one of being able to reserve their fire until the very instant at which it will be most effective. When the “Victory” went into action at Trafalgar at hardly more than drifting pace, she was for several minutes exposed to a storm of shot and shell before replying with a single gun. Nelson coolly waited until he was within close range, when the broadside he brought to bear worked fearful havoc on the enemy’s nearest ships.] 14.  Therefore the good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision. [The word “decision” would have reference to the measurement of distance mentioned above, letting the enemy get near before striking. But I cannot help thinking that Sun Tzu meant to use the word in a figurative sense comparable to our own idiom “short and sharp.” Cf. Wang Hsi’s note, which after describing the falcon’s mode of attack, proceeds: “This is just how the ‘psychological moment’ should be seized in war.”]

Shakespeare's plays do not present easy solutions. The audience has to decide for itself. King Lear is perhaps the most disturbing in this respect. One of the key words of the whole play is 'Nothing'. When King Lear's daughter Cordelia announces that she can say 'Nothing' about her love for her father, the ties of family love fall apart, taking the king from the height of power to the limits of endurance, reduced to 'nothing' but 'a poor bare forked animal'. Here, instead of 'readiness' to accept any challenge, the young Edgar says 'Ripeness is all'. This is a maturity that comes of learning from experience. But, just as the audience begins to see hope in a desperate and violent situation, it learns that things can always get worse: Who is't can say 'I am at the worst?' … The worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.' Shakespeare is exploring and redefining the geography of the human soul, taking his characters and his audience further than any other writer into the depths of human behaviour. The range of his plays covers all the 'form and pressure' of mankind in the modern world. They move from politics to family, from social to personal, from public to private. He imposed no fixed moral, no unalterable code of behaviour. That would come to English society many years after Shakespeare's death, and after the tragic hypothesis of Hamlet was fulfilled in 1649, when the people killed the King and replaced his rule with the Commonwealth. Some critics argue that Shakespeare supported the monarchy and set himself against any revolutionary tendencies. Certainly he is on the side of order and harmony, and his writing reflects a monarchic context rather than the more republican context which replaced the monarchy after 1649. It would be fanciful to see Shakespeare as foretelling the decline of the Stuart monarchy. He was not a political commentator. Rather, he was a psychologically acute observer of humanity who had a unique ability to portray his observations, explorations, and insights in dramatic form, in the richest and most exciting language ever used in the English theatre.

Texts on a lifeless strings of facts, but the keys to unlocking the character of human beings, people with likes and dislikes, diocese and foibles, errors and convictions. Words have texture and shape, and it is their almost tactile quality that leads readers to sculpt images of the writers who use them. These images are then interrogated, mocked, congratulated, or dismissed, depending on the context of the reading and the disposition of the reader.

The Bacchae left behind a thick trail of clues that we will begin exploring later in this book. Clues that lead to a magical version of Jesus: equal parts natural healer, initiator of mysteries, and concoctor of drugged wine. Unknown to many faithful today, it’s a version that places the founder of Christianity in the kind of detailed historical context that would have been self-evident to the earliest generations of Greek-speaking paleo-Christians.

The key context of this passage is that at this point in history, Jews and Samaritans hated each other. That means the love demonstrated by the Samaritan isn’t one of admiration, it’s one of determination. It’s the kind of love we would naturally show to ourselves even when we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see. It’s one defined by kindness, protection, and preservation. As C. S. Lewis says, “Love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s good as far as it can be obtained.

Synergy refers to the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements. In the context of your business, consider how a team can put forth a collaborative effort that exceeds an individual’s output. Now on task, you may begin to share the key parts of your plan with the pillars of your business or family. Embrace the opportunity and be enthusiastic as you are assigning responsibilities. Everyone needs to have a “paddle in the canoe” and work in synchronicity to achieve the desired outcome.

Suggested outline of a strategy document Once you have devised the strategy, you’ll need to explain it to the organisation by writing a strategy document. Below are the key elements it should contain: Where the organisation has come from The successes it has achieved thus far The changing environment and context in which it operates The vision for the future The unique role that the organisation plays The specific strategies that will get it there The timelines The challenges How you’ll measure success The role the organisation’s people play The role of the support functions

Jesus came preaching, “The reign of God is at hand; repent, therefore, and believe the good news.” The good news of what God has for us is so good that the contrast with present actuality convinces us we need to repent; the good news is so forgiving that we are freed to be honest about where we need to repent; the judgment involved is so serious that we need to be serious about repentance. Therefore, a key move in a Christian ethics patterned after Jesus is to listen carefully to criticisms and learn from them. Christian ethics is continuous learning, transformational repenting, making corrections and growing in Christ.

Each of the eight scales represents one key area that managers must be aware of, showing how cultures vary along a spectrum from one extreme to its opposite. The eight scales are:        •  Communicating: low-context vs. high-context        •  Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback        •  Persuading: principles-first vs. applications-first        •  Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical        •  Deciding: consensual vs. top-down        •  Trusting: task-based vs. relationship-based        •  Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoids confrontation        •  Scheduling: linear-time vs. flexible-time

What is the meaning of the phrase “shall be bound in heaven... shall be loosed in heaven?” Williams, the Bible translator, points out for us that the verb form is the perfect passive participle, so the reference is to things in a state of having been already forbidden (or permitted). This tells us that whatever is bound or loosed by the believer is done on the basis that it has already been done “in heaven,” i.e. by the Lord himself. What is it, then, that the Lord has already bound and which he has given us power to bind again? Jesus teaches us: Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. Matt. 12:29 The context of this passage finds Jesus casting out demons. His authority for thus doing is challenged by the religious authorities. They accuse him of doing it by the power of the devil himself. Jesus is explaining that he is able to control demon spirits and make them obey him because he has already bound the strong man — Satan. The fact that the demons obey Him is evidence of Satan being bound. Satan is already bound “in heaven” — by heaven’s power. His power is broken. The key is given to us. We have power over him, too. Amen! The Greek word for “bind” in the passage before us is deo. It means to fasten or tie — as with chains, as an animal tied to keep it from straying. This is glorious! When Satan is bound he is made inoperable. He loses his ability to act against us.

Doubt is crucial in science—in the version we call curiosity or healthy skepticism, it drives science forward—but it also makes science vulnerable to misrepresentation, because it is easy to take uncertainties out of context and create the impression that everything is unresolved. This was the tobacco industry's key insight: that you could use normal scientific uncertainty to undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge." ...Individual clinicians cannot single-handedly combat this kind of antiscience, a climate that has only been fostered by some political and religious leaders and by the social media. But at the very least, we can make our patients aware of the forces at play and the mind games that such merchants of doubt employ.

What emerged for me as purpose was the search for and cultivation of possibilities for experiencing meaningful human transactions in different languages and across cultural differences through play, sports, travel, food, literature, and conversation. I sought to establish relations of mutual understanding and love with people no matter what their culture or place of origin in the world—relations based on philia, eros, and agape, according to context and persons. I perhaps sensed instinctively that such relations were the key to being equally at home everywhere, even in la Yunai. More than an immigrant, at that time I still felt myself to be a sojourner in this country, but I wanted my sojourn to be imbued with the meaning found in earnest, sincere connections with the people and places that life brought to my experience.

WE’RE GOOD AT WRONG SPOTTING If you’ve ever received feedback at work—or had an in-law—you are familiar with the many shapes and sizes of wrong: It’s 2 + 2 = 5 wrong: It is literally incorrect. I could not have been rude at that meeting because I was not at that meeting. And my name is not Mike. It’s different-planet wrong: Somewhere in the universe there may exist a carbon-based life form that would have taken offense at my e-mail, but here on Earth everyone knows it was a joke. It used to be right: Your critique of my marketing plan is based on how marketing worked when you were coming up. Before the Internet. And electricity. It’s right according to the wrong people: Some see me that way, but next time, talk to at least one person who is not on my Personal Enemies List. Your context is wrong: I do yell at my assistant. And he yells at me. That’s how our relationship works—key word being “works.” It’s right for you, but wrong for me: We have different body types. Armani suits flatter you. Hoodies flatter me. The feedback is right, but not right now: It’s true that I could lose a few pounds—which I will do as soon as the quintuplets are out of the house. Anyway, it’s unhelpful: Telling me to be a better mentor isn’t helping me to be a better mentor. What kind of mentor are you anyway? Why is wrong spotting so easy? Because there’s almost always something wrong—something the feedback giver is overlooking, shortchanging, or misunderstanding. About you, about the situation, about the constraints you’re under. And givers compound the problem by delivering feedback that is vague, making it easy for us to overlook, shortchange, and misunderstand what they are saying. But in the end, wrong spotting not only defeats wrong feedback, it defeats learning.

Language can often seem abstract and transcendent of the body, the world, and even time itself. But language is more closely tied to your body mandala than you may realize, especially where its acquisition during childhood is concerned. If you read the verb “lick,” your tongue area will light up. If you hear someone say “kick,” it activates your leg areas. Christian Keysers, a mirror neuron researcher at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands, says that mirror neurons may very well be a key precursor to abstract thought and language. For example, he explains, you use the word “break” as a verb as in “I see you break the peanut, I hear you break the peanut, and I break the peanut.” The constant is the mental simulation of breaking even though the context varies in each case. So your body is the foundational source of meaning—not just of words and actions but even the meanings of things you learn about through your eyes, ears, and bodily experience.

Trauma symptoms themselves can become drivers of cycles of violence. Hyper-vigilance exxagerates survivors' sense of threat-so that a minimal threat can legitimately feel like a substantial and potentially even life-threatening one. How endangered one feels depends in part on the baseline of danger that exists. So for survivors who are hurt in the context of relative safety, their exaggerated sense of danger may result in simple self-protective actions like crossing the street when they get a bad feeling about someone approaching, holding their keys as they approach their apartment, or carrying pepper spray in their bag. For people who live where there is a more widespread, regular threat of violence, where day in and day out, they are making decisions that will affect whether or not they get home safe and alive, perceiving threats as more immediate than they are may mean that the self-protective actions people choose are graver. Not all survivors cope in this way, but many do.

Artists and designers have a largely shared skill set and knowledge base but the work they create, however indistinguishable in terms of technique, subject matter and visual language, is made for entirely different reasons. Attempts to define or make clear distinctions between art and design are always contestable, but at the beginning of a diagnostic process it is useful to identify a simple delineation between the two: Art An artist's practice generally emerges from their own individual concerns explored over varying durations in the studio. The work is then usually presented to a knowing public either in galleries or in designated public spaces. Design Design is largely initiated externally from the needs or desires of a client or external body. The functionality of the designed solution is as important as its desirability, craft and aesthetics. Design is in the public domain and, as such, its messages, meanings and functions are inextricably linked to the political, social and economic concerns of its audience/ user and its context.

Unnecessary Creation gives you the freedom to explore new possibilities and follow impractical curiosities. Some of the most frustrated creative pros I’ve encountered are those who expect their day job to allow them to fully express their creativity and satisfy their curiosity. They push against the boundaries set by their manager or client and fret continuously that their best work never finds its way into the end product because of restrictions and compromises. A 2012 survey sponsored by Adobe revealed that nearly 75 percent of workers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan felt they weren’t living up to their creative potential. (In the United States, the number was closer to 82 percent!) Obviously, there’s a gap between what many creatives actually do each day and what they feel they are capable of doing given more resources or less bureaucracy. But those limitations aren’t likely to change in the context of an organization, where there is little tolerance for risk and resources are scarcer than ever. If day-to-day project work is the only work that you are engaging in, it follows that you’re going to get frustrated. To break the cycle, keep a running list of projects you’d like to attempt in your spare time, and set aside a specific time each week (or each day) to make progress on that list. Sometimes this feels very inefficient in the moment, especially when there are so many other urgent priorities screaming for your attention, but it can be a key part of keeping your creative energy flowing for your day-to-day work. You’ll also want to get a notebook to record questions that you’d like to pursue, ideas that you have, or experiments that you’d like to try. Then you can use your pre-defined Unnecessary Creation time to play with these ideas. As Steven Johnson explains in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, “A good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neurons—thousands of them—fire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness. A new idea is a network of cells exploring the adjacent possible of connections that they can make in your mind.”18

You can change your patterns. You can change your roles, but you can only do that by altering your environment—whether that means having frank conversations to reestablish boundaries and expectations, or whether that means physically separating yourself from certain individuals or places. If you remain stuck in the same roles and patterns, it doesn’t matter how much willpower you exert; your efforts will continue to be confined within the limiting context of your role. You’ll remain hostage to a context that you mistakenly believe to be fixed identity. But you absolutely can change your roles, even abruptly and dramatically. People mistakenly believe they must be fully qualified to take on a particular role. But this is false. You actually become qualified through the role itself. For example, when Lauren and I became foster parents, we didn’t have any parenting experience. Sure, I read several books on the topic, many with smart ideas and innovative solutions to try. But theory and experience are two radically different things. I imagine all first-time parents go through a similar trajectory—you learn through doing.

How many thefts have there been?’ I asked. ‘That depends on how you define it,’ said Adrian. Because material went missing off sites all the time, which is why important finds were collated and secured the day they were found. Important in archaeological terms not always being the same as valuable – at least not in the fenceable sense. Archaeology came in all shapes, sizes, and apparent degrees of nickableness. ‘We wouldn’t have even noticed some of the thefts if they hadn’t been important to the context,’ said Adrian. Context being the key concept of modern scientific archaeology, and what separates your modern professional from the fumbling archivists and swivel-eyed tomb raiders of the past. It’s a religion they share with scene of crime technicians and it had been drummed into me from my first day at Hendon. Context – where you find an object – is more important than the actual object. In policing it’s whether the broken glass is on the inside or the outside. In archaeology it’s whether that datable coin is found in the wall foundations or its demolition infill. You can live without the coin, but you need the dating information.

Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the vital importance of having a caring adult or mentor in every young person’s life? How many times did I hear about the value of having a coach—whether you are applying for a job for the first time at Walmart or running Walmart? How many times did I hear people stressing the importance of self-motivation and practice and taking ownership of your own career or education as the real differentiators for success? How interesting was it to learn that the highest-paying jobs in the future will be stempathy jobs—jobs that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with another human being? How ironic was it to learn that something as simple as a chicken coop or the basic planting of trees and gardens could be the most important thing we do to stabilize parts of the World of Disorder? Who ever would have thought it would become a national security and personal security imperative for all of us to scale the Golden Rule further and wider than ever? And who can deny that when individuals get so super-empowered and interdependent at the same time, it becomes more vital than ever to be able to look into the face of your neighbor or the stranger or the refugee or the migrant and see in that person a brother or sister? Who can ignore the fact that the key to Tunisia’s success in the Arab Spring was that it had a little bit more “civil society” than any other Arab country—not cell phones or Facebook friends? How many times and in how many different contexts did people mention to me the word “trust” between two human beings as the true enabler of all good things? And whoever thought that the key to building a healthy community would be a dining room table? That’s why I wasn’t surprised that when I asked Surgeon General Murthy what was the biggest disease in America today, without hesitation he answered: “It’s not cancer. It’s not heart disease. It’s isolation. It is the pronounced isolation that so many people are experiencing that is the great pathology of our lives today.” How ironic. We are the most technologically connected generation in human history—and yet more people feel more isolated than ever. This only reinforces Murthy’s earlier point—that the connections that matter most, and are in most short supply today, are the human-to-human ones.

The story of the Internet's origins departs from the explanations of technical innovation that center on individual inventors or on the pull of markets. Cerf and Kahn were neither captains of industry nor "two guys tinkering in a garage." The Internet was not built in response to popular demand, real or imagined; its subsequent mass appeal had no part in the decisions made in 1973. Rather, the project reflected the command economy of military procurement, where specialized performance is everything and money is no object, and the research ethos of the university, where experimental interest and technical elegance take precedence over commercial application. This was surely an unlikely context for the creation of what would become a popular and profitable service. Perhaps the key to the Internet's later commercial success was that the project internalized the competitive forces of the market by bringing representatives of diverse interest groups together and allowing them to argue through design issues. Ironically, this unconventional approach produced a system that proved to have more appeal for potential "customers"—people building networks—than did the overtly commercial alternatives that appeared soon after.

The game within the game is the game that only the players see. They experience it in relation to one another on the floor at a particular time and in the middle of the action. It is one of the nuances of the game of basketball. As Knick teammates during those years, we knew what a teammate was going to do almost before he did it. We helped one another on defense and shared the ball on offense. We made room for each of us to be his best within the context of the team. For example, I often would see Clyde come down the floor with the ball. I'd catch his eye. I knew he wanted to go down my side of the floor. In order to give him a little more room to move, I would clear out. That way I didn't clog up his space. Or, when I had the ball on the side and he was at the top of the key, waiting to go backdoor, our center knew he had to move to the other side of the floor to create the room for the backdoor bounce pass from me to Clyde who was moving down the lane toward the basket. That was the game within the game. On one level, the game within the game was a matter of mechanics but is also operated on a psychological level in that we truly were all for one and one for all. We challenged one another in practice to become better. We helped one another come back from defeat. We inspired one another to reach our peak team performance. None of us felt we could be as good alone as all of us could be together. Our unity came sometimes with laughs, sometimes with conflicts, sometimes with moments of collective insight, but it was that spirit of camaraderie which brought us together in a way that allowed the fans to see something very special.

There are three key things that matter in having a voice: audibility, credibility, and consequence. Audibility means that you can be heard, that you have not been pressed into silence or kept out of the areas of where you can speak or write or denied the education to do so or in the age of social media, been harassed and threatened and driven off the platform as so many have. Credibility means that when you get into those arenas, people are willing to believe you, by which I don't mean that women never lie, but that stories should be measured on their own terms and context, rather than patriarchy's insistence that women are categorically unqualified to speak. Emotional, rather than rational. Vindictive, incoherent, delusional, manipulative. Unfit to be heeded. Those things often shouted over a women in the process of saying something challenging. Though now death threat are used as a short-cut, and some of those threats are carried out. Notably with women who leave their abusers, because silencing can be conversational or can be premeditated murder. To be a person of consequence is to matter. If you matter, you have rights, and your words serve those rights. And give you the power to bear witness, make agreements, set boundaries. If you have consequence, your words possess the authority to determine what does and does not happen to you. The power that underlies the concept of consent as part of equality in self-determination. Even legally, women's words have lacked consequence. And only in a few scattered places on earth, could women vote before the 20th century, and not so many decades ago, women rarely became lawyers and judges.

The empowerment triangle turns drama upside-down, transforming the persecutor (or scapegoat) into a challenger, the rescuer into a coach, and the victim into a creator. The empowerment dynamic allows all the roles to be essential for growth. In the drama triangle, the persecutor works with issues of power, the rescuer works with issues of responsibility, and the victim works with area of vulnerability: The drama triangle is familiar to many of us. We all know this pattern inside ourselves. We get stuck in a situation that we want to escape, and it creates drama. By leaning into the dynamic and entering deeper into relationship, we can work the energy so that it becomes an enriching transformation. If you can work this in a group, then you’ve subdued the scapegoat archetype and turned it into something more life affirming. The most important thing about the drama triangle is to make people aware of it. When a group can understand and recognize how this is a kind of destructive pattern, it becomes empowered to change the pattern. Uncoupling drama from our organizational and personal lives is the key. The group as a whole can embody a role to create safety and make sense of the system. Transformation from the drama to the redeemed starts with a pause, then an inquiry of what’s happening here, then a recollection of the three roles and who is playing what role in this context. Once the system is self-aware, ask the questions: “what else is possible? How can I become so centered that something new can happen? How can a new perception take place?” With enough safety and connection, the group will be able to follow the healing energy into re-organization and re-integration of the parts. Claiming or remembering your own archetype can protect against falling into one.

The Delusion of Lasting Success promises that building an enduring company is not only achievable but a worthwhile objective. Yet companies that have outperformed the market for long periods of time are not just rare, they are statistical artifacts that are observable only in retrospect. Companies that achieved lasting success may be best understood as having strung together many short-term successes. Pursuing a dream of enduring greatness may divert attention from the pressing need to win immediate battles. The Delusion of Absolute Performance diverts our attention from the fact that success and failure always take place in a competitive environment. It may be comforting to believe that our success is entirely up to us, but as the example of Kmart demonstrated, a company can improve in absolute terms and still fall further behind in relative terms. Success in business means doing things better than rivals, not just doing things well. Believing that performance is absolute can cause us to take our eye off rivals and to avoid decisions that, while risky, may be essential for survival given the particular context of our industry and its competitive dynamics. The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick lets us confuse causes and effects, actions and outcomes. We may look at a handful of extraordinarily successful companies and imagine that doing what they did can lead to success — when it might in fact lead mainly to higher volatility and a lower overall chance of success. Unless we start with the full population of companies and examine what they all did — and how they all fared — we have an incomplete and indeed biased set of information. The Delusion of Organizational Physics implies that the business world offers predictable results, that it conforms to precise laws. It fuels a belief that a given set of actions can work in all settings and ignores the need to adapt to different conditions: intensity of competition, rate of growth, size of competitors, market concentration, regulation, global dispersion of activities, and much more. Claiming that one approach can work everywhere, at all times, for all companies, has a simplistic appeal but doesn’t do justice to the complexities of business. These points, taken together, expose the principal fiction at the heart of so many business books — that a company can choose to be great, that following a few key steps will predictably lead to greatness, that its success is entirely of its own making and not dependent on factors outside its control.

[A] central theme is why social, political, and economic institutions tend to coevolve in a manner that reinforces rather than undermines one another. The welfare state is not 'politics against markets,' as commonly assumed, but politics with markets. Although it is popular to think that markets, especially global ones, interfere with the welfare state, and vice versa, this notion is simply inconsistent with the postwar record of actual welfare state development. The United States, which has a comparatively small welfare state and flexible labor markets, has performed well in terms of jobs and growth during the past two decades; however, before then the countries with the largest welfare states and the most heavily regulated labor markets exceeded those in the United States on almost any gauge of economic competitiveness and performance. Despite the change in economic fortunes, the relationship between social protection and product market strategies continues to hold. Northern Europe and Japan still dominate high-quality markets for machine tools and consumer durables, whereas the United States dominates software, biotech, and other high-tech industries. There is every reason that firms and governments will try to preserve the institutions that give rise to these comparative advantages, and here the social protection system (broadly construed to include job security and protection through the industrial relations system) plays a key role. The reason is that social insurance shapes the incentives workers and firms have for investing in particular types of skills, and skills are critical for competitive advantage in human-capital-intensive economies. Firms do not develop competitive advantages in spite of systems of social protection, but because of it. Continuing this line of argument, the changing economic fortunes of different welfare production regimes probably has very little to do with growing competitive pressure from the international economy. To the contrary, it will be argued in Chapter 6 that the main problem for Europe is the growing reliance on services that have traditionally been closed to trade. In particular, labor-intensive, low-productivity jobs do not thrive in the context of high social protection and intensive labor-market regulation, and without international trade, countries cannot specialize in high value-added services. Lack of international trade and competition, therefore, not the growth of these, is the cause of current employment problems in high-protection countries.

In a Harvard Business Review article titled “Do Women Lack Ambition?” Anna Fels, a psychiatrist at Cornell University, observes that when the dozens of successful women she interviewed told their own stories, “they refused to claim a central, purposeful place.” Were Dr. Fels to interview you, how would you tell your story? Are you using language that suggests you’re the supporting actress in your own life? For instance, when someone offers words of appreciation about a dinner you’ve prepared, a class you’ve taught, or an event you organized and brilliantly executed, do you gracefully reply “Thank you” or do you say, “It was nothing”? As Fels tried to understand why women refuse to be the heroes of their own stories, she encountered the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, which confirms that society considers a woman to be feminine only within the context of a relationship and when she is giving something to someone. It’s no wonder that a “feminine” woman finds it difficult to get in the game and demand support to pursue her goals. It also explains why she feels selfish when she doesn’t subordinate her needs to others. A successful female CEO recently needed my help. It was mostly business-related but also partly for her. As she started to ask for my assistance, I sensed how difficult it was for her. Advocate on her organization’s behalf? Piece of cake. That’s one of the reasons her business has been successful. But advocate on her own behalf? I’ll confess that even among my closest friends I find it painful to say, “Look what I did,” and so I don’t do it very often. If you want to see just how masterful most women have become at deflecting, the next time you’re with a group of girlfriends, ask them about something they (not their husband or children) have done well in the past year. Chances are good that each woman will quickly and deftly redirect the conversation far, far away from herself. “A key type of discrimination that women face is the expectation that feminine women will forfeit opportunities for recognition,” says Fels. “When women do speak as much as men in a work situation or compete for high-visibility positions, their femininity is assailed.” My point here isn’t to say that relatedness and nurturing and picking up our pom-poms to cheer others on is unimportant. Those qualities are often innate to women. If we set these “feminine” qualities aside or neglect them, we will have lost an irreplaceable piece of ourselves. But to truly grow up, we must learn to throw down our pom-poms, believing we can act and that what we have to offer is a valuable part of who we are. When we recognize this, we give ourselves permission to dream and to encourage the girls and women

Ellen Braun, an accomplished agile manager, noticed that different behaviors emerge over time as telltale signs of a team’s emotional maturity, a key component in their ability to adjust as things happen to them and to get to the tipping point when “an individual’s self interest shifts to alignment with the behaviors that support team achievement” (Braun 2010). It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. —James Thurber Team Dynamics Survey Ellen created a list of survey questions she first used as personal reflection while she observed teams in action. Using these questions the same way, as a pathway to reflection, an agile coach can gain insight into potential team problems or areas for emotional growth. Using them with the team will be more insightful, perhaps as material for a retrospective where the team has the time and space to chew on the ideas that come up. While the team sprints, though, mull them over on your own, and notice what they tell you about team dynamics (Braun 2010). • How much does humor come into day-to-day interaction within the team? • What are the initial behaviors that the team shows in times of difficulty and stress? • How often are contradictory views raised by team members (including junior team members)? • When contradictory views are raised by team members, how often are they fully discussed? • Based on the norms of the team, how often do team members compromise in the course of usual team interactions (when not forced by circumstances)? • To what extent can any team member provide feedback to any other team member (think about negative and positive feedback)? • To what extent does any team member actually provide feedback to any other team member? • How likely would it be that a team member would discuss issues with your performance or behavior with another team member without giving feedback to you directly (triangulating)? • To what extent do you as an individual get support from your team on your personal career goals (such as learning a new skill from a team member)? • How likely would you be to ask team members for help if it required your admission that you were struggling with a work issue? • How likely would you be to share personal information with the team that made you feel vulnerable? • To what extent is the team likely to bring into team discussions an issue that may create conflict or disagreement within the team? • How likely or willing are you to bring into a team discussion an issue that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view? • If you bring an item into a team discussion that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view, how often does the team reach a consensus that takes into consideration all points of view and feels workable to you? • Can you identify an instance in the past two work days when you felt a sense of warmth or inclusion within the context of your team? • Can you identify an instance in the past two days when you felt a sense of disdain or exclusion within the context of your team? • How much does the team make you feel accountable for your work? Mulling over these questions solo or posing them to the team will likely generate a lot of raw material to consider. When you step back from the many answers, perhaps one or two themes jump out at you, signaling the “big things” to address.

The centre of the conception of wisdom in the Bible is the Book of Ecclesiastes, whose author, or rather, chief editor, is sometimes called Koheleth, the teacher or preacher. Koheleth transforms the conservatism of popular wisdom into a program of continuous mental energy. Those who have unconsciously identified a religious attitude either with illusion or with mental indolence are not safe guides to this book, although their tradition is a long one. Some editor with a “you’d better watch out” attitude seems to have tacked a few verses on the end suggesting that God trusts only the anti-intellectual, but the main author’s courage and honesty are not to be defused in this way. He is “disillusioned” only in the sense that he has realized that an illusion is a self-constructed prison. He is not a weary pessimist tired of life: he is a vigorous realist determined to smash his way through every locked door of repression in his mind. Being tired of life is in fact the only mental handicap for which he has no remedy to suggest. Like other wise men, he is a collector of proverbs, but he applies to all of them his touchstone and key word, translated in the AV [the Authorized Version] as “vanity.” This word (hebel) has a metaphorical kernel of fog, mist, or vapour, a metaphor that recurs in the New Testament (James 4:14). It this acquires a derived sense of “emptiness,” the root meaning of the Vulgate’s vanitas. To put Koheleth’s central intuition into the form of its essential paradox: all things are full of emptiness. We should not apply a ready-made disapproving moral ambience to this word “vanity,” much less associate it with conceit. It is a conception more like the shunyata or “void” of Buddhist though: the world as everything within nothingness. As nothing is certain or permanent in the world, nothing either real or unreal, the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal. All goals and aims may cheat us, but if we run away from them we shall find ourselves bumping into them. We may feel that saint is a “better” man than a sinner, and that all of our religious and moral standards would crumble into dust if we did not think so; but the saint himself is most unlikely to take such a view. Similarly Koheleth went through a stage in which he saw that wisdom was “better” than folly, then a stage in which he saw that there was really no difference between them as death lies in wait for both and finally realized that both views were equally “vanity”. As soon as we renounce the expectation of reward, in however, refined a guise, for virtue or wisdom, we relax and our real energies begin to flow into the soul. Even the great elegy at the end over the failing bodily powers of old age ceases to become “pessimistic” when we see it as part of the detachment with which the wise man sees his life in the context of vanity. We take what comes: there is no choice in the matter, hence no point in saying “we should take what comes.” We soon realize by doing so that there is a cyclical rhythm in nature. But, like other wheels, this is a machine to be understood and used by man. If it is true that the sun, the seasons, the waters, and human life itself go in cycles, the inference is that “there is a time for all things,” something different to be done at each stage of the cycle. The statement “There is nothing new under the sun” applies to wisdom but not to experience , to theory but not to practice. Only when we realize that nothing is new can we live with an intensity in which everything becomes new.

The fourth generation of self-management is more advanced than the third in five important ways. First, it’s principle-centered. More than giving lip service to Quadrant II, it creates the central paradigm that empowers you to see your time in the context of what is really important and effective. Second, it’s conscience-directed. It gives you the opportunity to organize your life to the best of your ability in harmony with your deepest values. But it also gives you the freedom to peacefully subordinate your schedule to higher values. Third, it defines your unique mission, including values and long-term goals. This gives direction and purpose to the way you spend each day. Fourth, it helps you balance your life by identifying roles, and by setting goals and scheduling activities in each key role every week. And fifth, it gives greater context through weekly organizing (with daily adaptation as needed), rising above the limiting perspective of a single day and putting you in touch with your deepest values through review of your key roles.

Watching closely are many of the Catholics whose marriages have fallen apart. An estimated 28 percent of American Catholic adults who have ever been married have since divorced, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. That rate is lower than in the general public, but still constitutes 11 million people, the researchers said. For many divorced Catholics, the church’s approach raises an existential question, said Helen Alvaré, a law professor at George Mason University: “What is my place in the church, and do I feel welcomed?” Ms. Alvaré, who is a former spokeswoman for the American bishops, said the indissolubility of marriage is a Catholic essential, “a key to the entire Roman Catholic cosmology — our understanding of the world, God, our relationship with him and our relationship to one another.” But, she added, questions about the place of divorced worshipers in the church fit into a larger context of uncertainty for Catholics who do not fully live out the church’s ideals. “There’s a lot of divorced Catholics out there, and have we let these sheep wander without reaching out to them?” Ms. Alvaré asked. “Jesus wants us to look after all the sheep, no matter what.

The world today is closer together and adherents of non-Christian religions live among us. In this situation, for the sake of understanding and peaceful coexistence, it is necessary to take a look over the fence of our own cultural context into the world of religions. In the process, we ascertain that compassion and beneficence are not restricted to our cultural context, but rather are universal human and primordial religious phenomena.

Furthermore, we had witnessed over and over again that making opportunities for creative expression within a context of care and connection is a seemingly magical key for unlocking that hope and resilience. And it doesn’t require the work of experts. We can all do this.

HISTORY OF NIGERIA Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and the world’s eighth largest oil producer, but its success has been undermined in recent decades by ethnic and religious conflict, political instability, rampant official corruption, and an ailing economy. Toyin Falola, a leading historian intimately acquainted with the region, and Matthew Heaton, who has worked extensively on African science and culture, combine their expertise to explain the context to Nigeria’s recent troubles, through an exploration of its pre-colonial and colonial past and its journey from independence to statehood. By examining key themes such as colonialism, religion, slavery, nationalism, and the economy, the authors show how Nigeria’s history has been swayed by the vicissitudes of the world around it, and how Nigerians have adapted to meet these challenges. This book offers a unique portrayal of a resilient people living in a country with immense, but unrealized, potential. TOYIN FALOLA is the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include The Power of African Cultures (2003), Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria, 1945–1965 (2004), and A Mouth Sweeter than Salt: An African Memoir (2004). MATTHEW M. HEATON is a Patrice Lumumba Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He has co-edited multiple volumes on health and illness in Africa with Toyin Falola, including HIV/AIDS, Illness and African Well-Being (2007) and Health Knowledge and Belief Systems in Africa (2007). A HISTORY OF NIGERIA

In this spirit, one key methodological guideline would be: if you want to understand contemporary media technological culture, look at its science and military contexts, instead of the content of what is consumed as entertainment media.

This is not an affront on contemporary music or a rejection of relevant tools to help connect a new generation with the Gospel. These are important methods if we are going to properly steward our message in the context we have been placed in. The means can and must change to suit the culture, generation, and context, but the message cannot.

BUT AREN’T THESE JUST DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS? HOW CAN A DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION BE A STEP TOWARD LIBERALISM? At this point someone may object, “These other meanings for ‘head’ and ‘exercise authority’ are not removing God’s Word from believers; they are just giving a different interpretation. What’s wrong with that? How can that be a step toward liberalism?” In response I would say, there are some kinds of “interpretations” that actually nullify the original statement. For example, let’s say I am driving and I see a sign that says, SPEED LIMIT 45 But suppose I am driving 70 miles per hour, and a policeman stops me. Can I say, “Officer, I just interpreted it differently. I thought the numbers 4 and 5 placed together meant ‘70.’ I guess we just have a difference in interpretation”? Or let’s say I sign a contract that says I agree to “teach six classes” next year, and then I show up the first day and tell the students their assignments, and I never come back again for the whole term. When my academic dean questions me, I say, “Well, I interpreted ‘teach’ differently. I thought ‘teach’ just meant ‘give students assignments for the rest of the term on the first day of class.’ I didn’t interpret it to mean ‘give lectures in classes for a whole term.’ I guess we just have a difference of interpretation.”18 In both cases, these are not legitimate “differences of interpretation” because my meanings are far outside the commonly accepted and recognized ranges of meanings for the words “45” and “teach.” So it is no longer a difference of interpretation. It is a nullification and denial of the statements altogether. That is what I think is happening when evangelical feminists give key verses and key words an entirely different meaning, a meaning far outside the commonly accepted ranges of meanings for those words. That is why the question of hard facts to support those meanings is so important. When the proposals turn out to be contrary to the known evidence, we should conclude that they are untruthful. When the proposals turn out to be unsubstantiated by the known evidence, we should conclude that they are mere speculation, and the previously established meanings of the words should stand. The result of this egalitarian claim is again to chip away at God’s Word for believers, because it removes the sense of the verse that God intended: Previous meaning: I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. New egalitarian meaning: I do not permit a woman to teach or to abuse authority over a man (or: to commit violence against a man, etc.); rather, she is to remain quiet. These new meanings completely change the sense of a key word in 1 Timothy 2:12. But they do so contrary to the evidence about the word’s meaning and its use in a context like this one. And so by removing from God’s people the sense of what his Word actually says, they move another step down the path to liberalism.

The problem, as Daniel Gros writes is that “In Europe the banks and the sovereign are usually so closely linked that one cannot survive without the other.” As discussed above in the context of the doom loop, EZ national governments are the ultimate guarantor of their banks, but the banks are key holders of public debt. As a result: “insolvency of a government would also wipe out the capital of the banks and bankrupt them as well. But an insolvent government would no longer be able to save its banks.

today, even when we preach on the love of God, if we neglect preaching about sin, the wrath of God, and humankind’s need for a Savior, we are promoting imbalance. When we preach God’s mercy without the reality of sin, one must ask the question: Why must God be merciful? Why do I need mercy from Him at all? If we preach a Savior without giving context for what we need saving from, our grasp of salvation is limited. It all comes together when we present the complete, full Gospel—nothing missing, nothing lacking.

In the typical evangelical service, after a rousing sermon comes the “altar call.” This routine is strikingly similar to hypnotic induction methods in other contexts: The key is to get people to focus attention inward rather than outward, so that they see, hear, and feel internally rather than externally, through the five senses. At such times, you are much more susceptible to suggestions and less able to use your critical abilities. After an emotional sermon, which has likely already employed manipulative techniques such as fear and guilt, you are asked to bow your head and close your eyes. Soft music plays while everyone focuses inward. Quiet hymns repeat “Jesus is calling” or “Just as I am.” The minister then speaks softly into the microphone, suggesting that the Holy Spirit is present and moving in the congregation. Feelings are interpreted for you, as “conviction of sin,” “answering His call,” and so forth. With perfected timing, the preacher asks, “Can you hear Jesus knocking on your heart’s door? Won't you open it today?” You are then asked to raise your hand while keeping your eyes shut; then to get up and come forward. The effect is powerful, carefully orchestrated, and effective.

A key finding is that violence is remembered, given meaning and lived with in the present, in ethical terms. As we have seen from the stories belonging to former insurgents and former state counter-insurgency officers, the mediation of violent memories is fundamentally an ethical exercise for those who have participated in violence. It entails a reconstruction of one’s experiences in moral terms, in ways that enable ‘perpetrators’ to continue living with their unsettling pasts in the present. Memories of violence are morally tendentious, rather than being abstract and objective recollections of a recorded past. Shaped by the changing socio-political and moral contexts of recall, memories of violence are continuously reworked in the present, with profound implications for notions of the self and sociality.

Luther’s understanding of the individual Christian life is in some ways refreshingly simple and straightforward. We live at a time when the church always seems to be looking for new and elaborate ways of winning converts, of discipling, of bringing people to maturity in the faith. Luther’s approach is rather different. Building upon the objectivity of God’s action in Christ as set forth in his Word, he sees the Christian life as one fueled by the reading and hearing of this Word, primarily in a corporate context. This is a great antidote to a number of perennial problems for Christians. First, there is the “need” for something more than the Bible. The success of books that offer something spectacular—whether accounts of dying and coming back to the land of the living or low-key claims to special, extra words from God—shows that the Christian world loves something out of the ordinary. Luther would respond that such things are absolutely unnecessary, for what we need is the Word of God in the humble, mundane form that he has given it to us. Why read a book on a child who claims to have died and come back when one can read the Gospels and find there God, clothed in frail human flesh, dying and rising again? Why desire further, special words from God when the great Word of God, Christ himself, is offered to every individual as the Bible is read, preached, and sometimes applied individually through the confessional? Luther would see the market for such books as a function of our striving to be theologians of glory, unsatisfied with how God has chosen to reveal himself to be toward us, and always craving to make God conform to our expectations of what we need.

This book explores how the ethical charge carried by violence seeps into the fabric of life in the aftermath. The key arguments proposed are that for those who have perpetrated violence, the mediation of its memory is ethically tendentious and steeped in the moral, and so carries important implications for notions of the self and the negotiation of sociality in the present. 3 Memory does not entail an abstract recording of the past, but is informed by the socio-political context of recall. This means that people who have engaged in violence remember and give meaning to their experiences in ways that allow them to continue living with themselves, with their violent pasts, and with others, in the aftermath.

Michael Tomasello, a psychologist who has done influential research delineating just what makes human culture special, has listed his own “key characteristics of human culture”: universality, by which he means that some cultural traditions are practiced by virtually everyone in a community, such as a language or a religion; uniformity, individuals within communities performing the cultural behavior in the same way; and history, the pattern of cumulative change in behavior over time.83 “History,” as Tomasello uses the word in this context to mean “cumulative culture,” is already on our list. Universality and uniformity seem less fundamentally important. Some elements of human culture, such as language and religion, are often nearly universal and uniform within a community (although they clearly are not in many modern societies). But

For me context is the key—from that comes the understanding of everything.

Quincy hadn’t assembled the resources required to capitalize on its promising opportunity. As a result, it fell victim to the early-stage startup failure pattern I call “Good Idea, Bad Bedfellows.” In this context, “resources” doesn’t refer simply to capital; we see the Good Idea, Bad Bedfellows pattern play out when a startup with a promising opportunity falters due to deficiencies and dysfunction among a range of key resource providers, including its founders, other team members, investors, and strategic partners.

Bitcoin’s high volatility is often used as an example of why it cannot be trusted as a global payment mechanism. Bitcoin is volatile; it lost 30 percent of its value in 2018, only to rise over 100 percent in the first six months of 2019. But that volatility must be put in context. The inflation rate on the bolívar, Venezuela’s local currency, was 1.8 million percent in 2018. Having the choice, even in 2018, I would much rather lose 30 per-cent on my Bitcoin than 1.8 million percent on my bolívar.

defined self-socialization: “The process whereby children influence the direction and outcomes of their development through selective attention, imitation, and participation in particular activities and modalities of interaction that function as key contexts of socialization.

The key point is that the Western use—and subsequent demonization—of Sunni Islamist terror can lend itself to Clash-of-Civilizations-style cultural explanations for international political phenomena. However, this can only occur in the context of widespread historical obscurantism and disinformation that could collectively be described as state gaslighting.

Ultimately, a systems thinking approach places more attention on local context, incentives, and institutions, anticipates and addresses unintended consequences, and uses approaches to develop and implement policies and programs that engage key actors through the use of data for ongoing problem-solving and adaptation.

There is a fascist way of being antifascist, is a reflection that arises from seeing how, often, the accusation of being fascist is used, in the most varied contexts. as a low-key dialectical argument to close a discussion for which one has no case. Perhaps it is because when all one is capable of doing is opposing an idea one ends up representing that same idea in the mirror.

In the Old Testament, God’s mercy stands in an indissoluble connection with the other ways in which God is revealed. His mercy may not be extracted from this context and be treated independently. Already the revelation of God’s name to Moses shows that divine mercy is, so to speak, encircled by graciousness and fidelity. God’s self-revelation in the prophet Hosea shows that mercy is insolubly bound up with God’s holiness and gives expression to it.

Context constitutes 90 % of a message, words only 10 %.

The hypothesis which I wish to advance is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described. What we possess, if this view is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, or morality

In the context of strategic human resources development, strategies may seem a lot more like an idiosyncrasy rather than a pragmatic instrument. But the challenge is in spinning the wheels of these strategies into motion and studying the consequence which assuredly would lead to some development and not necessarily a failure. Dexterous and expert integration of strategic management and human resource management pops up as the key in this context to unlocking the uncertainties of a devised human resource strategy.

The key weakness of romanticism is that it seeks intimacy but refuses to encourage the habits that form people who are able to enter into and sustain genuinely intimate relationships. This is because real intimacy requires giving ourselves faithfully and permanently to another person in vulnerable trust. It is only in this context of safety that genuine intimacy, as opposed to just a powerful romantic or sexual attraction, can develop.

When you are expectationless, when you focus only on your actions, on what you can do best in a given context, and leave the results to a higher energy, to Life, then, you are non-frustrated. When frustration sets in, you become unhappy. And when you are not happy, you are dysfunctional. Which is why, being non-frustrated is key to constructive action, on any front, in any walk of Life.

Church services often include ritualized group processes that can induce trance states. Music, prayers, and a mesmerizing preaching style can create a state of relaxation and suggestibility. When a congregation proceeds to sing and pray aloud together with enthusiasm and speaking in tongues, an individual can easily conform. The aroused emotions and the group consensus about reality are convincing enough to inspire a response to get saved, “rededicated,” or “filled with the Spirit.” In the typical evangelical service, after a rousing sermon comes the “altar call.” This routine is strikingly similar to hypnotic induction methods in other contexts: The key is to get people to focus attention inward rather than outward, so that they see, hear, and feel internally rather than externally, through the five senses. At such times, you are much more susceptible to suggestions and less able to use your critical abilities. After an emotional sermon, which has likely already employed manipulative techniques such as fear and guilt, you are asked to bow your head and close your eyes. Soft music plays while everyone focuses inward. Quiet hymns repeat “Jesus is calling” or “Just as I am.” The minister then speaks softly into the microphone, suggesting that the Holy Spirit is present and moving in the congregation.

It should be clear that in Finnegans Wake, past, present, future, space, time and Ego-reality are all dissolved into the multiple "realities" described by mystics and quantum physicists; that Joyce, a man of timid courage, has seized the keys of hell of death, by showing that the Ego dies and is reborn more continually than we realize, and that absence or death are as unreal in this context as the famous Schrödinger equations which demonstrated in quantum theory that a cat may be dead and alive at the same time.

third key aspect of Wikipedia’s good gameness: it has good game community. Good game community requires two things: plenty of positive social interaction and a meaningful context for collective effort. Wikipedia has both. As Wikipedians describe it: Every unique location (article) in the game world (encyclopedia) has a tavern (“talk page,” or discussion forum) where players have the opportunity to interact with any other player in real time. Players often become friends with other players, and some have even arranged to meet in real life (“meetups,” or face-to-face social gatherings for frequent Wikipedia contributors).

But perhaps most importantly, the website also featured a section labeled “Data: What we’ve learned from your work so far.” This page put the individual players’ efforts into a much bigger context—and guaranteed that contributors would see the real results of their efforts. Some of the key results of the game included these findings: • On average, each MP expensed twice his or her annual salary, or more than £140,000 in expenses on top of a £60,675 salary. • The total cost to taxpayers of personal items expensed by MPs is £88 million annually. And the game detailed: • The number of receipts and papers filed by each MP, ranging between 40 and 2,000 • The total expense spending by party and by category (kitchen, garden, TV, food, etc.) • Online maps comparing travel expenses filed with actual distance from the House of Commons in London to the MPs’ home districts, making it easy to spot MPs grossly overcharging for travel (for example, MPs from nearby districts who filed £21,534 versus £4,418, or £10,105 versus £1,680) Bringing these numbers to light helped clarify the true extent of the crisis: a far more pervasive culture of extravagant personal reimbursement than originally suspected.

The salient feature of Paradise is that, as a reader, I experience events long before I can make sense of them.35 Events initially seem to exist outside of any frame of meaning, and it is only afterward that the frame through which the event is comprehensible becomes visible. The event itself initially appears as a violent irruption of the Real, occurring outside of any symbolic context. What Morrison is tapping into here is one of the key aspects of contemporary experience. Rather than experiencing the events in our lives as a part of a whole, within the context of the universal, we tend to experience events in isolation, as if each event exists in its own sphere, untouched by any other. The lack of an evident universal is what makes interpretation so difficult today. This appearance, however, is misleading, and it is through the act of interpretation that we can see the connection between events, the way in which they are all situated within a universality. On the level of its form, the novel illustrates both the illusion of nonuniversality and the hidden universality that makes interpretation possible.

Attributes like “15-megapixel camera” or “all-metal construction” enable benefits for customers such as “sharper images” or “a stronger frame.” Articulating value takes the benefits one step further: putting benefits into the context of a goal the customer is trying to achieve. Value could be “photos that are sharp even when printed or zoomed in,” “a frame that saves you money on replacements,” “every level of the organization knows the status of key metrics” or “help is immediately available across every time zone.” Features enable benefits, which can be translated into value in unique customer terms.

Differences between the relatively promiscuous Ache and the relatively monogamous Hiwi also illuminate the cultural variability of human sexual strategies. The different ratios of males to females in these two cultures may be the critical factor in eliciting a different sexual strategy. Among the Ache, there are approximately one and a half women for every man. Among the Hiwi, there are more men than women, although precise numbers are not available. The prevalence of available Ache women creates sexual opportunities for Ache men not experienced by Hiwi men. Ache men seize these opportunities, as evidenced by the high frequency of mate switching and casual affairs. Ache men can pursue a temporary sexual strategy more successfully than Hiwi men can. Hiwi women are better able than Ache women to secure a high investment from men, who must provide resources to attract and retain a mate.19 The cultural shifts witnessed today, such as the hookup culture on college campuses and in large urban settings and the rise of casual sex and online dating apps such as Tinder, probably reflect shifts in mating strategies as a function of a perceived or real sex ratio imbalance. One key cultural variable centers on the presumptive mating system, especially monogamy and polygamy. Some Islamic cultures permit men to marry up to four wives, as specified in the Qur’an. In parts of Utah and Texas in the United States, some fundamentalist Mormon groups place no formal limits on the number of wives a man can marry, and a few marry more than a dozen. Even presumptively monogamous cultures are often effectively polygynous, with some men having multiple mates through serial marriage or affair partners. The more polygynous the culture, the more some men will be inclined to pursue high-risk tactics in an effort to gain status, resources, and mates, either in the current life or in aspirational notions of life after death. Just as mating is a key cause of violence among nonhuman animals from elk to elephant seals, mating and violence are inexorably linked in our own species. Evolved mating strategies are influenced by, and implemented within, these key cultural contexts

This is because there is every reason to believe that slavery, with its unique ability to rip human beings from their contexts, to turn them into abstractions, played a key role in the rise of markets everywhere.

Based on Better Work's experience with hundred's of enterprises, there have emerged 5 critical areas of conversation between manager and contributor 1- goal setting and reflection - where the employee's OKR plan are set for the upcoming cycle. The discussion focuses on how best to align individual objectives and key results with organizational priorities. 2- ongoing progress updates, which are brief, data-driven check-ins based on the employee's real-time progress with problem-solving as needed. Progress updates really entail two basic questions - what's going well and what's not working well 3 - two-way coaching to help contributors to reach their potential and managers do a better job 4- career growth to develop skills, identify growth opportunities and expand employee's vision of their future at the company 5- light-weight performance reviews. A feedback mechanism to gather input, and summarize what the employee has accomplished since the last meeting in the context of the organization's needs. And note this conversation is held apart from the employee's annual compensation performance review.

He broke down each scene according to five key criteria: a synopsis (or summary) of the scene; the historical context; the imagery and tone for the “look and feel” of a scene; the core intention; and any potential pitfalls to avoid. In his own words, “I endeavored to distill the essence of each scene into a sentence, expressing in a few words what the point of the scene was.

Finally, of special interest in the current context, children with autism have trouble with skills of joint attention and perspective-taking, so half of all these children acquire no serviceable language at all, and any language they do acquire is used in pragmatically odd ways. The fact that joint attention is a key problem is clear from a number of studies that have found that these two sets of skills are related to one another in autistic children in the same way they are in typically developing children (Loveland and Landry 1986; Mundy et al. 1990; Rollins and Snow 1998). Astoundingly, Siller and Sigman (2008) even found that

Over the course of time, we settled on the following seven keys:    Demonstrate competence. You possess the necessary and critical skills required to lead in your organizational context.    Exhibit conviction. You display assurance that the chosen course of action will lead to positive results.    Set high standards. You aim high, both for yourself and your team.    Listen to your team. You listen to feedback and you incorporate that feedback appropriately.    Work hard. You put in the time and effort necessary to get the job done.    Do the difficult. You do the hard things, like holding people accountable, confronting bad behavior, and staying true to your values even when it hurts.    Be consistent. Your words, actions, decisions, and investments are in alignment.

CONTEXT includes current social and economic conditions, existing product portfolio, competitive landscape, and corporate culture. COMBINATION is the act of selecting key actions that can positively influence outcomes, when done together. SEQUENCE is the act of establishing a priority, order, and timing to those actions.

Here is the personal source of "the two Hegels." On the one hand, there is Hegel's sense of particular contexts, communities, and cultures; on the other hand, there is his Enlightenment sense of humanity, this all-embracing conception that had become, in Kant for example, the key to morality, rationality, politics, religion, and simply "being human." There is, again, this extreme tension in Hegel's Spirit, in other words, between his sense of unity and his sense of differences. And I shall argue in the pages that follow that this essential temperamental tension emerges in the writing of the Phenomenology itself, literally splitting the work in two. The incoherence of the Phenomenology, I want to argue, is nothing less than the epic philosophical tension of the age—something far more important than the lack of organization of a single philosopher, and something far more earth-shaking than an academic confusion concerning the proper "systematization" of German Idealism.