Joy

This is the text of a discussion between Judy Thorne and Mark Fisher explicating the meaning and possible use of the concept of luxury communism. The discussion was published in 'Futures and Fictions', a book which considers possibilities for a new political imaginary, by Repeater Press. The book was nominated for the 2018 International Center of Photography Infinity Award in Critical Writing and Research.

From my initial bedazzled infatuation with the miracle-manifesting wisdom of the East and eager transactions with its purveyors, to angry, despondent disillusionment then on to my arrival, after decades of spiritual practice and earnest re-evaluation, at a place of peaceful gratitude for the good of the Gurus, the good that with humble wonder we may call God, I reproduce here selections from accounts over the years of my evolving, healing attitude toward these divine yet human messengers, teachers and exemplars. In these pages are the essential landmarks and vistas of my peculiar path. From the trackless swamps through which I slogged, seething, thinking of Gurus as grrr-ooze, I ascended at times to bright-aired heights from which I saw those very bogs and bayous to be the source of life-giving streams and cloud-seeding mists that refracted sunlight into celebratory rainbows. These moments of appreciation have increased in frequency and duration and have expanded to include quotidian things so that they no longer seem quotidian at all, which makes quotidian an apt word to describe such things and eventually everything — quotidian, after all, being an unusual word for everyday, ordinary — and the ordinary everyday anything and everything is simply a marvel, the Something that somehow exists, with all of us and all things inseparable parts of that Whole. And that is wholly Love.

Humanity is on the threshold of recognizing the fundamental error in its view of life and death. Both death as well as active life is necessary to the vital formation of a larger, more essential whole. In this paper, I apply the sociology of knowledge and change as it pertains to death and focus on ways in which we can step outside its traditional frameworks and limitations. I also discuss topics related to death such as birth, aging, sickness, and war, and examine cultural differences in attitudes toward death. I offer varying perspectives including the Buddhist view and from these draw implications and conclusions. I apply the lenses of contemporary social scientists such as Edgar Morin, Kenneth Gergen, Edward Stewart, Milton Bennett, Mary Catherine Bateson, E. Doyle McCarthy, Philip Slater, and Piotr Sztompka. To these I add other relevant passages from the writings and speeches of key thinkers on the topic of death, in particular, Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, and educator, Daisaku Ikeda. To construct a more humanistic and sustainable view of life, it is first of all crucial to establish a culture which perceives death in its larger living context as but one cycle in the expansive eternity of life.

For many years, the approach taken towards technology design focused on supporting the effective, efficient, and satisfying use of it. The way people use technology has shifted from merely using it to enjoying using it. This paper describes an early approach to understanding user experience in context of technologies (e.g. digital cameras, PDAs, and mobile phones), as well as in more general context such as physical activities e.g. exercising, orienteering, and walking, and in context of diaries. The focus of this paper is on hedonic user experience; that is pleasure, enjoyment, excitement, and fun in the context of technology. This study provides insights into factors contributing to and influencing such experiences and the relationships between them.

The article attempts philosophical analysis of personal freedom in Christian evangelical worldview as well as showing the interdependence of the freedom and the fundamental concept of Christian biblical anthropology, displayed in evangelical Protestant aspect,  that is rebirth.
It also leads through the connection between the understanding of the Christian personal free-dom and the main categories of Christian ethics.

Представлены результаты исследования интереса и радости в соотнесении с дифференциальной моделью деятельностной динамики эмоций (ДДЭ). Участники эксперимента (студенты, N = 292) выполняли мыслительную деятельность, по окончании которой оценивали переживавшиеся ими при этом эмоции. Выявлено, что по мере изменения субъектно-деятельностных переменных (эффективность, результативность, компетентность, энергозатраты) кривые радости и интереса сначала «растут», затем «падают», пересекаясь на промежуточном этапе процесса, что обусловливает смену доминирования одной эмоции другой. Полученные данные подчеркивают синтезирующую роль модели ДДЭ, имеющей нелинейно-политомический характер, по отношению к предшествующим линейно-дихотомическому и нелинейно-трихотомическому представлениям.
Ключевые слова: интерес, радость, деятельностная динамика эмоций.

Gorbatkow А.А. (2011). The dynamics of emotions interest and joy in intellectual activity. Psikhologicheskii zhurnal. 2011. V. 32. P. 43-56.
The results of interest and joy study in connection with differential model of emotions’ activity dynamics (EAD) are presented. The participants (students, n = 292) carried out mental activity and the emotions they had been experiencing were evaluated after the experiment. It has been revealed that according to subject-activity variables changing (efficiency, effectiveness, competence, power inputs) the curves of joy and interest at first are going up and then down, crossing at the interim stage of the process due to replacement of one predominant emotion to another. Obtained data emphasizes the synthesizing role of EAD model, which has nonlinearly-polytomic character against preceding linearly-dichotomic and nonlinearly-trichotomic conceptions.

In this course we will examine the joyful philosophy of Michel Foucault (1926-1984), late professor of "the history of systems of thought" at the Collège de France, Paris. Widely regarded as among the most important thinkers of the 20th century, Michel Foucault has nonetheless been widely misunderstood. His thought is not difficult or obscure, but rather full of passion and wonder. We will examine in Foucault’s work the possibility of overcoming the nihilism of the modern age. We will place Foucault’s work in the milieu of 1960’s France, where it seemed for a moment that the very fundaments of society might be overturned. His experience in activism, his uncovering of relations of power and domination, his laughter—we will explore his formative influences, his philosophy, his fears, his hopes, and his courage.

This paper is part of a book review forum on Mark Purcell's "The Down-Deep Delight of Democracy", where I argue that the boundary between childhood and adulthood is deeply problematic and consequently we cannot discount the political agency of children, particularly in building a more autonomous version of democracy.

O objetivo deste texto é analisar brevemente a significação da alegria e da tristeza em Spinoza, precisamente segundo as partes III e IV de sua 'Ética'. Esse procedimento envolve uma análise dos modos de concepção dos atributos humanos (extensão e pensamento) para compreender de que maneira os afetos primários de alegria e tristeza podem aumentar ou expandir a potência humana pelo aumento da capacidade de se afetar de diversas maneiras.

The Common Beliefs Survey-III is a factored measure of dysfunctional beliefs and has generally shown satisfactory convergent validity and test-retest reliability [(2001) Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive- Behavior Therapy, 19(2), 89--103). We sought to further establish the utility of the measure by examining the extent the dysfunctional belief subscales re- lated to a wide variety of positive and negative indices of well-being, after controlling for a potential confound, namely, social desirability. Four hundred and fifty-seven university students completed questionnaires that assessed six dimensions of dysfunctional belief, seven negative indices of well-being (depression, anxiety, stress, guilt, hostility, hopelessness, suicidal thinking), three positive indices of well-being (life satisfaction, joviality, state self- assurance), and social desirability. Analyses revealed that lower well-being was associated with (1) beliefs that self-worth is dependent on success, (2) beliefs that self-worth is dependent on approval, (3) demanding beliefs that reflect unrealistically high expectations for events and individuals. Belief variables predicted 14% of the variance in the negative indices but only 7.3% in the positive indices. Stepwise regression revealed that the optimal set of belief predictors depended on the type of well-being predicted. These findings have implications for both theory and practice.

Augustine's theory of the various kinds and constituents of emotions; his critical engagement with Stoic 'cognitive psychology' of emotions as voluntary, caused by assent of the mind to evaluative judgments about past or future events, and therefore susceptible to moral evaluation.

Emotion is a force with which we convey our interior feeling such as love, hatred, anger, anxiety and is general all our joys to the others.emotin, or maybe its force by itself is one of most fundamental bases of a literary work and its exactly the factor that makes the words or the works eternal , because it evokes the person emotion and feelings all the time and the person never gets tired of reading it. Science and scientific theories related to it are made and processed by our wisdom and wisdom is rapidly changeable but emtion has very little changes and even if its changer at a time , the change is not in the foundation and its basis , but the change is in the form and is appearance. Emotin itself includes: the emotin of enthusiasm , fear , joy and anger and each of them has its own special details and perceptions. Enthusiasm , for example , includes the two element of eulody and thankfulness.emotion of fear includes apolgy and affection and joy includes enthusiasm and tenderness and tenderness and anger includes satire , promise and blame

This paper interprets the affect of compassion according to Spinoza’s theory of affects (Ethics III and IV). To this end, I distinguish the practical content of benevolence according to the origin, nature and force of affects. Finally, I examine in what sense benevolence deriving from the compassion would be a sadness, whereas the benevolence deriving from the piety would be a joy. Keywords: Compassion. Benevolence. Joy. Sadness. Theory of affects. | O objetivo deste artigo é interpretar o afeto da comiseração segundo a teoria dos afetos de Spinoza (Ética III e IV). Para tal, distingue-se o conteúdo prático da benevolência de acordo com a origem, natureza e força dos afetos. Por fim, examina-se em que sentido a benevolência proveniente da comiseração seria uma tristeza, enquanto a que provém da piedade seria uma alegria. Palavras-chave: Comiseração. Benevolência. Alegria. Tristeza. Teoria dos afetos.