Bridges To Humanity

This book is an endlessly fascinating journey through a mathematician's looking glass.

Offers a philosophical history of bridges—both literal bridges and their symbolic counterparts—and the acts of cultural connection they embody. “Always,” wrote Philip Larkin, “it is by bridges that we live.” Bridges represent our aspirations to connect, to soar across divides. And it is the unfinished business of these aspirations that makes bridges such stirring sights, especially when they are marvels of ingenuity. A rich compendium of myths, superstitions, and literary and ideological figurations, Of Bridges organizes a poetic and philosophical history of bridges into nine thematic clusters. Leaping in lucid prose between distant times and places, Thomas Harrison questions why bridges are built and where they lead. He probes links forged by religion between life’s transience and eternity as well as the consolidating ties of music, illustrated by the case of the blues. He investigates bridges in poetry, as flash points in war, and the megabridges of our globalized world. He illuminates real and symbolic crossings facing migrants each day and the affective connections that make persons and societies cohere. In readings of literature, film, philosophy, and art, Harrison engages in a profound reflection on how bridges form and transform cultural communities. Of Bridges is a mesmerizing, vertiginous tale of bridges both visible and invisible, both lived and imagined.

This unique book, formed as a series of essays in honour of the memory of Paul Heim CMG, the founder of Lincoln's Inn European Group, focusses on the building of bridges between individuals and institutions in European, international, and human rights law. The book features contributions from some of the foremost current or former European and international judges; leading practitioners and officials, each with links to Lincoln's Inn, and former recipients of Lincoln's Inn's dedicated scholarship programmes. The approachable style of the book makes it readily accessible for a wide range of readers including legal scholars, practitioners, students, and those with a general interest in the application of the law and justice in today's interconnected world. Each contribution provides personal reflections and expertise on selected aspects of European and human rights law, and the personal, professional, and technical bridges involved in their development and maintenance, together with insights into their future. The book provides multi-level perspectives on the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EFTA Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court, and the interaction of their jurisprudence with domestic law and between themselves, alongside our ever-evolving societies.

Readers learn about humans, classification, and what traits make humans different from other animal species.

The surprising ways nature has influenced architecture. It may come as a surprise to learn that architects have found solutions to all kinds of design challenges in nature! Some have looked to nature to solve a structural problem, like creating an earthquake-proof bridge by mimicking the extremely long roots of a special type of grass. Others have turned to nature for artistic inspiration, designing buildings and bridges that evoke the movement of swimming fish or a bird in flight. When it comes to style and structure, nature and architecture make perfect partners! From cactuses to birdsê wings, termite towers to honeycombs, inspiration for ingenious design is everywhere around us!

This book contributes to the current discussion on geoethics and global ethics within the geoscience and humanities communities. It provides new content and insights into developing convergent human actions in response to global anthropogenic changes, based on perspectives that make it possible to combine geoscience knowledge with humanities and social sciences approaches. Selected authors present their reflections, findings and insights regarding the vision of geoethics (ethics of responsibility towards the Earth) as global ethics from philosophical, humanities and social sciences perspectives. In addition, they discuss ethical frameworks from diverse cultural traditions, searching for points of intersection with geoethics. The goal: for global environmental problems to be managed via multi-perspective approaches that can more effectively accommodate complexity. Combining the strengths of the geosciences, humanities and social sciences can pave the way for a paradigm shift in how human societies develop adaptive, sustainable responses to environmental changes and societal inequalities.

Is it possible to create a borderless world? How might it be better equipped to solve the global emergencies threatening our collective survival? Build Bridges, Not Walls is an inspiring, impassioned call to envision–and work toward–a bold new reality. "Todd Miller cuts through the facile media myths and escapes the paralyzing constraints of a political ‘debate’ that functions mainly to obscure the unconscionable inequalities that borders everywhere secure. In its soulfulness, its profound moral imagination, and its vision of radical solidarity, Todd Miller’s work is as indispensable as the love that so palpably guides it."—Ben Ehrenreich, author of Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time "The stories of the humble people of the earth Miller documents ask us to also tear down the walls in our hearts and in our heads. What proliferates in the absence of these walls and in spite of them, Miller writes, is the natural state of things centered on kindness and compassion."—Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance By the time Todd Miller spots him, Juan Carlos has been wandering alone in a remote border region for days. Parched, hungry and disoriented, he approaches and asks for a ride. Miller’s instinct is to oblige, but he hesitates: Furthering an unauthorized person’s entrance into the U.S. is a federal crime. Todd Miller has been reporting from international border zones for over twenty-five years. In Build Bridges, Not Walls, he invites readers to join him on a journey that begins with the most basic of questions: What happens to our collective humanity when the impulse to help one another is criminalized? A series of encounters–with climate refugees, members of indigenous communities, border authorities, modern-day abolitionists, scholars, visionaries, and the shape-shifting imagination of his four-year-old son–provoke a series of reflections on the ways in which nation-states create the problems that drive immigration, and how the abolition of borders could make the world a more sustainable, habitable place for all. Praise for Build Bridges, Not Walls: "Todd Miller’s deeply reported, empathetic writing on the American border is some of the most essential journalism being done today. As this book reveals, the militarization of our border is a simmering crisis that harms vulnerable people every day. It’s impossible to read his work without coming away changed."—Adam Conover, creator and host of Adam Ruins Everything and host of Factually! "All of Todd Miller’s work is essential reading, but Build Bridges, Not Walls is his most compelling, insightful work yet."—Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crises (And the Next) "Miller calls us to see how borders subject millions of people to violence, dehumanization, and early death. More importantly, he highlights the urgent necessity to abolish not only borders, but the nation-state itself."—A. Naomi Paik, author of Bans, Walls Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the Twenty-First Century and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps Since World War II "Miller lays bare the senselessness and soullessness of the nation-state and its borders and border walls, and reimagines, in their place, a complete and total restoration, therefore redemption, of who we are, and of who we are in desperate need of becoming."—Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall "Miller’s latest book is a personal, wide-ranging, and impassioned call for abolishing borders."—John Washington, author of The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum and the US-Mexican Border and Beyond