Finding Meaning In An Uncertain World

All of us have a desire to live, not in the simple sense of merely surviving, but in the more profound sense of living with purpose and meaning. But we are not born into a ready-made world filled with meaning. We must find and live the meaning that is ours in the life we have been given. Using personal stories and clinical cases, this book deals with the human and the spiritual side of our search for meaning, and it seeks to help us move toward a more fulfilled life.

Now with an Adult Ministry Study Guide! All of us have a desire to live, not in the simple sense of merely surviving, but in the more profound sense of living with purpose and meaning. But we are not born into a ready-made world filled with meaning. We must find and live the meaning that is ours in the life we have been given. Using personal stories and clinical cases, this book deals with the human and the spiritual side of our search for meaning, and it seeks to help us move toward a more fulfilled life.

Originally published: Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2003, in series: Crosscurrents.

In his entertaining and informative book Graphic Discovery, Howard Wainer unlocked the power of graphical display to make complex problems clear. Now he's back with Picturing the Uncertain World, a book that explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. Using a visually diverse sampling of graphical display, from heartrending autobiographical displays of genocide in the Kovno ghetto to the "Pie Chart of Mystery" in a New Yorker cartoon, Wainer illustrates the many ways graphs can be used--and misused--as we try to make sense of an uncertain world. Picturing the Uncertain World takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do. Are cancer rates higher or lower in rural communities? How can you know how much money to sock away for retirement when you don't know when you'll die? And where exactly did nineteenth-century novelists get their ideas? These are some of the fascinating questions Wainer invites readers to consider. Along the way he traces the origins and development of graphical display, from William Playfair, who pioneered the use of graphs in the eighteenth century, to instances today where the public has been misled through poorly designed graphs. We live in a world full of uncertainty, yet it is within our grasp to take its measure. Read Picturing the Uncertain World and learn how.

We live in times of uncertainty and anxiety. In these times, how can we best navigate our unknowns? Our Uncertain World answers that question through a Jungian prism. Carl Jung’s theory has helped many people through difficult times. Jungian perspectives facilitate such challenging navigation by not simplifying complexity but rather by finding the meaningful through-lines that guide the individual toward individuation even in the darkest of times. Using Jung’s unique multi-dimensional approach, this book offers insights and provides answers to questions about life in a state of three-dimensional flux. Our Uncertain World was born from the premise that we are in a period of ongoing change. The interlocking crises of COVID, national polarization, environmental disaster, and international war can undermine or even destroy the symbols, rituals, and mental structures that give meaning and coherence to our lives. These crises are explored in depth In the book’s three sections, Living with Personal Uncertainty over the Long Term, Social Turmoil: A Moment of Social change for Our Community and Our Nation, and Challenges Facing Our World: Grappling with the Environment, The Pandemic and War. The authors of this book accompany the reader through the current challenges we face and examine new ways of adjusting to the existing condition of protracted uncertainty. The book encourages the reader to articulate their own challenges and develop their own language to write, speak, and live within the reality of uncertain times. Our Uncertain World provides tools for individuals and groups to formulate new perspectives and life strategies for the current reality.

Advances in Motivation Science, Volume Eleven, the latest release in the Motivation Science series, contains interesting articles that cover topics such as An Ecology of Meaning: An Integrative Framework for Understanding Human Motivations, Beer AMS Quest for Self Knowledge, Boundary conditions of the rational model Finding the limits of rationality, Growth goals: A review of the construct Predictors, Consequences, and Intervention, Pragmatic Prospection Theory, Research, and Practice, and The Quest for Self-Knowledge What Do We Want to Know (and not Know) About Ourselves. Presents new research in the field of motivation science and research Provides a timely overview of important research programs conducted by the most respected scholars in psychology Gives special attention to directions for future research

The Last of Us Survival Handbook offers survival strategies and tactics for living in a post-apocalyptic world, filled with danger and infected humans. It provides readers with detailed instructions on how to find food, water, shelter, and other resources necessary for survival in the wilderness and urban environments. The Handbook also covers topics such as building and fortifying structures, dealing with infection, coping with stress and trauma, and finding hope and resilience in a world without structure or civilization. The Last of Us Survival Handbook is an essential guide for fans and anyone interested in learning more about survival in a post-apocalyptic world.

Many of us, especially since 9/11, have become personally concerned about issues of security, and this is no surprise. Security is near the top of government and corporate agendas around the globe. Security-related stories appear on the front page everyday. How well though, do any of us truly understand what achieving real security involves? In Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier invites us to take a critical look at not just the threats to our security, but the ways in which we're encouraged to think about security by law enforcement agencies, businesses of all shapes and sizes, and our national governments and militaries. Schneier believes we all can and should be better security consumers, and that the trade-offs we make in the name of security - in terms of cash outlays, taxes, inconvenience, and diminished freedoms - should be part of an ongoing negotiation in our personal, professional, and civic lives, and the subject of an open and informed national discussion. With a well-deserved reputation for original and sometimes iconoclastic thought, Schneier has a lot to say that is provocative, counter-intuitive, and just plain good sense. He explains in detail, for example, why we need to design security systems that don't just work well, but fail well, and why secrecy on the part of government often undermines security. He also believes, for instance, that national ID cards are an exceptionally bad idea: technically unsound, and even destructive of security. And, contrary to a lot of current nay-sayers, he thinks online shopping is fundamentally safe, and that many of the new airline security measure (though by no means all) are actually quite effective. A skeptic of much that's promised by highly touted technologies like biometrics, Schneier is also a refreshingly positive, problem-solving force in the often self-dramatizing and fear-mongering world of security pundits. Schneier helps the reader to understand the issues at stake, and how to best come to one's own conclusions, including the vast infrastructure we already have in place, and the vaster systems--some useful, others useless or worse--that we're being asked to submit to and pay for. Bruce Schneier is the author of seven books, including Applied Cryptography (which Wired called "the one book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published") and Secrets and Lies (described in Fortune as "startlingly lively...¦[a] jewel box of little surprises you can actually use."). He is also Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., and publishes Crypto-Gram, one of the most widely read newsletters in the field of online security.