The Joseph Paradox

This book is a reader-friendly treatment of the Joseph story—one of the most popular tales in the Bible. Instead of the usual interpretation as an Horatio Alger success story, the text proposes that we are presented with a cautionary tale of high achievement and the pursuit of success. In the context of the larger biblical narrative, Joseph’s short-term success leads to the enslavement of his descendants and the centuries-long derailment of the destiny of the Children of Israel. The self-limiting nature of the pursuit of power is just one of the themes illuminated in this work.

Not since the Roman Empire has any nation had as much economic, cultural, and military power as the United States does today. Yet, as has become all too evident through the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the impending threat of the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, that power is not enough to solve global problems--like terrorism, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction--without involving other nations. Here Joseph S. Nye, Jr. focuses on the rise of these and other new challenges and explains clearly why America must adopt a more cooperative engagement with the rest of the world.

The epic tale of an ancient, unsolved puzzle and how it relates to all scientific attempts to explain the basic structure of the universe At the dawn of science the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno formulated his paradox of motion, and amazingly, it is still on the cutting edge of all investigations into the fabric of reality. Zeno used logic to argue that motion is impossible, and at the heart of his maddening puzzle is the nature of space and time. Is space-time continuous or broken up like a string of beads? Over the past two millennia, many of our greatest minds—including Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and other current theoreticians—have been gripped by the mystery this puzzle represents. Joseph Mazur, acclaimed author of Euclid in the Rainforest, shows how historic breakthroughs in our understanding of motion shed light on Zeno’s paradox. The orbits of the planets were explained, the laws of motion were revealed, the theory of relativity was discovered—but the basic structure of time and space remained elusive. In the tradition of Fermat’s Enigma and Zero, The Motion Paradox is a lively history of this apparently simple puzzle whose solution—if indeed it can be solved—will reveal nothing less than the fundamental nature of reality.

A radically new way of understanding secularism which explains why being secular can seem so strangely religious For much of America’s rapidly growing secular population, religion is an inescapable source of skepticism and discomfort. It shows up in politics and in holidays, but also in common events like weddings and funerals. In The Secular Paradox, Joseph Blankholm argues that, despite their desire to avoid religion, nonbelievers often seem religious because Christianity influences the culture around them so deeply. Relying on several years of ethnographic research among secular activists and organized nonbelievers in the United States, the volume explores how very secular people are ambivalent toward belief, community, ritual, conversion, and tradition. As they try to embrace what they share, secular people encounter, again and again, that they are becoming too religious. And as they reject religion, they feel they have lost too much. Trying to strike the right balance, secular people alternate between the two sides of their ambiguous condition: absolutely not religious and part of a religion-like secular tradition. Blankholm relies heavily on the voices of women and people of color to understand what it means to live with the secular paradox. The struggles of secular misfits—the people who mis-fit normative secularism in the United States—show that becoming secular means rejecting parts of life that resemble Christianity and embracing a European tradition that emphasizes reason and avoids emotion. Women, people of color, and secular people who have left non-Christian religions work against the limits and contradictions of secularism to create new ways of being secular that are transforming the American religious landscape. They are pioneering the most interesting and important forms of secular “religiosity” in America today.

Like the story of Joseph, life can be very difficult, especially when one is betrayed by the person or people you love and trust. However, to be able to move on in life and achieve your dreams, you must work through the betrayal and forgive your betrayer or those who have wronged you. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself to get rid of the resentment and toxicity you have towards your betrayer and those who have wronged you. By so doing you free your heart from revenge to enable you to focus and achieve your purpose and dreams in life. Studies have shown that unforgiveness can be detrimental to one's health leading to a lot of the sicknesses that people are suffering from. For instance, high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, cancer and insomnia, just to mention a few. Forgiveness on the other hand, leads to better health and general well-being. The lessons in this book provide helpful tips on how to deal with betrayal, and to be able to forgive those who have wronged you, minimize sibling rivalry, trust in God for His guidance and help, and by so doing persevere in challenging times to achieve your dreams or God's given purpose against all odds. Life is a paradox because, the very challenging situations like betrayal that can cripple one in life, are the same ones that can strengthen, build and enable you to thrive in life. That is, if you can persevere, seek help when necessary and go through them successfully. One should be ready to have a mind shift knowing that it is possible to go through any personal crisis and come out victorious. Joseph's life is a perfect example of how he rose above the tremendously difficult circumstances of betrayal by his brothers whom he loved and trusted, and his master's wife who framed him up landing him in prison. However, Joseph endured these challenges and forgave his bothers and others who have wronged him, worked hard, and trusted in God for guidance and help. Therefore, Joseph thrived everywhere he was placed and finally fulfilled his dream and purpose in life.

Paradox for Life Review explains how three different bases for self-esteem affect the accuracy of self-esteem as the lens through which older adults view their reminiscences. James J. Magee describes how life review groups have used paradoxes drawn from poetry, drama, word play, intergenerational family dynamics, Eastern and Western mystical traditions, and personal life experiences to enable members to discover new ways to accept their histories with compassion and wisdom.

This work is a large, powerfully illustrated interdisciplinary natural sciences volume, the first of its kind to examine the critically important nature of ecological paradox, through an abundance of lenses: the biological sciences, taxonomy, archaeology, geopolitical history, comparative ethics, literature, philosophy, the history of science, human geography, population ecology, epistemology, anthropology, demographics, and futurism. The ecological paradox suggests that the human biological–and from an insular perspective, successful–struggle to exist has come at the price of isolating H. sapiens from life-sustaining ecosystem services, and far too much of the biodiversity with which we find ourselves at crisis-level odds. It is a paradox dating back thousands of years, implicating millennia of human machinations that have been utterly ruinous to biological baselines. Those metrics are examined from numerous multidisciplinary approaches in this thoroughly original work, which aids readers, particularly natural history students, who aspire to grasp the far-reaching dimensions of the Anthropocene, as it affects every facet of human experience, past, present and future, and the rest of planetary sentience. With a Preface by Dr. Gerald Wayne Clough, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Foreword by Robert Gillespie, President of the non-profit, Population Communication.