I have been lucky to have had many great teachers during my academic life and mentors who continue to enrich my intellectual pursuits. In this post, I want to write about only three of them. The first is Graham Fulton. When I first met him, he was a psychology professor at University College Sedaya International (UCSI), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was a student there from January 2006 till July 2007, though I never had a…
Reflecting on the title of the book, Psychology as the Science of Human Being: The Yokohama Manifesto, it occurred to me that we can read the title in two different ways. First, psychology can be, and should be, a science that is responsive to human beings, to the messiness and ambiguities of our reality. According to this first meaning, we should be mindful that the target of psychological science, and practice it in a way…
I was one of the participants at a 3+ hour workshop on Francois Laruelle held by Incite Seminars. The workshop was facilitated by Glenn Wallis who opened the session with a personal note about how he had first encountered Laruelle’s work and how that encounter has influenced his own projects, most notably (thus far) his book, The Critique of Western Buddhism. Glenn’s presentation and the general atmosphere of the workshop–co-created by the wonderful participants–were centered…
If you’re interested in the topic of procrastination and want to read a carefully put-together collection of diverse perspectives on the topic, I’d recommend this book by Andrew Santella. It is clear that Santella himself has genuine interest in this topic. Reading the book, we could also see how much fun he has had writing it, which in turn makes the book fun to read. He isn’t satisfied with simplistic “theories” or “remedies” of procrastination,…
This is the second installment in my series of reading key philosophical texts. It seemed appropriate to follow the reading of Plato’s Republic with the Nicomachean Ethics. This text is an incredible place for intellectual training, for training of our attention. It is an exercise in the art of noticing what is relevant in a given judgment. My overview is an invitation for you to read this great work. If you decide to read it,…