Contributing Writers
John Bell
John Bell is a co-founder and director of The Conciliators Guild, an initiative dedicated to highlighting the role of underlying human motivations in politics.
TOOLS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
The Great Attention Heist
Co-authored with John Zada (Originally appeared on January 1, 2018 in Los Angeles Review of Books).
Increasingly, propagandists, media executives, and internet moguls are using new technology to turn our attention into a commodity for profit.
Margaret A. Caudill-Slosberg
Margaret Caudill-Slosberg, MD, PhD, MPH, was formerly Adjunct Assistant Professor of Community and Family Medicine, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College and Instructor in Anesthesiology, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. She has a longstanding interest in pain management and mind/body interactions and is the author of Managing Pain Before it Manages You. Dr. Caudill-Slosberg served as the lead pain specialist in the Kenya Heart and Sole project, University of Massachusetts Boston, developing pain management prevention and treatment strategies for the team. She currently assists patients in in medication-assisted-treatment of opioid addiction and nourishes her interest in public health through Emergency Management.
HEALTH AND EDUCATION IN THE MODERN WORLD: GLOBAL HEALTH
Income and Health
It’s important to understand how poverty is the antithesis of health and why eradicating it is critical to achieving good health for the globe and its population.
Defense Against Infectious Diseases
At least 21 million extra lives were saved due to the accelerated progress in reducing child mortality and malaria, maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
Maternal and Child Health
Better birth spacing from expanding availability of contraception can reduce maternal mortality by 30% and child mortality by 20%.
Current and Future Challenges
Global health has taken on an increased sense of urgency in the face of our shrinking planet and the impacts of global warming.
Hafeez Diwan
Hafeez Diwan is a skin pathologist in Houston, TX. He is a co-author of a textbook of skin pathology, Dermatopathology: A volume in the high-yield pathology series, and the author of How to Have Instant Will Power Right Away.
IDEAS THAT SHAPED OUR MODERN WORLD
The Journey of Classical Greek Culture to the West
Co-authored with Sally Mallam. The cultural center of what would become our Western heritage moved from Rome and Constantinople to cities in the Islamic world, the most famous of which were Baghdad and Cordoba. Islamic culture favored learning and tolerance, two major factors that set the stage for the Arab “Golden Age,” which contributed to the birth of the European Renaissance.
George Kasabov
George Kasabov was born in Bulgaria and lives in England. An architect and product designer, he has taught at universities around the world, including University College London (UCL), Harvard and Princeton. He has worked on environmental and sustainability issues since the early 1970s.
THE CHANGING WORLD ECONOMY
Debt, Trust and Money
Money attempts to make indeterminate qualities of our experience fit neatly into quantities that can be counted and compared to standard units, where everything is valued against a sum of money.
Power, Money and Stability
The Bank of England declares that “Money is a kind of IOU which is universally trusted.” The question which has occupied thinkers since money was first invented: What are the necessary preconditions to this trust?
Substitute Moneys and Cryptocurrencies
Today every transaction can be tracked by central authority. This cedes tremendous power to government and the banks. Whether this is used for good or for ill depends on how our politics evolves.
Risk, Gambling, and Financialization
Financiers and the owners of capital have found new ways to extract money without adding value to the rest of the economy. They’re not the only ones “taking” not “making.” Top people in commerce and industry have learned to do it too.
Featured Book Reports
Doughnut Economics
7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist
A report on the book by Kate Raworth
A “renegade economist” advances a new, more comprehensive and regenerative economic model based on a view of humans as socially adaptable beings in a world of limited natural resources.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
A report on the book by Thomas Piketty
A leading economist documents the trend of income inequality through history, stressing that the way an economy functions is directly related to a power structure that is determined and maintained by the few who hold the wealth.
A SUSTAINABLE PLANET
Featured Book Report
Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels
How Human Values Evolve
A report on the book by Ian Morris
The amount of energy that can be extracted from the environment through technology, says Morris, defines the social possibilities and influences the attitudes and world view of each epoch.
TOOLS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
Featured Book Report
1493
Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
A report on the book by Charles C. Mann
How the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and sowed the seeds of today’s fiercest political disputes.
Robert Ornstein
An award-winning psychologist and pioneering brain researcher, Robert Ornstein was the founder of The Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK) and the founder, executive editor and principle contributing writer of the Human Journey project until his death in 2018. Ornstein authored more than 20 books on the nature of the human mind and brain and their relationship to thought, health, and individual and social consciousness, several of which are Human Journey Featured Books. His books have sold over six million copies worldwide, have been translated into dozens of languages and used in more than 20,000 university classes.
Human Journey Featured Books by Robert Ornstein
The Axemaker’s Gift (with James Burke)
Healthy Pleasures (with David Sobel)
New World New Mind (with Paul Ehrlich)
Humanity on a Tightrope (with Paul Ehrlich)
Sally Mallam
Sally Mallam is the current executive director of The Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge and executive editor of The Human Journey project. She also directs ISHK’s literacy outreach programs. Mallam is an artist who has exhibited in the U.S. and Britain. Born in the UK, she spent 15 years in international business and publishing prior to coming to the U.S. Her primary research focus in recent years has been the role of religion and spirituality in the development of human societies. She is the author of The Human Journey’s comprehensive overview of the impact of religious ideas throughout history.
IDEAS THAT SHAPED OUR MODERN WORLD
Paleolithic Beginnings
About 35,000 years ago, our ancestors first began to conceive of a tiered cosmos and to formulate rituals to engage influential forces above and below—an idea that has been with us ever since.
Connecting with the Gods
Neolithic Era | Mesopotamia | The Noble Ones | Indus-Sarasvati Civilization | Aegean Civilizations | The Bronze Age Collapse | Archaic Greece | Ancient China
Pathways to Current Beliefs
Understanding how religious traditions evolved and intermingled sheds light on contemporary beliefs and rituals, the forces that shape human thought, and our mind’s great potential for change and development.
Jesus: Origins of Christianity
Jerusalem and the Early Followers of Jesus | The Church that Paul Built | Best-Known Gospels | Historical Jesus | Jesus the Teacher
A Multicultural Story
The Roman Empire was a melting pot of cultures, each with its own stories, myths, legends and beliefs—many of which live on in contemporary Christian beliefs and ritual.
Mohammad: Origins of Islam
The Pre-Islamic World | The Life of Muhammad | Muhammad the Messenger | Muhammad the Unifier | Judaism and Christianity in the Qur’an | The Community of Believers
The Journey of Classical Greek Culture to the West
Co-authored with Hafeez Diwan. The cultural center of what would become our Western heritage moved from Rome and Constantinople to cities in the Islamic world, the most famous of which were Baghdad and Cordoba. Islamic culture favored learning and tolerance, two major factors that set the stage for the Arab “Golden Age,” which contributed to the birth of the European Renaissance.
Featured Book Report
Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
From Shamans to Priests to Prophets
A report on the book by Stephen K. Sanderson
Why are there are so many different types of religion and how and why has religion evolved over time? The answer lies in both our biological and our sociocultural evolution.
David Sobel, MD, MPH
David S. Sobel, MD, MPH, Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine and former Medical Director of Patient Education and Health Promotion for The Permanente Medical Group and Kaiser Permanente Northern California. He practiced adult primary care medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Offices in San Jose. He has worked with the Stanford Patient Education Research Center on the development and evaluation of the Stanford Chronic Disease Self-Management Program. He is coauthor of eight books including Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions, Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain, The Healing Brain, Healthy Pleasures, Mind & Body Health Handbook, and What’s the Catch? How to Avoid Getting Hooked and Manipulated. He is recipient of the national Healthtrac Foundation Health Education Award, the Kaiser Permanente James A Vohs Award for Quality and Exceptional Contribution Award, and Honorary Fellow of the Society for Public Health Education.
HEALTH AND EDUCATION IN THE MODERN WORLD: THE PURSUIT OF HEALTH
What Causes Health
Some 95% of the trillions of dollars the US spends on health care goes to medical services and just 5% to population-wide approaches to health improvement – a clear misalignment with what we know about the true determinants of health.
Who Provides Care
The vast majority of all care is provided not by medical professionals but by people for themselves and their families.
Mind and Health
The majority of Americans report unhealthy stress levels, but more impactful than the stress itself is how people feel about it.
Robert Twigger
Robert Twigger is a traveller, writer and artist who has published 12 books translated in over 16 languages. His latest book is Walking the Great North Line.
Featured Book Report
INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING AND EMPATHY
The Weirdest People in the World
A report on the book by Joseph Henrich
This review first appeared in ISF Perspectives, the digital magazine of The Idries Shah Foundation.
The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history.
John Zada
John Zada is a writer, journalist and photographer based in Toronto who covers travel, culture and the Middle East. He is blogs at Al Bab and The Planisphere, and is one of the directors of The Conciliators Guild, an initiative dedicated to highlighting the role of underlying human motivations in politics.
TOOLS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
The Great Attention Heist
Co-authored with John Bell. Originally appeared on January 1, 2018 in Los Angeles Review of Books.
Increasingly, propagandists, media executives, and internet moguls are using new technology to turn our attention into a commodity for profit.
Featured Book Reports
INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING AND EMPATHY
Humanity on a Tightrope
A report on the book by Paul Ehrlich and Robert Ornstein
Originally appeared on June 27, 2012 in The Toronto Review of Books.
Over millions of years, our minds evolved with quick reflexes to deal with sudden threats. Our survival now requires that we consciously evolve a new mind and new perceptions to adapt.
The Righteous Mind
A report on the book by Jonathan Haidt
Originally appeared in “From the bookshelf” in Human Givens, 2018, vol 25, no 1.
We live in an era of polarized thinking. But could positions of both side have roots in common moral foundations?
Many other dedicated ISHK members and friends continue to provide crucial research, writing, and editorial support for The Human Journey.