Give Life Meaning Research Articles

Civil identity of students at a military training center: empirical research experience

Importance. One of the urgent tasks of modern Russian higher education is the development of the civil identity of students. Moreover, particular importance acquires the civil identity of students of military training centers, who, along with the civil one, receive a military specialty and must be ready for professional self-realization in both the civil and military spheres. An analysis of scientific publications in recent years shows that there is not enough empirical research devoted to the study of the civil identity of MTC students, which determined the choice of the topic of our research.Research Methods. The main tools of the empirical research are the standardized methods “Value Survey” (M. Rokeach), the LPO method “Life-Purpose Orientations” (D.A. Leontiev), the author’s modification of the “My Choice” questionary (S.S. Grunshpun), as well as the author’s questionary “The Heroic Past and Present of Russia,” reflecting the specifics of the educational activities of the military training center. Research base: Military training center at SPbSUT The Bonch- Bruevich Saint Petersburg State University of Telecommunications. The sample consisted of 400 male students aged 19 to 23 years (200 of the 2nd year students and 200 of the 4th year students).Results and Discussion. A comparative analysis of diagnostics of the civil identity components formedness (motivational, cognitive, behavioral, emotional-evaluative) shows positive dynamics in the change in hedonic motives in the 2nd year to conscious ones in the 4th year. Statistically significant correlations are identified between: “goals in life” scales: the presence of goals that give life meaning and direction and time perspective is associated with cheerfulness (p ≤ 0.05); locus of control – life and controllability of life. The belief that a person (student) is given the freedom to make decisions, control his life, and take responsibility is negatively related to freedom (p ≤ 0.05), positively related to interesting work (p ≤ 0.05); life effectiveness or satisfaction with selfrealization; a change in attitude towards events significant for the state and Russian society, and an awareness of the importance of responsible service to one’s country is identified; increasing the level of knowledge of the history of the Russian state, which is reflected in improving the overall academic performance of students and motivation for further professional self-realization in their chosen specialty.Conclusion. The introduction of a comprehensive program for the development of civil identity of students “To Serve Russia” into the educational activities of the military training center contributes to the development of positive motivation of students to serve the Russian state and society; expanding knowledge and ideas about the heroic past and present of the Russian people; increasing interest in acquiring experience in solving military-professional tasks to ensure the preservation and strengthening of Russian statehood; a positive emotional assessment of events significant for the state and the manifestation of an active civil position in socially significant activities.

Exploring the limits to our understanding of whether fish feel pain.

Exploring the limits to our understanding of whether fish feel pain.

The Course of Life Concept Development in Students Inclined to Deviant Behavior

Objectives: Deviant behavior has become a global issue of great concern and requires immediate attention. This study aimed to investigate the course of life concept development in students inclined to deviant behavior. Methods: This experimental and empirical study was performed by a structural correlation as a quasi-experimental design in 2019-2020. The study setting was the Belgorod National State Research University, and the target population was the students aged 18 to 21 who tended toward deviant behavior. The samples were selected based on real groups’ involvement and polar groups’ isolation and comparison. The variables were the correction program aimed at developing personal notions about the life path in students and the qualities that make up the content of the “temporary” and “value-semantic” aspects of the subjects’ notions about the life path. Data on deviant behavior were collected using the questionnaires of a tendency to deviant behavior and the deviant behavior questionnaire of Robinson and Bennett. The structural equation modeling, partial least squares method, and SmartPLS software were used to validate the original model and test the hypotheses. Results: Only 27% of students tended towards deviant behavior (group 1), and 73% were normal students (group 2). The students in group 1 had a higher tendency to nonconformism (P≤0.01), moderate inclination to addictive behavior (P≤0.01), and more aggressive tendencies (P≤0.01) compared to the students in group 2. Also, in the students in group 1, “present” and “past” times were described as joyful, light, real, close, calm, voluminous, bright, and active, but “future” time as passive, motionless, empty, little, flat, petty and narrow. In terms of value-semantic measurement of students’ life concepts, the students prone to deviant behavior did not have meaningful purposes in the future that give life meaningfulness and direction. Discussion: Based on the study findings, a higher tendency for nonconformism, addictive behavior, and aggressive tendencies was found in the students with a tendency to deviant behavior. Also, these students lack meaningful purposes in the future that give life meaning and direction, and they live for today or yesterday. It is suggested that the correctional and development work under a program aimed at the personal course of life concepts development reduce the students’ inclination to deviant behavior.

Metaphors can give life meaning

Conceptual metaphor theory offers a perspective on how and when people find meaning in life. Whereas life’s meaning can be difficult to grasp, metaphor compares life to a relatively more concrete and structured concept. Supporting this account, American adults (Study 1) and German undergraduates (Study 2) who framed life as a journey reported more meaning in life. The journey metaphor was particularly beneficial for individuals with low levels of perceived coherence in life (Study 2). Study 3 further explored this pattern of moderation: An accessible metaphor, compared to other life framings, benefited participants who lack a strong meaning framework. Study 4 focused on the mechanism behind metaphor’s influence. Participants who imagined events from their life journey perceived stronger interrelatedness among those events as measured with an analog spatial organization task. Perceived interrelatedness in turn predicted meaning in life, particularly for individuals with a strong preference for well-structured knowledge. Finally, participants who applied their own metaphor to life expressed greater meaning (Study 5), especially those high in personal need for structure (Study 6). An internal meta-analysis of these findings provides cumulative evidence for metaphor’s influence on perceived meaning in life and reveals moderating features of the individual.

El fracaso axiológico de la vida

El sentido de la vida no es solamente un antiguo y común problema filosófico, sino también uno práctico que, de cierta forma, cualquiera plantea. Todo el sentido de la vida siempre fue correlacionado con la creencia en algunos valores superiores que constituyeron impulsos para el ennoblecimiento espiritual del hombre. Aunque los valores espirituales sean ilusiones, ellos son absolutamente necesarios para poder dar sentido a la vida. Cuando ellos desaparecen, se produce una grave enfermedad de la conciencia axiológica del hombre. Los personajes que intervienen en el escenario de la cultura en este drama son el idealista, el que instituye los valores como ilusiones necesarias del espíritu humano y el sabio, que pierde cualquier ilusión relativa a la salvación mediante la creencia en los valores.

Criatividade e resiliência na vida de Nise da Silveira

O presente trabalho, síntese de uma dissertação de Mestrado, teve como objetivo analisar a biografia de Nise da Silveira, psiquiatra brasileira eminentemente criativa, que enfrentou situações adversas ao longo de sua trajetória. Buscando por indicadores de criatividade e resiliência em sua história de vida, foi realizada uma análise de diversas fontes documentais, com a intenção de identificar a presença de características criativas e resilientes descritas na literatura científica, a partir de um roteiro de análise desenvolvido pelas pesquisadoras. Os dados obtidos apontam para existência de vários aspectos típicos da pessoa criativa no nível individual (relacionados a aspectos cognitivos, motivacionais, de personalidade, sócio-psicológicos e padrões de vida); no nível de domínio (área específica de destaque, sistemas simbólicos e tipo de prática criativa); no nível de campo (principais mentores, relação com rivais e relação com seguidores) bem como para a presença de características próprias do sujeito resiliente (papel da família e das amizades, autoestima e realização profissional, capacidade de dar sentido à própria vida, resolução de problemas, independência e autonomia, senso de humor e outros) na história de Nise da Silveira. Tais potenciais, criatividade e resiliência, uma vez estimulados, atuaram de maneira decisiva em seu desenvolvimento saudável e eminente.

Readers of Joshua Loth Liebman's Peace of Mind

Readers of Joshua Loth Liebman's <i>Peace of Mind</i>

In the shadow of industry: a study of culturization in Papua New Guinea

The activities of extractive industry have recently been framed by a language of corporate social responsibility that relies on a system of legibility and objectification. This process reifies ‘cultural units’, abstracting them from the rules of kinship, migration, and exchange that ensure social and economic security. I refer to this process and the ideology of ‘development’ that accompanies it as culturization and examine it in the context of oil extraction in Papua New Guinea's Kutubu region. Drawing on debates on the indigenization and politicization of ‘culture’, I present culturization as a process that relies on rules of inheritance and property to impose a structure of difference in contexts of extractive industry that ignores the intricacies of sociality that ultimately give life meaning. The aim of the paper is to both illustrate the consequences of this process and consider cognate ideas of ‘culture’ vis‐à‐vis ‘sociality’ to emphasize their mutual theoretical importance to contemporary anthropological inquiry.

Counterterrorism, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

Counterterrorism, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

Best Practices: A Program to Support Shared Decision Making in an Outpatient Psychiatric Medication Clinic

This column presents preliminary findings of an intervention to support shared decision making in psychopharmacology consultation. The waiting area in an urban psychiatric medication clinic was transformed into a peer-run Decision Support Center featuring a user-friendly, Internet-based software program with which clients could create a one-page computer-generated report for use in the medication consultation. The Decision Support Center was used 662 times by 189 unique users from a young-adult and general adult case management team from October 2006 to September 2007. All clients had severe mental disorders. Only ten clients refused to use the intervention at some point during the pilot study. Focus groups with medical staff (N=4), clients (N=16), case managers (N=14), and peer-specialist staff (N=3) reported that the intervention helped to create efficiencies in the consultation and empower clients to become more involved in treatment-related decision making. A randomized controlled trial is currently in process.

The Walkabout: Challenging Students in a California Charter Middle School

The Walkabout model has proved to be a perfect match for the goals of a charter middle school that has broken out of the constraints of a traditional curriculum. The authors describe how students at the school prepare for and embark on independent projects that push them to take risks and expand their engagement in the world. IMAGINE YOUR students planning and implementing their own projects -- projects that extend their abilities, challenge them academically, and make valuable connections to their community. Our middle school students at Chico Country Day School are doing just that. The projects the students have designed range from learning how to fly a helicopter to planning a toothpaste-and-toothbrush drive for a local homeless shelter. And all have come about through the Walkabout Program. In 1974 the Kappan published an article by Maurice Gibbons laying out the Walkabout Program. This article and a follow-up article by Gibbons introduced and then further explained the program and the rationale for the celebrated Walkabout movement.1 Gibbons based his ideas on the Australian film Walkabout, a movie that told an exceptional tale of rites of passage in the Australian outback. When a young man who was left alone in the wilderness over an extended period of time returns to his tribe, he is confidently announcing, by his survival, that he is now able to rejoin the tribe as a fully contributing member. In the same spirit, the tribe eagerly welcomes his return. Gibbons used the Australian Walkabout to make the profound point that we in North America do not seem to have an authentic rite of passage to mark the critical transition from adolescence to adulthood. Therefore, Gibbons proposed adapting the Walkabout as a way to help make up for the absence in our culture of a challenging transitional experience for our young people. The Walkabout provides a structure that enables students to make creative decisions about their learning that are based on their own needs and interests. As Gibbons remarked about young people in 1974, No one can give life meaning for them, but there are a number of ways we can help them to give life meaning for themselves (p. 602). Learning to initiate, plan, and evaluate one's own learning journey can be challenging and sometimes frustrating, but such a decision-making process also represents real life. Essentially, the Walkabout is based on five different challenge categories: adventure -- students demonstrate courage and endurance in an unfamiliar environment; creativity -- students use their imagination to solve a problem, expand their horizons, and stretch their abilities; service -- students show their responsibility to the school and community through volunteer work; practical skill -- students learn and demonstrate a new and practical skill; and logical inquiry -- students identify, use, and evaluate a variety of resources and present this information in an appropriate format. These five categories form the structure that students use to select challenges that either can be integrated into the school curriculum or can take place wholly outside the specified curriculum. It is crucial that a selected activity be a legitimate challenge for students and provide learning experiences that are original and involve reasonable risk. Students are fully aware of what are and are not authentic and worthwhile achievements, and sharing with peers, friends, family, and the wider community their pride of accomplishment is the very important culmination of the Walkabout. What follows is a description of how we integrated the Walkabout into the curriculum of a charter middle school. Matching the School and the Walkabout The Chico Country Day School opened its doors in 1997 as a K-6 charter school. Its main focus was on thematic instruction, small class size, and parent involvement. As the school's favorable reputation grew, so did its enrollment. …

Death, come closer

Death gives life meaning. Without death every birth would be a tragedy. The thought that I might be editing the BMJ for the next 5000 years is perhaps even more awful for me than for you. Gulliver was vastly excited when he travelled to Laputa and heard of the Strudbruggs, the immortals. He imagined them with their “minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of Spirits caused by the continual Apprehension of Death.” In fact they were the most miserable of people. One of their “prevailing Passions” was envy of the deaths of the old. Truly, where there is death there is …

Encountering the downward phase: biographical work in people with multiple sclerosis living at home

This qualitative study examines how individuals in an advanced stage of multiple sclerosis (MS) who live at home, accommodate to their illness. The downward phase in the illness trajectory of MS often consists of a lengthy period of gradual decline. According to Corbin and Strauss's framework, accommodation is conceptualized as biographical work that refers to the actions taken to retain control over the life course and to give life meaning again. For our purpose semi-structured interviews with 22 people with MS were conducted and compared with 21 interviews with their family caregivers. The analysis consisted of fragmenting and connecting the data and involved close reading and constant comparison. The continuity of biography is at risk since body and performance failures lead to the loss of salient aspects of self. Participants interpret MS as an all-encompassing illness and emphasize the process of having to give up everything. Four case stories are described to demonstrate the complex intertwining of the biographical processes and to show the range in biographical accommodation. Some patients are capable of putting their lives back together again, while others retreat or do not consider MS a part of their lives. The unpredictable course of MS makes it impossible to give new direction to the life course.

Quality of life: An overview of issues for use in occupational therapy outcome measurement

The concept of quality of life (QOL) has been used as an outcome measure to indicate the global health, functioning and wellbeing of a person following illness, injury or disability, and to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Whilst QOL has been widely used for these purposes by researchers and practitioners in the health and social sciences, it has had limited application by occupational therapists. This has occurred despite the obvious links to occupational therapy philosophy, with both having a multifaceted, holistic, and client-centred approach to people’s lives, and a concern with the roles and functions that give life meaning and value. This paper reviews QOL literature in order to introduce occupational therapists to the issues involved with using this construct, from its conceptualization to its measurement. A guide to the decision-making processes involved in selecting an appropriate QOL outcome measure for use in occupational therapy practice is provided.

Statement--fundamental concepts of occupational therapy: occupation, purposeful activity, and function.

Deriving from the philosophical basis of the profession, occupation is the core concept of the profession of occupational therapy. However, in the occupational therapy literature, the term occupation is used in a variety of ways. Occupation, a collection of activities that people use to fill their time and give life meaning, is organized around roles or in terms of activities of daily living, work and productive activities, or pleasure, for survival, for necessity, and for their personal meaning. It is the individualized, unique combination of activities that comprises an individual's occupations. Purposeful activities have been described in many different ways: as something all people engage in; as tools or media that therapists use to enhance or facilitate performance; and vehicles for bringing about change. Purposeful activities are seen as part of the process of occupational therapy. Purposeful activities are subset of occupations in that they are goal directed and serve as a major tool in the process of occupational therapy. The term function, viewed as the ability to perform activities required in one's occupations has become increasingly important to society in describing the performance or change in individuals. This societal shift in ideas has prompted the concept of function, viewed as a product, to become more important than the process of bringing about change. Occupational therapy practitioners typically have viewed the process as being just as important as the product. When working to improve function, occupational therapy practitioners use purposeful activities that are meaningful to the person in relation to his or her occupational history, preferences, personal goals, and needs. Occupational therapy practitioners need to keep the individual's occupations in the forefront of their thoughts when using any purposeful activity and to plan interventions toward improving the individual's ability to function within his or her occupations. In the interest of the profession, it is important to concentrate on occupation. Furthermore, it is essential that we study our interventions' relationship to occupation and function, and how purposeful activities are used toward supporting the individual's ability to engage in occupation.

Alcoholism: The quest for transcendence and meaning

A vigorous and long standing argument continues in an effort to define the etiology of alcoholism and prescribe its treatment. Each sideaadvances its cause by challenging the other's efficacy. However, none of the prevalling responses to alcoholism is very effective. Fighting on the ideological battlefield of western science results in a sterile understanding of alcoholism and provides social workers little information to help them understand the experience of alcoholism and the complexities of recovery. The experience of alcoholism is profound. More than a bad habit or a disease, alcoholism is an attempt to give life meaning, to assuage existential dilemmas. Effective recovery from alcoholism occurs when clients learn to disengage from their relationship with alcohol and give their lives a new sense of meaning. Sources of knowledge outside empirical science offer important principles to help workers facilitate recovery.

Religion In Children's Literature: Introduction

Religion In Children's Literature:Introduction Frank P. Riga The claim that all important questions are religious questions seems, on the surface, exaggerated. Yet the Call for Papers on religion in children's literature has met with a considerable response, both in quantity and in variety of approach. Among the authors dealt with, moreover, even an occasional non-believer surfaced. Perhaps such a response should not be surprising given the general interest in religious questions manifest in American society. Much evidence implies, however, that Americans are materialistic and secular, and recent pop-psychologies argue for the primacy of the autonomous self. If there are answers to the questions that give life meaning, such psychologies say they are found within homocentric parameters. Despite this, and despite the rumored death of God, the interest in religion and, no doubt what is more important, the search for religious faith continue. And like all important societal concerns, these find their way into children's literature. As the following papers demonstrate, the subject of religion in children's books involves us, not only in specific questions and themes, but in the social and critical perspectives of which children's books are a part. The recent televangelist scandals provide an almost staged background for the first essay in the Special Section. In "The 'Born Again' Phenomenon in Children's Books," Karen I. Adams discusses the preoccupation with religious fundamentalism within the context of the "new realism" in young adult books. While the new realism of the 1970s and 80s has allowed for the presentation of such formerly taboo subjects as sex and drugs, it has likewise allowed for a more realistic portrayal of religious matters, including "failures, flaws, and hucksters." Books like M.E. Kerr's Little Little and Cynthia Rylant's A Fine White Dust reflect contemporary evangelism in which, among other things, religion has become "big business" garnering "big bucks." Despite this hoopla and hypocrisy, the resurgence of interest in religion touches on a recurring concern of young people, who try to come to terms with their religious impulses in a secular, sometimes anti-religious, environment. That Katherine Paterson was the daughter of missionaries and a former missionary herself, however, attests to the fact that young people's religious concerns can grow as naturally out of life as any other human need. Rylant, too, reassures us, I think, when she questions the God of terror and hell fire: "after all, would you want people loving you if the only reason they did so was because of fear?" That religious considerations in children's books are not simply a personal matter is disclosed in Joan DelFattore's concise review of the Mozert case in Tennessee. This paper demonstrates how religious concerns and children's literature come together, but the question is not how such preoccupations find their way into children's books, but rather, having found their way into the literature, how certain segments of society react to them. Here, under the stress of a First Amendment challenge, believers' rights come into conflict with public education. The pluralism involved indicates, of course, the lack of cultural unanimity that, on the one hand, leads to conflict and, on the other, seems necessary for the various forms of individual freedom so highly prized in our times. Specifically, DelFattore gives a lucid and comprehensive analysis of the issues involved, not only in this celebrated litigation, but in virtually all fundamentalist challenges to modern children's books. Regardless of how we react to those challenges—and the specter of censorship, by either religious or secular interests, seems always ready to materialize—they force us, by their insistent focus, to question how books influence readers. As the third essay in the Special Section reminds us, the religious implications of children's books have long been a serious social concern. Here, Alan Rauch studies the relationship of science and religion in early nineteenth-century science textbooks. As Rauch argues, an examination of these textbooks reveals a growing tension between science and religion that was neither apparent nor threatening. Since "science must explain the world through physical laws and religion by supernatural causes," the covert split between the two was latent in...

Joseph Campbell's Theory of Myth: An Essay Review of his Oeuvre

Joseph Campbell has been writing about myth since 1943, and his most recent book, The Mythic Image (1974), is the culmination of his lifelong study of the subject. Since 1943 Campbell's view of myth has remained not only virtually unaltered but also virtually unproved. Campbell offers no arguments for any of his various assertions about myth: that modern society is in turmoil because modern man finds life meaningless; that modern man finds life meaningless because he has no myths, which alone give life meaning, that modern man has no myths because science precludes his acceptance of myths at the literal level; that the real meaning of myth is not, however, literal but symbolic; that the symbolic meaning of myth is psychological; that the psychological meaning of myth is Jungian; that when so understood, myth is acceptable to modern man; and that when accepted, myth can give life meaning and thereby end the turmoil of modern society. Rather than arguments, Campbell offers examples, but, subject as all of them are to alternative interpretations, they do not suffice. Finally, Campbell at times contradicts or qualifies his own otherwise dogmatic interpretation.