TOK - Theory of Knowledge: Emotion

The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the Element, they feel most themselves and most inspired and achieve at their highest levels. Ken Robinson looks at the conditions that enable us to find ourselves in the Element and those that stifle that possibility. Drawing on the stories of a wide range of people, including Paul McCartney, Matt Groening, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Bart Conner, he shows that age and occupation are no barrier and that this is the essential strategy for transform­ing education, business, and communities in the twenty-first century.

There is a section on Emotion in this book. See the index for page numbers.

Chapter 8 deals with emotional aspects to Apple's products and product design.

Chapter 3 looks at the benefits of sharing emotional experiences.

Looks at the world in terms of places where happiness exists.

Can YouLearn to BeHappy? YES . . . according to the teacher of HarvardUniversity’s most popular and life-changingcourse. One out of every five Harvard studentshas lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar’sinsightful and inspiring lectures on thatever-elusive state: HAPPINESS. HOW? Grounded in the revolutionary “positive psychology” movement,Ben-Shahar ingeniously combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual enlightenment. He weaves them together into a set of principles that you can apply to your daily life. Once you open your heart and mind to Happier ’s thoughts, you will feel more fulfilled, more connected . . . and, yes, HAPPIER.

The Boston Globe “Surprising and remarkable… Toggling between big ideas, technical details, and his personal intellectual journey, Greene writes a thesis suitable to both airplane reading and PhD seminars.” Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world’s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground. A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (“portrait,” “landscape”) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions—efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain’s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight—sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words—often with life-and-death stakes. An award-winning teacher and scientist, Greene directs Harvard University’s Moral Cognition Lab, which uses cutting-edge neuroscience and cognitive techniques to understand how people really make moral decisions. Combining insights from the lab with lessons from decades of social science and centuries of philosophy, the great question of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong to Us? Ultimately, Greene offers a set of maxims for navigating the modern moral terrain, a practical road map for solving problems and living better lives. Moral Tribes shows us when to trust our instincts, when to reason, and how the right kind of reasoning can move us forward. A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.

A revelatory look at how our environment unconsciously yet dramatically shapes the judgments and decisions we make every day Most of us go through life believing that we are in control of the choices we make;that we think and behave almost independently from the world around us. But as Drunk Tank Pink illustrates, the truth is our environment shapes our thoughts and actions in myriad ways without our permission or even our knowledge. Armed with surprising data and endlessly fascinating examples, Adam Alter addresses the subtle but substantial ways in which outside forces influence us, such as colour, influence on mood, our bias in favor of names with which we identify, and how sunny days can induce optimism as well as aggression. Drunk Tank Pink proves that the truth behind our feelings and actions goes much deeper than the choices we take for granted every day.

In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have rightly been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry both in the United States and abroad. Anxiously focused on national economic growth, we increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable and empathetic citizens. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. Drawing on the stories of troubling--and hopeful--educational developments from around the world, Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education. (Note by UWC Librarian: chapter 3 concerns emotions.)

Why are we attuned to the latest headline, diet craze, smartphone, and fashion statement?Why do we relish a change of scene, eye attractive strangers, and develop new interests?How did homosapiens survive near extinction during an environmental crisis 80, 000 years ago, while close cousins very like us died out?Why is your characteristic reaction to novelty and change they key to your whole personality?Follow a crawling baby around and you'll see that right from the beginning, nothing excites us more than something new and different. Our unique human brains are biologically primed to engage with and even generate novelty. This 'neophilia' has enabled us to thrive in a world of cataclysmic change, but now we confront an unprecedented deluge of new things--one that shows no sign of slowing. In New acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher, using cutting-edge research and interviews with countless experts, shows us how we can use our adaptive gift to navigate more skillfully through our rapidly changing world by focusing on the new things that really matter.

Emotional Intelligence: A Practical Guide shows how you can improve your personal and professional relationships, your health, your children's prospects and more. With exercises, case studies and useful tips, it helps you put the principles of EI into practice to achieve a happier, healthier life.

Examining themes of forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict transformation, this book brings together the personal testimonies of both survivors and perpetrators of crime and violence and asks the question whether forgiveness may have more currency than revenge in an age which seems locked into the cycle of conflict. The powerful real life stories collected by The Forgiveness Project come from ordinary people around the world in a diverse range of situations, including those who have transformed aggression into a driving force for peace. Raising the possibility of alternatives to resentment, retaliation and revenge, each story shows the very real impact of forgiveness (or lack of forgiveness) within a particular context, provoking questions such as 'what is forgiveness?', 'how can you respond to the unforgivable?' and 'can you move on without forgiveness?'Marina Cantacuzino's challenging, reflective introductory essay sets the stories in the larger context of approaches to forgiveness, from both religious and secular viewpoints, concluding that in the reality of lived experience forgiveness has a quality `as mysterious as love'.As with all good storytelling each personal narrative in this book reveals both the intimate in the epic and the epic in the intimate.The Forgiveness Project grew out of a conviction that people's perspectives only shift when they are able to hear the stories of others. In ten years it has become a high impact and influential charity that has wide application and a universal draw on people. Using real stories of victims and perpetrators, the charity sets out to explore concepts of forgiveness and conflict resolution in order to humanise the 'other', foster resilient relationships and help to dissolve tension.All royalties from the sale of this book will go to The Forgiveness Project.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.