Buddhism
Book Release: “Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide”
I’m pleased to make note here of the release, on March 19th, of my book Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide published by Princeton University Press. Here is the book’s description and cover:
- Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn’t always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient and modern philosophies—Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life—and how philosophy has helped him cope with it.
- Chopra shows that many philosophers—including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger—have viewed anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious.
- Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight.
US serviceman sets himself on fire outside Israeli embassy in protest over Gaza genocide
Aaron Bushnell says he can no longer ‘be complicit in genocide’ in Gaza
A US airman has set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell, an active duty serviceman, recorded a video en route to the embassy gates in which he said he could ‘no longer be complicit in genocide’. Despite the terrible protest he was about to make, he seemed quite calm and composed, saying that what he was about to suffer was nothing compared to the suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza:
I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
Aaron Bushnell
Security personnel attempted to put out the fire before Bushnell was rushed to hospital with extensive burns, but family members said that he later died of his injuries.
Before the act, which he reportedly live-streamed, Bushnell sent a message to news agencies:
Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Bushnell is said to have worked in IT for the US air force. Whether that led him to seeing things that his conscience couldn’t bear is not know. His last words were ‘Free Palestine’. Police pointed guns at him as he burned.
The protest was reminiscent of Thich Quang Duc, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and the first of several to do so, who set himself on fire in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the US-friendly South Vietnamese government in the 1960s. Duc’s sacrifice galvanised public opinion around the world and focused international attention on Vietnam.
Another victim of Israel’s genocide and war crimes, Bushnell clearly hoped that his protest would do the same and shock a complacent US government and (in part) public into action against the apartheid occupation regime and its war crimes.
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