Mental illness is often highly stigmatised in movies and television. People who have legitimate mental health conditions are unfairly portrayed in many Hollywood films. One particular example of the harsh depiction of someone with mental illness is M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Split. In the movie, James McAvoy plays a villain who has 24 distinct personalities,…
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In the past decade, we have seen the meteoric rise of the ‘mindfulness industry’. The revenue of the most popular meditation app, Headspace, for example, is estimated to be over $50m a year. Following in the footsteps and success of Headspace, we have seen an influx of other meditation and mindfulness apps, such as Calm,…
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Employee engagement refers to the degree to which employees care about their work and the company they work for. If employees are engaged, we would say that they are passionate, motivated, and focused when carrying out tasks; whereas disengaged employees will be disinterested in the projects and the organisation they are a part of. There…
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For some time now, I have been going to the North London Buddhist Centre for group meditation and classes on Buddhism. One of the courses I joined was on the dharma (the Buddha’s teachings), specifically focusing on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, which can be formulated as follows: Life is dukkha (a Pali term…
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In 2013, the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), tapped fibre-optic cables for access to our personal communications (including emails, Facebook posts, internet histories, and phone calls), and then shared this information with the National Security Agency (NSA), the major spy agency in the US. The Snowden…
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