Employee Encagement, Total Work, and the Corporate Gaze

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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Is Enlightenment Actually Possible?

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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The Ethical, Psychological, and Social Implications of Mass Surveillance

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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The Problem With ‘Chugging’

‘Chugging’ refers to the practice of charity workers asking passers-by for donations. Certain cities, such as Newcastle, have introduced restrictions on chugging, based on complaints from the public about the tactics of ‘chuggers’, as they are called. But finding chuggers to be a nuisance is not a sign that people are uncharitable. It shows that…

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Why Does Social Anxiety Exist?

Social anxiety is a debilitating nervousness of being in social situations, which affects up to 12% of people in the UK. This makes it the most common type of anxiety disorder (for comparison, generalised anxiety disorder is present in 6% of the UK population). Common symptoms of social anxiety disorder include intense worrying about interactions…

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