Commodification

Purpose - The ecological crisis of Lake Urmia began in 1995, and its critical state was announced in 2014. Previous studies have demonstrated that farmers and water management in agriculture sector are the main contributors to the crisis. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of neoliberalization in water financing, commodification, and privatization programs in reducing the water level of Lake Urmia. Design/methodology/approach - This research is descriptive-analytical in terms of method. The method of data collection is also documentary and field interviews. The documents include the laws of First Plans (1990) to the Fifth (2011) of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Fair Water Distribution Acts (1982), and the Provincial Agricultural, and Water Development Documents. The documentary analysis approach corresponds to the interpretive analysis paradigm of information analysis. Findings - What the represented results and the discussions indicate is that when politics and economics are together (as it always is today), separation becomes a neoliberal trick to restore order and self-preservation, and it causes, “The separation of the elements of water, the exploiter, the private interest from the public interest, and from each other”. In this way, by using fake tricks in the name of development and protection, it uses the environment and water resources to gain legitimacy and capital accumulation and transfers the costs of these conspiracies to the environment and the water source. Original/value- Nevertheless, it seems that the policies of structural adjustment and implementation of programs in different governments have created different "separations" and they have imposed enormous environmental costs on water resources.

Synopsis Although research has shown that nowadays we are less likely to have a lifelong love partner, the media industry has increasingly incorporated 'love' as a guarantor of success for media products of all kinds. My argument is that, in order to sell more, the media industry has constructed a false notion of love. Worse than that, we the audiences have adopted this notion; since this is a false construct, many people have come up with unrealistic expectations of their love life. The results can be seen in the ever-increasing rate of divorce. I argue that we need something that I would call "love literacy" to appropriately respond to one evolutionary intention that exists in all of us.

This essay undertakes a critical investigation of Wang Anyi’s short story, The Destination , employing Erich Fromm’s humanist psychoanalysis to elucidate the complex interplay between societal transformation, the erosion of authentic love, and the resulting existential anxieties within the context of contemporary Chinese modernity. The analysis focuses on the protagonist, Chen Xin, and his return to a radically transformed Shanghai, a disorienting architectural and bureaucratic maze that disrupts historical continuity. This spatial disorientation, the essay argues, mirrors Chen Xin’s strained familial ties, which exemplify Fromm’s notion of alienated pseudo-love, wherein genuine emotional intimacy is replaced by commodified social exchanges operating under the pressures of a state-capitalist regime. Fromm’s contrast between a way of life focused on owning and controlling things, versus one that emphasizes being present, growing as a person, and forming meaningful relationships, reveals a subjectivity caught between the pressure of inherited ideologies and the basic human need for love, care, and real emotional connection in a globalized and increasingly commodified society.

What is the ultimate end of higher education? Giambattista Vico, echoing Socrates’s Delphic oracle, claimed that the ultimate end of all education is self-knowledge. I fully agree with Vico’s claim, but also radically extend his idea about education, in accordance with contemporary and futuristic Kantianism, and then apply it specifically to contemporary and near-future higher education. In 1784, Kant published an essay called “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in which he argued that the fundamental thesis of “enlightenment” or Aufklärung is that all rational human animals are strictly obligated to think for themselves and to act freely, with resolution and courage, in accordance with sufficient respect for their own and everyone else’s human dignity. Taking together Vico’s Socratic idea about self-knowledge, with Kant’s idea about enlightenment, and then creatively revising-&-updating them both to fit the contemporary 21st century existential, moral, and sociopolitical predicament of humankind, then in my view, the ultimate end of higher education is not only (i) self-knowledge, but also (ii) rational autonomy in thinking, caring, and acting, (iii) authentic human creativity, and (iv) sufficient respect for everyone’s human dignity. In turn, the four-part conjunction of these ultimate ends is what I call radical enlightenment. Therefore, I’m saying that the ultimate end of higher education is radical enlightenment.