Scholars to discuss theme of ‘Body and catastrophe: towards a new utopia’
Kyung Hee University is holding an international conference to discuss how mankind will be able to sustain prosperity in the face of growing environmental and other challenges.
World-renowned scholars gathered for the 2011 Peace BAR Festival on the theme of “The Body and Catastrophe: Towards a New Utopia.”
The conference runs until Tuesday, with the opening ceremony taking place today.
This event will bring together the university and global society, intellectuals and citizens, for creative dialogue that transforms the darkness of catastrophe into the light of hope.
The Peace BAR International Conference is a place for global scholarly exchange and collaboration to initiate creative dialogue.
The 2010 Body and Civilization Conference was an occasion to reconsider present civilization based on reason, science and technology.
Today people are confronting a range of crises including the tsunami and the nuclear disaster of Japan, the violation of human rights, human suffering in the Middle East, and disruptive climate change.
Participants will look into the causes of these crises and set forth a new paradigm for a life-centered civilization.
Globally eminent scholars and the Kyung Hee community will gather in three sessions to discuss the body _ the cultural and artistic living body, the political and social body, and the natural and cosmic body.
They will explore new possibilities for a sustainable civilization and human community through multidirectional reflections on the body to overcome catastrophe and pursue life.
Humankind today enjoys the fruits of a remarkable civilization. The discoveries of science and technology have ushered us into an age of affluence and convenience.
However, a reckless invocation of efficiency and effectiveness has fractured civilization, setting mankind on a downward spiral to irreversible catastrophe.
Natural disasters, climate change, the exhaustion of resources, and the dangers of advanced weapons, combined with growing social inequality and poverty, constitute an overwhelming threat to humanity.
It is the time to extend the horizons of civilization so as to be receptive to the pain-wracked “body.”
Mankind needs to restore Earth as a hospitable home for all beings. People must use the spiritual and sensual dimensions of their bodies to envision a civilization of the future.
The conference will explore new possibilities for humanity by exploring the living organism, the body writ small, the community, the political and social body, and the cosmos, the body writ large. It will seek to put forth a new vision of hope for the world.
Source: The Korea Times
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