PERCEPTION, SPIRITUAL LITERACY AND “THE THIRD SOMETHING.”
The " Third Something " is a meaning that arises from spiritually-correct relationships with Self, Others, our surroundings and being aligned with a purpose greater than our own individualistic goals. It is an immaterial reward, a form of spiritual earning that fills us with inner joy enhancing our wellbeing physically and mentally. It exists outside us, somewhere between relationships, and it is only harvested by the right interactions, of love, humility and gratitude, which keep it alive. My post-doctoral work in media-anthropology is focused on finding ways that nurture The Third Something at a time when materialistic worldview is the dominant way of seeing the world. I began by looking at visual literacy to decode internal biases caused by the way "development" is articulated. In my PhD dissertation I coined the term "donor gaze" to explain the harmful impact of using the narrow lenses of international development, which conceptualise "progress...