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Contemporary cinema and video games express considerable skepticism toward the colonization of further planets. Contemporary films including Elysium and Passengers depict space travel as the prolongation of inequalities within human civilization, while others such as Gravity and The Martian predict a rebirth of the human species through technological advances and space travel limited to a lucky few. Games, meanwhile, explore topics ranging from private spaceflight to the genetic modification required for long-term space habitation, especially in EVE Online, which we focus on in this chapter. Although both contemporary films and games celebrate technological advances, these media also show that multiple inequalities lurk behind the celebratory human renewal into a multiplanetary species.

This chapter investigates the central role that intention (cetanā) plays in Buddhist ethics, the unique perspective into the nature of the self and agency from a Theravāda Buddhist stance. Intention is paramount in determining every mental, verbal, and physical action as wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral in the Buddhist ethico-psychology. Buddhist ethics offer an inclusive, compassionate, and non-theistic perspective into the many moral dilemmas we face today as the mind and its processes, the underlying volition of a thought, context, and circumstances all determine the nature of an action. This is of relevance particularly in the digital age where agency is often imperceptible from societal, legal, and materialistic stances. The virtual world is perceived to be distinct from concrete reality and hence unethical actions considered to be less negative and destructive, and the perpetrators often difficult to trace or made to pay the consequences as societies and legal systems struggle to deal with this new reality. Buddhism has little to say about reforming society but on the other hand provides a refined investigative system of categorization of ethical and unethical actions through its theory of kamma (action) originating in a seed of positive or negative intention in the mind, and the consequences are said to be unavoidable although subject to manifold variations. Although the influence of Buddhism is still fragmented in the West with debates on its relevance, what to adopt, adapt, and discard, it can offer a fresh perspective on ethics, intention, agency, and the self.

This introduction locates the 11 chapters of the volume under three headings: Agency-Affirming Places, Overtly Hostile or Agency-Denying Places, and Covertly Negating Places. Each chapter is summarized briefly, detailing its methods and key findings. Following the summaries, the editors point to common themes among the chapters and discuss the relationship between media and physical and symbolic gender-based violence as illustrated in the chapters.

An understanding of the deep, intertwined roots of faith, family, nationalism, and capitalism within the United States is essential as we stand at the precipice of unprecedented global crises – climate change, economic inequality, and violence. Being raised in a devout, Evangelical Christian household provided unique insight into the political and cultural landscape of the Appalachian coal fields, where my extended family – who face persistent poverty, environmental pollution, and nonexistent support services – only expect relief from the crucible of life through death. Reflecting on the longstanding influence of the Protestant ethic (Weber, 2001/1930) and the consequences of widespread austerity-based policies (Piketty, 2014), I trace my experiences as being an insider/outsider within rural Appalachia and academia as a microcosm of the world that lies ahead, where global crises come home and local crises become planetary. Strategies to address impending global challenges demand analysis and action which extends beyond nations and national interests toward a planetary-level analysis. Specifically, planetary sociology brings a sociological analysis of the nuance and complexity of the “political, economic, organizational, and social” worlds into analysis with the, often ignored, natural worlds (Dahms, 2017). Thus, reflecting on the interconnected and interdependent levels of analysis – personal, familial, communal, national, and global – through the power of personal narratives serve as a beginning of planetary solutions.

Our focus is on the use of narrative in ethics education in organisations. The effectiveness of stories as a basis for executive education and organisational development has been described in other chapters in this book and elsewhere. Many writers provide examples linking stories and ethics, but the examples are drawn most often from overtly ethical stories. We offer a more expansive and inclusive view, suggesting that all stories are valuable for teaching ethics. We use Booker’s (2004) finding that all stories belong to one of seven basic plots – overcoming the monster; rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; comedy; tragedy; and rebirth – to show that no major category of narrative need be omitted from those which can provide examples or links to the development of virtue in organisations. We provide examples of how stories can be used to encourage the development of specific virtues including courage, integrity, hope, inquisitiveness, humour and prudence. Six further aspects are considered – whether only moral stories are useful, the value of complexity, the benefit of familiarity, stories of failure, the selection of appropriate stories and whether non-fiction can be included.