Tuesday, May 28, 2013

How Money Stops Growth

Line up all the economists in the world, it is said, and they'll all point in different directions. And while it's true that economists do view society through the particular lens of their political or sociological ideology, there are some general economics principles that seem widely held in the field.

One is that you can point to economic performance as an indicator of a household's or a company's or even a nation's success. And therefore the need to look after the drivers of this all-important economy - banks and corporations and GDP and all that stuff.

Economic performance is even one of the most important indices when considering happiness and quality of life on those top 10 countries to live in lists that pop up once or twice a year.

But yet, there is something obviously missing in a person who gives attention only to the financial side of things in life, something out of kilter and off balance - even psychotic - in running the world based on what the bean counters have to say.

We'll explore what's wrong with this view today. How Money Stops Growth, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Final Conflict

It would be difficult to ignore the problems all around us. In fact, I was watching a disturbing video on the weekend about the serious consequences of Geo-Engineering - this manipulation of the jet streams through chem trails and the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska and Russia - and how it's threatening to finish up with the Arctic ice flows in 2 to 3 years and liberate massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere and generally demolish life as we know it.

It's a horrifying scenario, and coupled with the massive damage being caused economically by the secret banking cabals, and it can really make you lose sleep.

Good to remember, then, that there's good action all around us, too. Well intentioned people working in their communities for justice and equality and environmental sustainability.

This tension has always existed between the forces of evil and the forces of good, but it seems the stakes are higher today than they've ever been. It is no exaggeration to say we're living in important, even apocalyptic, times.

The Final Conflict, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Friday, May 03, 2013

What a Normal Life Should Be

Check out a modern photography exhibition and you'll often find disturbing pictures of conflict and misery, along with the usual justifications of "Hey man, that's the reality!"

We all remember those generation defining images of the naked girl running down a dirt road in Vietnam, the young student defying the tanks in Tiananmen Square, the vulture stalking the child in the Sudan. And it's easy, in the face of those stark scenes, to think that this does indeed show reality.

I'm not so sure about that. If we look around us, we can certainly see enough disgrace and horror to make that argument that life is suffering.

But a humble psychoanalyst and social scientist in Brazil is forcing us to re-think all that. "Evil," states Norberto Keppe, "is just the destruction of good, not the natural state."

And that profound truth, although hinted at throughout history, has never been entrenched as a core pillar of any scientific philosophy. Until now.

What a Normal Life Should Be, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

Click here to listen to this episode.