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Yes, you are right: neo-liberalism, de-regulation and self-regulation!
‘Almost as soon as it took office, this government appointed a task force to investigate farming rules. Its chairman was the former director general of the National Farmers' Union. Who could have guessed that he would recommend "an entirely new approach to and culture of regulation … Government must trust industry"? The task force's demands, embraced by Paterson, now look as stupid as Gordon Brown's speech to an audience of bankers in 2004: "In budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers."...
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‘So why did government policy change? I've tried asking the environment department: they're as much use as a paper sandbag. But I've found a clue. The farm regulation task force demanded a specific change: all soil protection rules attached to farm subsidies should become voluntary. They should be downgraded from a legal condition to an "advisory feature". Even if farmers do nothing to protect their soil, they should still be eligible for public money.
‘You might have entertained the naive belief that in handing out billions to wealthy landowners we would get something in return. Something other than endless whining from the National Farmers' Union. But so successfully has policy been captured in this country that Defra – which used to stand for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – now means Doing Everything Farmers' Representatives Ask. We pay £3.6bn a year for the privilege of having our wildlife exterminated, our hills grazed bare, our rivers polluted and our sitting rooms flooded.
‘Yes, it's a parable all right, a parable of human folly, of the kind that used to end with 300 cubits of gopher wood and a journey to the mountains of Ararat. Antediluvian? You bet it is.’
The above extracts are from an article by George Monbiot and published in the Guardian on Tuesday 18 February 2014.
Read the original article:
How we ended up paying farmers to flood our homes | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
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Visions of a New Earth: Responding to the Ecological Challenge- The Report
Kamran Mofid: Visions of a New Earth: Responding to the Ecological Challenge...Watch the Video HERE
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The Mother of All Questions: What is Love?
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Let us see what the sages and philosophers have reminded us of what true love is.
As Prof. Simon May writing in the Financial Times has remarked: ‘Today millions of people celebrate one form of love and one only: romantic love, the love that speaks the language of erotic desire.
‘As we settle down to our candlelit dinners – or, as singletons or conscientious objectors to Valentine’s day, wander past packed restaurants envying or pitying the serried rows of couples – we might ask: why do we so privilege romance?
‘Why, for example, do we not have a St Francis day for love of nature? Or a world friendship day named after Aristotle (who considered friendship the supreme form of love)? Or an anniversary when love between parents and children is celebrated with more than the card and flowers given, one-sidedly, on Father’s or Mother’s day?
‘Indeed, why do such alternative love festivals sound faintly absurd to our contemporary ear?
‘The answer lies in the unique promise of romantic love, as it has been conceived of since the late 18th century, to satisfy five modern and, taken together, western ambitions.’…
The irresistible appeal of the romantic ideal
Photo: AFP/Getty Images/Via Financial Times 12 Feb 2014
Read the original article by Prof. Simon May HERE
Socrates on Love*
“Plato’s Symposium takes place in a dining room in a back street of Athens, a place where conversation is a factory for beautiful ideas, ideas of beauty, beautiful things. Even the silences sparkle.
At this dinner party, set more than 2,400 years ago, Love is the night’s theme. The Symposium can still be read as one of the greatest stories of love in Western literature. Socrates is among the guests. The only subject in the world that Socrates believes himself to be the unsurpassed master of is love. ‘I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with someone.’ Socrates loves his fellow men with an overpowering eroticism, and because he believes he can look into their eyes and understand a little about himself as he does so, we are taught that it is through our relationship with the world around us that we can become whole. Socrates sees the massive power of love. We too are just beginning to unpick the complex, psychophysical parcel that love is. Socrates makes our relationships with one another his life’s work.
Socratic love is enormously powerful, it turns the world upside down. What the philosopher knows is that we love love-stories, and our love is often a love-story played out. But nowhere does he mock. Socrates’ love is literal: the point of life is to love it. He is erotic. He states that if Eros passes you by in life, you are a nonentity. All those aspects of love he approves of, as good-life glue for society, since ‘festivals, sacrifices, dances’ are motivated by Eros. And, more than that, love is a guide – a passion for what is good and a horror for what is degrading. And the genuinely heart-warming revelation of Socrates in the Symposium is that dedication to love is not a selfish pursuit. The point of love is not gratification, but symbiosis. And love, desire, ambition, hope, concord, enthusiasm, drive whatever you want to call it – if tended, if not allowed to burn itself out, plays a long game. His love is not flash-in-the-pan passionate. In Socrates’ eyes, it is honesty and a pursuit of knowledge rather than ignorance that leads to loveliness in life. For him, love has a purpose. It is the life-force, the desire to do, to be, to think. It is the thing that makes us feel great about our world, and therefore makes us be great in it. Socrates describes these ‘good’ dynamos as ta erotika – the things of love.”
*The above piece is by Bettany Hughes who is the author of 'The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life' (2011).
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A Compassionate Company for the Common Good: Aravind Eye Hospitals
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“A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.” Buddha
Why Love, Trust, Compassion, Generosity, Respect and Gratitude Trumps Economics: Together for the Common Good- Aravind Eye Hospitals
To all those who are searching for a better path to heal our troubled world:
I ask you to watch this video
To all my compassionate and spiritual academic colleagues seeking to share the best practices with their students:
I ask you to show this video to them
Then, we can all discover how we might create a world for the common good