hundreds of billions for the banks, less than one billion euros for the starving
I don’t even feel like commenting on this. Read the facts and judge for yourself about what kind of a world we are living in and then maybe start thinking about the possibilities of changing it. (Don’t forget the Max-Neef’s needs-based model.)
A dramatic increase in food prices over the last year has pushed nearly a billion people to the brink of starvation….. According to a new study released on Thursday by the international aid organization Oxfam, the world hunger crisis threatens to slip entirely under the radar as developed countries grow more and more obsessed with the turmoil in financial markets….. Last May, the prospects for fighting world hunger looked much brighter. At a conference held in Rome, industrialized nations pledged $12.3 billion to help combat the problem. So far, though, only $1 billion has been paid out. To put these figures in perspective, German Chancellor Angela Merkel that would commit up to €500 billion ($669 billion) to help bailout German banks and financial institutions…. The United Nations estimates it would require between $25 billion and $40 billion to effectively respond to the world hunger crisis…. Several big multinational corporations linked to agriculture are having banner years. Nestle’s revenues were up nine percent in the first half of 2008, while sales at British supermarket giant Tesco climbed 10 percent. The biggest winner of all might be agribusiness giant Monsanto: Its profits for the first quarter amounted to $3.6 billion, a 26 percent spike over last year.
read the whole article here:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,584512,00.html
integrating the happiness ingredients
Having reached stress-freedom the guidees are ready and prepared to integrate the happiness ingredients identified by scientific research into their own individual lives.
800 years of continuous Epicurean communal life in friendship furnished the stress-freedom seekers with the ingredients for happiness as identified by 20th and 21st century scientific research:
In “The formula for Happiness” Stefan Klein resumes the results of scientific research as follows
Happiness ingredients
1. Quality of relationship with partner
2. sex/exercise/sport/dance
3. friendship
4. self-determination, autonomy, FREEDOM
5. civic sense, responsibility
6. social equality
7. voluntary work for others
Epicurean learning communities furnished their members with the social environment necessary for the creation and perfection of the happiness ingredients they needed. At the same time they learned to use the think-tools of reflection and the communication-improvement-tool of giving and receiving feedback to be able to eliminate the happiness blockers as identified by Epicurus and reconfirmed by scientific research: stress based on fears resulting from self-deception, false expectations, competition, envy, jealousy, the rat race.
At this stage the guidees are encouraged to develop communities based on identical intentions, value systems and strategies. By this time they are equipped with the necessary tools to shape the synergic satisfiers described by Max-Neef that will enable them and empower them to lead authentically happy lives with like-minded friends.
satisfiers that contribute to happiness through stress-freedom
After having understood the link between their needs and their desires the guidees learn to analyze the link between their fundamental needs and the satisfiers of these needs, as proposed by Max-Neef.
The main contribution that Max-Neef makes to the understanding of needs is the distinction made between needs and satisfiers. Human needs are seen as few, finite and classifiable (as distinct from the conventional notion that “wants” are infinite and insatiable). Not only this, they are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system – i.e. they are interrelated and interactive.
Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation (in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom.
Satisfiers also have different characteristics: they can be violators or destroyers, pseudosatisfiers, inhibiting satisfiers, singular satisfiers, or synergic satisfiers. Max-Neef shows that certain satisfiers, promoted as satisfying a particular need, in fact inhibit or destroy the possibility of satisfying other needs: e.g. the arms race, while ostensibly satisfying the need for protection, in fact then destroys subsistence, participation, affection and freedom; formal democracy, which is supposed to meet the need for participation often disempowers and alienates; commercial television, while used to satisfy the need for recreation, interferes with understanding, creativity and identity – the examples are everywhere.
Synergic satisfiers, on the other hand, not only satisfy one particular need, but also lead to satisfaction in other areas: some examples are breast-feeding; self-managed production; popular education; democratic community organisations; preventative medicine; educational games.
The guidees are guided to develop their own synergic satisfiers: these are satisfiers that are congruent with their own individual value system and with their life-goals.
making money online
Some of my friends are against making money online, others for it. Some of them are even successfully engaged in it. Now they want to have my point of view on this subject.
I answered them, that first of all, I do NOT have to have a point of view on every single subject in the universe, like politicians and other opinion-mongers.
Money is for Epicureans, like for most people just a means, a resource and therefore, from an ethical point of view the most important aspects about it are: where you get it from and what you do with it.
From this standpoint “ethical” money should comes from activities which are congruent, i.e. in line with your system of values. A friend of mine is developing software that is needed by users and other developers and wants to market it and the marketing activity involves some revenues for him, because e.g. some people make some money every time somebody clicks on a link like
http://revenueblueprint.com/?e=bdpocom
because this product benefits their businesses. I ask myself – and the other group of my friends: what is wrong about this? The transfer of money takes place within the framework of the satisfaction of needs. These needs might not belong to the category of Max-Neef’s “fundamental needs” or Epicurus’s “natural” needs but their satisfaction implies no harm done to anybody.
From an ethical point of view it is just as important to reflect where does the money go: What do you do with the surpluses that remain after having satisfied your “fundamental” or “natural” needs? Do you reinvest it into your business? Do you spend it on self-indulgent luxuries? Or do you channel them into supporting the neediest people on your continent?
Your stress-FREEDOM is best served if both the earning and the spending are congruent with your ethical standards.
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