I sometimes wonder if the constitutional notion of “participative democracy” is not just an impossible, idealistic dream. We are eighteen years down the road since our 1994 elections and the only hard evidence I have of my participation in our new democracy has been making my mark on a few ballot papers. The countless thousands […]
economy
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Why we always sow the same old reap
I think most readers will be familiar with that unbearable screech which sometimes blasts out of a concert’s or meeting’s sound system. Well, that screech is caused by the feedback into the sound system of some of the amplified sound already produced by the system. Because the sound wave of the feedback is in phase […]
Posted inBusiness, General
The economic week in review: Fairly awful, actually
Aside from some unexpectedly upbeat news from manufacturers in the US and – to a lesser extent – China, this week saw the release of some truly awful economic data. Here’s the rundown. United States On Tuesday, the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index – an indicator of future activity – defied consensus expectations […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Is it time for a South African Spring?
Let’s face it, our world is in a total mess right now. Social strife, political skullduggery and infighting, environmental degradation, and, for most, severe economic hardship, are pretty much the common denominators across every nation which makes up the global community. What makes this mess so particularly vexing to contemplate in South Africa is that […]
Posted inGeneral
Disenchanted youth of the world: Tomorrow’s hope
The youth of the world are disenchanted — disenchanted by the older generation’s politics as well as their economics, by their ideologies and their religions and by their inability to halt ecological destruction. And they are the ones who will replace the current leaders of the world. What are the chances that they might just […]
Posted inGeneral
Going after ‘extreme oil’ is extremely irresponsible
The emerging information on the quest for what is referred to as “extreme oil” is worrying in the extreme. And it is very bad news for other creatures on the planet, especially those who live in the oceans, judging by the information clip sent to me by the Care2 petition site, to which I subscribe […]
Posted inGeneral
Beyond protecting the environment: Ensuring life support
Several recent reports on a variety of things have made me return to an important book by Thomas Princen, Treading Softly – on which I have written here before. The news items that caught my eye covered different, but related topics. Two of them focused on court cases involving big oil companies – Chevron and […]
Posted inGeneral
The ‘economistic worldview’ and the destruction of life
In his important recent book Treading Softly – Paths to Ecological Order (see my earlier post on it) — Thomas Princen distinguishes among four “worldviews” in relation to the environment, that is, four different ways of “perceiving and conceiving and making sense of one’s world” (pg 164) within what he terms “the current industrial, commercial […]
Posted inLifestyle
We’ll need two planets by 2030
At the beginning of his latest book, Treading Softly: Paths to Ecological Order, American ecological scholar Thomas Princen quotes from the Living Planet Report of 2008: “Our global [ecological] footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30%. If our demands on the planet continue at the same rate, by the mid-2030s we […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Media, News/Politics
Why South Africa should be run like the Loeries
Two icons meet on stage Photo: Gallo Exhilarating, exhausting and, most of all, enlightening. I’ve just returned from a two week road trip and social media campaign, travelling down to Cape Town for the Loerie Awards. (You can read all about the campaign here.) It was unbelievably hard work and worth every Red Bull-fueled moment […]