Clearly the entire economics establishment, with about a million people on the planet involved in some aspect of economic analysis, planning, risk management, and forecasting, turned out to be turkeys owing to the simple mistake of not understanding the structure of Extremistan, complex systems, and hidden risks, while relying on idiotic measures and forecasts -- all this in spite of past experience, as these things have never worked before.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If a turkey had philosophical ability, it might argue that life just gets better and better. The steadily fattening fowl would have evidence for this point of view because each day would bring with it more and more delicious fare. Every night it would go to bed feeling sated and eager for the next morning when the pleasures of the previous day would be repeated or even heightened. The reflective bird could confirm its optimism via the inductive method: empirical study would demonstrate an increase in nourishment, from which would follow the logical generalization that life was a process of ever-expanding fulfillment.
Crow’s Theatre, in association with Porte Parole (Montreal), presents the Toronto premiere of SEEDS written by Annabel Soutar, directed by Crow’s Theatre Artistic Director Chris Abraham and starring Eric Peterson, from February 18 – March 10 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.
This topic COULD go in Body and Soul but I'm putting it here in Humanities and Culture.
"People in our society are not materialistic enough."
Discuss.
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Some context below and why I thought this might be interesting to look at.
I happened upon Edyta Just near the end of the third day of Women's Worlds 2011 in July, in the hall where she was sitting at a table with books from the European ATGENDER association. She was presenting at the conference the next day, on a panel entitled, "Teaching with Gender: Asian and European Perspectives."
She expressed an interest in learning how to attract more students into Gender/Women's/Feminist Studies during our interview. She complained about the misconceptions about the field, "those crazy feminists that want to send all the men to hell," and how once people become familiar with it those misconceptions fade away and are replaced with a new process of learning.
I recently watched a video titled "Zeitgeist: Moving Forward", which was produced by Peter Joseph of The Zeitgeist Movement.
The movie offers some valid arguments against the inadequacy of money-based economies to meet the needs of long-term human survival and offers what it terms a "Resource-Based Economy" as the alternative. In summary, a globally automated management of the world's resources founded on the belief that the planet can support the current human population with equitable resource allocation.
By far the most profound and stubbornly persistent of the many misconceptions that have prevented a clear and rational understanding of one of history’s most important thinkers is of Marx’s attitude toward nature and the environment. It has long been held that, if he devoted any thought to it at all, Marx ruthlessly subordinated environmental concerns to his vision of humanity’s inevitable economic progress.
