It's only 1 week to go until I finish up at my job, YAY! I am so damn excited. Can't wait.
I realized that I will not be blogging for a little while after this, so I must endeavour to add as many entries as I can over the next week - Bring on the blog therapy!
Theres a couple of things I wanted to raise in this blog:
Firstly I wanted to refer to an article I read this morning in the Financial Review entitled "The Challenge of Post-materialism", by Richard Eckersley.
Essentially this article states : "we live in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history". And if now was good, it argued, the future would be even better. The belief that we live in the best of all times has been most famously and controversially articulated in recent years by Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg in his 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the real state of the world. That we live in such a "blessed" era is usually credited to material prosperity resulting from economic growth. "
Obviously, the Australian government believes wholly and completely that if we are to prosper and be a happy peaceful nation we need to assert our economic dominance.
I find this argument to be flawed. Firstly, I think it is extremely ignorant to assume that economic wealth automatically brings happiness and peace.
Secondly I do not agree that we are living in the happiest, healthiest and peaceful time.
Depression is at an all time high, health issues are constantly arising that reflect the stresses and pollutants we are subject to everyday, such as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. As for peace? Please. I have never heard such crap.
Interesting though, that someone would see this as being a time of peace, prosperity and happiness. Are they just predicting the inevitable revoloution? Do they know our time is running out?
What do you think?
I forget what the second Blog issue was... damn my memory!
posted by Jo @ 10:45 AM
4 Comments:
Generally I find Eckersley really good - even a bit of a lefty, but perhaps not on this occasion. Whatever the case may be, he is an excellent researcher and his efforts should not be taken lightly. That said, my guess is that a proper read of the research paper would clarify a few things.
However, it is my opinion that you are right here Jo. At the dawn of the industrial revolution a book was written called "Suicide" (or something to that effect) by Durkheim. It is he coined the term 'anomie' which he used to classify the emergence of a new motivation for suicide and an increase in the number of suicide. The thing about the study was that he could look at industrialised and non-industrialised countries or cities and compare the suicide rates. In the industrial areas suicide was higher. So the term 'anomie' was coined to explain the disassociation cause by what was essentially the birth of a liberal economic system which is, in my mind, highly problematic.
However, having said that, it is very easy to believe that we are living in such dark time where crime is at an all time high and so on. The reality is that crimes such as murder have actually remained at a fairly consistent rate for an extremely long time.
My point? That we can always have a better society and it is important to strive for it. But enjoy what you've got now.
Well said Hammy, well said.
It's just the lunacy of society that freaks me out, but I will leave that for another Blog entry.
In the meantime, I am off to have an awesome long weekend. I suggest you do the same.
Oh and stop being so damn smart!
Well said Hammy, well said.
It's just the lunacy of society that freaks me out, but I will leave that for another Blog entry.
In the meantime, I am off to have an awesome long weekend. I suggest you do the same.
Oh and stop being so damn smart!
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