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Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 22 May 2013; Hits: 3986

Photo:CapX

First let me quote some words from a letter to the Guardian by Clive Needle, Director of EuroHealthNet:

“It is the first duty of governments to protect the health and wellbeing of citizens. It is a priority objective of the EU, enshrined in legislation. Surveys show it is top of people's concerns…our question must be why the dominant political choice across Britain and Europe is to disregard this, and impose austerity measures however much they hurt and destroy lives.

We rage and rush to act when a small number of people are hurt in a specific incident, or by a single disease. Yet millions of people in every country in Europe, as studies commissioned by the EU and WHO will reveal when published, are being almost silently condemned to early, preventable deaths or painful lives, because of economic decisions.

It does not have to be this way. There are well evidenced, cost-effective, proportionate, affordable, immediate and long-term alternative measures available for all political and social systems, left, right or centre. Stuckler recently presented his findings to a WHO Europe intergovernmental conference in Oslo on sustainable health systems in the context of the financial crisis. As he confirms, it is not too late to act, and it is a matter of political choice. These facts, and the relevant work of other British experts such as Professors Marmot, McKee and Wilkinson, should be on the desk of every prime and finance minister, every editor, every company director, every civil servant and every community leader across the country and internationally.

Wellbeing is the business of not only leaders in public, private and voluntary sectors, but also all of us, and the benefits of simple actions can be massive in political, economic and human terms.”

And now below see further the inhumanity of “Austerity”, killing the people, whom by and large, had not caused the financial crash of the 2008 to begin with. The question now surely must be: Why are the ordinary people punished, whilst the guilty ones are allowed to continue to sing and dance to the banks, as they did before the crash?

'Recessions can hurt, but austerity kills'

The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills

by David Stuckler, Sanjay Basu

In the US, more than five million people have lost access to health care. In Greece, there's a 200% increase in HIV cases. And in some of the worst-hit countries, suicide rates are up. David Stuckler, author of an explosive new book, says the facts speak for themselves.

“The austerity programmes administered by western governments in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis were, of course, intended as a remedy, a tough but necessary course of treatment to relieve the symptoms of debts and deficits and to cure recession. But if, David Stuckler says, austerity had been run like a clinical trial, "It would have been discontinued. The evidence of its deadly side-effects – of the profound effects of economic choices on health – is overwhelming."…

“The mass of data they have mined reveals that more than 10,000 additional suicides and up to a million extra cases of depression have been recorded across the two continents since governments started introducing austerity programmes in the aftermath of the crisis.

In the United States, more than five million Americans have lost access to healthcare since the recession began, essentially because when they lost their jobs, they also lost their health insurance. And in the UK, the authors say, 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness following housing benefit cuts.

The most extreme case, says Stuckler, reeling off numbers he knows now by heart, is Greece. "There, austerity to meet targets set by the troika is leading to a public-health disaster," he says. "Greece has cut its health system by more than 40%. As the health minister said: 'These aren't cuts with a scalpel, they're cuts with a butcher's knife.'"

Read more on the tragic consequences of “Austerity”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/15/recessions-hurt-but-austerity-kills/print

Matters of life, death and economics

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/20/life-death-economics

Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 20 May 2013; Hits: 3488

Prof. Mofid to speak at the Spiritual Heritage Education Network (SHEN) Annual Conference: Education to Globalise the Human Mind, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada, 28-29 September 2013.

Please visit the following links for complete information about (SHEN), the conference schedule, presentations and presenters:

Fourth Annual Reflective Conference on Education to Globalize the Human Mind, 28-29 September 2013, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

“The mission of the Spiritual Heritage Education Network (SHEN) is to provide educational access to the thinking and findings of those enlightened beings (prophets, sages, and seers), who have spent their lives studying the nature of humankind and its relationships in the universe.”

Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 18 May 2013; Hits: 10507

A painting by Berrin Duma. Photo: turkishpaintings.com

“In the beginning by the sixth day morning

The whole creation was given birth

And then God made man and gave him dominion

Over every living creature on the earth

Tragedy in the garden, we all know what happen

Shamefully banished from Eden

We witness the first Paradise lost

And since then is Mother Earth who end up paying the cost

That’s why I’m begging.

Mother Earth is crying, she say to stop the polluting…oy oy oy

Mother Earth is dying, we got to stop the polluting…oy oy oy

Whole attitude got to change, and priorities rearrange

We got to become more competent

The way we protect the environment

And fight, fight for all that it’s worth

Fight to save Mother Earth…oy oy oy

Mother Earth crying… oy oy

In case you don’t know, the planet Earth dying slow

What a sad way to go.”… “Mother Earth Crying”, a song by Baron

Corporate visions of sustainability focus on material prosperity – but leaders must respect the soul as well as the soil

“As our world stumbles to the brink of ecological collapse, the "tipping point" of irreversible climate change, sustainability has become a vital issue. But in order to consider the question of sustainability, it is important to begin with the question: who or what is being sustained?

Does sustainability refer to sustained economic growth, and an environment that is able to maintain the status quo with our energy-intensive, consumer driven needs? Or does sustainability refer to the whole ecosystem, an interconnected web of life with its vast and rich diversity of species? What is the relationship between sustainability and the economy?

What kind of world do we want to sustain?

The first image of sustainability presents economic models of growth and energy efficiency, often with accompanying "green" ideas, such as green technologies or green energy, to help our civilisation develop. This is the corporate image of sustainability, orientated almost solely towards our human prosperity, with images of material progress that the environment is seen as supporting. This is sometimes referred to as "surface ecology".

The second image of sustainability is often referred to as "deep ecology", and it considers the ecosystem as a living whole of which humanity is only one part. In this complex web of interrelationships all species are dependent upon each other, and it is this organic pattern that needs to be sustained. No one part can be considered as separate from the whole, and the idea that the environment is just here to support us and our prosperity is a travesty of real environmental consciousness.

Deep ecology maintains that the idea of endless economic growth is unsustainable, and that business as usual will destroy the beauty and diversity of our world. It calls for new economic models, which respect and support the ecosystem of which we are a part.

The spiritual dimension

And there is another, deeper dimension to sustainability, which is as foundational as it is almost forgotten. Thomas Berry, a priest of the Passionist order and one of the leading voices in "eco-spirituality", said: "There is now a single issue before us: survival. Not merely physical survival, but survival in a world of fulfilment, survival in a living world, where the violets bloom in the springtime, where the stars shine down in all their mystery, survival in a world of meaning."

Berry suggested that there is a spiritual dimension to our present ecological crisis. It has long been understood by indigenous peoples that our relationship to the Earth is spiritually as well as physically sustaining. For indigenous peoples this is often included in their way of life, and expressed through their rituals and prayers.

In our Western culture we may sense this spiritual nourishment in the beauty, peace, or sense of wonder that the natural world gives us. This belongs to the quality of life rarely valued by our solely economic images of progress. And yet we are sustained in ways we cannot easily measure. In the words of Satish Kumar: "The contemporary environmental movement, in the main, follows the path of empirical science, rational thinking, data collection and external action. This is good as far as it goes but it doesn't go far enough. We need to include care of the soul as a part of care of the planet."

Disconnection

If we go to the root of the present ecological crisis we will find a state of disconnection. We appear frighteningly disconnected from real awareness of the effects of our materialistic culture upon the very ecosystem that supports us. The challenge is to develop a value-based economic structure, that is not concerned solely with our material well-being, but embraces the whole human being – body and spirit – as well as the rich biodiversity of the Earth.

The idea of a value-based economic structure is far more realistic than many of our present business models, which are short-sighted in the extreme. To quote Charles Eisenstein in Sacred Economics: "When we must pay the true price for the depletion of nature's gifts, materials will become more precious to us, and economic logic will reinforce, and not contradict, our heart's desire to treat the world with reverence and, when we receive nature's gifts, to use them well."

We need to explore ways that businesses can serve humanity in its deepest sense, rather than creating a poverty of spirit as well as an ecological wasteland – develop an awareness that the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the energy we use are not just commodities to be consumed, but part of the living fabric of a sacred Earth. Then we are making a real relationship with our environment.

This deepening of awareness may seem idealistic and impractical, but only a few decades ago organic farming, which respects the well-being of the soil, was considered uneconomic and idealistic. Now it is recognised as both environmentally and economically sustainable.

The next step is to reconnect with a way of life that respects and includes the soul as well as the soil, and encourage values-based businesses that respect both the individual and the environment. If we understand the importance of these values, and how central they are to the world we will leave to our children and grandchildren, we will find new ways that business can support these very human needs, and create an economic model that is not solely concerned with "surface ecology" but is sustainable for our deeper selves and for the whole ecosystem. This is one of the greatest challenges.” (Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee)

See the original source of this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/eco-spirituality-values-based-economic-structure

If you wish to read more on this topic please see below:

Visions of a New Earth: Responding to the Ecological Challenge- The Report

https://gcgi.info/308-visions-of-a-new-earth-responding-to-the-ecological-challenge-the-report

Pursuing Common Values: A Call to Recover our Moral and Spiritual Imagination, Transforming Society

http://www.gcgi.info/news/306-pursuing-common-values-a-call-to-recover-our-moral-and-spiritual-imagination-transforming-society

Our Crises are not merely Economic but Spiritual: A Time for Awakening

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/11/01/global-crises-are-spiritual-time-awakening

The Power of Yellowstone: ‘for the enjoyment and benefit of the People.’

http://www.gcgi.info/blog/359-my-guest-blogger-steve-szeghi-the-power-of-yellowstone

A Franciscan Environmental Restoration Path Engaging the Youth in Climate Change Adaptation