In Land Rush the misalignment of the promise of foreign investment in commercial farming, the country's benefits (in this case Mali) and the benefits for local farmers.
While it seems there are exploitation cases to draw upon where the promises made to the subsistence farmers simply fail to materialise. Some of the interviews with local Mali farmers highlight views which question the sustainability of monetary systems.
"Only white people know the value of money. They're the ones who made it. And if they give us lots of money for our land; then our land is more valuable than their money."
It has been argued that reflexive thought is perhaps a distinguishing ability of human thought. It has been argued that self-refection separates us from other animal cognitive abilities. However, reflexive thought about our selves in society is fraught with bias, false-truths and the mire of ethnocentrism.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a powerful reflective ability and his speeches show a birds-eye view of the society he lived in. His "Proud to be Maladjusted" demonstrates that reflexive view that looks not at the mirror of society but perhaps through it. In doing so he makes an excellent criticism of approaches which premise social problems as the fault of the individual or parents. Perhaps we need to look from a wider lens?
Martin Luther King Jr:
“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word maladjusted.
"It is the ringing cry to modern child psychology; maladjusted.
"Now of course we all want to live the well-adjusted life, in order to avoid neurotic, schizophrenic personalities. As I move toward my conclusion I would like to say to you today, in a very honest manner, that there are some things in our society and some things in our world for which I’m proud to be maladjusted.
“I call upon all men of good will to be maladjusted to these things until the good societies realize.
“I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to racial segregation and discrimination.
"I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry.
"I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. And leave millions of god’s children smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.”
While reading the GSB article about Patagonias new global campaign about responsible capitalism I noticed this Ad of theirs entitled "Don't buy this jacket" as an anti-consumerism anti-Black Friday statement. It is an interesting leap. I wonder how many stopped and looked at themselves? I wonder if it increased their sales? Certainly makes you think about quality over quality as a sustainable consumer.
Millions of individual minds flock to great cities to be in the thick of it. Maybe to be close to others. Maybe to be close to great business. Maybe to be close to great culture and subculture. Millions of individual minds flock to London yet Populus polls illuminate a hidden darkness in the bright lights of the capital: do a quarter of London-dwellers really feel alone? Dickens describes the secrets of individual minds in A Tale of Two Cities. It feels as though Dickens celebrates the hidden depths of each individual while echoing a tragic yearning for human connectedness. "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!"
Charles Dickens It feels unusual to acknowledge just how unfathomable and opaque we might be, even to our closest ones. To admit we are all natural introverts with the very best of our thoughts destined to remain privy to ourself. Only the highlights shared and only the headlines understood. What a wonderful fact to reflect on Dickens.
In my eyes, empiricism is a logical scientific approach to derive basic truths through our eyes.
We derive the most reliable truths about the physical world with our eyes, measured by evermore technical devices with our eyes. How do you know about length? Temperature? Maths? Wavelengths? Geography? All based on perception. And largely, if not completely, through your eyes.
Empiricism is the most objective scientific method from which to derive truths, and we naturally fall in to the trap of presuming empiricism is the path to absolute truths yet we forget that the eyes of empiricism are perhaps in their natural subjective. We may not be seeing the bigger picture.
