Posts Tagged ‘do no harm’
Nonviolent economy
By Johan Galtung
Two important words enriching each other. “Nonviolent” easily becomes bla-bla, and “economy” is too general. But, does “nonviolent” make a difference for the better to the economy? And vice versa, can “economy” make “nonviolent” more positive, beyond resistance to evil?
Let us start with “economy”, here conceived of as a cycle with three poles: Nature, Production, Consumption. And three processes: Extraction from Nature, Distribution from Production to Consumption, and Pollution from Production-Consumption back to Nature. The cycle flow is in that order: Nature → Production → Consumption → Nature.
A simple summary of the economy: humans extract resources from nature, produce-process for (end) consumption, and sends what they cannot consume back to nature (but economists, like book-keepers, left out the Nature part). And we want it all to be nonviolent!
“Do no harm!”, nonviolent, is insufficient. “Peace”, “peaceful” include positive peace–Peace Economics, A Theory of Development are my books (TRANSCEND University Press, 2012, 2010)–with “do good!”.
And: Nature can evolve better without us, not we without Nature. Read the rest of this entry »
Some people are exceptional
By Jan Oberg
July 20, 2014 – 12 days after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, after Shejaiya and after 400 people on the Palestinian side have been killed.
Some people condemned what they called a planned Serb genocide on Albanians in Kosovo.
Some people were very upset about the siege of Sarajevo. And the massacre at Srebrenica.
Some people believed that the Yugoslav Army occupied Croatia and tried to create a Greater Serbia.
Some people condemned what was then called ethnic cleansing. Read the rest of this entry »