- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 106
One of my favourite scenes from the Star Wars movies is when the young Luke Skywalker is training with Yoda -the legendary Jedi Master- in Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back. In that episode Luke was training in the Force, and he was struggling, finding it very difficult to do his tasks. At one point, he fails to move his ship with the Force, and says it is impossible because it is too heavy. Then, After Yoda moves the ship easily, Yoda turns to Luke and says a line that will be the key in Luke’s training: Luke if you are going to succeed: “You must unlearn what you have learned.”
Not long after gaining my PhD in Economics and starting my full time job as a Senior Lecturer in Economics in the 1980s, I, too, had a ‘Luke Moment’: I must unlearn what I had learned! More on this later.
Why is modern economics not a force for good and what must be done to make it good?
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 76
‘Education of the mind without education of the heart is no education at all.’-Aristotle
Photo credit:The Pictures Quotes Blog
Why kindness is the key to a new economy
The world needs kindness; every person, everywhere, needs kindness. Kindness gives Hope and hope gives us life. Kindness connects us and fuels us. Kindness moves us. Kindness keeps us. Kindness grounds us. Kindness protects us. Kindness anchors us. Kindness is what makes us human.
Can we find space for kindness and empathy in our classrooms, teaching and deliberations, against a backdrop of complexities and challenges, where we have allowed compassion, love and kindness to be viewed as luxuries, rather than necessities of life? Can we nudge people to behave altruistically? Can we build a view of society that is built not from the extremes, not from saints and sinners, but through the everyday kindness of action, by state, by organisations, businesses and the individuals? Can greed be transformed into generosity, selfishness to selflessness, hatred to kindness,...,? Can we alter policies and practices to make the world a kinder place? Can we all come together and in the interest of the common good, begin to imagine a different world, a kinder world?
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 91
Modern Economics has undermined People, Civility, Trust, Moral Sentiments, Community, Mother Nature, Beauty, and Humanity
Do you think this typical mainstream economist can have anything to say about Who We Are and What is the Purpose of this Journey We Call Life?
Economics has long been the domain of the privileged few, the so-called ivory tower, where specialised, jargonised language with opaque and impossible to understand theorems has made it inaccessible to people, the people that it claims the economics is for!!