Divide and Conquer: How the Essence of Mindfulness Parallels the Nuts and Bolts of Science

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2010-06-28T11:02:49+10:00

If you have an hour to spare and want to learn how mindfulness meditation and yoga work from both a generic level and scientific basis then I highly recommend this talk given by Shinzen at Google earlier this year. ...The skills that we learn in Yoga / mindfulness meditation are generic and Foundational - this means that they are skills that can be used in all areas of life and are key leverage skills. ...Shinzen’s definition of concentration is the same as the definition of the state of yoga - it is the capacity to focus the mind exclusively on any object or subject and sustain this focus for as long as you like without getting distracted by anything. It is Shinzen’s experience that meditation can raise base line concentration - the level of concentration available in daily life - by 200% to 300% . ... What he means by this is that the amount of extra stuff you will be able to get done with a 3 fold increase in base line concentration is the amount of stuff that would take you 50 years to achieve without the increase. ...Staying with the television metaphor, think of how much more detail you can see on a wide screen TV with high definitional digital than on a 13 inch TV with normal reception. ...As we get more skilful in meditation we gain the clarity to see and feel this normally unconscious process on a moment by moment basis. ...

What are you taking for granted today that you would only realise that you really value if you lost it?

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2010-06-02T13:29:40+10:00

You can think of your conscious awareness as a small stage that only has space for a limited number of actors at any one time. ...The rapid changes to our social structure are breaking down the very behaviours and relationships required to feed and nourish our relationships and what is important to us in the long term. ...So while it is true at one level that we are "individuals", the important point is that this “individuality” sits "on top off", and is influenced and supported by, our relationships. ...In our new online world where we are "always on and always connected" we are paradoxically becoming more disconnected and isolated from the key relationships that support and nourish us. ...They are tools that offer humanity the chance to develop the large scale networks that are required to deal with the uncertain and increasingly unstable globally interconnected world that we now live in. ...To build and maintain strong bonds we have to invest a relatively large amount of time and specific activities such as touch and sex (in adults). ... Weak bonds - like the internet - allow us to maintain large networks without the same requirements of time and physical contact required for strong bonds. ...In a future post I will explain how we build practices and rituals into our yoga practice that allow us to remember and appreciate the importance of our relationships, and generates the internal emotional states of love and gratitude that support them.

Improve your brain function and risk of mental disease with exercise ... and preferably with yoga that is structured a specific way

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2010-04-13T13:23:57+10:00

Aerobic exercise is better than strengthening exercise and the best option combines both (and an even better option includes a whole bunch of upside down work but I don't have the "proof" for that yet) ...Why is Aerobic exercise better than strength exercise for cognition and why is a combination of the two better? ...Aerobic exercise is better at creating and increase in blood flow in your body than static strength training is - movement creates flow. And strength training produces more growth hormones that aerobic training - which is why weight lifters or people who want to grow big muscles do strength training. So if you do strength training to generate growth hormones, followed immediately by aerobic training to generate the blood flow to take the growth hormones to your brain, you will improved neurogenesis or growth and repair of brain cells. ...If you have followed the logic of why increased blood flow to your head is a key factor driving improved brain function then it should be easy to follow that upside down postures help increase blood flow to your head. ...Inversions lower your blood pressure and increase the tone of your parasympathetic nervous system - the rest and digest part of your autonomic nervous system that needs to be activated to put your body into repair and growth mode - so that all the growth hormones and extra blood flow to your brain generates growth and healing. By my estimate, in the first 45 minutes of the movement part of the class, 47 percent of it is inverted - in the average Iyengar or Bikram class this would be zero percent

Eating Right for your Brain - cut Alzheimers by 40%

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2010-04-13T10:24:59+10:00

(Reuters) - A diet rich in olive oil, nuts, fish, poultry and certain fruits and vegetables may have a powerful effect at staving off Alzheimer's disease, researchers reported on Monday. People who ate nutrients specifically selected for brain health had a 40 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared with others, Yian Gu, an Alzheimer's disease researcher at Columbia University in New York and colleagues found. ...While other studies have looked at individual nutrients, Gu's team studied groups of foods high in nutrients that have been shown to be associated with Alzheimer's disease risk. ...Those least likely to develop the disease ate more olive oil-based salad dressing, nuts, fish, tomatoes, poultry, cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, fruits, and dark and green leafy vegetables and ate less red meat, organ meat or high-fat dairy products. "People who adhered mostly to this dietary pattern compared to others have about a 40 percent reduction in the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease," Gu said. ...Because it is rich in heart-healthy foods, it may be protecting the brain from strokes that could make it more vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease. But it also may be that the nutrients -- such as omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants and folate -- directly protect the brain. Current treatments helps with some symptoms, but cannot reverse the course of Alzheimer's, a mind-robbing form of dementia that affects more than 26 million people globally.

The Story Of Bottled Water

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2010-03-30T17:59:58+11:00

The History of bottled water is a case study that demonstrates many points about being human. This 8 minute animated stick person video from Anne Leonard, who came to fame with a similar video called The Story of Stuff, tells a story about how a major industry developed around a product that is essentially free. In the USA over a third of bottled water is essentially bottled tap water. In the majority of blind taste tests that compare tap water with bottled water, tap water comes out top. ...So why do we buy bottled water when we can get it free from the tap? ... And then there is also portability - people like to take water with them when they exercise. I have been approached by many companies to stock bottled water here but I have refused on the grounds of the pollution created by the plastic bottles. ...

Study suggests that multivitamins may raise breast cancer risk - Solution: eat a healthy and varied diet

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2010-03-30T11:20:38+11:00

Study suggests that multivitamins may raise breast cancer risk NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many people take multivitamins in the hopes of thwarting disease, but a new study finds that older women who use multivitamins may be more likely than non-users to develop breast cancer. In the U.S., for example, it's estimated that half of adults routinely use a dietary supplement, often a multivitamin. And studies show that one of the primary motivations is the belief that supplements will protect them from chronic diseases. In a decade-long study of more than 35,000 Swedish women who were between the ages of 49 and 83 and cancer-free at the outset, researchers found that women who reported multivitamin use at the study's start were 19 percent more likely than non-users to develop breast cancer. That was with factors like age, family history of breast cancer, weight, fruit and vegetable intake, and exercise, smoking and drinking habits taken into account. Until more is known, a woman's best bet is to get her vitamins and minerals from a well-balanced diet rather than pills, advised lead researcher Dr. Susanna C. ..."If you eat a healthy and varied diet," she said, "there is no need to use multivitamins."

Mom's diet may alter infant's allergies - eczema and Wheeze

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2010-02-23T11:45:39+11:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eating lots of vegetables and fruits during pregnancy may lower the chance of having a baby with certain allergies, hint study findings from Japan. Greater intake of green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruit, and veggies and fruits high in beta carotene (generally those colored red and orange) may lessen the risk of having a baby with eczema (itchy, dry, red patched skin), Dr. Yoshihiro Miyake at Fukuoka University and colleagues found. Foods high in vitamin E, found in some green vegetables, similarly may lessen the risk of having a wheezy infant, they report in the journal Allergy. ...In the current study, Miyake's team evaluated vegetable and fruit intake during pregnancy of 763 women and their offspring's early-age eczema or allergic wheeze. ...According to the investigators, moms who ate greater amounts of green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruits, or beta carotene while pregnant were less apt to have an infant with eczema. For example, after allowing for other eczema risk factors, eczema was more common among infants of moms who ate the least versus the most green and yellow vegetables - 54 and 32 infants, respectively. Likewise, higher intake of vitamin E during pregnancy was associated a reduced likelihood of having a wheezy infant -- a finding that supports previous investigations from the U.S. and ...Boosting intake of green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruits, and antioxidants such as beta-carotene and vitamin E among moms-to-be "deserves further investigation as measures that would possibly be effective in the prevention of allergic disorders in the offspring," the researchers conclude.

Yoga and Ayurveda, as opposed to manufactured functional foods, are the gateway to health

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2009-12-09T08:18:07+11:00

The idea behind functional foods is that we can add back functions that were removed from food in the manufacturing or refining process. ...The solution is to eat unprocessed foods that our digestive systems and body feedback loops evolved to cope with in our evolutionary environments. ...In my opinion the attempt to create functional foods - that attempt to add back into the food what was removed in the manufacturing process - might sound like a good idea. ... This is the belief that we can reduce things into parts - analyse the parts separately - and then expect that when we put the parts back together we will get the effect of the sum of their individual impacts. ...Just like the behaviour of an individual changes according to the person or people they hang out with, the components of food behave differently when they are combined with other food component. ...If we want to be healthy we need to understand the natures of our individual body systems and adopt diets and lifestyles and relationships etc. that are conducive to our health. This is an act of self responsibility that is based on the development of internal self awareness, experimentation and the capacity to regulate the flow of energy and information in our individual body systems - with recognition that this occurs in relationship to the people and the larger environmental systems that we are embodied in. ...Therefore it is not something that is amenable to mass marketing and "one size fits all" manufactured solutions based on reductionist thinking like functional foods

Is the gym contributing to the unhappiness epidemic? RX - Yoga

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2008-11-21T09:50:45+11:00

In a nutshell the discovery was that happy people spend a lot of time socialising, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television. ...And if you go into the actual gym area you will see most people staring at these television screens while they are working out. ...TThe real practice of yoga has nothing to do with "perfecting" certain physical positions in terms of how they look from an external perspective - that approach teaches "conformity and the idea that self value comes from being perfect in the eyes of standards set by an external authority. ...One of my teachers, TKV Desikachar, once said to me: " from the perspective of yoga it is more important for your students to fix their relationships with their mothers than to be able to do any yoga postures or breathing exercise" ...But unhappiness is the opposite - when we are unhappy we are aware of it and think about it - but we don't generally think "how do I become happy" - we think "how do I get rid of this unhappiness" . If we were constantly happy we would become used to it just like we become used to anything that doesn't change - it would be the normal state and life would be become flat. ...I have in front of me right now a brochure for the fourth annual conference on "Happiness and it's Causes - Tools and Techniques for a happier life". ...As a caveat I should mention that we do have an aspect to yoga practice where we learn to generate positive internal self talk, positive images and positive emotional states.

Rediscovering Ancient Wisdom to save the human Race

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2008-11-13T14:28:02+11:00

His blind faith in the validity of scientific research as indisputable truth is not born out by John Ioannisis's work that has demonstrated that most published research findings are false.

Chemical used in Plastic bottles may be harming your children - US government health agency

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2008-04-16T09:05:23+10:00

If you or your children are drinking bottled water from a plastic bottle, feeding from a plastic baby bottle or infant formula from a can you might want to stop this ASAP. This Tuesday a US government draft report warned that a bisphenol alos known as BPA, a chemical used in some "plastic food and drink packaging, including baby bottles may be tied to early puberty and prostate and breast cancer". The draft findings come from the National Toxicology program which is part of the U.S. ...In Canada there are reports that the Canadian Health minister is about to declare BPA a dangerous substance. This would make it the first regulatory body in the world to make this determination. As you might expect there are divergent opinions of the draft results between the chemical manufactures and environmental activists who have long warned about the potential harmful health effects the chemical. ..."The American Chemistry Council industry group said the conclusions confirmed that human exposure to bisphenol A is extremely low and noted no direct evidence that exposure adversely affects reproduction or development in human" ...It reflects a significant body of science showing that BPA may play a larger role than previously thought in a host of common health problems," Anila Jacob of the Environmental Working Group said in a statement.

Your prenatal yoga classes are benefiting you baby's heart as well as you new research suggests

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2008-04-08T11:14:15+10:00

Here is some good news if you practising prenatal yoga a couple of times a week - new research presented at the 121st annual meeting of the American Physiological Society on Monday 7th April 2008 reports that "When the mom exercises during pregnancy, the unborn baby gets the same type of training effect that you would see in an adult - so you see the lower heart rate and also improved heart rate variability, which is evidence of improvements in the nervous system of the heart." ...May, from Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in Kansas City, and her colleagues tested the hypothesis that foetuses exposed to exercise in the womb have better autonomic function compared with that of foetuses not exposed to exercise. How often and for how long and at what intensity do you need to exercise to see these benefits? ... In the pilot study the researchers compared a group of 5 women who performed moderate intensity aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes, 3 times per week, with another group of 5 who had no regular exercise regime. They measured the foetal heart rate and heart rate variability between 28 to 36 weeks of pregnancy. Foetuses exposed to maternal exercise had significantly lower heart rates than foetuses not exposed to exercise. ... Foetal heart rate variability was also significantly higher in the exercise group than in the non-exercise group. "Maternal exercise may be the earliest intervention to improve the heart of children and possibly the best," said Dr May.

Challenges to on-line Participatory Democracy - I test drive www.howshouldivote.com.au

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-11-23T11:18:09+11:00

Having said this, will this turn out to be a case of voters loosing through the "divide and rule" principle - large political parties find it difficult to difficult to resist the sway of motivated special interest groups - how much easier would it be for these groups to conquer individual voters? ...Having said this , I was talking to someone about the idea of senator-online and he told me he had just been on a web-site set up by www.getup.org called www.howshouldivote.com.au. ...The objective of the web-site is to help you choose which candidate to vote for in the coming federal election based on a comparison between your ranking of important issues compared with the way the candidates have ranked those same issues . ...The first problem was that two candidates had not participated so they were excluded - one of these was the liberal party candidate - but given that my best match was with the democrats with labour third it probably wouldn't have mattered in my case. ...Having said this, will this turn out to be a case of voters loosing through the "divide and rule" principle - large political parties find it difficult to difficult to resist the sway of motivated special interest groups - how much easier would it be for these groups to conquer individual voters? ...Having said this , I was talking to someone about the idea of senator-online and he told me he had just been on a web-site set up by www.getup.org called www.howshouldivote.com.au. ...The objective of the web-site is to help you choose which candidate to vote for in the coming federal election based on a comparison between your ranking of important electoral issues compared with the way the candidates have ranked those same issues . ...The first problem was that two candidates had not participated so they were excluded from the evaluation- one of these was the liberal party candidate - but given that my best match was with the democrats with labour third it probably wouldn't have mattered in my case.

The coming "gold rush" - feeding plankton with iron filings to sequester carbon - madness or saviour?

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-11-21T11:18:14+11:00

All you will need to do is find a plankton forest in the ocean and throw an bunch of common iron filings over board with some form of "proof" to verify you have done it. ...The as yet unproved theory is that "iron seeding," or "iron enrichment" - dumping tons of pulverised iron ore into the ocean - can catalyse the growth of microscopic algae that will then suck carbon out of the atmosphere - in the same way a rain-forest on land works for the health of the planet. ...And when I say permanently I am thinking of what might happen if half the planet gets in on the act and starts dumping iron filings into the ocean to make their millions - might the ocean plankton become "obese" and start to exhibit symptoms such as plankton type 2 diabetes or heart disease? ...But the reason that a scheme like this would fail to make money for all but a few that got in early is that it is based on "access" to a free resource that anyone can exploit with little capital or skill. ...Kenneth Coale, a researcher at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California who has conducted leading work on the subject said that "Many scientists think we should try to establish the facts and the downstream consequences of iron enrichment and there are a few non-scientists who think if it can make money we should do it now." ...I think we should be pursuing ideas that reduce greenhouse emissions and per capita renewable resource consumption rather than backing ideas that promise to offset emissions that allow us to continue with business as usual - especially ideas that may fail to deliver their promises in the long run, or worse still exacerbate the situation. ...I wonder how many years of testing we need to do in a real plankton environment to see how they adapt to their environment and how other parts of the ecosystem respond. ...The way that systems behave depends upon many things - adding refined products to environments has unintended side effects - oil and coal are in a sense refined trees and the consequence of feeding them to the "earth body" is global warming.

Australia - the myth of strong economic management and the march towards dictatorship

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-11-09T11:36:24+11:00

This is easy to do and used frequently by barristers in court cases and politicians who want to create false ideas in voters minds - if you to see research on this have a look at Stephan Lewandowsky report titled Memory for Fact, Fiction, and Misinformation. ...If any existing part of your government responsibility is becoming an electoral liability then eliminate your responsibility for it in the name of economic sense - either blame the states, transfer responsibility for running it to the states (or the federal government if you are a state) or sell it to the private sector. ...One golden rule of "good economic management" is that government debt is bad -the private sector should be making these investments - the invisible hand of the market is the best way to make investment decisions. ...If governments go to the "market" to look for players to make these "risky" long term infrastructure type investments instead of doing them themselves are we really likely to get them done more cheaply? ...The truth is that if governments were really the "good economic managers" that they claim to they would be able to be able to make long term investments more cheaply than the market or some form of private public partnership. ...To get back to my original point, I feel like I am being asked to vote for governments that want power but are also trying to avoid the responsibility that goes with it. ...If this second option is the case and voters are really that ignorant then what hope could we have that a senator on-line type democracy would result in good outcomes? ...The key competitive selling point in our coming election is which party do we believe can grow the economy more - historically an increase in economic growth is correlated to increased per capita renewable resource usage.

The common factor behind affordable house prices in world markets is a high property tax not deregulated markets

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-09-10T12:14:10+10:00

Is a shortage of land supply caused by state government controls the sole reason for the price increases?, and will deregulation of this function bring prices back to affordable levels such as those found in Texas? ...I disagree withe the protagonists like the right leaning think tank -The Institute for Public Affairs (IPA) - and John Howard who blame the whole price rise on land supply shortage and claim that falling interest rates played no role in it. ... Look at the IPA analysis in more detail and you will see that real price of rural land doubled in the two years 2001/02 to 2003/04 - their own analysis disproves their point and demonstrates the impact of interest rates but they are blind to it. ...With the housing crisis hitting centre stage there is a group of organisations and individuals who have a very clear position that there is only one reason for the price increases and that can be sheeted down to a shortage of supply of land. ...Alan Moran has penned also penned a 93 page document titled "The Tragedy of Planning" in which he explores this theme in more detail and comes to the conclusions that interest rates have played a negligible role in the increase in housing prices. As the basis for his argument he uses information from Demographia.com. which as I explained earlier tries to link affordable housing markets to land deregulation while totally failing to mention anything about land tax rates as a possible cause. ...Now we have an initiative called The Great Australian dream project. - to quote the front page of their website its a "joint initiative of the Institute of Public Affairs and the Housing Industry Association, The Great Australian Dream Project has been created to promote research and inform discussion on the major causes of housing unaffordability in Australia and to encourage the adoption of policies that will once again put home ownership back within the reach of ordinary Australians" It was launched by no one less that Peter Costello and is hosting a nation wide tour by Wendell Cox the man behind Demographia.com who as I have pointed out has no idea of what is driving housing prices but is on a free market crusade.

Is your diet keeping you healthy or is it one of the reasons why you are sick?

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-09-03T13:27:44+10:00

If you want to see how food effects health at a very gross level, look at statistics on how a country's disease profile changes as it becomes Westernised and its population switches from its traditional diet and lifestyle to a western diet and lifestyle. ...In Ayurveda we see that diseases like chronic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis etc. are essentially different manifestations of an inflammatory environment that started in the digestive tract. ...If your GP treats it symptomatically with say a COX two inhibitor (anti-inflammatory drug) - without fixing the problem that is causing the inflammatory environment - the inflammation will simply show up somewhere else as say heart disease. ...If we stick with this analogy of an ethanol plus petrol fuel mix, we can ask ourselves what types of foods do we have in our diets that are like ethanol - something that will work as fuel but that we historically weren't designed to use as fuel. ...If you ask western medicine why the aborigines are suffering form these diseases they will tell you that the cause is their diet - processed western food, especially sugar. So why is it that western medicine blames the aboriginal health problems on food, but then seems to completely ignore this as a casual factor in the non aboriginal population. ...If refined foods have such a major impact on body function when classified as a medicine, it should come as no surprise that they are having exactly the same sorts of effects when we eat them as "normal food". ...It is not easy to be healthy in our society and it is becoming harder by the day - we have to work for health - it cant come from tablets.

Insights from Ayurvedic medicine rediscovered - taking drugs with the right foods makes them work better

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-07-18T11:06:13+10:00

In many cases, drug therapy will only be prescribed after the practitioner has observed the effects of these basic changes on the patient because they by themselves may be sufficient and/or the results of their practice will act as a diagnostic tool to guide the practitioner develop a more effective "drug" regime. ...So for example when the drugs are taken (time of day, before eating, while eating, after eating), the carrier agent that delivers the drug (water, honey, fat, alcohol, ginger, etc change the effect of the drugs action), synergistic herbs (that facilitate the action of the main herbs) and digestive hers (ones that facilitate digestion or elimination) - these are all factors taken into consideration. So Ayurveda has a rich established theoretical framework for enhancing the delivery of "drugs" to patients that might provide western medicine with ways to deliver drugs in the future that are more effective and/or mean that we get the same results using less drugs. ...Six minute consultations do not give the practitioner enough time with the patient to either do the type of in-depth investigation that is necessary to unearth the possible causative factors, or to educate and coach the patient on appropriate remedial changes. Thirdly, patients live in a time poor society and may not either have the life skills necessary to make the changes (they may not know how to cook) or access to the facilities required to make these changes. It is far more likely that a patient will choose a system that offers quick relief from symptoms that requires no changes other than popping a few pills over one that requires inconvenient changes to diet and lifestyle and offers slower change. ...In comparison, being told to try something such as "stop eating sugar, wheat and dairy products and come back next week and lets see how things have changed" can easily be interpreted as the doctor doesn't know what is wrong or that there is no positive action being taken. ...So while Ayurveda has some rich insights in the the practice of medicine - and particularly the maintenance and enhancement of health, as distinct from the treatment of disease - these insights are only likely to be rediscovered accidentally.

The Hidden Poison in our Food - Time for a tax on frucose

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-07-11T11:54:08+10:00

And wouldn't it be even better if the same solution also reduced type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and other chronic inflammatory diseases like arthritis and heart disease - and it gave people more energy and made them feel better. ...In an interview with Norman Swan on Radio National's Health report yesterday (9 July 07) he went as far as saying "we're being poisoned to death, that's a very strong statement but I think we can back it up with very clear scientific evidence". ...Without going into the details here, what happens in simple terms is that long term consumption of fructose sets in train a positive feedback loop that over-rides the normal negative feedback loop that controls energy balance in your body. This doesn't only cause you to overeat, but it also prevents your body from speeding up to burn off the extra calories - and because of this you not only overeat which keeps keeps the feedback cycle going, but you have low energy, feel lousy and have no inclination to do any exercise. ...To quote Dr Robert Lustig again, "In fact fructose because of the way it's metabolised is actually damaging your liver the same way alcohol is. ...Given that alcohol consumption is banned for under 18's and there is a tax on alcohol to mitigate for the increased health costs that are associated with it's consumption, it looks like we have a clear cut case for taxing fructose and possibly even banning it in children's foods. The implications of this evidence are huge - the fact that many children are being poisoned on a daily basis by consuming fructose and no one is acting is tantamount to condoning and being complict in child abuse on a massive scale. ...I have sent emails to John Howard and Kevin Rudd and their respective Health Ministers - Tony Abbot and Nicola Roxon, and I have suggested to Norman Swan of the Health report that maybe he can get other Radio National programs to pick up the story such as Rear Vision, In the National Interest, Life Matters, Saturday Extra

David Hicks - a symbol of the future collapse of democracy?

alan@yogaplace.com.au — 2007-02-11T14:57:34+11:00

Democracy can only be upheld if there is a "rule of law" that can stand above "elected" governments to prevent them from corrupting and breaking those laws with the view to seizing power "permanently". ... This has not only made the world a more unsafe place for all of us, but it has created a massive world wide anti USA sentiment that has the possibility of creating a positive feedback loop that will drive the collapse of democracy. ...The USA, UK and Australia have all evoked the "fear factor" based on the "war on terror" to introduce anti-democratic laws to "protect" us from the perceived threat. ...Democratic governments and free market growth economies have an inbuilt structural weakness that makes them incapable of making long term actions that have a negative effect in the short run. ...Even worse, the short-term free market feedback system is structurally flawed in such a way that it destroys our long term future. This is because the free market system has excluded "externalities" from its model - these are the "free" resources that have driven the growth that now threatens our existence - Nature - air, oceans, rivers, land, forests etc. ...So while we blindly continue to pursue short term growth, private equity etc, the undemocratically elected government of China has its eye on long term survival and is taking strategic actions to secure long term access to "undervalued" resources. ...So we democracies have two broad options - A slide down to authoritarian system (the most likely path if we use David Hicks as a barometer) or a shift upwards, to a planetary system (We centered vs, I centered) that has appropriate feed back systems in place to allow us to adapt to the realities we face.

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How to turn the word NO into a positive