Thirty-three years ago, I watched as a culture that had been sealed off from the rest of the world was suddenly thrown open to economic development. Witnessing the impact of the modern world on an ancient culture gave me insights into how economic globalisation creates feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, particularly in the young, and how those psychological pressures are helping to spread the global consumer culture. Since that time I have been promoting the rebuilding of community and local economies as the foundation of an ‘Economics of Happiness’. [...more]
Expect a deepening global depression; protracted economic, political, social, and institutional upheaval; mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hunger; and severe repression to curb public anger. Blame it on decades of political influence buying yielding unprecedented returns for the privileged, but economic wreckage and catastrophic life changes for the rest. The price of excess is pain, lots of it for the world's disadvantaged, the ones who always pay for rich peoples' sins. [...more]
The number of hungry people, which was declining for several decades, bottomed out in the mid-1990s at 825 million. It then climbed to 915 million in 2008 and jumped to over 1 billion in 2009. With world food prices projected to continue rising, so too will the number of hungry people, leaving millions of families trying to survive on one meal per day.
“We know from studying earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians, Mayans, and many others,” says Brown, “that more often than not it was food shortages that led to their demise. It now appears that food may be the weak link in our early twenty-first century civilization as well.
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What is it that stands between you and vibrant health? People who have spent a fortune on supplements, gotten plenty of exercise and bought high quality food still find themselves unable to answer this question. For many of them, the answer lies in neurotoxins hidden in even the most healthy sounding foods, including many foods labeled as organic. These ingredients often cause serious reactions, including migraines, insomnia, asthma, depression, anxiety, aggression, chronic fatigue, and even ALS. They may be responsible for the swelling numbers of children diagnosed as ADHD. [...more]
Petroleum supplies slowly dwindle as demand rapidly soars. So the prices of gasoline and oil that supply modern societies with their industrial production of food will go up, up, and away. A radically different future than the oil-energized twentieth century is dawning. [...more]
Exposure to more television and other electronic media during the teenage years appears to be associated with developing depression symptoms in young adulthood, especially among men, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. [...more]
Spicy foods add an incredible amount of flavour to food. As ethnic foods become abundant, chilli and spicy food is increasingly popular. The good news is that adding spice to our food has a range of benefits for our health and wellbeing. [...more]
The US is sinking into depression, and as the result of globalization much of the rest of the world is being dragged along. Most people have never seen anything like this in their lifetimes. What they are witnessing is secular upheaval that will bring great change to beliefs, values and lifestyles. A new word is needed to describe it, as it is something much more than an economic depression. Maybe reconstruction will serve as the descriptive term for now. [...more]
While medical diagnoses are based on science, psychiatric “diagnoses” are not at all scientific. They do not reveal what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment, and what is the likely outcome. Nor are they reliable. Different psychiatrists who examine the same patient typically offer different “diagnoses.” Moreover, psychiatric “diagnoses” move in and out of favor, depending on a variety of social factors. [...more]
A study by researchers at the Institute for Cancer Research in Oslo, Norway has given further credence to the claim that the benefits of modest sun exposure outweigh the risk of skin cancer for most people. Johan Moan, the researcher who led the study said, "Modest sun exposure gives enormous vitamin D benefits." [...more]
