I think I can connect with an audience because I know what it's like to be on the other side of it and I really remember all of that.
As usual, in every scheme that worsens the position of the poor, it is the poor who are invoked as beneficiaries.
Today you have a situation where now the prescription is: People who dont have enough money to buy food should end up paying for their drinking water. That is going to be the kind of situation in which you will get more child labor. You will get more exploitation of women. Youre going to get an absolutely exploitative economy as the very basis of living becomes a source of capital accumulation and corporate growth. In fact, the chief of Coca-Cola in India said: Our biggest market in India comes from the fact that there is no drinking water left. People will have to buy Coca-Cola.
It is time to learn from the mistakes of monocultures of the mind and the essentialising violence of reductionist thought. It is time to turn to diversity for healing.
That amazing power of being able to stand with total courage in the face of total power and not be afraid. That is stri shakti.
The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.
I have called this phenomenon of stealing common knowledge and indigenous science "biopiracy" and "intellectual piracy. " According to patent systems we shouldn't be able to patent what exists as "prior art. " But the United States patent system is somewhat perverted. First of all, it does not treat the prior art of other societies as "prior art. " Therefore anyone from the United States can travel to another country, find out about the use of a medicinal plant, or find a seed that farmers use, come back here, claim it as an invention or an innovation.
Small actions are at the heart of kaizen. By taking steps so tiny that they seem trivial or even laughable, you'll sail calmly past obstacles that have defeated you before. Slowly - but painlessly! - you'll cultivate an appetite for continued success and lay down a permanent new route to change.
The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.
Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
Saw so much of the wickedness of my heart that I longed to get away from myself. . . I felt almost pressed to death with my own vileness. Oh what a body of death is there in me. . . Oh the closest walk with God is the sweetest heaven that can be enjoyed on earth!