Thích Nhất Hạnh - ‘The Art of Power’

 

If we continue abusing the Earth this way, there is no doubt that our civilisation will be destroyed. This turnaround takes enlightenment, awakening. The Buddha attained individual awakening. Now we need collective enlightenment to stop this course of destruction. Civilisation is going to end if we continue to drown in the competition for power, fame, sex, and profit.

This weeks Green Thought comes from the 2008 book ‘The Art of Power’ by the expatriate Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Village

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_%28Buddhism%29

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh

Herman Scheers - Energy Autonomy

Reducing all questions exclusively to price……( results in) the idea of the market economy degenerate(ing) from an economic ordering principle into organised social irresponsibility.

This weeks Green Thought is taken from Herman Scheers 2007 book Energy Autonomy. The late Hermann Scheer ( 1944 - 2010) was a member of the German Bundestag (Parliament), President of Eurosolar (The European Association for Renewable Energy) and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. In 1999, Scheer was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his "indefatigable work for the promotion of solar energy worldwide".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Scheer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Autonomy

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/tech/home

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy

George Monbiot - Workforce (Guardiuan Article 9/6/15)

We know that our conditions of life are deteriorating. Most young people have little prospect of owning a home, or even of renting a decent one. Interesting jobs are sliced up, through digital Taylorism,  into portions of meaningless drudgery. The natural world, whose wonders enhance our lives, and upon which our survival depends, is being rubbed out with horrible speed. Those to whom we look for guardianship, in government and among the economic elite, do not arrest this decline; they accelerate it.

This weeks Green Thought comes George Monbiots Monbiot.com article ‘Workforce’ posted on 9^th June 2015

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/28/education-jobs-middle-class-decline

 

Gilles Deleuze

 “The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?”

This weeks Green Thought comes from the late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925 – 1995) .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/

Neil Evernden - ‘Natural Alien’ 2nd Edition

For, at bottom, nothing has changed. The natural environment remains vulnerable whenever there are short-term benefits to be had by sacrificing environmental protection…….by basing all arguments on enlightened self-interest the environmentalists have ensured their own failure……’

 

He then goes on to quote Anthony Brandt  - ‘The industrialist and the environmentalist are brothers under the skin; they differ only as to the best use the natural world ought to be put to.’

 

 

This weeks Green Thoughts are taken from page 10 of Neil Everndens’ ‘Natural Alien’ (2nd Edit. 1993).

 

http://www.dgfg.org/1/post/2011/10/book-review-the-natural-alien-humankind-and-environment-by-neil-evernden.html