Weekly read

If you want to become a change maker, you need a better outlook on how the world looks like. On of my favourite routines is to collect articles over the week that I normally read in the weekend.

Here’s my first blog post about my weekly reads. Every Sunday from now I will share with you articles about human wellbeing and sustainable development I think is worth reading. If you want a more regular update you can also follow my Facebook Page.

The Diet That Might Cure Depression by Olga Khazan

Published in the Atlantic this article is about the lastest science on how a better diet, with whole-grain, fruit and vegetables can play a role against depression. I’m very interested in the way food relates to health and the more research showing the advantage of a diet mainly being plant based the more reasons to change our diets. We already know the benefits of a planet based diet in relation to tackling climate change so the stronger evidence for health benefits, the stronger the incentives to create new policies.

Has humanity reached “peak intelligence”? by David Robson

Published in BBC Future the article takes an holistic perspective on intelligence. It starts with an introduction of the historical research and concerns about the drop of IQ in many societies, the reasons behind it but also biases on IQ, such as critical thinking or rationality. Just the sentence “The cleaner our fuels, the smarter we became” makes it worth reading. Or this one: “.. a lack of rationality and critical thinking can explain why financial fraud is still commonplace, and the reason that millions of people dish out money on quack medicines or take unnecessary health risks”. In the era of AI it’s more important then ever to understand human intelligence and the development of our capacity to think clearly for our own benefit as a specie.

Warren Buffett Says This 1 Simple Habit Separates Successful People From Everyone Else by Marcel Schwantes

Published directly on Pocket. Yes, I love reading “what rich/successful people do”. Not because I necessarily want to be rich, no, I want to make the world a better place and that’s success for me. I love reading them because they’re normally short but consist of wisdom. This articles talks about the importance of saying no, the importance of focus and a good exercise on how to find your most urgent goals.

One of the world’s most influential economists is on a mission to save capitalism from itself by Eshe Nilson

Published in Quarts this article is about the economist Mariana Mazzucato and her work. It’s an interesting read though we know that capitalism is dominating the world economy and has served us well, but also, especially in the lens of inequality and the climate crisis, has it’s shortcomings. Mariana wants to move beyond ideologies and are not interested in any of that sort. Rather, how to reshape economics and mainly capitalism since she still believed it has its role to play. In time of urgent action, her ideas are realistic ones that could help us to solve major issues.

The problem of mindfulness by Sahanika Ratnayake

I might not agree with the author completely but I think it’s very wise to extinguish western trends of mindfulness from buddhist teaching. Also the paradox of knowing yourself in relation to the insight of there is no self. Interesting read for anyone who has ever tried or thinking about trying meditation.

Turn off your phone, notifications on your computer and spend some time to focus on proper reading. It’s good for your mind. Enjoy.

You want to save the world? Have a second thought before taking action

I grew up with the idea that I'm going to save the world. That will be my job as an audult. No one told me, from what I can remember, that it’s my destiny to do so, I clearly chose it to be my path. There’s several issues with that statement. The first thing is that the world doesn’t need to be saved. And this doesn’t come from someone who doesn’t believe in climate change, rather the opposite, this comes from someone who separates scientific facts with morality and actions. What I mean is that “the world” includes a lot of things and all of it doesn't need to be saved. Rather we could wish that some of it would be better off. By taking climate change as an example, it’s clear that it would be beneficial for humankind to do everything we can to stop the realise of greenhouse gases and invest in carbon offset innovations, technologies and environmental practices such as planting trees. So who needs to be saved? Humans of course. Some might argue the thousands of species being extinct due to climate change also needs to be saved, but why would humans care? The obvious answer is that we like the idea of tigers in the djungel, elephants on the savannah and bees in our garden but the most rational answer would be; for our own survival. It’s cheaper and less risky to let ecosystem serve humanity as it has during the last 10 000 of years then inventing technologies that will replace them (even though I doubt humanity has enough knowledge to create such advanced systems). If climate change needs to be dealt with, and thousands of species, and not to mentioned all the social and economic issues, why can’t we say that the world needs to be saved? For something to be saved it needs to be saved from something. If you look at it, this means humans. We are the creators of all these issues so what what really needs to be saved from what? My conclusion is that humans should then save themselves from themselves. And you still believe you want to be that person that saves humanity from themselves? So how to do that? The obvious answer is saving yourself. What you really say is that you want to save yourself - and from what? From yourself of course. If you have reached that conclusion but still wondering - what about climate change? Well, you’re being a part of it every single day and you participate in the system creating this huge error in beneficial development for humankind. Some of you might say that you don’t care about humans, all you care are about is animals, then have a second look at the hierarchy among species and see who’s in charge. You might acknowledge this and still want to save the animals from humans, then you probably have a better chance of helping animals by helping humans.

So before you go on your mission to save the world. Acknowledge that the world doesn’t need to be saved, it needs to be changed (if you have ideas of what to be good otherwise I would say that even the word “need” is not really valid) and change is happening rather if we consciously participate or not. So you can chose to do your best to contribute to a change that you might find beneficial for animals, humans, both or nature (regardless if you view humans as a part of nature or not). How to create a better world then?

Well that’s for another post.