Digging for Meaning

just saw this talk on TED. Its the usual evangelical white man's talk to other white men about the need for understanding a people as a people rather than a 'problem' or a 'situation'. its about the 'shadow city' as he calls the slums in developing world. its an interesting talk and an earnest attempt in the right direction. However, in their politics to humanize, they tend to absolve the other forces at work. earlier in his talk, he talks how these shadow cities are expanding and more and more people are trooping in, without questioning why is that the case. he talks of how the shadow cities lack basic amenities of life but all these cities are built on hope and freedom. true, but what is making the people uproot themselves culturally, socially, materially and move to inhuman filth-holes in hope of what? while everyone should be able to enjoy his rights, at the same time he need not be elsewhere, far from his home to enjoy those rights and freedom. compou...

The original reason I thought of against efficiency was really an empirical observation, with parallel to a natural sciences maxim. Any system naturally degenerates to higher entropy. The third law of thermodynamic s says so. The only way to continuously improve (increased order…going against disorder) is to segregate the components into an efficient system apart from a degenerate one. For eg. Essentially it could translate to the increased cleanliness inside our houses at the cost of dirtier and infertile land outside. Think of the nuclear wastage in ocean beds that has killed entire species of fishes. All for our want of efficient energy. So increased efficiency here means you r screwing up something else somewhere, all the more. So in Capitalism, where a select few get more and more resources at their disposal without an iota of understanding of it's cost, a third world country is perhaps paying the price through it's deforestation, increased pollution, de humanization, infe...