World Views

Oasis changing lives through football.

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Oasis Founder Clifford Martinus has a contagious passion for sport and community. This is evident in the work done at Oasis Place with his belief that the connection to a team, fair play and sport can support an individual in overcoming the odds, both personal and social. This South African non-profit creates positive personal development opportunities for youth from marginalised backgrounds.

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Latest Posts in World Views

Introduction to the Social Disorder of Capability

As the indicators of the status of complicated macroscopic systems, statistically valid representative variables are of critical importance for knowing the dynamic conditions of the systems. As a few examples, in natural sciences, we have become very familiar to various physical quantities such as temperature and pressure, which can help us to predict the behavior of a natural system; in economics, we have economic indices to track economic health from different perspectives; in psychology, we have the intelligence quotient to provide a partial evaluation of the intelligent level of individuals.

Despite the convenience of using the well-known variables in academic researches and practical applications, the process of identifying the notions behind those variables could be painstaking and daunting. This article would introduce an abstract notion for the cultural dynamics, which has been greatly ignored by the world in the past.


The Climate Refugee Crisis

It’s a life-and-death threat, and it’s going to get much worse.  What can we do? There is in fact a deadly nexus of influences at work that could multiply the estimated number of refugees. This is a unique moment in the history of life on Earth, and in our own history as a species.  We must make a collective choice whether to live or die.


Re-learning How to Play Global Chess: What Would Winston Churchill Do?

There is a potentially effective international response to the rise of China as a superpower, but it will require a twenty-first century Winston Churchill with vision.  In the next decade, China is likely to challenge the United States in many ways.  Winston Churchill understood the crucial value of cooperation against a common foe.  A twenty-first century Winston Churchill, with a keen eye on the global chess board, might see the proposed “Global Government Initiative” as an opportunity to create a new political alliance.


“Sustainable Development”: How’s It Going?

The U.N.’s original definition of the term has been corrupted, and the current U.N. iteration (in a set of 17 Development Goals) is an overreach.  Either way it’s failing.   What is to be done? This currently fashionable concept first arose in the 1980s.  A U.N. report stressed that it should be about basic needs.  Our current emphasis on “growth” and increased “wealth” is unsustainable. I believe we must return to the original 1987 U.N. definition, which focused on our basic needs, and make it a global priority going forward.

 


2nd Order Philosophy

Human civilization is now suffering the widespread political and economic crises all over the world due to the collective confusion caused by various extreme worldviews, extreme life views, and extreme religious views. With the ever stronger capacity to cultivate nature, to produce goods, to fend off the beasts and catastrophes, and to do many wonders of dreams, we humans as a whole are not living a less stressful but an ever increasingly stressful life. We are trying to do our best based on our knowledge; however, while we see the world in a straight-line fashion, the world often turns around in a paradoxical way; when ancient dreams come true, their potential negative social impacts could also become true.