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

The Fairness Instinct and the Social Contract

 One of the important findings of the emerging, multi-disciplinary science of human nature is that humans do, indeed, have an innate sense of fairness.  We regularly display a concern for others’ interests as well as our own, and we even show a willingness to punish perceived acts of unfairness.


Happiness versus the “Gross Misery Index”

The United Nations now publishes an annual World Happiness Report, and it shows that the overall trend since the depths of the Great Recession, in 2008-2009, continues to improve.  By the U.N.’s criteria, the world is getting happier.  Likewise, the Gallup polling organization, which does an ambitious annual survey across some 140 countries of people’s subjective sense of well-being, reports that its metric is also rising. 


Should We Have a “Gross National Happiness” Index?

It seems that happiness is busting out all over – like that famous lyric from the classic Broadway musical, Oklahoma.  True, happiness is not much in evidence in our  economy, or in our shrill and rancorous politics.  But never mind.  An explosion of research and a bumper crop of writings about happiness can be found -- somewhat incongruously -- in various academic journals these days, as well as in the bookstalls.  A dozen titles were counted in a local bookstore recently without breaking a sweat.


Stakeholder Capitalism: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

 What do BP, Goldman Sachs, Enron, World Com, Bernie Madoff, and a long list of other “malefactors of great wealth” (to borrow a pejorative from President Theodore Roosevelt) all have in common?


Ayn Rand Shrugged

It is somewhat amazing that Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, first published in 1957, is near the top of the current best-seller list.  It has long enjoyed a cult following as a sort of CEO’s bible, inspiring each new generation of libertarian political conservatives.  Now it seems that the gospel according to Ayn is spreading beyond the Tea Party to the parasitical “masses” that she denounces.