How to Engage in Buddhist Economics

It is time to change how humans work and manipulate economics. As human beings it is time to stop prioritizing goods before people. There is a big difference between moneyand wealth and it is time to recognize that difference. There are ways to create wealth for communities and entire nations rather than what we are doing now, brining in money for corporations and the government. There is a 1973 book on exactly this topic byBritish economist, statistician, and theorist, E.F. Schumacher, named Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. In this text, Schumacher groups together essay on ethics, economics, and the environment. His ideas seem related to those of Tolstoy and Gandhi and he delves into ancient wisdom to try to bring back some humanitarian order to the modern world. One of the best essays in the book is title, Buddhist Economics. Here he looks into the moral questions of wealth, writing, “Right Livelihood is one of the requirement of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. It is clear, therefore, that there must be such a thing as Buddhist economics…Spiritual health and material well-being are not enemies: they are natural allies.” We have a right to make money in a job that we feel compelled to do, which then creates wealth. If we keep ourselves in an economy where people don’t matter, just products and consumptions than it results in a lack of purpose or meaning for the people. This means that everyone will avoid work because it is something that they dread doing. On the other hand is the Buddhist idea of what work should be. Schumacher writes, “The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centeredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.”

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How to Effectively Motivate

We all have encountered a lack of motivation. Maybe you have an impending deadline but you can’t peel your eyes off facebook. Or perhaps you have to finish a project, but you can’t find the motivation so you clean your entire house instead, anything to do what you have to. The key to focusing on these projects that you have to accomplish is finding the motivation to complete them. The two kinds of motivation are internal and instrumental. For example, if you want to write a research paper because you are really interested in discovering the facts and putting them together in a new way, that is internal motivation. However, if you want to write a research paper to get a wonderful grade and therefore a prize for the rest research in the University, which comes with acclaim and attention, then the motivator is instrumental.

Usually, your motivation for completing something is a combination of both internal and instrumental motivation. The question is, how do you get the perfect combination of these two motivators so that you are most likely to complete the project, assignment, or task that you have to do? A new paper published in the Proceedings of the Nation Academy of Sciences looks into the secret behind the perfect motivators. They concluded that instrumental motives are actually not very helpful for productivity and that internal motives are much stronger. The study for the paper used 11,320 cadets in nine different classes entering the Military Academy at West Point. They looked into why these cadets wanted to go to West Point, in other words what their motivation was. The questions included instrumental motivation answers like “I want to get a better job later in life” as well as internal motivation answers, for example “I want to be trained as a leader in the U.S. Army.” After a few years, the cadets who entered the program for internal motivation reasons were much more successful than those who entered with instrumental motivation. Those who were internally motivated had a much higher rate of graduation and included more commissioned officers. The bottom line is that internal motivation is the most compelling so be sure to check in with yourself about your own motivations before diving into a large project.

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Google and Apple’s Role in Combating Alzheimer’s

Medicine has struggled to keep up with the amount of Alzheimer’s disease in this country and around the world. There is still no cure and very little medicine to reduce symptoms. Even more shocking is that Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth largest killer in the United States. Fortunately, tech companies like Apple and Google have been working to create products and services that will keep patients with Alzheimer’s more comfortable and safe.

Google has been working with Google Glass so that it is useful for those affected by Alzheimer’s. The device will use facial recognition software to tell the patient who is in front of them by alerting them to their name and their relationship. Additionally the Glass device can give the patients reminders like when to take their medicine or when they have to go to the doctor. Glass, along with wearable devices can track Alzheimer’s patients and their movements throughout the house and beyond. If a patient wanders away, as is known to happen with over 60% of Alzheimer’s patients, the wearable devices will indicate where they are.

In addition to health concerns and knowing who people are, tech experts have been working on therapeutic games. The pharmaceutical company Pfizer is working with game developer Akili Interactive Labs to create and test a game called Project EVO for Apple’s iPhones and iPads. The point of the game is to keep up memory through therapeutic activities and it also tracks the development of the Alzheimer’s patients disease symptoms and how rapidly they changing. Pfizer is currently working on a clinical trial that will test 100 people both with and without brain plaque, one of the first signs of Alzheimer’s. They are looking to see whether Project EVO can be a biomarker for the disease. All of these companies are working to help those who are affected and offering solutions in the meantime while medical experts continue to search for the cause and cure for the disease.

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Caltech Raising Money for the World

The most imminent threat facing us today is climate change and Caltech is looking to do something about it. The Caltech Resnick sustainability Institute is raising money to help support scientists and their research in renewable energy. So far, Caltech has received $15 million in gifts for the researchers to deal with the realities of climate change.

The Caltech organization has its home in Pasadena, California campus of the California Institute of Technology. They are publically announcing their contributors to drum up support. Lynda and Stewart Resnick gifted the latest donation to the cause. The fund was started by a donation from the co-owners of Roll Global that own POM Wonderful and Wonderful Pistachios. In 2009 they donated $21 million and that helped to kick start the institute as a whole.

The scientists are using the funds to explore many options for sustainable technologies and sources of energy. So far they have examined wind energy, fuel cells and batteries, smart grid systems, solar photovoltaics, and biofuels, among others. The executive director of Resnick, Neil Fromer says of the work, “we style ourselves as a studio for sustainability. Our goal is to capitalize on the unique culture at Caltech of interdisciplinary collaboration and playful scientific exploration to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the world, in terms of how do we use energy and natural resources in ways that can sustain our future?” The fossil fuels that we are currently using to get energy are filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gasses. Scientists have noted that we have already crossed a dangerous threshold so we must come up with other ways of harnessing energy for our purpose so we stop harming the planet to ease the consequences. Currently, the use of fossil fuels is causing the loss of species, rising sea levels, severe weather, and international conflict. The work that Caltech is investing in may be the only option to help stop this process and start the world on a healthier path for

sustainability.

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TM for War Victims in Africa

In the United States, we understand what it is like to have veteran return home from the Iraq and Afghanistan with post-war trauma like PTSD. The continent of Africa has also been plagued with wars as over the past 20 years, 18 African countries have been engaged in war. This means that war trauma has affected not only soldiers, but citizens and it is estimated that as many as 100 million Africans have been victims of war and the violence and sexual abuse it brings and therefore suffer from post-traumatic stress. Therefore, PTSD is an epidemic on the continent and has caused many Africans from living the most productive and healthy lives they can. If PTSD is not treated it can lead to violent or self-destructive behavior, depression, alcoholism, anxiety, unemployment, and suicide. In the United States these symptoms are often deal with using physician prescribed drugs and therapy. These options are not available to many Africans because of the shortage of psychologists and psychiatrists in the area.

An option for those in African countries affected by PTSD may be transcendental meditation. The technique has been through many peer-reviewed studies and they all show great benefits to those suffering from post-war trauma. TM is an evidenced-based solution and has frequently outperformed other healing techniques by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, among other PTSD symptoms. TM has already been used effectively in the Congo, demonstrating that it is effective in the African region. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, Brian Rees, M.D., M.P.H. was the primary author for the Congo study and notes that TM, “provides the mind and body with a unique state of ‘restful alertness’ that reduces deeply-rooted stress and improves brain function.” Without access to psychologists and psychiatrists, Transcendental Meditation is a proved effective way to help treat those ravaged by war throughout Africa and around the world.

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