Life and Spirituality

http://absfreepic.com/free-photos/download/beautiful-sun-beam-on-grassland-4608x3072_66131.html G rass is the most plentiful source of food on our Planet for humans and animals. Of various grasses, some are excellent food sources for humans. Both wheat and rice are varieties of grass. The seeds can be dried and stored for long. Wheat is one of the cheapest sources of food for humans because of its abundance. A few humans are allergic to gluten in wheat and in that case rice or corn is an alternative. http://www.stock-free.org/field-harvest-wheat-haystack.html Humans have a tendency to develop food fads for a few decades at a time such as cholesterol free, caffeine free, gluten free etc. Natural food eaters avoid all such fad foods that are unnatural and have undergone much processing . Those components are essential to the food they are a part of but since individual chemistry of each person is unique and reacts differently to same food, some may be allergic ...

Lokesh and his mother. May God bless and protect these children and children everywhere on Earth A cross my home in India, is another home that was sold recently. The new owners are redesigning and reconstructing parts of it. The contractor has allowed a laborer, his wife and two kids to stay in the under construction site so as to keep an eye on supplies in an otherwise vacant home. In recent times, there is some prosperity in India and extreme poverty has reduced but there still remain pockets of poverty and it is out of these that most construction laborers come. Poverty is not new in India. It has been there now for several generations with some families and when that happens, humans can sink to the lowest of depths of humanity and this could be the case with the laborer just mentioned and his two kids. Often it is a matter of proper knowledge rather than poverty alone that does this to humans. This laborer has a two year old son and a five year old daughter a...

The Money-lender and His Wife, by Quentin Metsys, 1514. Louvre Museum F or centuries a moneylender has existed in South Asian villages. He tells you that you can take any amount of money you need for anything you wish; only there shall be small monthly interest. They must remember to pay the interest regularly or with compounding, it would become huge, but they can take their time to pay back the original amount. Just in case they cannot pay that back too; they shall just hold the land as collateral. Since needs arise often, villagers take loans often. For centuries the money lender has become richer while the villagers impoverished. Money lenders who became very rich moved to cities and then the world and some of the richest persons in the world are from among such communities. The modern version of the village moneylender is banks that have pushed individuals and nations into a life of debt from the monthly credit card loan to huge ones on their homes or nations. Bu...

  E very now and then one hears of news items from the developed world as to how persons on a low income or welfare are trying to manage their food on a low budget and the difficulties they are facing. I have seen this at first hand with some of my students in Canada who were facing similar difficulties. Often I had to step in with a bit of friendly advice as to how to go about dealing with the situation based on my experience of South Asia where very many families have managed to get by on very little for centuries. In North Western India for example, these are the five things that bring down food costs when a household is facing financial difficulties: Meat is not consumed but when a vegetarian meal is balanced people are just as healthy or healthier. There are earlier posts in this blog describing how some of the healthiest, strongest and longest lived persons are in fact vegetarians or near vegetarians. All food items are prepared starting from bas...

A Brief Introduction to the Economics of Greed and Exploitation S ome of the posts in this blog have been about economic inequalities and its tragic consequences - such as hunger, homelessness and early mortality - that seems to be increasing in some of the leading capitalistic societies of the world. The wealth of the world has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It has given rise to things such as the occupy movement and a demand for a return to communism. However communism and equality created by it have not worked since some amount of economic diversity and inequality are natural and required just as it is with the size of trees in a forest. At the same time, given the opportunity, humans can become extremely exploitative leading to unsustainable inequalities. The new revised version of the book – A brief Introduction to the Economics of Greed and Exploitation – suggests simple methods to control extreme economic inequalities in modern capitalism i.e easy and p...

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poor_and_rich_in_Thailand.JPG W e know from history that in the past, much of the world’s wealth was held by a few rich and powerful kings and emperors. Has that changed now? Have you wondered how the world’s wealth is distributed in the new modern democratic age where we have rule of the people, by the people for the people. It seems that the emperors may not have gone away. They have perhaps just changed their style and address. Nevertheless as human civilisation advanced inequalities on the whole reduced or moved up and down over the centuries, then something dramatic happened around thirty years ago in 1985, inequalities began to rise again at ever faster rates. See here for precise scholarly data on this and simple ways to fix it. According to a report in the guardian,  The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a n...

Robin Hood and his Merry Men I n today’s complex economy it is useful for the ordinary citizen to understand a few simple principles about economics. That way, they can manage their own money better and also contribute their voice to policy making in their countries. This post is about inflation, its causes and ramifications and how it can be managed  in any country. Money is a used for acquiring goods and services and when the price of goods and services rise we say that inflation is taking place. The price of something depends on many factors but two of the primary ones are 1. Demand and supply balance 2. Extent of Money Supply.   Both factors are easy to understand. If a commodity becomes in short supply then its price tends to rise. If apple crops have been destroyed by untimely frost then apple prices will rise. If the demand for a product increases then too its price rises but if demand falls prices fall or crash. The balance of demand and supply is one...