My Delhi Travelogue

My first time living alone and what an incredible way to start: none other than the capital of India itself. New Delhi. But I must admit my initial thoughts on Delhi were iffy at fairest and not just because of its skin cracking heat, its high crime levels and sheer lack of empathy compared to my favorite Indian metro Bangalore, but also because unlike other Indian cities the initial hustle and bustle and the clear materialistic approach to life made Delhi feel soul-less. Just another place with more malls than the rest, just another place with more hormonal teenagers than the rest, just another place with more class divide than the rest,…..just another place.

How wrong I was.

A Milestone of Determination

“I  am a new day rising

I'm a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again”

-Its times like these, Foo Fighters

I have always considered Canada to be like a second home having lived in Vancouver for a good part of my early childhood. I was thoroughly enamored by how beautiful it was, how responsible its citizens were, and how the only criticisms I heard were mostly backhanded compliments such as, “Canada is not interesting because it hasn’t messed up enough like the rest of us.” However, I did find one of its traditions quite irksome.

Making Globalization Work - A Look Into Solutions Offered by Joseph Stiglitz

It was Peter Berger that said it is within human nature to offer meanings to all that they perceive and construct social realities from it. (Luckmann, 1967) A certain fear of the unknown and a desperate need to predict the future also falls under the same category regardless of how aloof the outcome is or how misinterpreted. Like the oracle of Delphi who told Croseus, king of Lydia that if he were to attack the Persians, “a great empire will be destroyed”. Little did Croseus know that the oracle was speaking about his own empire. And yet the need to consult soothsayers, astrologers and reading into the predictions of Nostradamus is still continued to this day because reputable sciences have very little to offer on this regard.

Argentine Economic Crisis 2001

The Argentine debt crisis was unique in several ways in such that it was not just the failure of the local and international economic institutions and international trade but also a socio-political failure.  It set precedence on how a bad government can bankrupt one of the traditionally richest countries in the world. It is however hard to pick one incident that sparked Argentina’s downward economic spiral. Like most crisis a number of factors over a long period of time culminated into its bankruptcy in 2001. It is a topic of hot debate on what these factors were.

‘Le Bon’ – David Hume (1711-1776)

             

               

David Hume as a political and ethical philosopher probably represents the zenith of Scottish enlightenment. In an era that saw renaissance in free thinking and libertarian spirit and gave the world philosophical legends like Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid and James Hutton; David Hume seems to occupy a corner all for himself. Hume, a notorious empiricist, in a sense represents a dead end in his line of philosophical thinking. Nonetheless Hume’s greatness comes from the fact that he developed to its logical conclusion the empirical philosophy of Locke and Berkeley and by making it self-consistent made it incredible. (Russell, 1945) However, Hume was more widely known for his writings in economics and history than as a philosopher. His philosophical sophistication and greatness was only recognized through the works of his contemporaries like Reid and Kant who cleared a pathway into Hume becoming a reference point for all future philosophers (Schmidt, 2003). Hume in a sense could be considered a precursor along with Francois Quesnay to Adam Smith’s theories on political economy, exchange and property. At a personal level what I find most appealing about David Hume, and my inspiration behind this paper is his theory of property and exchange and how his idea of formulation of justice is derived from it. This formulation of justice in turn becomes the bed rock of a social contract that binds societies together.