Tuesday 28 October 2014
7pm - 9pm
The Venue, Saw Swee Hock Student Centre
About the project
Critical Thinking is a collaborative research project that aims to understand contemporary affairs in the context of financial markets, commerce, media, government, education and public institutions.
Our work to date reveals that power is concentrated within a ruling clique (RC) whose wealth and power is derived from, and exercised through, four systemic flaws in the political economy.
The RC are identifiable by the company they keep at meetings such as Bilderberg and Davos, where they ensure media, politics, military and intelligence agencies, banks, corporations, NGOs, think- tanks, lobby groups, public institutions and education serve their interests. Levers of power create competition, distraction and division to foment wars and geopolitical tensions, encouraging opposing ideologies - in politics, economics, religion and on the basis of race or between the employed and unemployed, immigrants versus indigenous populations.
All the while, more and more people are being oppressed or displaced and the environment decimated, through exponential wealth extraction. Local, national and global challenges abound and need to be understood in the context of the political economy.
About the session
This two hour interactive session will comprise a preliminary break-out session for people to work in groups of six to eight, to agree the single most important challenge facing us today. The output from each group will be noted (1 challenge per group) and counted where challenges are agreed by more than one group.
We will then discuss how each challenge can be interpreted through a model, showing how concentrated power is behind war, environmental devastation, oppression, division and wealth extraction. We will deal with three most cited challenges.
The results of the initial breakout groups will be published in a written report of each challenge in terms of the political economy (including those we don't have time to discuss), together with the model, its derivation and an explanation of the four fundamental flaws.
The session will close with a presentation on an initiative to eradicate the flaws in the political economy, ie. to devolve power to the people and share the wealth of the planet sustainably and equitably.
Running order:
• Prompt start: 7pm
• Introduction (10 minutes)
• Breakout groups (10 minutes)
• Interpreting the three most cited challenges (75 minutes)
• An initiative to devolve power and remove the flaws in the political economy (25 minutes)
The Report will be circulated to attendees following the event.