TED talk by Michael Sandel

I read a couple of very interesting books over the past week, but I have been a little lazy with the posting.

In The Age of the Unthinkable, Ramo presents a very intuitive argument on how we must prepare for and adapt to the quickly-changing, very unstable world that we live in. His main point is that we need to see the bigger picture (the forest) instead of focusing on the problem at hand (the tree) - though he phrases it much more eloquently than I did. Throughout the book, I felt that his way of thinking was very Oriental, and then I realized that he has actually studied (and is studying) China in great depth and very affected by the Eastern way of thinking. I never really thought about it, but after reading this book, I felt very fortunate that I have been exposed to both Eastern and Western ways of thinking. There will be times in my life when my exposure to both cultures will come in handy.

Communism: A History is just a very concise historical account of how communism spread and the conditions that allowed for countries to accept communism or communist rulers. The book is very straight-forward and leaves not much room for questions. The author concludes by stating that communism is inherently a flawed philosophy and it can never be realized.

I came across a TED Talk given by Michael Sandel. He is a professor at Harvard and he recently published a book called, Justice: What's the right thing to do? He gives a very interesting talk on what a democratic debate is. Check it out: http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_lost_art_of_democratic_debate.html