Forum Post: Online Enlightenment Project

Please join the Online Enlightenment Project for a free week-long workshop that runs from February 21-28, 2012, inclusive...

A free online workshop with award-winning Cambridge economist HA-JOON CHANG: 23 THREADS ON '23 THINGS'

In threaded, asynchronous discussion, we'll work with Ha-Joon to figure out viable ways of saving the planet. See the article below.

Register for the free workshop and download the workshop syllabus here:

Online Enlightenment Project presents Ha-Joon Chang http://onlineenlightenmentproject.org/resources/23things/

CAN A HETERODOX ECONOMIST LEAD US INTO THE LIGHT?

Can a heterodox economist, one who is inspired and challenged by non-economists, craft a plan to save the planet? Can a development economist lead us into the light? Please come and participate in a free online workshop with Ha-Joon Chang from Feb. 21-28, 2012, in which we'll brainstorm ways to make the world in which we live a radically better place in the very near term.

Heterodox economists have recently been called ”marginal revolutionaries,” so it’s easy to understand their advocacy for redesigning economic systems. (1) But what is the nature of the light in question? It might be described as a flexible wave of movements coming forward, an intertwining of economic, philosophical, and metaphysical concepts all directed toward the immediate and radical betterment of our individual and collective circumstances here on Earth.

On the one hand, we have exposés of corruption at the highest levels, evidence of imminent economic collapse, wars and rumors of wars; on the other hand, we have the Occupy movement, grassroots community initiatives, and the imagination to envision entirely new economic systems to untie the snarled knot of our present circumstances. (2)

This is territory that Ha-Joon Chang, a development economist at Cambridge University, traverses.