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    Dave Darby bio

    Dave Darby founded Lowimpact.org in 2001, spent 3 years on the board of the Ecological Land Co-op and is a founder member of NonCorporate.org and the Open Credit Network.

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    Dave Darby

    A brief history of philosophy, part 4: Aquinas reconciles Christianity with Aristotle

    Dave Darby 08-Jun-2016

    Last week we saw how Augustine reconciled Plato with Christianity; but Aristotle, with his logic and his empiricism, was difficult to reconcile with a book that already claimed to have all the answers, and so that didn’t happen until 900 years later. Read more

    A brief history of philosophy, part 3: Augustine reconciles Christianity with Plato

    Dave Darby 31-May-2016

    Augustine (354-430) was a bridge between the classical world and the medieval, Christian world. He reconciled Christianity with Plato, and his immaterial world of forms – a much easier task than reconciling Aristotle, with his scientific outlook and emphasis on reason. Read more

    A brief history of philosophy, part 2: Socrates, Plato & Aristotle

    Dave Darby 26-May-2016

    After the natural philosophers, the main focus of philosophy was changed by Socrates – probably the most famous philosopher of them all. His position was that you begin to become a philosopher when you admit that you know nothing. Read more

    How many of us could give a rough overview of the history of philosophy? Part 1: Thales to Socrates

    Dave Darby 20-May-2016

    It may seem like a strange question from an environmental organisation. But the way that we think nowadays didn’t just fall from the sky – it’s not ‘common sense’ and it hasn’t always been the same. We’re not born with a worldview – it’s something that we develop from what’s gone before. Read more

    Ha Joon Chang: ‘increasing corporate power is at the heart of TTIP’

    Dave Darby 08-May-2016

    Ha Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism and Economics: The User’s Guide explains that TTIP is not about ‘free trade’ – trade is already more-or-less free. TTIP is about helping corporations to sue countries if they dare to do anything – anything at all – that can be shown… Continue reading Ha Joon Chang: ‘increasing corporate power is at the heart of TTIP’ Read more

    Obama says we’ll be ‘at the back of the queue’ for TTIP if we leave the EU; that’s the best argument I’ve heard for Brexit

    Dave Darby 01-May-2016

    Trade deals (and in fact, the EU) exist to maximise growth and to orient our economies towards exports. From an environmental perspective, this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Read more

    The 6 main approaches to changing the world; which one do you subscribe to?

    Dave Darby 23-Apr-2016

    We received an email recently with these sentences: ‘This idea of those evil corporations is mistaken because we are all involved in society and economy. There is no us and them we are all part of it and need to take responsibility for that.’ Read more

    Public support for TTIP has plummeted in Germany and the US to 17% and 15% respectively

    Dave Darby 22-Apr-2016

    A report for the Bertelsmann Foundation has shown plummeting support for TTIP in Germany and in the US – down to 17% in Germany and 15% in the US, with 18% of Americans and a full third of Germans saying that it is ‘a bad thing’. Read more

    Stephen Hawking says that we should prioritise space travel and that ‘philosophy is dead’; cleverness and wisdom are very different

    Dave Darby 19-Apr-2016

    There’s clever and there’s clever. There’s clever like a computer or a calculator, and then there’s clever as in wise. The first kind of cleverness is the technical type, that can work out how to build nuclear weapons, or to genetically modify food crops, or to cut through the branch that we’re sitting on Read more

    Work / farmshare opportunity for someone interested in farming, smallholding, forestry, livestock, mushrooms or building stone

    Dave Darby 16-Apr-2016

    Here’s a very interesting opportunity for a budding smallholder – either paid work or farm share, near Totnes in Devon. Over to Richard: Read more

    If the BBC advertises Tesco, why is there a licence fee?

    Dave Darby 13-Apr-2016

    Just listened to a ten-minute advert for Tesco on ‘You and Yours’ on Radio 4, masquerading as news. I have some questions: Read more

    A small key can open a large door: why we should all know what’s happening in Rojava

    Dave Darby 11-Apr-2016

    I don’t believe that any ethnic group anywhere in the world can truthfully claim that they have never carried out atrocities against another group. Every nation has been victim and perpetrator at some time. Read more

    How the CEOs of Europe’s biggest corporations write EU policy

    Dave Darby 09-Apr-2016

    There’s an organisation based in Brussels called the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). It’s a club – invitation only, not transparent, not democratic – just a private club. Read more

    Where does money really come from? (erratum: there is no fractional reserve system in the UK)

    Dave Darby 29-Mar-2016

    There is a simple conception of the banking system – that banks look after money for savers, and pay them interest. They then loan out that money to other people and charge them a slightly higher rate of interest, and that’s where they make their profit. Read more

    Should the TV licence fee be scrapped?

    Dave Darby 26-Mar-2016

    It’s a tricky one. The argument for the licence fee (and one that I used to subscribe to until I watched the Panorama corporate propaganda piece – see below) is that the Beeb produces drama of a quality not found anywhere else. Read more

    The EU referendum from a low-impact perspective

    Dave Darby 13-Mar-2016

    We’ve got a referendum coming up in June that Cameron didn’t want, but was forced to promise at a time when it looked as though votes lost to UKIP might have cost him the election. His arguments now are largely based on the number of jobs that could be lost if we leave. Read more

    Review of Ralph Ibbott’s book ‘Ujamaa: the hidden story of Tanzania’s socialist villages’ and how I was lied to in Tanzania

    Dave Darby 10-Mar-2016

    I have a special interest in this book. As a young man in the 1980s I’d read Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (Swahili for “togetherness”, “unity” or “familyhood”). I was inspired by his vision of a co-operative, non-hierarchical society based on sustainable villages Read more

    Home-made biogas anaerobic digester

    Dave Darby 08-Mar-2016

    Thought you might like this. Just came across an old photo of a simple biogas digester built by Lowimpact.org co-founder Phil when we were based at Redfield Community in Buckinghamshire. Read more

    Is it a good idea to recruit (in N America and Europe) for sustainable living apprenticeships in Peru?

    Dave Darby 01-Mar-2016

    We’ve just been approached by someone running ‘sustainable living apprenticeships’ in Peru, asking if there’s anywhere to promote them on our site. This sort of thing happens all the time, by the way – yoga retreats in India, conferences in Malaysia, meditation on Greek islands etc. Read more

    Mutualism: a philosophy for changing society with a difference – it’s implementable

    Dave Darby 21-Feb-2016

    There are lots of ideas for changing the world – from voting to demonstrations, petitions, lifestyle change, incremental change, revolutionary change, or more of the same, only harder. The problem with many of them is that they are either ineffective or not implementable. Read more

    There’s a crash coming – a slap from Mother Nature. This isn’t pessimistic; it’s realistic.

    The human impact on nature and on each other is accelerating and needs systemic change to reverse.

    We’re not advocating poverty, or a hair-shirt existence. We advocate changes that will mean better lives for almost everyone.

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