Columns

Bigger is Better or Small is Beautiful

Sep 10, 2016

In the 1990s, during the Mahathir adminstration, the country embarked on major infrastructure projects — some of them like the Crooked Bridge of questionable benefit to the masses.
Utopia, with limits

Sep 10, 2016

When I was a child, there was a popular song whose chorus repeated this line: Everyone is searching for Utopia.
Excessive consumption will not lead to human happiness

Sep 02, 2016

How often we think, that if we could only afford to buy something we desire — it could be a flashy car, the latest gadget or a fashionable handbag — we would be happy.
God’s nature – exuberance or the cross?

Sep 02, 2016

A young girl, probably around 16 years of age, along with two other girls her own age, came into the store.
Think again about that bargain buy

Aug 25, 2016

One of the things that has crept upon us over the last few decades is the rising prominence of mainstream economic thinking in our lives and into the
A happy death

Aug 25, 2016

In the Roman Catholic culture within which I grew up, we were taught to pray for a happy death. For many Catholics at the time, this was a standard petition within their daily prayer: “I pray for a happy death.”
Re-discovering wisdom and spirituality in the economy

Aug 19, 2016

Much of the concern of planners and economists focuses on economic growth, foreign direct investments, infrastructure spending and all the traditional indicators of economic success.
Fear

Aug 19, 2016

Unless you are already a full saint or a mystic, you will always live in some fear of death and the afterlife. That’s simply part of being human. But we can, and must, move beyond our fear of God.
Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful’ is still relevant in our world today

Aug 11, 2016

In our present world, whenever a community or society is confronted with a problem, the solution has often been to come up with large or giant projects. We are all too familiar with the tendency to come up with mega projects that run into millions, or even billions, of ringgit.
Our fear of hell

Aug 11, 2016

Hell is never a nasty surprise waiting for a basically happy person. Hell can only be the full-flowering of a pride and selfishness that have, through a long time, twisted a heart so thoroughly that it considers happiness as unhappiness and has an arrogant disdain for happy people.