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Oslo is a beautiful city. We have already commented on the Noble Peace Centre and the opportunity to learn about ways to make peace – or to or to dismiss it as of less value than going out to dinner (see our last blog). But Oslo also impressed us with another unique idea – the Oslo Business for Peace Award. Read more
“I can’t believe we paid money for this.” They were two American tourists, and we were standing in the Nobel Peace Museum in Oslo. We were surrounded by stories of awe-inspiring individuals who had changed the course of history through their commitment to justice at whatever cost (and many paid a very high price for their convictions and activism), and apparently (for some) the experience wasn’t worth the $20 entry fee. Read more
You can read about it, see a documentary about it, make a donation to it, buy a cow at Christmas to put in it, but until you experience it, it is really hard to fully understand. Read more
Professor Nico Stehr, the Karl Mannheim Professor of Cultural Studies at the Zeppelin University in Germany remarked on the first day of the Masters of Social Innovation program that “most of our lives are spent half-asleep”. It jolted me awake given the fog of jetlag that was floating around in the corners of my brain.
The focus of our discussion was ‘knowledge’ and how knowledge differed from ‘information’. It is well acknowledged that those living in the Western world have more access to information than at any other time in history. But does this information give us knowledge? Or does this information keep us half-asleep? Read more
Looking around Stockholm, there is much that appears very similar to Australia. There are reruns of bad American sitcoms on television in English, there are similar public transport systems, education systems and shopping centres, and if I see another poster or billboard of Beyonce advertising H&M I think I might rip it down myself.
But when you scratch the surface, there are some interesting cultural differences. Read more