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the market economy has created market societies. And it has given us this globalization, which means being aware of the whole planet.

Are we ruling over globalization or is globalization ruling over us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of "being all together" in an economy based on ruthless competition? How far does our fraternity go?

I am not saying any of to undermine the importance of this event. On the contrary, the challenge ahead of us is of a colossal magnitude and the great crisis is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one.

Today, man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man; and life.

Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that, indiscriminately. We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short

and it slips away from us. And no material belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental. But if life is going to slip through my fingers, working and over-working in order to be able to consume more, and the consumer society is the engine. If consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops, and if you stop economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us, but it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet. And this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things that have a short useful life, in order to sell a lot. Thus, a light bulb cannot last longer than 1000 hours. But there are light bulbs that last 100,000 hours! But these cannot be manufactured, because the problem is the market, because we have to work and we have to sustain a civilization of "use and discard", and so, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. These are problems of a political nature, which are showing us that it's time to start fighting for a different culture.

I'm not talking about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a "monument to backwardness." But we cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market, on the contrary, we have to rule over the market.

This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking, that the problem we are facing is political. The old thinkers, Epicurus, Seneca and even the Aymara put it this way, a poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more, and more and more. This is a cultural issue.

So I salute the efforts and agreements being made. And I will adhere to them, as a ruler. I know some things I'm saying are not easy to digest. But we must realize that the water crisis and the aggression to the environment is not the cause. The cause is the model of civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life.

I belong to a small country well endowed with natural resources for life. In my country, there are a bit more than 3 million people. But there are about 13 million

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cows, some of the best in the world. And about 8 or 10 million excellent sheep. My country is an exporter of food, dairy, meat. It is a low-relief plain and almost 90% of the land is fertile.

My fellow workers, fought hard for the 8 hour workday. And now they are making that 6 hours. But the person who works 6 hours, gets two jobs, therefore, he works longer than before. But why? Because he needs to make monthly payments for: the motorcycle, the car, more and more payments, and when he's done with that, he realizes he is a rheumatic old man, like me, and his life is already over.

And one asks this question: is this the fate of human life? These things I say are very basic: development cannot go against happiness. It has to work in favor of human happiness, of love on Earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having our basic needs covered. Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we have; happiness. When we fight for the environment, we must remember that the essential element of the environment is called human happiness."

COMPREHENSION CHECK

Read the article again and explain the following words:

1.power plants

2.emissions of greenhouse gases

3.relevant

4.notwithstanding

5.claws

6.flutter

7.affluent

8.squander

9.progeny

10.beget

11.prodigious

12.ruthless competition

13.fraternity

14.indiscriminately

15.slip away

16.worth

17.light bulb

18.sustain

19."use and discard"

20.trap

21.vicious cycle

22.in my humble way of thinking

23.adhere

24.digest

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25.endow

Answer the questions:

1.Is it a happy person who needs more and more?

2.Is it possible to enable 7 billion people to enjoy the same level of consumption?

3.What is the hyper-consumption?

4.Do we live in the era of consumption or hyper-consumption?

5.It is possible to produce the light bulbs, that last 100,000 hours, but why such bulbs are not manufactured?

6.Looking at the picture of 3 circles, answer the question: what does the sustainable development mean?

7.Should we make our life more and more expensive and affluent or we should find the happy medium?

FOLLOW-UP

Write an essay (about 200 words) about the problem of poverty and suggest the ways of its solving.

UNIT 9

WARM UP

Make a list of words that mean “poverty” and give their definitions. What is the difference between these words?

READING

Skim through the text fairly quickly and tell the audience its main idea.

THE MEANING OF POVERTY

Difference between poverty and misery

Misery: Condition of extreme poverty, lack of basic things you need to live, which follow spiritual discouragement, unhappiness and sense of desolation.

Poverty: means also who have only the necessary, not the excess. The Webster (Webster's third new International dictionary of the English language) report a famous sentence of R.A. Shermerhorn: "In poverty, morality and even a touch of happiness was possible, never in destitution.

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For Orazio poverty is: "Wearing clothes for your height, using shoes of your size, here is the wisdom".

By Jewish tradition: The essential idea is that the only element in common for everybody is precisely human dignity. This ended in the Jewish tradition with the fusion of two generally separated concepts: justice and charity into one: the economic solidarity designated by the word "tsedaqua." The idea that the rich have the duty to give a part of her abundance to the poor was not a simple recommendation, but a moral obligation converted into law in the contemporary age with the income tax. In other words, the tsedaqua is destined to create a new society in which poverty has been won.

If we leave the Western world, we know that two big Asian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, consider the ascetic life as the means by which the believer can reach the transcendental purification. In Islam are known words of the Prophet Muhammad: "O God, help me to live poor and die poor." In Islam, the "Zakat" (Tsedaqua among the Jews) is the offer of a part of the fortune that is recommended to give to the poor.

The axiom: "to be poor in this life to be happy in the other", does not really have anything religious. Many people, who live in poverty, are happy anyway.

The Gospel of Mark says: "who gives up everything, find everything a hundredfold, even in this life". (Mark 10,29 and 30) And it is also said in Gospel: “many who are first will be the last, and the last, first.” (Mark 10, 31) So we need to think how we can help others instead of getting richer and richer.

Gandhi proclaimed that civilization, in the true sense of the word, is not to multiply the needs, but to limit them voluntarily. It is the only way to know the happiness and make us more available to others. To create an unlimited number of needs just for having to satisfy them then, it is like chasing the wind ...

COMPREHENSION CHECK

Read the article again and explain the following words:

1.Misery

2.Destitution

3.human dignity

4.fusion

5.charity

6.abundance

7.obligation

8.transcendental

9.purification

10.devoid

11.persuable

12.The Gospel

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13.multiply

14.voluntarily

15.chasing

Answer the questions:

1.What is the condition of extreme poverty?

2.What does destitution mean?

3.Do you agree with the saying “Wearing clothes for your height, using shoes of your size, here is the wisdom”?

4.What moral obligation was converted into law in the contemporary age with the income tax?

5.Do you agree with saying “not to multiply the needs, but to limit them voluntarily”?

6.Do we have enough charity organizations to help live happy life?

FOLLOW-UP

Make a short summary of the text.

UNIT 10

WARM UP

Look at the picture. How may it be connected with the text? READING

Read the article and entitle it.

Attached and open societies represent human horizons necessary to guide people, society and economies development.

On the other hand, human and even economic development is deeply linked to the individual freedom expansion, starting with the capability accessing and producing culture. People deprived of freedom tend to remain trapped by their surviving need and can, consequently, not have the courage to ask changes and/or act for them.

Their expectations are restricted, without any ambition, to the few things considered possible. Disillusion distances desire from real expectations and slows positive behavior directed to step out from the condition of poverty, dependence and deprivation. Politics must create conditions so that people has a real chance to judge what kind of life he'd like to live. Real freedom expansion is the

aim, but also the development means. All that has been said so far clarifies the strategic role of culture as one of the factors that are origination of the virtue chain, par excellence the channel through which affirm and guarantee a common social orientation towards innovation, creativity. Culture presents itself, with equal dignity compared with scientific and technological research, as a foundation of knowledge economy. The real contemporary challenge both in fallen areas and in those that already are underneath poverty threshold is, therefore, to produce new culture and to ensure that this culture integrate itself with the patrimony of existent wholeness, actually that it gives to this patrimony new nourishment, and that at the same time it becomes the farming plot in which the productive system (and a new productive system) goes searching new changing ideas. The promotion on the area of politics that draw creative talents appear as concrete strategies, successful in promoting on the areas human development, making innovations and favoring the growth of interconnections between educational system, welfare system, production system, knowledge (and technology) outfit and millennial social capacities of local communities.

COMPREHENSION CHECK

Read the article again and explain the following words:

1.attached societies

2.deprived of

3.remain

4.consequently

5.expectations are restricted

6.Disillusion

7.еxpansion

8.aim

9.virtue chain

10.par excellence

11.equal dignity

12.patrimony of existent wholeness

13.nourishment

14.interconnections

15.welfare system

16.outfit

Discuss the questions:

1.Did you find the picture (the person that doesn’t know what to draw) relevant in this text?

2.Is it the right decision that we need to get rid of people deprivation of freedom?

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3.Can only the real freedom save the society from poverty?

4.Is innovation and creativity are crucial in building the cultural society? And what else do we need?

5.What we need to develop in our society to make the world better?

FOLLOW-UP

Write an essay (about 200 words) using the questions above as a plan.

Учебное издание.

Учебно-методическое пособие для вузов.

Составители Фомина Ирина Валерьевна Тищенко Владислав Павлович

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