War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it. We have total economics as well. Everything affects everybody. The Malaysian currency shakes, and people around the world are seriously affected.
Interpretation
War and economics now impact everyone globally, highlighting our interconnectedness.
Salman Rushdie's quote reflects on the evolution of warfare and economic systems, suggesting that in the modern world, conflicts and financial markets are no longer distant events. Instead, they are total and pervasive, affecting every individual regardless of their geographical location. This highlights the deep interconnections that exist in today's global society, where local events can have far-reaching consequences.
In practice
This quote can be used to open a discussion about the effects of global economics during a conference.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.
My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.
Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our celebration. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.
One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy.
Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.
The door to the invisible must be visible.
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