One of the field trips in my Integral Human Development class was to the National Museum of Fine Arts. This trip was meant to feature aesthetic development, one of the forms of well-being. Aesthetics is the appreciation and nature of beauty, in the context of art. Aesthetic engagement can breed emotional connection through the process of creating, doing, and experiencing art. This connectedness has the capacity to bring about meaningful interactions and belongingness in the workplace.

Among the topics discussed during the Heartland Institute’s 13^th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-13) that I attended on July 25 in Washington, DC, USA, was the social cost of carbon (SCC) vs social benefit of carbon (SBC).

GONE ARE the days when sales people had to be snappy looking, fast talking, and bag-toting musketeers. Gone are the days when mere product knowledge, industry experience, terrain familiarity, and the right connections could land you a sale. Gone too, are the days when buyers were taken in by the name of a brand, the flash of a product, and the ease of making the purchase. Especially gone is the time when professional selling was a one-way street called “Pitch,” “Push,” or a “Closing Cul-de-sac.”

CHINA HAS long promoted its traditional medicinal system as a national treasure and more recently as a tool of soft power. While the ancient art remains a policy priority, however, it faces very modern challenges including rising costs, complexities of production and treatment, and murky intellectual property rights.

LONDON -- What is it about “free markets”? The phrase creates a frisson of excitement among a certain group of people. In The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society, Binyamin Appelbaum describes what happened when these intellectual fanatics were given the power to act on their ideas. It is not a happy tale.

In the playbook of democratic governance, government and its institutions perform the role of an enabler that provides the necessary legal and regulatory environment for the delivery of better and affordable public services.

When I read the post in social media that Senator-boxer Manny Pacquiao had proposed crucifixion as a method of imposing the death penalty, my automatic response was to suggest, “Crucify him!”

MANAGEMENT wants to understand why employees leave, especially when the resignation is voluntary and not forced. (Did you not like the cafeteria food?) The exit interview is designed to draw out the motives behind a departure not reflected in a dry, maybe angry, resignation letter, sometimes just one sentence long. It is supposed to guide management on gaps in its retention policy.

BURIED AMONG the storylines about global trade and political intrigue from the G7 summit last month is perhaps the most noteworthy one of all. Business for Inclusive Growth, or B4IG, a coalition of 34 multinational companies with more than 3 million employees and revenues topping $1 trillion, unveiled an initiative to tackle inequality with help from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In view of the Chinese maritime militia’s ramming of a Filipino vessel in Recto Bank on June 9, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio proposed a number of “no war” techniques for pursuing the Philippines’ arbitral victory against China. One of the strategies would enjoin us together with Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, to enter into a convention that would collectively voice support for the ruling against China’s dashed lines. Accordingly, this convention will “leave China isolated as the only disputant state claiming EEZs from the Spratly islands.” All but Indonesia have laid a claim in the South China Sea.

On the night of July 13, 1966 a jobless merchant seaman, after having consumed several drinks, entered a student nurses’ home in the southeast side of Chicago. Armed with a revolver and a switchblade, he demanded money from the residents. Terrified, the nurses obliged. Drunk, he lingered in the house for an hour. Then he decided to kill the nurses. He led the women in singles or pairs to other rooms where he stabbed or strangled them.

Next week, on Sept. 9, the BusinessWorld Industry 4.0 Summit with the theme “Winning Together in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (FIRe) will be held at the Shangri-La at The Fort, BGC, Taguig City. This big event is a partnership of BusinessWorld, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and the Philippine Chamber of Telecommunications Operators (PCTO).