We have a political system divided between ‘let them work for tat’ (the right) and ‘let them buy tat’ (the left). The result is a deep and valueless materialism that allows hundreds of young people across London to go on violent and thieving rampages simply because they can get away with it. We have a school system dedicated to encouraging people to work for still more expensive tat. We have houses filled with tat. We have conversations dominated by tat and a culture that encourages us to yearn still more strongly for it.
The Jewish Barber (Charlie Chaplin’s character): Hope… I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…
Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written ” the kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting – the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.
The soul of man has been given wings – and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow – into the light of hope – into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.
Kevin Slavin argues that we’re living in a world designed for — and increasingly controlled by — algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can’t understand, with implications we can’t control.
People who should know better are forever banging on about ‘economic growth’ as being something which we should make a priority. Really? How’s that going to work? We keep on doing more stuff, which begets more stuff, which begets more stuff… so… you really don’t need to be more than about four years old to realise this means:
a lot more work – and you can bet it’s going to be us who have to make / do all this shit,
a lot more waste since the easiest way to increase profits is to make a low quality product which is built only to last just long enough for the guarantee to expire,
we run out of things we actually need, like oil, since we consume it all making plastic fucking wrapping for all the fucking stuff, and sitting in traffic jams in a commute to a job we don’t fucking want so that we can go and make more fucking shit in order to “drive economic growth”. Which brings us back to (1).
Perpetual economic growth is neither possible nor desirable, and growth is already causing more problems than it solves. Hmm… what to do.. what to do..?
A ha! How about instead of churning out more and more, we just focus on making stuff better and better? More time. More craftsmanship. More skill. More pride. More enjoyment. More beauty. More contentment of a job well done.
But that’s not realistic… all those ‘more’ things won’t pay your bills, and you need money to live. It pays to be realistic and pragmatic, and you need cash today.
You’d better go to work this week in order to deal with today’s reality. But what about next year’s reality? And the year after that? How can we get to a point where we’re making things genuinely better, not chasing our tails because we have bills to pay?
The reality is that the next twenty years will be completely unlike the last twenty years. The world population has near doubled in your lifetime. We have an economy which no longer serves our needs and works against our interests – like causing us to run out of the stuff we want. One thing that we know for sure is that when we’re confronted by fucked systems is that we change them. It may take a long time for us to realise how fucked things are (see Russia, Egypt, slavery etc), but when we do, a lot of change happens very fucking quickly (see Russia, Egypt, slavery etc).
Acknowledge the reality that within a pretty short period of time, things are going to be quite different. More is happening faster. In order to be able to handle it with the dignity, wisdom, and elegance which becomes such fine people as ourselves, we need to start looking further ahead. The question we need to answer is: How can we transition to an economy which keeps us thriving and happy, whilst being long-term sustainable, before we’re suffocated by the competing needs of the other 8 billion people who have all suddenly realised they want cars, TVs, and lightbulbs, too?
It turns out that it’s much easier than you might think, and both are coming your way pretty fast. If you listen to the news, you’ll spot two trends which are growing quietly in the background (albeit muted by the howls and death throes of the old economy as it stumbles from crisis to crisis…) These two trends are the steady-state economy, and natural capitalism.
As for natural capitalism: we used to have the gold standard as a foundation for money, right? Having a reasonably finite amount of stuff gave value to the notes we used to represent it, and the economy still worked a treat: roads were built, health services prospered, lots of people had good jobs, and lots of people went to dig big holes to look for gold.
What would happen if money had its foundation in the capacity of the Earth to support life? Ok it’s a litte more esoteric, but it can still be measured easily enough. For almost everyone, money carries on as bits of paper and numbers in bank accounts; but instead of digging for gold, we could earn create wealth by planting forests, or building wind farms. In order to get richer, faster, you have to improve more things, quicker, for more people. You’ll have spotted this trend in carbon credits, offset forest planting, and the number of social enterprises which are popping up all over the place.. making things better is big business, and it’s only getting bigger.
So here’s a tip: if you’re not working towards the new economy yet, you will be soon. The sooner you do, the better off you’ll be.
British Gas is committed to distributing £3m via the energyshare fund to community renewable projects over the next 3 years. energyshare really wants to hear from all types of communities across Britain. A registered community group can apply for up to £100,000, and all they ask is that projects:
have the objective of saving or generating energy locally
are supported by their local community
will benefit the local community and have a tangible and lasting impact.
some aspect of the project is realistically achievable within one year
will inspire even more community renewable projects
A small town in northern Spain has decided to reintroduce the old Spanish currency – the peseta – alongside the euro to give the local economy a lift. The hard times have seen thousands of businesses close and more than two million jobs go.
It is an attempt to get cash registers ringing – and help lift the town out of a long and painful economic slump. Shopkeepers were sceptical at first, but they now say the scheme is a great success. One man visited the local hardware store this week with a 10,000-peseta note he had found at home, and had no idea what to do with. He is now the happy owner of a sandwich toaster.
Can you design a better energy than the Government?
A short documentary made by Delib about the US government’s Open Government initiative, featuring interviews with a whole host of insiders and commentators.”Understand that mistakes will be made, and be flexible and understanding about that… real time government … government as platform…”
Larger households generate less per-capita waste
Yes it’s completely obvious, but it’s nice to have it in graph form, since it adds weight to my frequent imploring to friends that we go live in together in a resource, time, and cost efficient group.
The Cooperative Group seizes the moment
The Co-operative Group launched a radical plan to boost membership to 20 million in ten years, inject cash into community enterprise and build a more sustainable economy.
The ambitious strategy includes pledges to deploy £1bn green energy finance, invest £11m into community enterprise and £20m into an international loan development fund, create 200 co-op schools and launch a £30m apprenticeship academy. Additionally, the group will roll out a fair trade programme in the next three years.
Systems analyst and designer, strategist, writer, campaigner, provocateur, permaculturist, web developer, and occasional TV farmer and sheep wrangler.
There are elegant and enjoyable solutions for the many interlinked problems humanity faces. I like to communicate them, and find ways of moving organisations and individuals towards them.
Flattr is a micropayment & microdonation system. You pay a small amount every month and then click Flattr buttons on sites to share out this money amongst those sites, kind of like an Internet tip jar. Just one of many new forms of money and trade we can use to help more people be more fairly rewarded.
The site is built using the excellent open-source Wordpress, based on a theme by Derek Punsalan.
Systems analyst and designer, strategist, writer, campaigner, provocateur, permaculturist, web developer, and occasional TV farmer and sheep wrangler. 