Small Revolutions: Voluntary Simplicity in Devon

Slogan

I saw this on a t-shirt surfing the net:

"WE ARE THE PEOPLE WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR."

Damn right we are.

Hope is everywhere.

Hope is always defiant, struggling up through the cracks.

Fragile though it is, it finds a foothold in the most unlikely of places.

Word of the day: Slacktivism

I love getting my daily fix of the Urban Dictionary. Today I got a great one:

1. Slacktivism

The act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.

Signing an email petition to stop rampant crime is slacktivism. Want to really make your community safer? Get off your ass and start a neighborhood watch!

2. Slacktivism

The search for the ultimate feel-good that derives from having come to society's rescue without having had to actually gets one's hands dirty or open one's wallet.

It's slacktivism that prompts us to want a join a boycott of designated gas companies or eschew buying gasoline on a particular day rather than reduce our personal consumption of fossil fuels by driving less.

It tickled me, but it's got a serious side too.

Maybe I'm just tired as I write this, but I am getting fed up of people who think that they recycle a bit of cardboard each week and think they've "done their bit" for the world.

I just think "Well, thank god you put your empty loo roll in a separate bin - we can all sleep safe tonight now..."

Don't get me wrong, recycling is very important. But it's also part of a larger set of behaviours:  Reduce, Re-use, Repair, Recycle.

Recycling is the very last step if you can't do any of the others.

If you want change, you've actually got to do something. Token efforts just don't count or let you off the hook. Sorry.

I worry that there are too many people thinking that they're doing enough with token gestures (for example, big banks giving a nominal donation to a green charity when you buy their product, whilst on the other hand said bank is making money hand over fist investing in companies and industries that are ruining the same bits of the world the charity is trying to save, and doing it a lot better than the charity can undo it). There's a word for that too: greenwashing (new take on whitewashing).

I've decided to be watchful of myself and weed out any slacktivism. It doesn't mean I have to run myself into the ground working tirelessly 24/7 but really just stop doing the things that clearly don't make a difference and being all self-congratulatory about it.

Gosh, that sounded like a bit of a rant. Should I start a new blog for my dark green angry alter ego?

The 11th Hour: Documentary

I don't know when this is coming out in the UK, but the trailer makes for compelling watching, and its premise is not just a call to action, but a call to immediate action.

We won't know for sure when the planet has truly gone past tipping point until after the event. But leading scientists think we're not only near it, but that time is right now.

In their own words, the 11th Hour describes the last last moment when change is possible.

I think it will be released in the US on 17th August, but I haven't been able to find a release date for the UK yet.

LETS (Local Exchange Trading System)

Yes, Exeter does indeed have a LETS organisation.

http://www.exeterlets.org/

I love the way LETS is so subtle. It creates an economy where money is not used, essentially allowing people an agreed way of sharing skills and services as well as receiving them.

It's subtly radical and decentralist, just like the philosophy and practise of permaculture...

The End of Suburbia

Last night I went to Haringey to see The End of Suburbia. Along with the Cuba documentary, these are the two main films that are out there about peak oil. It's must see, chilling stuff.

Free Book Download: Plan B 2.0 - Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

Every now and then you come across a book and you want to buy everyone you know a copy of it. This is one of those books.

We know what the problems are for the planet. Now it's time to get behind a solution.

Written by the president of the Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown, it's an examination of the problems we face right now and how we can make the transition to a new economy which is sustainable - without overshoot, without collapse - and solving third world poverty at the same time.

I haven't read it all yet, and I will review it when I have finished it, but so far this book does what no other book I've read so far has done: it's putting together all the solutions we know we already have, and envisioning them on a planetary scale.

It is big picture stuff. It's about solutions and not problems.

More than ever, we need a shared vision which we can buy into collectively - at all levels - because too many of us just feel like 'individuals doing our bit' which can be lonely sometimes, and frustrating when we see the prevalence of the problems.

More than ever we need the hope and the optimism that we can really bring about change in a cogent and structured way. This book shows how it could all knit together in a plan for a new economy - Plan B.

Whether you buy a copy of Plan B 2.0 - Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble or you download chapters for free it's a book I think will be very important.

I'll try and review it in the next two weeks, but you can dip in and out of it and judge for yourself by visiting the Plan B 2.0 minisite at the Earth Policy Institute.

Nice Idea: Wallet Buddy

I resisted buying some really cheap t-shirts today.

Then I came across this wallet buddy this evening.

I like it because it asks the questions I want to ask myself before I pull out my debit card.

A neat little idea.

7 Myths of Money & Shopping

Money is invisble. This is how our system now works. Most money transactions are invisible. Out of sight, out of mind. Debit cards and credit cards, direct debits and automatic payments have made money all but invisible to us. We are no longer a cash economy which means money has lost its physical presence. The result is that we spend without thinking.

Money is free. Buy now pay later psychology. Tomorrow never comes. Subtly, as a result of money that is invisible, and loans and credit cards that are thrust upon us, we're likely to find ourselves in the position of thinking it's free money. Not that we actually think it's free but we do not make the strong emotional connection between having it now and paying it of later. If we made a strong emotional connection between whatever we borrowed and the work we needed to do to pay it off, we might think differently. This separation of cause and effect frees the willing shopper from immediate consequences.

Good little consumers. Advertising messages are simply propoganda. If you watch TV, listen to the radio, stand at a bus stop, someone somewhere is trying to convert you to their agenda.  If they were political messages trying to convert us to communism or fascism, or christian fundamentalism, we'd be up in arms. But obviously since it's often a brand of beans, or new clothes, or a new loan which will take you 15 years to pay off, it is on a different level. But at bottom, it is still brainwashing. It is still indoctrination. Every trick is employed by advertisers to win you round. And it's a prolonged training most of us have received since childhood. Is that right? Is it ethical? There are many answers.

Having and Being. I've talked about this before, but the primary mode of 'being' in our society is through 'having'. It is much easier to buy identity than be it. Want to be 'sporty'? Buy a pair of trainers, get all the the kit. It's far harder to go into the gym and consider oneself as 'sporty' because one works out a lot. We have become the sum total of our possessions in this consumer society. We've lost the art of being to the art of shopping and having. No wonder people shop and get into debt so that they can 'be' more. It's just awful and saddening that it's a complete illusion.

Money is freedom. We're taught that money represents freedom. But that's only if we have it, not if we've spent it all. And if we've overspent, well, with mounting debts we do not pay off, it's simply increasing the sum of our obligations - the amount of time we will have to work to pay it all off.

Money + Shopping = Happiness. I think this is the biggest illusion - that if you have enough money you could buy complete happiness. I don't think that's true. Wanting never stops. Real satisfaction comes from different things. Like community and family. Like achieving something, like spending time appreciating what you've got already, by developing new skills and independence.

You're not good enough. If you buy into consumerism, you're buying into being told that you don't measure up all the time. No wonder we all want to 'get ahead'. The messages are disheartening: you're too fat, not beautiful enough, you smell, you're geting old and wrinkly so no-one's going to love you... would you let anyone talk to your best friend like that?

These, I think, are the most pervasive and insidious myths about money and shopping. I think they lead people into debt and unhappiness, and leave people ever more unfulfilled. I believe that if we can dispel these false beliefs, we would be a long way along the road to freedom.

Do you agree? have I got it wrong? Let me know what you think by adding a comment.

Culture Jamming: An experiment with debt.

In January, there were just 94 searches made in the UK for voluntary simplicity.

In contrast, the top 5 key words for debt, including debt management, debt help and debt consolidation netted over 250,000 searches in January.

One advert I saw today offered people a £25,000 loan, over 180 months. 180 months is actually 15 years. That's 15 years of paying off the debt. What's more, they'd end up paying over £43,000 to repay the debt.  So they'd also be paying  over  £18,000 just in interest on that loan - over £100 in interest every single month.

So why don't people know more about voluntary simplicity?

Well, for a start, simple living isn't advertised on TV every commercial break. I don't know how many commercials there are about loans and credit cards, debt consolidation and re-mortgages - but it feels like they're on constantly. If we advertised how great simplicity is 24 hours a day on almost every channel, it might get more interest.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing a series of short articles about money, debt and how simple living relates to it.

It's a propoganda campaign. A bit of culture jamming, really.

It's all very nice and affirming me blogging to the converted. But it's not to much effect if the people who could really get some benefit from it won't come across it.

So my aim with this 'section' of the site, which will punctuate my other entries, is to see if it's possible to start infiltrating the search engines for these keywords. Simply to show how living more simply can reduce debt - to spend less and work less.

My aim? I want everybody to have a better quality of life and I don't believe it relies on earning more money.

Now these companies have a lot invested, they employ the best, and they've been getting dominance in the search engines for many years. So they have a bit of a head start.

Big odds? I like a challenge...

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