Small Revolutions: Voluntary Simplicity in Devon

Freeconomy: Next Generation Freecycle?

Freecycle is more than just a recycling place.

For me, it shows just how good people can be.

And I think we all to a greater or lesser degree, need our faith  restored in human nature sometimes.

Moreover, I actually think it's a stepping stone - to a culture where we do more to help out each other as we can and where our time allows.

Mel introduced me to Freeconomy Community a few weeks ago, and though there are only a few people in the local area who are members as yet, I've seen the general membership rise massively in the last few weeks.

To quote their own website, it's like this:

Freeconomy is about sharing the skills you've learnt throughout your life and learning those you haven't. It's about helping others and providing an opportunity for others to help you. Freeconomy allows people to make the transition from a money based communityless society to more of a community based moneyless society, and to share the land they don't need or can't use to facilitate a local food community. In essence, freeconomy is about making dinner for a friend who was yesterday a stranger...

High ideals for sure, but then we've already started doing that through Freecycle already, haven't we?

I think I am subscribing more and more to a cascade theory of change. Change happens like a waterfall, and so ideas and initatives are needed at all levels to make a big change possible in society.

It's the little things that always lead to big things - the very subject of my blog. It's about creating small revolutions, not big ones.

Freecycle is a small revolution that has snowballed in the last couple of years to become a very very important movement. Maybe the freeconomy is the next step down the waterfall?   

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 Cosmic Boomerang.

I've now taken the step of shutting down my business, and god do I feel happy about it. Thanks to everybody online and offline for their support

I got some great comment from Mike, and I'd like to paste his comments here:

"I spent most of last year doing the same thing, only to discover that I'm at my best/happiest/wholest in the garden, occasionally writing (words and software).  So, now wrapping up the loose ends of what remains of my business "interests", and just going with the flow for a while.  It's bliss."

I also had dinner with a friend last night who also told me about someone a lot more successful than myself. This person writes bestselling novels and has just given up, to the consternation of their publishers, a project that doesn't feel right, that just doesn't inspire them.

I feel I have learnt something of a lesson about letting go. About having the courage to give something up that doesn't feel right, to follow your heart regardless of its own peculiar, often frustrating logic.

The files are being archived as we speak, and I have left in its place, a picture of a buddha. There is something wonderful and refreshing and freeing about letting it all go.

I worry sometimes that it may be yet another instance of me flitting from one thing to another. But something tells me that although there is a risk of that with my personality, there is also a greater force carving out a certain, almost inevitable path.

The path is massage.

I started training with Clare Maxwell Hudson a couple of years ago. I had just come out of a turbulent period of my life with a need to escape my life in London and get some time out. The escape I found was going round Europe in a campervan. That turned out to be a bizarre and not altogether wonderful experience, and after a minibus crash in Sorrento in Italy. But I still needed somewhere to chill out so I went to Thailand for two months, and wrote constantly in my journal. When the Tsunami hit on Boxing Day, and my family was frantically trying to get in contact with me not knowing if I was alive or dead, I was on the other side of the country sheltered from the devastation and unaware of it.

I came back home and started the massage course again. This was all down to Clare's kindness as she did not  make me pay to do the course again. Later that year redundancy threatened, and a new job loomed and I gave up once again, stupidly.

I can tell how this is looking. Bad.

But I find myself here and now, knowing that I have to complete my training as a massage therapist. There seems to be something inevitable about it, rather like a vast karmic/cosmic boomerang. Whatever I try to do, however I try to escape (university, corporate careers, far flung escapes and bizarre travel adventures) I am brought back to the same thing again.

I don't believe in destiny. It's an absolute construct. There's no such thing. It's generally something we map onto history with hindsight in order to confer it with some sort of narrative inevitability that serves our own purposes. And that's a whole load of rubbish.

But I do believe in following your own heart. In fact, the older I get, I believe that is the only way. Knowing yourself and following your heart. Because life is short and at the end we die. I believe my various bits and pieces will simply become part of the universe again. That's it.

Massage and aromatherapy is something that I have harboured in my heart since I was 17.

And I believe it's time to stop playing around and start following my heart well and truly. Because that's the only way there is.

Doesn't matter that it doesn't create fortunes. It does matter that what I do in life has to feel right to me, and only me.

Clare Maxwell Hudson has closed her school I was shocked to find a couple of weeks ago. And it sparked something in me.

So, Clare, if you ever happen to come across this, I'm back. And this time the cosmic boomerang is coming home to stay, because I can no longer run away from what I need to do.

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.

Community

"We don't know how to do communities any more."

A report on radio 4 this morning showed how housing in the UK has suffered a failure of the imagination.

Poorly planned rabbit hutches, without sufficient opportunity for interaction - no benches or communal areas or anything which might encourage interaction, a sense of community.

To approach the challenges of the next 50 years and more, we're going to have to learn community. Because it's only through working together and sharing resources that we'll be able to live in a low impact way in a globally warmed world.

I'm no expert or model here. I live in the midst of 9 million people in London. The sheer density of us seems to enclose us and shut us off. We value private time and space and we choose our interactions carefully.

But things like Freecycle help, encouraging sharing and gift giving. Shopping locally makes a difference, rather than just shopping in a big warehouse where you'll never see the same cashier twice.

Community is hard. It's uneasy for those of us brought up on television and Internet - it's not instant and it's not under our control and doesn't fit our interests exactly. But we need to learn it all the same. And though the lessons may be hard, I suspect we'd be the fuller and happier for it.

The Gift Economy: Open Source

Got up at 6am this morning after celebrating Burns night with haggis, neeps, tatties and whisky.

Started bread and put in more yeast. The past two loaves have been a bit dumpy and chewy. Forgot the bread and so it overproved a little. Now it's baking.

Courier arrived with my new laptop battery. I made a decision I am going to do what I can to save my almost 7 year old laptop. If the laptop battery works out, I am considering launching myself on the steep learning curve of moving to Linux.

If there ever was a gift economy in action, it's open source and the philosophy behind it. If you're not a geek like me, this is what open source is: a whole bunch of people developing software and distributing it for free for many reasons - for the challenge, to help break the Microsoft monopoly, to learn new skills, but mostly for the good of the community.

There is tons of it out there, and it's not just for programmers.

For those of you who don't know, there is a whole suite of open source products, which mean you never have to buy Word or Excel or Powerpoint. It's called Open Office and it also works on Microsoft Windows. And it's free...