"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Acting on the passion for life, not money.
Few people would consider the impact of money on our behaviour. Because it is so ingrained in almost every culture, unless you are talking about cultures not influenced by modern society, it has taken on almost religious proportions to most in that most people never question the existence of a monetary system and they think it has always existed and will exist indefinitely.
Since the objective of this mission is to come up with a new system of exchange, and while I have always advocated the abolishing of a monetary system here, here and here, I will be sharing with everyone a new system of "currency". "Currency" used here will function as an analogy for human behaviour in a Resource-based Economy (RBE) where the use of money has been phased out.
Our behaviour in a monetary system is shaped according to the values of competition, self-interest, very simply, any behaviour that would lead to profit creation. Be it blatant environmental pollution by corporations, or insider trading by corporate executive, or even the shallow, insecure, self-centered and materialistic mentality that most people in developed worlds have, are all conditioned on us by the monetary system.
Since learning about The Venus Project, The Zeitgeist Movement and their vision for the future, I have tried to dissociate these values from myself in order to better relate to the movement. The message I have applied thoroughly in my life is the passion for learning. Learning not in an academic context, but continuing to have that natural curiosity for life that all infants and young children have that is dampened and killed as we grow up and grow increasingly cynical about our broken social system. Most people here should relate with this, because we empower ourselves, we give ourselves the responsibility to speak out and act in order to change the world. I believe J. Krishnamurti expressed it the best when he said:
You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything.
Whereas, majority of people in today's society associate social status with their belongings, I take pleasure in having as little possessions as possible. Not only does it send a strong message to the people around me, but it promotes a kind of minimalist mentality that one should not need material possessions in order to be happy. Whereas shopping is seen "therapy" in our sick society, I almost never shop unless I need something. We have been conditioned to see wandering around malls ("window shopping") as a kind of "normal" and socially acceptable behaviour and should be promoted.
Whereas majority of people are conditioned to act to further self-interest without thinking about the impact that would have on the people around them, I take a view that if the people and my environment are taken care of, that would also serve my interest. While this is evident in macroeconomic and social planning, if the majority of people in a society are ill and have weak immune systems, then chances are that the state of health in that society would be extremely poor. However, we are not applying this to society. Where I live, it is the norm for people to blatantly litter and spit in public, behaviour that they would not engage in while at home. There is almost no initiative for socially and environmentally productive behaviour because such behaviour is not promoted by our consumer-oriented, self-centered culture.
Let's not focus on irrelevant issues like a failed (money) system. Instead we want to raise the level of behaviour and thinking for all human beings so that they can contribute to making this world a much better place. We say we want to wipe out corruption, poverty, crime, hunger etc, so let's start with the basics.
To end, consider the words of Gandhi, "We must become the change we want to see in the world."
Since the objective of this mission is to come up with a new system of exchange, and while I have always advocated the abolishing of a monetary system here, here and here, I will be sharing with everyone a new system of "currency". "Currency" used here will function as an analogy for human behaviour in a Resource-based Economy (RBE) where the use of money has been phased out.
Our behaviour in a monetary system is shaped according to the values of competition, self-interest, very simply, any behaviour that would lead to profit creation. Be it blatant environmental pollution by corporations, or insider trading by corporate executive, or even the shallow, insecure, self-centered and materialistic mentality that most people in developed worlds have, are all conditioned on us by the monetary system.
Since learning about The Venus Project, The Zeitgeist Movement and their vision for the future, I have tried to dissociate these values from myself in order to better relate to the movement. The message I have applied thoroughly in my life is the passion for learning. Learning not in an academic context, but continuing to have that natural curiosity for life that all infants and young children have that is dampened and killed as we grow up and grow increasingly cynical about our broken social system. Most people here should relate with this, because we empower ourselves, we give ourselves the responsibility to speak out and act in order to change the world. I believe J. Krishnamurti expressed it the best when he said:
You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything.
Whereas, majority of people in today's society associate social status with their belongings, I take pleasure in having as little possessions as possible. Not only does it send a strong message to the people around me, but it promotes a kind of minimalist mentality that one should not need material possessions in order to be happy. Whereas shopping is seen "therapy" in our sick society, I almost never shop unless I need something. We have been conditioned to see wandering around malls ("window shopping") as a kind of "normal" and socially acceptable behaviour and should be promoted.
Whereas majority of people are conditioned to act to further self-interest without thinking about the impact that would have on the people around them, I take a view that if the people and my environment are taken care of, that would also serve my interest. While this is evident in macroeconomic and social planning, if the majority of people in a society are ill and have weak immune systems, then chances are that the state of health in that society would be extremely poor. However, we are not applying this to society. Where I live, it is the norm for people to blatantly litter and spit in public, behaviour that they would not engage in while at home. There is almost no initiative for socially and environmentally productive behaviour because such behaviour is not promoted by our consumer-oriented, self-centered culture.
Let's not focus on irrelevant issues like a failed (money) system. Instead we want to raise the level of behaviour and thinking for all human beings so that they can contribute to making this world a much better place. We say we want to wipe out corruption, poverty, crime, hunger etc, so let's start with the basics.
To end, consider the words of Gandhi, "We must become the change we want to see in the world."
Views: 29
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Comment by Nick Heyming on April 1, 2010 at 6:09pm
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What do you think of Time Banks?
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Comment by Ezra Ho on April 2, 2010 at 5:39am
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It would certainly be a great transitional structure for a RBE. But ultimately, we want to have a similar social structure characterised by human unity and compassion while the unnecessary problems of today, which could be easily solved if not limited by cost, would be taken care of by cybernated automation.
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Comment by Iron Helix on April 2, 2010 at 6:05am
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Whenever I come across these type of movements, I say go for it. Of course I have yet to see anyone actual drop out of the monetary system and do it. I guess that sort of speaks for itself.
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The numbers of The Zeitgeist Movement are still too small to make any impact. Only when you have critical mass can you actually form opposition. Considering TZM is only 2 years old, it's too early to pass judgment on it.
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There should be nothing stopping such an economy from forming. If you have small numbers, then I guess you would have a small resource base, but if you were indeed operating without self interest and on a 'sustainable' basis, there should be no reason why you couldn't 'get by' with the (albeit low) standard of living such a model creates. :)
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Are you familiar with TZM and The Venus Project, for example, having watched Zeitgeist addendum?
The model of sustainability that you're talking about is a low-tech minimalistic lifestyle. What TZM wants to achieve is high-tech minimalism, which requires every country in the world to pool their technological and natural resources together to allow everyone to have access to the resources they need to survive. Of course, this is an overly-simplified explaination of the concept.
Let me share what Buckminster Fuller wrote back in 1969:
"We have discovered that it is highly feasible for all the human passengers aboard Spaceship Earth to enjoy the wh*** ship without any individual interfering with another and without any individual being advantaged at the expense of another, provided that we are not so foolish as to burn up our ship and its operating equipment by powering our prime operations exclusively on atomic reactor generated energy.
...
We have learned of the superstitions and inferiority complexes built into all humanity through all of history’s yesterdays of slavish survival under conditions of abysmal illiteracy and ignorance wherein only the most ruthless, shrewd, and eventually brutish could sustain existence, and then for no more than a third of its known potential life span.
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We must undertake to increase the performance per pound of the world’s resources until they provide all of humanity a high standard of living. We can no longer wait to see whose biased political system should prevail over the world."
And that I think sums up TVP.
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The only difference between minimalism and TVP is the size of the resource base, which creates "relative standard of living". If the wh*** world was nationalized, and it's resources utilized under one method, that does not necessarily equate to sustainability, nor does it eradicate the "consumerism". It's rationing that will do this (unless you are a cornucopian, which isn't not so much a plan for the future as it is a belief, akin to religion). If you're going that route, you would need one heck of a jack boot government to enforce it. Otherwise (meaning no real government) it's just another form of minimalism, just with whatever resource base (be it large or small) that you have available to you and the associated standard of living. So the conclusion I reach is that proponents of these type of movements don't want to start participating in it until they have a large enough resource base to give themselves a "comfortable" standard of living.
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You are projecting the kind of socio-economic system that we have now into TVP. In a Resource-based Economy of TVP, there would be no need to promote and perpetuate consumption unlike what we have at present. In a vastly different environment, in which the necessities of life can be obtained without a price tag, we believe that peoples' behaviour would radically change.
Resources would be used according to the carrying capacity of the planet and with the most efficient techniques that is simply unaffordable today. Moreover, resource usage would be unlike what we have because in a TVP RBE, the notion of property would transcend what we know today.
With the resource base of the entire planet available to all peoples, complemented with technological processes, it would be possible to give not just proponents of TZM a "comfortable" standard of living, but a standard of living that exceeds today's elite class to everyone on the planet.
In essence, attributes of social systems that existed in the past and present cannot be compared with TVP because there are so many nuances that have to be addressed.
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Right, but of course... you need the wh*** planet's resources to accomplish this. It would be IMPOSSIBLE to achieve on a microcosm? Hmm?
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May I know if you have watched the doc**entary Zeitgeist Addendum or Future By Design?
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