by Robert McLean
Response to
climate change either for the individual or on a society-wide basis can be
simple in the extreme or so complex it is almost incomprehensible.
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| Our earth needs a "cooling" hand |
Whatever it
might be, it needs to be considered, articulated among friends, workable and in
the greater good.
Interestingly,
it seems the entire world is trapped in an economic paradigm from those
struggling to survive in the most destitute of circumstances to the wealthy, who
should they wish, can have more for breakfast than many have to eat for a whole
week.
Those at
both extremes live in a world that is dominated by economics.
The
destitute, however, and despite what appears to be disarray, live closer to the
idea of community, an idea that will evolve into a workable concept, a way of
living to which all of us will ultimately be indebted.
Writing in Nation of Change, Charles Eisenstein
said: “. . . community is nearly impossible in a highly monetized society like
our own. That is because community is woven from gifts, which is ultimately why
poor people often have stronger communities than rich people.
“If you are
financially independent, then you really don't depend on your neighbors—or
indeed on any specific person—for anything. You can just pay someone to do it,
or pay someone else to do it,” he said.
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| Charles Eisenstein |
Any
response to climate change, personal or societal, will be hobbled until we can
free ourselves from the disabling economic paradigm that only worsens the
difficulties from which escape is a must.
Eisenstein
has discussed the idea of “gift circles” in which each person, in turn, talks
about the one of two things they need and then in going around the circle
again, each person talks about things they have to give.
Of course,
those in the circle can mention that they would like one of those things on
offer.
Notes of
needs and what is offered are kept and circulated via email among those in the
group.
Finally,
the circle is used a third time, to provide the opportunity for those who took
up a previous offer to articulate their gratitude.
Eisenstein
said: “It confirms that this group is giving to each other, that gifts are
recognized, and that my own gifts will be recognized, appreciated, and
reciprocated as well.
“It is just
that simple: needs, gifts, and gratitude. But the effects can be profound,” he
wrote.
The
Eisenstein discussed process effectively disconnects us from the consumerist
way of living that the economic hawks argue is the lodestone of the good life.
What is and
isn’t the “good life” is remarkably subjective being inextricably linked whether
you are or not are among the comparative few who live within the ease of the
economic paradigm or, rather, stand with the many who look-on with curiousity
and envy from the outside, remote from the good life and who experience a life
of real want.
There is,
however, sliding through all this imagined or genuine want, created openly, but
strangely surreptitiously, by the legions of marketers who engineer within each
of us a need for the “new”; the idea that last year’s model, of whatever, is no
longer what we should have, although the newest edition is frequently, in a
practical and pragmatic sense, essentially no different from that we already
have.
The ideal
of the consumerist world, the idea that we must have the “latest, newest and
best”, is what is exhausting the world’s finite resources and driving us
further up the “don’t go there” climate change scale.
The welfare
of humanity, according to countless scholarly economists and business and
political theorists, is linked to an ever increasing growth-based economy; an
economy that under close examination favours only a few, gouges at the world’s
finite resources, pays little attention to innovations that contribute naught to
the traditional growth-based economy, but which are critical to the broader well-being
or happiness of people.
It is so
difficult for us to imagine a society that is not linked to, or driven by, a
growth based economy, but if our response to climate change is to have any
influence or impact we must be intimately involved in the creation of a whole
new paradigm in our communities, and beyond that our broader society, of a way
of living that does not revolve around the money-based economy.
Our
contemporary economy compartmentalizes and individualizes everything, ignoring
the reality that everything of worth in the world is inextricably linked
through nature’s network epitomizing the adage about the flapping of a butterfly’s
wings in an Amazon jungle can be a pivotal happening in a typhoon that sweeps
through some other and distant part of the world.
Within Eisenstein’s
“gift circle” are the beginnings of what will be the underpinnings of a new way
of living, one that escapes the present growth-based economy and hinges on the
idea of sharing.
Long have I
imagined that a family home would be just that – remaining within the family for
generations and changing shape and size to meet the ever changing demands of
families and never to be sold, rather to be given away with the proviso that
the existing occupants can live there until they die.
The idea is
that the older generations can live in the house until they die, passing on
their wisdom and knowledge to younger family members and so re-igniting a
dynamic which is lost humanity when older people are “hidden” from society in
old peoples’ homes.
Should
houses be built with an understanding that they were to be the family home for
a long, long time, construction would be different in that it would be planned
and built in such a way that it would fit more comfortably with the environment
and designed in such a way that it would allow those who live there to survive
without heavy reliance on energy derived from sources other from those integral
to the house itself.
Sharing
would be common – rather than every house having a complete set of tools
(garden and otherwise) as it does now, neighborhoods would have one central repository
of tools that would be shared among 20-30 households to allow for allow for the
upkeep and maintenance of those respective homes.
We will
have fewer houses, but more homes for more people, fewer overall tools from
large to small, and because of that, more sharing of skills and knowledge about
some of life’s most fundamental tasks.
The added
bonus, of course, is more personal interaction among neighbours and subsequently
a stronger community.
Just two
thoughts that would help us ease our way out of the present economic dilemma as
no longer would people be bound to what are often life-long mortgages or the
relentless and inexplicable variations of the real estate market and nor would
we, along with thousands of others, spending untold sums to accumulate tools that
research has shown that those same tools (both in monetary and environmental
terms) are frequently used for just one or two minutes in their 20 year life.
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This is somewhat extreme,
but trains are unquestionably
the best way to move people. |
That
suggests, inarguably, that those same tools should be drawn from a central
neighborhood resource, set up for the purpose of sharing.
Public
transport is about sharing, private transport is about individualism and so
there is the crux of society’s challenge with climate change – as long as we
adhere to individualism it will worsen (although we are already locked into
difficult times because of the long-life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere),
but through sharing, pretty much everything, we can ease our future's decided
difficulties.
