Truly inspiring, even for a hard bitten old cynic. Add complementary currencies and stir. Or perhaps, it is the uncounted reciprocity that makes it work. | On a typical working day, most “normal” neighborhoods are empty, their residents off working to pay for all the stuff in their fine homes. My neighborhood, on the other hand, is full of life. People are in the streets, walking and biking |
| Weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement is a fractal assertion of life revealing itself through the cracks of civilization. |
| The blighted areas of Springfield, Illinois, are a microcosm of the ruins of cities like Detroit. The neglect and abandonment of our neighborhoods by those to whom we pay taxes is evident. |
| The people who remain here are here for the long haul. Poor people are well aware of the economy of the community |
| When you have not money to purchase the assistance and care you need, you use the time you have to assist and care for others, and they reciprocate. It’s security that life in civilization cannot buy, especially now that we are in the horribly depressed phase of our bipolar economy.Read more at energybulletin.net |
| What I question is not consumption in the abstract but consumerism and overconsumption. While consumption means acquiring and using goods and services to meet one’s needs, consumerism is the particular relationship to consumption in which we seek to meet our emotional and social needs through shopping, and we define and demonstrate our self-worth through the Stuff we own. And overconsumption is when we take far more resources than we need and than the planet can sustain, as is the case in most of the United States as well as a growing number of other countries. Consumerism is about excess, about losing sight of what’s important in the quest for Stuff. |
| Lots of our favorite characters and cultural icons surround themselves with signature cool Stuff. |
| What would the Oscars be without the gowns? |
| We’re attached to these characters’ possessions and obsessions as much as to their personalities; it’s all part of our national mythology. It only makes sense that we’d get attached to our own Stuff.Read more at www.alternet.org |
A recent study suggests that if you’re generous others will follow suit. I suggest you give it try.I just lent $25 to Grace Mumbi and so can you. http://su.pr/1qFVYw
In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious. |
Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more. |
In a game where selfishness made more sense than cooperation, acts of giving were “tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more,” wrote political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University. |
The network described by Fowler and Christakis doesn’t necessarily replicate natural group dynamics, but suggests a general model for how behaviors spread. They suggest that researchers of altruism and cultural evolution study how different group configurations promote or limit the spread of behaviors. |
Homeless as chic!? What does it mean? There but the grace of God go I? Or does it give poverty a new dignity? | This is a homeless man in the city of Ningbo. And now a band of web followers are calling him the coolest man in China. |
His good looks and bohemian dress sense have won him thousands of online fans after a resident of Ningbo posted a picture online. Web users in China have called him the “Beggar Prince”, the “Handsome Vagabond”, and, most often, “Brother Sharp”. |
| He also appears to have a fondness for women’s clothes, which has only served to fuel his status as a fashion icon. |
| The suggestion that homelessness can be cool chimes with a fashion trend that many have considered tasteless: in January, the designer Vivienne Westwood presented a “homeless chic” show in which models were styled to look like rough sleepers, |
| His identity remains a secret, and social workers in Ningbo say they want to keep it that way. “Homeless people are vulnerable. It is incorrect to use them for entertainment purposes,” said one worker at a homeless centre in Ningbo.Read more at www.independent.co.uk |
| It’s been only a month that a union for the unemployed has come into existence through an ingenious grassroots organizing campaign. In case you haven’t heard about it, the union’s name is “UR Union of the Unemployed” or its nickname, “UCubed,” because of its unique method of organizing. |
| The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps |
| Six people who live in the same zip code address can form a Ucube. Nine such UCubes make a neighborhood. Three neighborhood UCubes form a power block that cntains 162 activists. |
The more educated people walk away, the poor stick it out to the end. Prices are still falling. So the extent of losses banks and investors will have to take on mortgages that are still being paid every month, but may not be for longer, hangs large over the US economy. Without a recovery in house prices, consumer spending and confidence in the US is expected to remain muted, reducing the potential for economic growth. |
| Further losses on mortgages could result in more pain for banks, too, reducing the amount of new credit that they can make available to consumers and businesses. This, in turn, would have knock-on effects for the global economic outlook, |
| higher the negative equity, the higher the rate of non-payments. |
Particular concern surrounds defaults by people who merely face negative equity rather than monthly funding problems. These “strategic defaults” may be accelerating as more people shrug aside societal pressure to meet debts if they can. |
| landlords already have signs out saying “bad credit accepted”. |
People who have grown up poor have had years to learn psychological coping mechanisms, as well as practical knowledge of how to get by. The new poor lack both advantages. What will they do? BUENA PARK, Calif. — Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits. |
| Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed. |
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come. |
| 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. |
| Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of AprilRead more at www.nytimes.com |
Intelligent poverty (reusing jars) trumps stupid wealth (flying everywhere) every time, if the idea is to survive in a world where we can only afford to use a small portion of their current consumption. And we would slow the process of ocean acidification making it perhaps possible for dying sea life to regenerate. Whereas past energy transitions have exploited new, larger sources of energy that enabled exponential growth in many areas of society, the reality of the geologic constraints imposed upon today’s society relegate unbridled economic growth, the defining economic characteristic of the industrial era, to be a thing of the past. A new economic model is needed–one that focuses on human welfare as being separate from income, and one that focuses on the resiliency of society rather than the growth of society over the long term. |
| a pivotal part in beginning this energy transition will be to change the attitude and behavior of people (hence governments) around the world from the belief that the only way to happiness is through financial wealth. Read more at energybulletin.net |
Another Evolver candidate.
“If we continue abusing the earth this way, there is no doubt that our civilization will be destroyed. This turnaround takes enlightenment, awakening. The Buddha attained individual awakening. Now we need a collective enlightenment to stop this course of destruction.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
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“The world itself has a role to play in our awakening. Its very brokenness and need call to us, summoning us to walk out of the prison of self-concern.” -Joanna Macy
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“Each of us must take complete responsibility for the world, as if the world’s fate depended on our words and actions. And whether we know it or not, it does.” Hozan Alan Senauke
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| In A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency |
| The authors presented in this anthology assume that awareness will bring about behavior change |
| The state of life on earth may ultimately depend on our capacity to act with true ecological intelligence.”-Shambhala Sun |
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Beyond civilisation - The Festival of Life in the Cracks (2)
