Everybody is talking about it. Everyone is affected by it. And yet it shouldn't be a surprise. The world wide economic crisis is her to stay. The old western world is definetly sinking in its own hands. It's nothing new. every big civilization in history has experienced it: the huge golden era first, and then the drop down, the surrending to the excesses commited in the high wave...
All I hear in the news are politicians talking about creating economic growth, finding new jobs or new technologies that will make us competitive enought to survive the crisis. The problem with these ideas is that we're not thinking out of the box, and this crisis needs real new thinking.
For centuries, our cicilization has depended on values based on the persuit of profit. All the major developments have been due to this persue. Money makes the world go round. Yes, it did indeed. But that world is cracking a part now, so looking at solutions where we only consider financial solutions will do no good. We don't need annother economic plan or another marvalous ingenious 'I-must-have-that-thing'.
We've done enought, at least what regards technologies and world records. We have what we need. We can always do it better, it's true. But what's the point of doing it to perfection if the whole point of it beeing disappears? As my old teacher in school used to say: form is important, but content is essencial. Just as making the most of the presentation of the writing is not enought to account for the missing point in the text, just as pointless it is to develop extremelly hight technology if there's no fuel to produce energy to turn the machine on, or if the people are so desperatly poor they even can't even pay for food or water.
We have to rethink the whole thing. We have to shift our society values and our main goal for our society. It can't be money and priviledged status anymore. We have to raise us above and find new ideals.
Philosophy, religious beliefs (not religion, which is religious belief transformed into organisations) and not to mention the declaration of human rights have always presented us for alternative values. So we already have some other ideas we can use.
We have to reorganize our society, decide what we want to keep, what is really important and find a way where everybody, so to speak, can have a fair share of the cake. It's not new communism. It's plain survival. One could also say, it's only trying to live according to "treat your neighbour as you'd wishes to be treated" or "love your neighbour as you love yourself".
But how do you do that? I don't know. I'm just an artist, a dreamer, and I have very little knowledge of economics and politics. But I count on the internet. I count on this blog getting read by many people, maybe creating discussion, maybe giving other people who are closer to those who are major decision takers an idea, an inspiration. We need new ideas. We need everyone's engagement - for maybe your word will make somebody else find the answer... So help me find possibilities, help me ask questions, help us all with new ways of using what we have on earth.
Here are my questions:
What would happen if profit no longer was the main concern and goal of society?
What if we placed 'good living skills' as the new goal for society, where healthy living is the main idea?
How would that affect our work places? What if instead of giving values and status to papers in the bank, we value the time spendt helping one another, for eks. through teaching, caretaking, and other 'soft jobs'?
If money is out, what is so our currency? One man created art money (a small art work that has a fix value, and can be used to pay for goods and services) and caused huge noise in the economic world. Maybe we should look at such experiments and try something new. We all have so much to give - much more than money can buy. So why not use that as currency?
What if we just decided to accept that our financial world is cracked and decided to shut it down? What if we called that financial marked 'the new Disneyland', a fantasy world that isn't real? We gave those rules in the financial marked meaning and value. We could just as well withdraw their values. What would happen if every company, every business and every person just had what is real: their houses, their workers, the work they do, the ideas in their heads and their skills and their relationship to other people? Without money, as we know it, how would we share food, water, housing, jobs, technology, and waste? How would that impact our social structures, such as families, friendships and workrelations?
What is really vital for people? What is important in order to live a good life, and not just survive through life? How do we best use freedom of speach? How do we best contribute to the whole society? How are we democratic in a new era, where communication tends to create huge opportunities for many people to share their ideas and to affect political, social, economic and religious events? I've heard Google, facebook and the likes already do it, just for making more profit for themselves and for the companies who use them... What about using the same technologies for keeping up with the good ideas, for developing a real forum for a new world?
And I didn't talk about all the green possibilities - everybody talks about it now, so, there should be quite a number of good ideas there. I'll let this space for those who are much better to argumenting for a green active policy than I am.
Making a new world is like rearranging the furniture in your home. You have to think first, because it costs a lot to move the huge closet out of the room. You have to decide what use you want to make of the room, what needs more lightning or darkness, what stays in the way of traffic, what contributes to a cosy atmosphere, and how you see yourself in it. And then it's mostly about deciding what to throw away, what to keep, what to mend, what to use in a new way and what to give to other people who may use it better. And once we've moved the heavy furniture, there'll be a lot of readjustment. Routine will teach us how practical or efficient things are and then it's all 'learning by doing' time...
But right now, we're just in the 'thinking fase'. Please, feel free to comment! Feel free to give voice to your ideas! They're badly needed! And please, do share this with your friends and accquaintances!
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