There are a ton of people downsizing their lives, and their careers to match. I don't work much, live off of very little, and have never been happier. Nobody lays on their death bed and says that they wished that they had worked more, or bought more shit.
This is a great article. "Can’t help but wonder: what if we could keep the invention and quit the consumption?" I think going forward we (humans) need to define economic terms, accounting for current externalities. What does consumption and production mean? Should it be GDP? Primary energy/exergy use? Some other thermoeconomic measurement? Happiness index? Once terms are defined, what functions do we want to optimize both in relative terms and absolute terms? i.e., GPD per capita, energy intensity per happiness unit, environmental pollution per capita per life satisfaction, GPD per exergy destruction or entropy production, etc...
Thought provoking… the key is why Denmark consumes less and enjoys a higher standard of living. It comes down to land use; creating healthy family homesteads or community complexes that bring people together. Here is America, there are few neighborhoods where people even know their neighbor, let alone treat their neighbor as themselves. We are suffering from isolation, only further exacerbated by technology and media. What we need is to get back to land, regreen our small corner of the earth, to create our own spaces of love, and to help others do the same. All else is just a distraction, an endless mental exercise.
It's our mind over body sensory education coming back to haunt. We've lost touch with the greatest resource we have to guide our actions -- the wisdom of our desires. We've forgotten how to find and follow the arc of our pleasure to a sense of enough.
All we need is a new culture in the Anglo West, A.K.A., the global north. Do we have the imagination to create what's next, or wait for circumstances to dictate what happens? We are more interested in feeling good about ourselves than taking a challenging creative journey. This thing of ours is all-consuming. Collaborative creative activities within one's community are an excellent way to use innovative tools, spend critical calories, and avoid cheap-shyte dot com. Have "the conversation" when doing something productive with your people. Let's get used to sharing what we need to live well. We have the commons in common. Raise a barn and put the tools in it. We don't need a start-up or a market to have a collaborative workspace where we design and three-D print valuable things. We work because we work. Active is Attractive ;-)
Yes! Qualitative accounting, accounting for the intangible values of stuff, and the negative (or positive) impact of a given supply chain on our environment, our health, our social wellbeing, etc is the future. The global system is reconfiguring the financial architecture to account for the qualitative values, and they are defining the metrics, which may or may not be the highest and best metrics. We have an opportunity to steer this qualitative ship in the right direction, to fund and support projects that both fit into the emerging metrics being defined in real time and to form collaborative pods that begin to self govern and define qualitative metrics in a way that serves the highest and best.
There are a ton of people downsizing their lives, and their careers to match. I don't work much, live off of very little, and have never been happier. Nobody lays on their death bed and says that they wished that they had worked more, or bought more shit.
This is a great article. "Can’t help but wonder: what if we could keep the invention and quit the consumption?" I think going forward we (humans) need to define economic terms, accounting for current externalities. What does consumption and production mean? Should it be GDP? Primary energy/exergy use? Some other thermoeconomic measurement? Happiness index? Once terms are defined, what functions do we want to optimize both in relative terms and absolute terms? i.e., GPD per capita, energy intensity per happiness unit, environmental pollution per capita per life satisfaction, GPD per exergy destruction or entropy production, etc...
Thought provoking… the key is why Denmark consumes less and enjoys a higher standard of living. It comes down to land use; creating healthy family homesteads or community complexes that bring people together. Here is America, there are few neighborhoods where people even know their neighbor, let alone treat their neighbor as themselves. We are suffering from isolation, only further exacerbated by technology and media. What we need is to get back to land, regreen our small corner of the earth, to create our own spaces of love, and to help others do the same. All else is just a distraction, an endless mental exercise.
It's our mind over body sensory education coming back to haunt. We've lost touch with the greatest resource we have to guide our actions -- the wisdom of our desires. We've forgotten how to find and follow the arc of our pleasure to a sense of enough.
Perfectly summed up! Keep the invention and quit consumption.
One thing capitalists always argue is that without capitalism, innovation would be stifled. Is this true?
All we need is a new culture in the Anglo West, A.K.A., the global north. Do we have the imagination to create what's next, or wait for circumstances to dictate what happens? We are more interested in feeling good about ourselves than taking a challenging creative journey. This thing of ours is all-consuming. Collaborative creative activities within one's community are an excellent way to use innovative tools, spend critical calories, and avoid cheap-shyte dot com. Have "the conversation" when doing something productive with your people. Let's get used to sharing what we need to live well. We have the commons in common. Raise a barn and put the tools in it. We don't need a start-up or a market to have a collaborative workspace where we design and three-D print valuable things. We work because we work. Active is Attractive ;-)
Yes! Qualitative accounting, accounting for the intangible values of stuff, and the negative (or positive) impact of a given supply chain on our environment, our health, our social wellbeing, etc is the future. The global system is reconfiguring the financial architecture to account for the qualitative values, and they are defining the metrics, which may or may not be the highest and best metrics. We have an opportunity to steer this qualitative ship in the right direction, to fund and support projects that both fit into the emerging metrics being defined in real time and to form collaborative pods that begin to self govern and define qualitative metrics in a way that serves the highest and best.
Common sense is what it sounds like to me