Thanks to Dave Smith for the link.
1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth?
2. Always include local nature — the land, the water, the air, the native creatures — within the membership of the community.
3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbours.
4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products — first to nearby cities, then to others).
5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of "labour saving" if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.
6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.
7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.
9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.
10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.
11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.
12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.
13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.
14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programmes, systems of barter, and the like.
15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighbourly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighbourhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.
16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
—Wendell Berry
Redux | June 15, 2007: Oof. It's been a tough few weeks. Work and non-work. Always busy. Never enough hours in the day or coins in the pocket, it seems. Then, last night, an encounter with an offensive real estate agent left us shaken and more than a little stirred. Thankfully, Stefan Sagmeister (thanks, Merlin!) was there to save the day. Check it out:
1. Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
2. Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
3. Being not truthful works against me.
4. Helping other people helps me.
5. Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.
6. Everything I do always comes back to me.
7. Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.
8. Over time I get used to everything and start taking if for granted.
9. Money does not make me happy.
10. Travelling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
11. Assuming is stifling.
12. Keeping a diary supports my personal development.
13. Trying to look good limits my life.
14. Worrying solves nothing.
15. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
16. Having guts always works out for me.
There. Isn't that better?
Thanks to Christy Lee Engle for the link.
It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and lovingkindness, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
It's been some time since I last posted a new song. Here's one that's been fighting for my attention for the last little while; I managed to put the final touches to it late last week. Inspired by my two years in Saskatchewan, this track has a light, open, and somewhat melancholic feel, much like that engendered by the humbling prairie skies and landscape.
Prairie [3:57]
Redux | February 23, 2007: Alrighty. I usually steer clear of myself on this blog, but I've been blog-tagged with the "five things" meme by my friend Sophia and couldn't resist. So here goes:
1. When I play a musical instrument, I "see" notes as colours: A = white; B = orange/brown; C = yellow; D = blue; E = red; F = brown; G = green. Sharps and flats are different intensities of their "parent" colour; for the musicians out there, I read sharps/flats as Ab, Bb, C#, Eb, F#. I was never taught this and have no idea how common this is.
2. I enjoy being creeped out. This can manifest in a variety of ways: film, music, visual art, literature, or the occasional feeling of déjà vu. I draw the line at food, however.
3. I'm a student of Theravada Buddhism.
4. I am attracted to wide, open spaces, and have a desire to ride the rails across the North American prairies.
5. My career has been, and continues to be, devoted to water, but I've never learned to swim.
Rather than tag five other bloggers (which suggests a chain letter, which isn't my style), I'm issuing an open invitation to any who also wish to navel-gaze. The comments are yours, brother and sisters.
From the Whiskey River blog:
One does not become enlightened by imagining light, but by making the darkness conscious.
—C. G. Jung
Redux | December 21, 2006: ...was "vituperate". Thanks, guys!
Thanks to Hugh MacLeod for the link.
1. Good ideas almost always begin as heresy.
2. Life is pointless. So what? Make your own meaning. Revise to suit.
3. If you can't think anything at all, you can't think anything at all. Any limitations you place on what you're willing to consider restrict your ability to engage in rational thought. That includes, of course, limiting your ideas to "rational" ones… Sometimes silly leads the way.
4. You're only entitled to the opinions you've thought through. You can only do that if you use hard data. Opinions you adopt from others are other people's opinions, not yours.
5. Fear is caused by thinking you have an answer when in fact, you haven't done anything to get one.
6. Belief in one truth over all others debases that truth. There are always a lot of truths, some of which can be simultaneously and contradictorily true.
7. Having no good flaws is worse than having no good traits.
8. The inability to run a mental simulation of the effects of any given action is an excellent indication of a possible new frontier. Simply, if you don't know what will happen when you do something, there is no question that you will learn by doing it.
9. The common denominator of human nature is the desire to transcend human nature. What are you doing about it?
10. Why is the marketing of a product inevitably more effective than the product itself? Self-help books induce millions to buy, though few change. Appropriate the techniques by which you are manipulated into buying life-styles and packaged ideals, and use them to sell yourself the actual life and ideals you want. Learning how illusion works allows us to make illusion work for us.
11. New ideas result nearly exclusively from the combination of thoughts, images, or concepts previously assumed to be exclusive. Creation is entirely the child of synthesis and discord.
12. It's not important that others agree with you. It's equally unimportant that you agree with others. It's important for everyone to listen.
13. If an answer is easy, it's probably wrong. If an answer is simple, there's a fair chance it's right. Or at least useful.
From Chris' Parking Lot blog:
I think first of all that there is a false dichotomy between talk and action. To be more precise I should say that there is a symbiotic relationship between talk and action. We can act any way we choose, and that is just fine, but when we want to take action that is wise, we need to be in conversation with others. We may also be in conversation with context as well, which looks like a literature review, a market study, an environmental scan and so on. Regardless, wisdom follows from being with the insights of others. Wise action is what we do after we have talked well together.
—Chris Corrigan
Yoko Ono's letter to John Lennon today, the 27th anniversary of his shooting death in New York City.
December 8, 2007
I miss you, John. 27 years later, I still wish I could turn back the clock to the Summer of 1980. I remember everything - sharing our morning coffee, walking in the park together on a beautiful day, and seeing your hand stretched to mine - holding it, reassuring me that I shouldn't worry about anything because our life was good.
I had no idea that life was about to teach me the toughest lesson of all. I learned the intense pain of losing a loved one suddenly, without warning, and without having the time for a final hug and the chance to say, "I love you," for the last time. The pain and shock of that sudden loss is with me every moment of every day. When I touched John's side of our bed on the night of December 8th, 1980, I realized that it was still warm. That moment has haunted me for the past 27 years - and will stay with me forever.
Even harder for me is watching what was taken away from our beautiful boy, Sean. He lives in silent anger over not having his Dad, whom he loved so much, around to share his life with. I know we are not alone. Our pain is one shared by many other families who are suffering as the victims of senseless violence. This pain has to stop.
Let's not waste the lives of those we have lost. Let's, together, make the world a place of love and joy and not a place of fear and anger. This day of John's passing has become more and more important for so many people around the world as the day to remember his message of Peace and Love and to do what each of us can to work on healing this planet we cherish.
Let's: Think Peace, Act Peace, and Spread Peace. John worked for it all his life. He said, "there's no problem, only solutions." Remember, we are all together. We can do it, we must. I love you!
Yoko Ono Lennon
RSS Feed