Copenhagen

Copenhagen 2009:
2 weeks to save the world. That is what they are telling us, the leaders of this conference on climate change. According to them if we do not get agreements at the end of this conference then we will have wasted our last chance to save the world. The world, this amazing world that has supported life forms for 4 billion years. The mother earth who seems to have a benevolent predisposition to supporting life in so many infinite formats. 2 Weeks to sort our crap out or else she will expel us, or kill us all.

Will Our mother do either of these things; will she banish or discard us forever? Do we understand her enough to be able to decide at a 2 week conference how to find harmonious balance with her nature?

I fear our egos are exceeding their remit once more. We still see ourselves as masters of nature and our environment. We believe that a collection of our "suits" can solve all of the earth's problems and that we can reverse, arrest or dictate climate change by virtue of a series of conferences and man made laws.

I believe one of the main reasons why climate change has gripped so many of those in power into such a vice of fear is that it highlights to them how irrelevant and how lacking in control this particular phenomenon makes them. They believe they can control everything; however climate change is one thing that they realise they may not be able to control.

So what will happen in Copenhagen or at the next several conferences? As a guarantee taxation will increase and revenue generation mechanisms will be instigated. Big business will get bigger and the man or woman on the street will pay from their pockets. But will anything change? Will we get a handle on climate change and gain the power to stop, arrest or reverse its effects?

I don't know the answer to these questions but I fear that as long as we allow our leaders, our businesses and our governments to tackle this problem exclusively, then it will only be engaged with intellectually and from a purely financial basis ONLY. It is a problem that they think can be fixed by throwing money (our money!) at.

The child, woman, man, grandmother and grandfather in their individual lives will not be empowered to engage with their environments from their heart spaces. In this heart space they can come into harmony with their local environment and hence regain their place in the cycle of nature. In this space they will align with their local community and form powerful alliances who heal their locality. In short they will make the enlightened choices that eliminate harmful activities, consumption and pollution from their lives. To put it bluntly they are not now being directed or legislated into submission from above, but rather are leading and empowering themselves from the ground up.

Will this more desirable path lead to us arresting or reversing climate change? Again, I don't know the answer, but surely this is a much better route to go down. Why should we allow the few to create taxation (carbon taxing), new industries, new legislation etc. that are supposed to stop climate change, but offer absolutely no guarantees that they will succeed. We will spend billions and trillions and may well end up causing more pollution problems through incompetence (very likely), or corruption.

It will cost us nothing (or very little) individually to step up to the mark and make enlightened, empowered decisions in the moment. DO we really need those new products?, do we really need to pollute with certain activities?, do we really need to throw so much of our food away? etc...

The earth has an intelligence that we cannot comprehend. As mentioned she has supported life forms of such staggering variety and abundance over such a long timescale that our place in her history is truly minuscule. We are powerless to control her. If we accept this then we can relinquish so much fear and come to a place of acceptance and empowerment.

She (The Earth) may well be in a cycle of climate change that will permanently alter our environment. Change is guaranteed here on Mother Earth. She is constantly shifting and moving, recycling, evolving, dying and birthing. Are we adding to her woes at the moment by pumping excessive quantities of CO2 into her atmosphere? More than likely we are, but if we stop will she then co-operate as we wish her to and stop changing? What if she doesn't? Only she can answer these questions.

If we TRUST though that this benevolent mother who is so predisposed to harbouring life in all it's formats may be changing but will always have a space and home for us, her children, then we don't have to be so afraid and so powerless. If we ourselves evolve alongside her evolution, then we can make the enlightened choices as mentioned and come into balance with her.

She will look after us, provided we make the effort individually and honour her presence and gifts to us. Climate change or not we need to honour our home. We need to trust we have a role in the future of this world, even if our environment does alter greatly from the way it is now.

Carbon taxing alone will not bring us into balance with our mother!

Demographic Focus: Teenagers.

Teenagers/Young Adults: So often they get forgotten and misunderstood. They are yesterday's children and tomorrow's adults, yet as a demographic they are often left to fend for themselves.

How does the isolation of this phase set in? After all they are only a few years removed from being cute little children who were adored by their parents and by people in society in general. In a few more short years they will end up being the next wave of young adults expected to forge careers, settle down and perpetuate the family cycle again. This phase of their lives, (the teenage years) is not unlike when the tree has just broken ground as a vulnerable sapling. The warmth and security of being a seed safely nurtured by the soil (childhood) is over and the great towering tree (adulthood) is off in the distance. For now the sapling is buffeted around and is forced to try and begin to find its own path and way in life.

Can these human saplings get assisted any better by society? I believe they can and also that they deserve more from us, the adults in their lives. The key is that not only should their parents be responsible for them, but that all of our adult society in the local community should act as mentors and guides for them.

If we relied more on our local communities and introduced a local social structure etc. it would engender a sense of shared co-operation and of looking out for one another. If we also look to history we can also learn a lot from our more ancient cultures (e.g. Native Americans). In those societies education of our teenagers was more holistic. They didn't cram heads full of technical information, test this and proceed to use the results as the only yardstick to measure success in life.

Education was so much more than this. It was concerned with raising successful and rounded human beings and thus it empowered teenagers to tease out their latent and unique skill sets over a few years. The adults (all of them) took an active interest in the evolution of these fledgling adults and noted their weaknesses, strengths and passions. Over time a collective community profile would get built up as to the direction a particular teenager should take in life. The key was that this mentoring role was not exclusive to the parents of the teenager. Quite the opposite; they had many adult mentors watching out for them. The beauty of this system was that the teenagers rarely got lost and isolated from society and tended to learn early the value and unique contribution they could make to their locality and to other people. This lead to great personal empowerment in such a vulnerable phase of their lives. In essence it birthed well adjusted young adults.

Somewhere along the line things went askew. We know that the 20th century saw the evolution of large cities and suburbs and this evolution lead to the era of isolation. We built our houses and apartments and forged ahead in life with just the help of those within our four walls. We forgot our local community. We felt we didn't need them. If we needed anything we could just buy it.

One only has to look around today to see evidence of this modern phenomenon. Let's examine young families. The children of these families are absolutely adored (rightly so). Very often though the only other adults who interact with them are two equally adoring sets of grandparents. The children's lives and milestones are celebrated and feted by just these few people. However there is a great isolation to it. It never includes the local community. Let's progress a few more years into those teenage years. Very often the picture is very different. That teenager is often now sullen, isolated, apathetic and lost. The question is where did it go wrong?

The thing most parents hope for at this stage is that time will heal this situation. They hope that at some point they will wake up and that miraculously from the chaotic teenager a well rounded and adjusted young adult has arisen. In most cases that is true. However for a few this does not happen. Some end up on darker roads, ones that can lead to drink and drug abuse and most upsetting of all, the road of non return that is suicide. Is this the parents fault? ABSOLUTELY NOT. It is no one's fault but I believe it would happen far less (if ever) if we all in adult society took care of and watched out for our community teenagers. Leaving the rearing of children to two adults (or single parents) exclusively is not fair or rounded enough. Of course the parent(s) should be responsible for most of the care of their offspring, but they should also be able to avail of outside assistance. Similarly they should look out for the children of other parents too.

As the picture perfect cute child grows it is inevitable that there has to be a natural separation away from the parent(s). This helps to form the character of the young person. However if there is a natural separation away form the parent(s) it can mean that now the teenager feels they have no adult to confide in or to share problems with. Obviously this phenomenon is skewed more towards boys than girls as anecdotally boys tend to isolate themselves much more. However this is where the rest of us (adults in community) need to step in. We should be approachable and non judgmental towards these people who may need our assistance and support.

We also need to get away from making our teenagers compete for everything. All of their young lives involve being pitted against each other for the best education, results, university places and future careers. We need to introduce more holistic education models. Some will thrive in a competitive environment but again the very few vulnerable ones will not. Again this can be a trigger to a very sad demise.

Just because one teenager is academically gifted does not mean they should pursue a professional qualification in the college route. They could be multi-skilled and are far better off in an artistic and creative environment. Similarly just because one teenager is not gifted academically does not mean they should be destined to a manual trade. Perhaps they are particularly sensitive and are best suited to a career in the caring sector. If we had community wide observation, coaching and mentoring of our collective children/teenagers we could see these facts. The more we can reduce the opportunities for apathy, isolation, unhappiness, desperation and fear to set in with our teenagers the more likely they will birth into wonderful happy and balanced young adults.

It is no secret that once peoples' basic needs are met then the older they get the happier they become. Therefore it is an entirely natural condition that our teenagers who are just starting out in life can often experience some of the more harmful thoughts, emotions, fears, phobias etc. If they can truly know in their hearts that we are ALL there for them to help them out, then it allows them to know any challenge or difficulty can be overcome. We shouldn't let their poor parents shoulder everything on their own.

Look around you to these teenagers; yesterday's children, tomorrow's adults. Reach out today, they need you.

We WILL NOT run out of resources!

This should be a required mantra for people to say everyday. *We WILL NOT run out of resources. We have EVERYTHING we need here on Planet Earth*. Repeat three times. etc.. etc.

Of course in our world of today this statement is not true. We are consuming more than our fair share of resources and we also have a strict tiered hierarchy where the very few get most of the spoils, i.e. 1% of people own 20% of the World's wealth.

Many in the Green movement cry foul at the sheer quantity of people in our world and say that we are doomed to failure due to the size of our populations. I for one do not buy into this argument and scarcity thinking. I firmly believe we do have enough resources for the people of the world; the problem is that we have no idea how to distribute the bounty from the earth fairly.

If so few get so much it means that the average person never feels like the world is a fair place. They may have employment and an income but they are always fearful that some outside influence (a boss, a recession, outsourcing) can take that job and income away from them. So their physical representation of the Earth's bounty (i.e. monetary income) is not guaranteed in their minds. Therefore we do not have trust among the many that we will always be looked after. The upshot of this is that we will try to hoard resources and will do whatever it takes to get rich quick to beat this scarcity mentality. It explains why we have all accepted the notion of the free market economy for so long. We see that 1% with so many of the spoils of the Earth and believe that one day it could be us.

However what is a far better solution all around is if we have the absolute faith and know that we ALL can access the resources of the world (through physical manifestations like money) whenever or wherever we need them throughout our lifetimes. The best way to do this is to form local communities and to use those communities as springboards towards true sustainability. One proactive step to take is to set up bartering systems within those communities. Straight away we start to take some of the power away from the current economic system and start to get security in our lives. Therefore, even in recessionary times we have enabled ourselves to "earn resources" from the earth that no outside influence can take from us. After all bartering of goods and services keeps "resources" flowing freely through a community without monetary transactions.

I am NOT advocating a return to a socialist regime that was supposed to advance a fair society for all. In that system the few again exploited the resources of the Earth and further exploited the masses. It never met it's intended goal. However if we all take our individual power back and align into strong local communities then we can start to implement solutions in our lives that can force a natural re-distribution of the Earth's resources. Bartering in our local community is a strong step in this direction.

If we barter it means we are not forced to earn bigger and bigger sums of money in the wider economy to pay for the goods and services we normally outsource. Now instead we could possibly get those from our local economy. As an example we may need plumbing services that would have cost us 5K traditionally. Perhaps we can now request those services (if available) in our local economy. These services will be assigned a points ranking. We now owe the system this value of points. The corollary is that the plumber who did the work has built up this value in credits. The Key thereafter is that I do not owe him the points directly. I have my own skills, labour and talents that I can offer others (or the plumber). I will need to offset his work to me over time to the community. Since I am performing my own unique skills and services it means I can offer them to the community at a time of my choosing. The plumber can also "draw" from his credits too, either from me or from others in the community.

The upshot is that we create a circular movement of goods and services but are NOT paying excessive fees to the outside "market" economy. This has the desired effect of meaning we need to work less and have shorter working lives in the wider economy. Of course this frees up even more time to work in the local economy. Over time we can envisage a future where our current totally unsustainable economic model is de-leveraged by the growing influence of thriving local community economies.

We then start to experience true sustainability and also much fairer distribution of the earth's resources. This is because we can begin to TRUST that our goods and services will always be needed and that we can trade and work our way sustainably and securely into the future years. No longer can recessions/outsourcing/bosses etc. decide our faith on a whim.

Of course all of this coupled with advancing self integrity will mean that we can start to imagine a future where we do not abuse the natural resources of the earth. If we learn to trust as above it means we will inevitably end up with a far more mature relationship with the earth. Our integrity and trust combined means we will have a relationship with the world where we will only take what we need, when we need it. I believe that is when we will return to balance with the Earth.

Remember if we can change then we will NOT run out of resources, in whatever format we need them.

We don't need a greenfield site to build a sustainable community

There are nearly seven billion of us on the planet. In percentage terms, nearly all of those people are housed. People often think that to have a sustainable community means going "off-grid", i.e. buying up land in splendid isolation and building houses of straw bales, cob and having compost toilets.

But we can't all leave our current housing solutions and head off to the mountains to do this. First off there wouldn't be enough land and secondly it is not practical. So if we are to have sustainable communities we have to RETROFIT our current localities. While it is a noble concept to build a sustainable community from scratch it really can only ever be a showcase for what the rest of us should be doing.

Millions of people live in horribly unsustainable places, e.g. large tracts of suburbia surrounding Western World cities. This is the last place that one would think of as being sustainable. But these are the very places that sustainability can and will work.

These housing solutions are sprawled out to give everyone they own "plot of the earth". The car is King, as generally basic services like shops are at least one mile away. So we end up with people living lives of isolation in their homes, followed by commutes into and out of their developments in their cars. Life becomes a prison of the box, i.e. the house, car, office, factory, recreation buildings etc..

There are so many tools at our disposal to counteract the mess the developers presented us with.

Form community - 150 people or less, research shows that above this number people lose intimate contact and responsibility for each other.
Set up a local economy - barter. Have an honest appraisal of everyone's skills and talents, whatever they may be, from hanging pictures, through counselling others ,childcare, growing food to accountancy services. Agree a ranking system for each task and begin trading with each other. Preferably via online accounts (note this will be covered in detail in subsequent blogs).
Utilise individual and common land - One person or people from community can barter time and services to growing fruit/vegetables for community. Perhaps more people can barter for the preparation of these products into tasty meals for the tables of the community.
Investigate possibility of building shared building - try to decouple from maintenance fees for the housing development and perform this task among community on barter economy. Possibility then of using the money saved to get a collective fund to purchase materials to build community building.
People could work from this building - telecommuting, selling produce from community, having small shops for craft sales etc...
Integrate elderly into community - promote elderly integration rather than allowing people go on to scrapheap at age 65. They could be active members of barter economy, especially for child welfare as they are retired.
Bring pre-school childcare back into the community - childcare groups residing in individual houses or indeed in community building. Childcare bartered by community members. Retired people ideal here.
Alternative education of children - possibility of running Steiner type education models.
Breaking free of 9-5 working model in wider economy - community members to try and break free form clock driven work week. Negotiate for services rendered rather than time on the job. Then with the extra time saved (as one becomes more efficient if getting re-numerated for tasks rather than time) then suddenly much more time is freed up for the community and for the barter economy.

All of the above (and MANY more solutions) will be covered in greater detail in subsequent blogs and downloads. These are some of the very easy to implement (community building obviously is a longer project) and fast ways to start being sustainable in our local community.

The one thing we can do today is to start. Obviously we won't get 150 people in one day. Start with one other person and build from there. It takes just one other person to BEGIN your community. Then over time you can turn your dysfunctional isolating housing solutions into a truly vibrant community of people.

I don't want to be in community with him/her/them !

We all think this: How could we possibly imagine forming local community with those people from next door or even that crowd down the road. After all he/she/they have so many flaws, as does everyone really come to think of it!

Those days have to end. Our current society structures have engendered a sense of isolation. As a result we have become very discerning about whom we spend our time with. As we have grown individually we have watched many others who we feel do not meet our standards or indeed are not the kind of people we want to commune with.
But society is tearing itself apart as people are crying out for community. The "ice-olation" has become too much to bear. We are all beginning to feel strong stirrings and desires to form community. But how do we transcend our differences and make this leap? How do we find the strength, compassion, courage, patience, love, security and commitment to stand as strong individuals and yet be part of an even stronger, nurturing community?

TO me the ONLY answer is that we all have to finally face those demons, make an inventory of our shortcomings and overcome them in due course. We may feel superior and more enlightened than our neighbours, but chances are they have their own unflattering views of us. We all have our flaws. What is certain is that we cannot bring the more toxic of those into community. We need to be honest with ourselves, be ruthless and work through these issues. The past decade has exposed many skeletons in our world and has introduced a culture (thankfully) of people no longer being willing to live and wallow in their darker character traits. Society is advancing at an exponential pace. Our healing as individuals is happening, it is as if the older dysfunctional templates are not being supported anymore.

So the man who refuses to face his emotions and hides himself in his work, the woman who is exhausted to the point of desperation trying to be all things to all people, the elderly person draining their families for sympathy, the young adults refusing to grow up by hiding themselves in alcohol/drugs, and many more similar stories of peoples lives are all going to have to change. We cannot have strong community if we continue to lead unhealthy individual lives.

The brilliant news of course is that once we do form healthy local community we suddenly find that we will lose so much focus from the more narcissistic traits of our personality and our lives. This environment will promote a sense of collective responsibility, thereby acting as positive amplification of our better, truer, more loving selves.

Like the older ancient native cultures (e.g. Native Americans), we will find our joy in community. It is no coincidence that in those cultures depression was not something that was common at all. If people can believe in something bigger than themselves, namely the community, then it takes so much focus away from their individual problems. Those small nagging problems can never take root, fester and grow into bigger problems when they are getting shared and sorted collectively.

We shouldn't though beat ourselves up for the way society has evolved over the past 100 years. It is a fact that prior to that the community was central to peoples lives. During that time we had intimate understanding of our local environment but not of the wider world. In the 20th century a culture of exploration and seeing the world set in (e.g. massive immigration to the USA). Unfortunately this led to our isolation. While we saw the world, learned so much, especially about other cultures etc., it ultimately led to the point where people became very unhappy.

I now believe we have reached the turning point. We are meant to go back to our local communities, to find true purpose and joy in our lives. However the fantastic news is that we can do so with the vast knowledge we have gained from the wider world. We are coming full circle, back to where our ancestors were but with so much more knowledge and information. We can have all our needs met in the local community, but thanks to technology like the Internet, we can also have the world at our fingertips. No longer should we search wide and far for the holy grail, i.e. the one city, country, house, suburb etc.. that will be perfect. Where we are today is perfect. It can be our very own city of Gold.

And you know what, him/her/they down the street are probably lovely people......

Introduction

No matter where we live I firmly believe we can create heaven on earth in our local community. Our immediate environment should be able to meet most (if not all) of our needs and should hold us in a promise of security, plenty and healing from cradle to grave.

All modern day housing solutions promote a sense of isolation and competition. We live in close proximity to each other but fail to share any of our joys,woes, fears or success with one another. We shut our doors and often try to face life with just the help of those within our own four walls.

The western world of present has taught us to believe we don't need our community and if we do need any outside assistance we tend to just purchase it from a third party.

Life has become a repetitive existence for many that is lived out in a series of boxes of isolation; from our houses to our cars, from our offices to our shopping malls.

However we can RETROFIT our lives and our housing developments. We can turn our houses of isolation into homes of warmth and sharing as part of vibrant, thriving, life affirming local communities. The chance for change is here. We can turn our lives around and create our very own cities of gold, or even our own little peace of heaven on earth.