The final episode of "Addicted to Money"

I just watched "Addicted to Money" episode 3 via iView on the ABC's site (scroll the list till you find it — only 11 days to go before it disappears). A tiresome business in South Gippsland where broadband is not much faster than dial-up, so it took me two hours to watch the last half hour of the program. In the end it was an exhortation to be virtuous. I suppose given the shortness of the program and the complexity of the subject multiplied by the contentiousness, it wasn't fair to expect much more. In the end I was surprised by the directness and honesty of the presentation but of course it could only skim the surface, leaving the courses of action to deal with the situation entirely up to us.

Which actions to take? This is where our all-to-human prejudices come into play, and I don't pretend to be free of them. But let me just say that focusing on the shortcomings of others, either at the highest levels of politics or in your own street is not likely to prove a sensible course. Look at what you are doing, and remove the plank from your own eye before you make comments on the speck in other people's. Also avoid the related problem of depending on your so-called betters to solve the problem for you. Forget about electric cars, wind power and all the other fluff. In the end, if you can't build it and fix it locally, preferably yourself, then it will suck all your blood.

What am I doing? In the next few weeks we'll be getting an aquaponics setup going at our nursery. Aquaponics will become a very popular method of growing your own produce, especially in a water-constrained environment. I'll keep posting our progress as it takes place.

Our transition meeting

We had our third meeting last night, and we used the Shires "Zing" computer system which allows a large group to get through a lot of business quickly, without being dominated by the loudest voices. There were a few technical problems but they didn't really make any difference. The virtue of the exercise was a credit to Christine Hamilton, one of the Shire's employees, who did a great job of keeping us all moving and shutting the obsessive talkers up.

I'm now waiting for the Shire to email us the results. I've got a reasonable idea of what they are, having read through the whole thing last night while we were doing it, and I think it's fair to say that the results are a reflection of both the wisdom and the folly of the educated and socially concerned citizens in our little neck of the woods. The wisdom comes from recognition of the inexorable grinding power of change, the folly from timidity and a desire to hang on to the known and a lingering belief in a Millennial notion of Progress, where a just and virtuous class of scientifically trained experts will usher in a Golden Age. This belief is really the last bit of social glue that can hold a complex society together and motivate middle-class people, binding them to the necessary life of self-sacrifice demanded by the gods of technocracy. It is a belief that will die hard and cause a lot of pain before it does.

What do I mean by this? Well, it is the idea that lies behind a lot of the rhetoric of both the Left and the Right, which thinks suffering is Someone's or Something's fault, and some fiddling with the social fabric or the silencing, re-education or execution of undesirables will lead us to endless happiness. Or perhaps it's just a matter of replacing all the V-8s with electric vehicles and having solar panels on every roof. Whatever. Perhaps you get my drift, or perhaps not.

Let me lay my cards on the table. Life goes on, according to what Nature allows, which may or may not be in accord with our wishes. During the rise of our technocratic civilisation over the past several hundred years we "won" more often than we "lost", which is why there are now so many of us. During the next several hundred years it will be the other way round. Whatever we do now can't alter that overall fate. Our task is to learn to accept whatever the moment can bring us (because in any case, that's all we have) and do the best we can, without false beliefs in our exceptionalism and other types of pseudo-religious nuttiness that infect our oh-so-secular age. Maybe solar panels will be of some use, but I'm not wasting time on peripheral issues like that. Food, shelter and community are the main requirement. Place is the most important single factor. The rest is up to the Brownian motion of fate, or the will of the gods if you like.

"Addicted to Money' again

I watched the second episode of "Addicted to Money" — it really is quite good. It's interesting that a viewpoint is being presented that actually seems to bear some resemblance to reality, when 90% of what one sees or hears these days is either spin, fluff or a combination of the two. For instance our Kev (Australia's Prime Minister) drops in to Afghanistan and lets us know "we're there for the long haul", protecting the corrupt, powerless government of a country which is producing most of the World's opium. Way to go, Kev! And he's a fan of a Big Australia, even though we have no water, bad soil and are pushing our ecological limits over the breaking point.

"Addicted to Money" looked at the real story: the shift of power to China and how the Chinese are in turn caught in the US debt trap. Dear little Australia continues to be a pawn in their game, to be discarded without a thought when our moment comes.

What an amazingly interesting time we live in, with profound change gathering all round us. We are in a period like the "Phony War": the storm clouds are gathering and lots of people all over the world are suddenly unable to keep things going the way they were, yet we're living in a dream that somehow we can keep it like this in Australia forever. Make your changes now, while it's easy! Get out of debt and get in to a way of life that can carry you when the storm breaks!

Next week is the final of "Addicted to Money". Not to be missed.

Local Food Map Website

Gordon Rouse has emailed me with his map of locally grown produce. It looks like a great idea. I'll quote from his email…

I wanted to let you know that my wife and I have launched our food map at http://www.localfoodmap.net.
The idea of the online map is to have locally grown produce easy to find wherever you are. You can search by keywords on your location, and registered producers will come up as icons on a map.

I am hoping as many food-producers from small vege growers to farms will put their farmgate presence on this map so that we can all find what is growing in abundance in our local area.
The system also allows users to subscribe to farms, which means growers can send out emails to their subscribers to let them know if there is a fresh harvest, or a large animal is being butchered.

I believe that this website could be an invaluable tool in meeting the aims of the Transition Town organisation, in promoting direct farmgate sales and food networks. I hope you can consider registering yourself as both producers and alertees, and maybe even letting your local members know about this through your contacts.

At this stage, there are only a few outlets in Victoria, so if you wish to see a demonstration of this working, I suggest you use "Melbourne Victoria" as your locality.

"Addicted to Money": ABC TV nails its colours to the mast!

An interesting documentary, "Addicted to Money", was broadcast on ABC TV last night (Thursday). The Global Financial Crisis is so complex a beast that even those who are riding it for their own gain hardly understand it, so to expect a TV show to lay it all bare is a big ask. Television is a poor medium for intellectual exchange and the endless camera and editing doohickies filling up the space drove me nuts. The heavy-handed drug addiction metaphor irritated too, but there was no doubt of the conviction of the makers, or of their opinions of whose fault the whole debacle has been. Bankers, guard your estates!

Good talking heads interspersed through the show, particularly Elizabeth Warren who saw all this coming.

So it looks like the ABC is coming out of its corner fighting, after the long Howard years of being forced onto the back foot. Good oh! "Addicted to Money" is a series so I guess I'll tune in next week.

Cross-posted interview

The interview I talked about in my last post between Stoneleigh and Euan Mearns is cross-posted at The Oil Drum, so you can read the always intelligent discussion of it by TOD people as well.

This is the way it'll go

A superb but wrenching interview by Euan Mearns of The Oil Drum with Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth. A truly sombre prospect for the USA. What can we expect here in Australia? At the moment it's all green shoots and rising interest rates. We're heading into summer with a good spring rainfall in the south where I live and family members are house hunting again.

You readers of this blog are volunteers — you don't necessarily have to agree with me, but you're unlikely to continue reading if what I say jars too violently with your world-view. So I feel no need to sweeten my message to make you "feel better". Rather the truth — it's a much better place to start thinking of where to go from here.

But it's a different case with family and in a small community, where I'm accused of being excessively negative for yelling "Danger!" I even get told that somehow by talking about it, I'm making it happen! That people like me are undermining confidence in the system and should just shut up.

I won't quote from the interview with Stoneleigh. Just read the whole thing. It lays out the course of our world history for the next twenty years. You can't stop it happening, just as I can't make it happen, but we sure as hell can attend to our immediate circumstances and make preparations to deal with it.

The meeting on Thursday night

We had a good turnout, and I had some calls from people who would have liked to have come but had other commitments. There were quite a few people I'd never met before. We watched a film about Cuba, "The Power of Community", which was interesting although it kind of avoided the issue of exactly who decided Cuba was going to go permaculture. Was it Castro or the plebs? Perhaps it doesn't matter for us because if the figures they gave of the radical reduction in fossil food usage for food production are true then we should be OK even here, with our poor soils.

But back to the meeting. We had a discussion after the film where we went around the room and each person spoke about their area of interest and reason for coming for the evening, and we used that to make a list of the areas of concern. These we've emailed back to everyone. There will no doubt be additions and alterations but the list gives us a basis for planning a future for the district which will take the changes we're facing into account.

Here's our Transition Corner Inlet topic list
Energy
Renewable
Decentralised
Bulk purchase
Community projects
Leadership example for other communities
Self-sufficiency
Showcase
Efficiency & design

Education/information
Encourage others to join
Spread awareness & understanding
Film Festival
Environmental issues
Basic energy knowledge for home or community
Using local libraries to stock relevant books/periodicals
Climate change & energy resource issues education

Local economy
Tourism eco/transition
Bartering/alternative currencies
Bulk buying & co-operatives
Small-scale local economy
Resilience
Practical crafts and handy skills
Multi use of facilities (halls, community gardens)

Food production
Producing basic food groups
Preserving/value adding
Survival food
Food security
Sustainable practices
Community gardens across all communities

Technology
Explore & trial ideas
Alternative fuels
Alternative modes
Getting networks in place
Safety for cycling
Hand tools use and manufacture
Practical recycling of resources
Animal use & management

Health
Growing medicinal herbs
Preventative health

Social
Values (modest scale/frugality/generosity)
Survival/confidence
Sharing with youth
Maintaining social connections at a distance
Older people & physical demands
Employment conditions/availability
Welcoming incomers
Toxic politics/polarisation of views/community division
Starting with simple steps before tackling bigger things
Using/maintaining community halls as social centres more effectively
Personal growth through social involvement
Helping communities help themselves/encouraging community self-reliance
Setting targets/measuring outcomes
Process driven from bottom up
Using the Net & other technology to connect to others
Using non-threatening messages to promote change
Dealing with anxiety, stress, grieving
Co-operation and sharing skills
Network expertise
Developing, maintaining and sharing contacts

Some of our topics are a bit thinly populated. I'm sure health is a much bigger issue, but we were missing the crucial people who could have contributed there. But this is just the beginning and over the next year or so we will expand our contacts and refine our list. We will use the list to develop action plans which we'll be able to pass on to the areas of the community who need to see them.

I was happy to see how so many people are anxious to get their teeth into something real and it takes away the feeling of isolation which I've been feeling for a long time in relation to my vision of the unfolding events. Onward and upward!

Our Transition Town (Corner Inlet area, in our case!) film night

We're having our next meeting this coming Thursday (details here). I'm rather looking forward to it and feel that we might actually do some good! I'm not sure how many will come but I think some interest has been ignited. There seem to be new people popping up out of the woodwork.

I'm very fond of our little town and have seen enough of the world to appreciate its subtle but real virtues. Hardly any crime, hardly any bad vibes! People who say hello in the street to you every day, even though you know they think you're a weirdo. But I'm aware how fragile this peace is, and how in many ways we lie in the hands of an indifferent fate, which with the turn of circumstance in the greater World could ruin all this tomorrow. That's what I think is worth fighting to prevent.

Max Keiser kicks ass!

Max calls the bankers what they are: thieves.