“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.” – Walden, Henry David Thoreau

 

Keith Wiltshire (Aged 76, retired teacher who taught in Malaysia, the United Kingdom & Singapore; resides in Bristol, UK):

"Poverty. Insufficiency of any or all of these: food, clothing, housing, health, companionship.

Abundance. Adequate amounts of all of the above.

Why is there poverty? Lack of imagination by the wealthy. SELFISHNESS (Refusal to love your global neighbour as yourself) and the sad fact that as the planet is depleted by the wealthy who are the major cause of global warming it will be the poor who suffer most from the collapse of systems which now seems inevitable.

[Just remembered: Keith had taught me English literature at an elite junior college which academically had an intensively competitive environment. Before I left he autographed a text he taught, Gulliver's Travels, and in it drew his Oxford college crest and his own motto beneath -- labore nihil delectat ("to do nothing delights me"). I still have that copy of Swift somewhere.

And from a group email sent out by him] --

Our Garden

I have been stimulated to write this to all of you by Sanjay Perera's questionnaire about poverty & affluence [abundance] - & the undeniable fact that although our income is too low to have to pay Income Tax, we are nevertheless affluent.

It has become a custom for us to hold a garden party at midsummer (which is also our wedding anniversary) so for those who have not yet attended such an event I intend to describe our back garden, where a good deal of our time is spent.

It faces due south, is about 100 yards long & 30 wide. There are two plum trees, one yellow, one red, which are as old as the house (and us), situated near the border fence, one half-way along, the other overshadowing the patio which is just outside the French windows of the house. In the centre is a magnolia tree which we have just reduced to its size when we moved in ten years ago, thus allowing more light into the garden. I have recently dug 3 new beds formerly under its (admittedly beautiful) shade.

Our garden philosophy is that anything can grow wherever it wishes unless there is a good reason why it should not - there are therefore plenty of buttercups & daisies sprinkled over the grassy area immediately beyond the patio with flowers springing up among the vegetables & various Spring flowers (daffodils, primulas, violets) under what remains of the magnolia. There are also still 2 bay trees, & 2 apple trees (one cookers, one eaters) & a sprawling tree at the end of the garden just before the laurel hedge which separates us from the 1970s houses which were erected just beyond the line of the original Roman Road from the port of Abonae (at the bottom of the hill) & Bath.

There are easily movable chairs & benches and grassy paths between the vegetable beds which are sometimes guarded, as at present by four-foot tall foxgloves with streams of tiny florets (blue, white, purple, pink) inhabited by honey-bees which are having a revival this year after years of decline in the country. The pink of camelia bushes is now over - as are the magnolia & weigelia (3 more sizable bushes), & the peonies. (There are many other colourful flowers here & there but only the Head Gardener knows the names & how to spell them!)

We have 4 compost bins into which we tip our grass cuttings, kitchen waste etc. for worms to turn into magnificent soil improver after a few months. These are all along the western edge of the garden & between them, clinging to the fence are blackberry bushes. In the middle of the southern sector of the garden are soft fruits: gooseberries, raspberries, redcurrants, loganberries (all of which are also represented in our store cupboard full of jam jars filled by Pauline last year - as well as a few remaining in our freezer). You will have gathered that, as far as possible we try to feed ourselves but are somewhat handicapped by our inability to grow rice or bananas, though we do have plenty of potato & cabbage beds & rows of beans, peas, garlic scattered among the nigella (blue flowers known colloquially as 'love in the mist").

This year's party is for the local Green Party to reflect on their election results (we only have one MP - but the Labour Party started with one, and we held our City Council seat with a different candidate). Many people told me that they would like to vote Green but would have to vote LibDem [Liberal Democrat] to keep the Tories out - so much for tactical voting!

P.S. Further reading: The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry a Kentucky farmer & poet; also this poem by Louis Macneice written just before the 2nd World War started:

THE SUNLIGHT ON THE GARDEN

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying.

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too

For sunlight on the garden.”

To end, Thoreau's journals have some interesting stuff as in an entry on Oct. 4, 1851:

“...Minot is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer – who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life – that I know. He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labor, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking for a sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him. He has not too much land to trouble him, -- too much work to do...but simply to amuse himself and live. He cares not so much to raise a large crop as to do his work well. He knows every pin and every nail in his barn. If another linter is to be floored, he lets no hired man rob him of that amusement, but he goes slowly to the woods and, at his leisure, selects a pitch pine tree, cuts it, and hauls it or gets it hauled to the mill; and so he knows the history of his barn floor.”

Then on Oct. 6, 1851:

“To Fair Haven Pond by boat, the moon four-fifths full, not a cloud in the sky: paddling all the way. In the middle of the pond we tried the echo. As we paddled down the stream with our backs to the moon, we saw the reflection of every wood and hill on both sides distinctly. These answering reflections – shadow to substance – impress the voyager with a sense of harmony and symmetry, as when you fold a blotted paper and produce a regular figure, -- a dualism which nature loves. What you commonly see is but half. Home at ten.”

[After first click on video, click it second time at link "Watch on Youtube". For those who have the patience: try at some stage to find a quiet time, close your eyes, and focus on just listening to the audio of the video.]

hi folks,

Part of changing mindsets of people for the better is to change the way the economy works, and how we view and live in it.

We can do this when each of us does our part in spreading some form of good work.

There are new ways to measure and view economic growth beyond GDP. What's missing are things like GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) and even GNH (Gross National Happiness).

This is not to say that GDP does not have its uses. But it is a highly inaccurate and misleading way to capture growth and success in an economy.

A GDP valuation includes all money generated by a country including for eg, the cost of a war, car accidents, oil spillage etc.

This means that rather than reflect what is a 'plus' in the ledger, the GDP includes all 'minuses' as well (ie, money lost and spent on wasteful and harmful activites).

For eg, if you have your own firm and you factor in all the money you earn at the end of the month. Then you minus all the debits you have from it, like maintenance costs, cost of education and food for your children etc,

Whatever's then left from your earnings is your profit. That's common sense.

But a GDP, believe it or not, takes all your earnings and expenditure including your minuses and rolls that up to a grand figure and says thats what an economy has made. It's counterintuitive because you shouldn't add your losses as growth, but economies do that. Which is why most growth indicators are misleading.

Expenditure is not equal to growth. Growth is much more than dollars spent/generated.

That is why you can have GDP growth but unemployment/or marginal employment (because you can grow a GDP by expensive govt projects which is not the same as getting people decent jobs that allow them to lead a decent life).

Web searches on this and on "Green Economy" will help put many of these things in context. Many of these ideas can also be gleaned from Economia by Geoff Davies and The Economics of Happiness by Mark Anielski

Check out: http://www.anielski.com/

Countries like Bhutan use the GNH, and local and even the federal govt. in Canada now use GPIs.

The GPI captures the quality of life. That is what economies are really about.

How it is done is basically to have a plus and debit system for an economy and you do the right thing by subtracting the negative effects of losses to the economy and their negative impact: like building more cars, and creating larger roads to contain them, or demolishing green spaces and community areas for larger shopping malls and more $ banks, or a greater armament industry.

The GPI can be used together with the current GDP as a better and fair basis of capturing economic growth.

One of the measurements used in GPI, and not in GDP calculations, are activities that are not given monetary value but are nonetheless of great value.

For eg, a value is given to what a stay home parent contributes, to social and volunteer workers' contributions, to social and community contributions by companies, or activities by civil and civic society.

If a person takes time off work to look after an ailing parent or family member, or even a good friend, this may be added or captured by GPI.

This is part of the pluses added to the GPI calculation.

If a society becomes less gracious due to rapid urbanisation and harmful economic competition, this would be captured as a minus under GPI.

Studies have shown that since the end of WW2, while the GDP has grown greatly in the US (for instance) its GPI has eroded drastically.

Which explains why material wealth doesn't equate in many people's view to genuine wealth and what gives meaning to their lives.

And on the innovative use of cooperatives in this scheme of things check out Emilia-Romagna in Italy which also produces apart from fine food, wine, the automative industries of Ferrari, Ducati, Lamborghini, and Maserati (perhaps they might go Green...?).

Part of the need for a new economy is due to the failure, increasingly evident, of our current debt based monetary system that is now reeling from corporate malfeasance, priorities given to the banking industry and a near collapse of financial loan institutions: the fallout of which the US and many other countries are starting to face now.

Witness the recent desperate rate cuts by the US Fed and the buying of stakes by Singapore's sovereign wealth funds into international banking organisations -- all a result of a failing debt based economic system.

This impacts all of us: that's why mainly middle class people find that they all have to work harder, longer, get more depressed and stressed and still find that the genuinely rich get only richer, as everyone else slides into more debt, poverty and frustration.

Never mind the lower income groups who are desperately trying to find just breathing space.

The imbalance of things, and unacceptable level of inequity that the current debt based economic system generates is ruining our quality of life.

Part of this has to do with the monetary system we have: eg, a debt based system in which banks issue paper money based quite literally on nothing. They actually do create money out of thin air.

The monetary system of debts and interest rates only create the economic slavery that all hard working people (and increasingly unemployed people) find themselves in.

One of the things we need are interest free banks.

Check out: Anielski Report

Another way is to also start a split barter system where money is used but in a limited form. These ideas can be read up on and I believe Emilia-Romagna uses some form of this system.

Many thanks for your time.