Why This Crisis May Be Our Best Chance to Build a New Economy — YES! Magazine

The following article by David Karten was published in Yes Magazine during the Summer of 2009.  He outlines a number of steps we can take to re-vitalize our economy.

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via Why This Crisis May Be Our Best Chance to Build a New Economy — YES! Magazine.

Thankful

Here in New England it is Thanksgiving.  The landscape has settled in to shades of brown and the trees are mostly bare now, their branches turned in against the coming cold.  The nation also seems settled into itself.  Like the trees we turn inward – mindful of the winter in our future but grateful for today.

Thanksgiving for me represents a time that Americans strive to become the people they always intended to be — thrifty, careful of family, thoughtful about the needs of tomorrow.  At once reflective and hopeful, our past, our present, and our future surround us at the family table.

The boundaries of our lives are most clearly etched at that table—each family tradition tied to the history of the people who came here before us, our past inescapable in the herbs and spices we use to flavor our favorite dishes and the contours of the faces around the table. Each child new to the table is gently guided through the rituals, and those family members who are no longer with us are collectively remembered – and their loss is individually and acutely mourned.  

Many critics of our culture point to the Christmas holidays as the ultimate example of our nation’s excess- a criticism I endorse. However, to view our culture through this lens alone is to misunderstand the great goodness that still remains in the people of this country and is evidenced by the utter failure of repeated attempts to commercialize this most sacred of American traditions. Even the Happy Thanksgiving cards languish on the shelves and the intrusion of Christmas merchandising before Thanksgiving is rightly regarded as an affront to the dignity of our nation.  The “tradition” of shopping the day after Thanksgiving, that invention of desperate retailers—is still powerless to interfere with Thanksgiving day itself, our most treasured of holidays.  

We are a nation of diverse origins, but for this one day we come together in a simple but profound act of thanks givings and communal feasting—unscripted by any force outside of our own family traditions. Baked Italian pasta dishes, fragrant Indian rice,  black bread, brown bread, corn bread and every type of bean imaginable—all are present on tables throughout this great nation. 

But Thanksgiving isn’t about the turkey or any one of the various dishes we have inherited from our immigrant roots. It is about us- about who we are — as mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, sons and daughters. It is about how well we have nourished our relationships over the years, whether we have honored the memories and the traditions of those who have come before us, and how much care we have afforded those who will come after us.

It is a day for reflection, for tolerance, and sometimes it is a day for forgiveness.  It is the essence of what it means to be an American – grateful for today and hopeful for tomorrow. Because no matter how long we have been here, no matter how many oceans distant we have traveled from our ancestors, no matter the depth or origin of our faith … whether we give thanks to God or are simply thankful, on this one day we strive to express the very best of ourselves and by so doing we help to restore the best of our American dreams.

Elizabeth Conrad

Thanksgiving 2009

 

The Way We Live Now: Part One- The Loss of Longing

When he was little my youngest son used to enjoy taking out my jewelry.  He would carefully try on each piece in turn, closely studying his appearance in the mirror before he would remove one item and exchange it for another.   This was an activity that could amuse him for 30 minutes or more– precious down time for me back in those exhausted days.  I was happy to admire his various selections and tell him the story behind this or that trinket.  The small pearl ring that belonged to my mother, the garnet set in gold that my husband chose for my 30th birthday, the string of rough southwestern turquoise stones given to me by my Aunt after one of her many journeys. Sometimes he would put on all of it — every single piece. Layered and draped in metal and stones he would whirl around the room like some exotic creature, intoxicated by the possession, however fleeting, of imagined riches. 

These things are precious, but only to me and only because of the way they came to me – through the hands of people I love.  Their value without this context is next to nothing– a handful of silver bangles, twists of beads, a few gold rings — that’s all.  But for my son it all glittered with the white heat of Want and the promise of Someday.  So too does desire burn when we allow ourselves to test drive a new car or try out a new lap top computer.  

As I think about my relationship to the things have owned, I remember that feeling of Want and how intensely I would long for something.  Many of us who were young before our homes became overstuffed with disposable treasures will remember the sense of pure delight when we saved enough money to acquire a small luxury.  These things were usually imported, but back then they were truly special – french soaps and perfumes, a lovely silk kimono from China, leather boots from Italy that were so buttery soft you would lift the box to touch them again and again on the way home…. 

They were special because they were rare and expensive and they delivered exactly what was promised- soap that lathered thick and creamy, boots that fit perfectly and never pinched, the kimono that was just the right weight to drape beautifully. We saved for these things and treasured them – not just because of their scarcity but also because of our emotional involvement with the waiting and the many small sacrifices that were required to buy them.  

I also recall the S & H Green Stamps that my mother would collect at the grocery, hoping that eventually she would have enough stamps to order something special from the catalog. Periodically she would pull out an old card table we had along with a bowl of water and a sponge.  Then we would stack the blank books alongside the sheets of stamps and paste them into the pages until the books were full, stiff with paste and stamps but magical in their ability to prompt the Want and the Someday dreams about what we could buy.  Or, the department store catalogs that arrived each year, thick with promise and hope for ordinary people like us.  We spent many evenings when I was a child looking through those catalogs and dreaming about everyday things– new bath towels, drapes for the living room, an electric fan. 

It was only later, as young adult, that I learned from more affluent peers that those catalogs of my childhood were to be disavowed. I was introduced to “better” stores and, like so many of my generation, I bought into the myth that feeding the Want didn’t have to wait for Someday – that More was Better.  All of this occurred during a time when an unprecedented volume of goods became available at ever lower prices. The items we used to consider “luxuries” became commonplace, and while the constant pressure to lower prices did affect quality, we bought and we bought and we bought some more.  All of us — stuffing our houses and stifling our children’s desires with more and more and more of whatever it was we wanted.

Throughout this spending and consuming binge, it never occurred to us that longing is a necessary element in a healthy relationship with our possessions.  If we don’t long for things, wait for them, and save for them, then eventually we come to value what we have less and less. 

Like the jaded traveler who hops a plane to Paris every time she wants new clothes or the person who eats dessert too soon after dinner, the effect of shortening the period of time between Want and Someday is to reduce the pleasure we derive from even our most important possessions.  In this way we further shorten the cycle, each time seeking pleasure in acquisition that becomes increasingly elusive.  Like the wild dance of my son, we wrap ourselves in “luxuries” that are neither scarce nor expensive, nor even meaningful. In the aggregate they serve only to deaden our appreciation for our extraordinary good fortune–that we have such abundance we must learn to push ourselves away from the table.

Elizabeth Conrad

Blueberry Memories

Yesterday we went blueberry picking at our local orchard. The day was New England perfect– the sun bright and hot, tempered by a dry cool breeze– and the sky was that deep, intense blue that still takes my breath away – even after all these years.  The berries were so plentiful they hung like bunches of small grapes at the end of drooping branches, tucked under glossy green leaves. In less than an hour we had each picked plenty — more than enough to make jam and freeze whole for a mid-winter treat.  But it isn’t the berries that I will remember– it is the sensation of the warm sun on my back, the sound of aimless chatter around me, the feel of each small fruit as it rolls off its branch and into my palm, and the look of concentration on my son’s small face as he works quietly in his systematic way to fill his bucket. 

Mostly though, picking blueberries brings back a flood of memories – each framed by the same intense New England sky, the same dry breeze, the same sense of deep gratitude for the moment. My grandmother, when she was still alert and able to travel to Maine, picking berries at a high bush berry farm and grinning a blue and unrepentant smile- clearly relishing the eating as much as the picking.  And then, many years later, an enchanted turn down a long gravel road in the North Woods that took us into a plantation of tall pines with a sea of blueberries beneath.  Our children tumbled out of the car and ran into the fragrant cushion of moss and blueberries, and we stayed in that place for a very long time- marveling at the slanted light as it filtered through the high tree tops, the smell of pine, the crazy sweet taste of wild blueberries, and the sound of our boys playing in the wood.  And finally, the many, many nights we read “Blueberries for Sal”  to our boys when they were very young – a favorite story for them both even though we were separated by several eras from Robert McCloskey’s simpler time.  I remember how intently I would study the end pages of the book, fascinated by the illustration of a 1940′s kitchen and the rendering of Sal’s mother, her obvious youth, the jars and rubber seals set out for canning on the table, and the calendar set forever to August in Maine.  

The experience of being present, truly present and in the moment, is so rare and so precious that when you  have it you must fix it forever in your mind.  Each of these memories are forever mine, inseparable from this beautiful place we call home, fixed in time, and brought alive with a handful of berries.

The Age of Hyper-Individualism – Is the End in Sight?

In “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future” (Holt Paperbacks, 2007) author Bill McKibben describes the modern American personality as increasingly hyper-individualistic.   This uniquely American state of mind is, perhaps, the natural evolution of our society– founded as it were by strong-willed people who left the confines of their small villages and pre-destined futures to find their place in the New World– independent thinkers, reformers, tamers of the wilderness — many of them newly armed with basic literacy and therefore direct access to new ideas— all of this with the engines of the industrial revolution already rumbling in the not too distant future.   McKibben notes that while our liberation from great deprivation has brought us nearly unfathomable benefits (who among us would really choose to live as we did 300 years ago– cold half the time, hungry most of the time, dirty, sick, and deeply and grieving  for the loss of one precious child after another…)  the extent of this liberation has now exceeded our ability as humans to balance opportunity with responsibility. Our houses have doubled in size over the last 30 years and many of us have both witnessed and participated in creating the ”new normal” for affluent suburban lifestyles– 2 acre minimum lot size, 3000 sq. ft. minimum house size, 3 car garages and “trophy kitchens” that are larger than the total amount of shared common space that existed in most of our grandparents  homes. We leave our homes daily and travel far for long days at work and we delegate both the care of our lawns and our children to strangers. Few of us know our neighbors any more–and we don’t have time to attend the annual town budget meetings.  McKibben writes “what ties are there left to cut?  We change religions, spouses, towns, professions with ease. Our affluence isolates us ever more.  We are not just individualists: we are hyper-individualists such as the world has never known” (page 96).  

The more money we have the less we give of ourselves to our community – and it shows.  Outside of our carefully framed suburban view the overall quality of American schools has declined to the extent that we significantly lag other developed nations, our overall health status ranks below most other developed nations, and we have the world’s highest proportion of our population in prison.  

Now that we have it all are we any happier?  Not according to a growing body of research.  McKibben references several studies– one conducted annually by the National Opinion Research Council since WWII which asks people whether whether they are–overall– very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy.  Our “very happy” period reached its peak in the 1950′s and has declined ever since (McGibben, page 45).  We know, from numerous studies, that once our basic needs are met– money doesn’t buy happiness.  

” In fact, past the point of basic needs being met, the “satisfaction “data scramble in mind-bending ways. A sampling of Forbes magazine’s “richest Americans” has happiness scores identical with those of the Pennsylvania Amish and only  a whisker above those of the Swedes, not to mention Masai tribesmen.  The “life satisfaction” of pavement dwellers- that is homeless people — in Calcutta was among the lowest recorded, but it almost doubled when they moved into a slum, at which point they were basically as saisfied with their lives as a sample of college students drawn from forty-seven nations. (McKibben, page 42.) 

So where has this all left us?  Mr. McKibben’s book was published in 2007 – before the horrific financial market meltdown that started in early 2008 and is still in process– like a slow motion crash scene.  Our houses have declined in value by an average of 20%, our retirement savings by 30%, and our jobless numbers have doubled over that time.  And now, more than ever before, the true threat of climate change is becoming very clear. The excesses of the “new gilded age” have become excruciatingly visible to all but those who were most invested in its continuance.  It is hard these days to even remember the sense of self-satisfaction that came with knowing your house was making you rich while you slept.  And those feelings of affluence led us to make many daily decision about how we spent our time and our money that, in retrospect, lacked the mature perspective a falling net worth provides.  Now frugal is “in” and excessive consumption is “out.”  We have a new president and a new state of mind. We are planting gardens and recycling again.  Enrollment in volunteer programs is up. One of our local high schools had a “prom dress exchange” — apparently someone finally figured out that it was wasteful to spend hundreds on dress that will only be worn once.  And well-attended Green Living events have begun to appear throughout New England which have as their focus sustainable living, re-localization, alternative energy and re-purposing our lives.  These are good signs that America may finally be waking up to the realization that our best hope for the future is in firm realization that both our human and our natural resources are gifts to be preserved for the benefit of our society, not commodities to be extracted and spent.

Simplicity

Today we attended a church service at the invitation of a young couple to witness the baptism of their baby daughter.  The church is an old Congregationalist church, and like so many of its kind in New England it sits perched on a hill in our little village — white clapboards, double front doors, small entry, and then through to the sanctuary– beautiful in its spare simplicity.  The service was a direct and straight forward affair in the manner of our region.  No appetite for theater here– just one man at the front, the choir on the upper balcony at the back, and a small but vigorous congregation.  A friend’s sister-in-law sits behind us and a neighboring family in front. It turns out that the fellow who keeps sheep up the road has a fine clear voice and the woman who lives two houses down from him directs the choir through a suprisingly complex and lovely piece of music.  A tradition of announcements before the service reveals several relatives ailing, two anniversaries, an invitation to help cook chicken pies, and an exhortation to serve the homeless poor in our closest city — 20 miles and many layers of comfort away.  The baby is baptized and brought round to be introduced to the congregation, and afterward we all sing a familiar hymn.  

This small congregation is a representation of our community– farmers and lawyers, secretaries and engineers, a television producer, a carpenter, a teacher, and a business owner.  And whether your faith is firm or subject to doubt, there is no question about the solidity of those dark pews, the plank floors, and the plain wooden wainscoting that lines the perimeter of the church.  So many baptisms, announcements, weddings, funerals, and prayers have preceded us on this day, and I am unexpectedly touched to the core– deeply thankful for the connection that links me to all of these people and to to all of those who came before them.  These people are earnest and well intentioned.  They don’t sit on the outside of life and practice irony.  They show up and make an effort.  They cook pies and feed the homeless.  They garden and tend their children and worry about the future.  They make an effort to be present and accounted for.  That is the real blessing that I witnessed today– the gift of community, the focus of shared commitment, and the sound of a familiar hymn– sung by voices I never knew were so lovely.

Relocalization — A strategy for our times.

I have been leafing through the ” Solar Living Source Book” (13th edition written and edited by John Schaeffer, published by Gaiam Real Goods, Hopland CA, 2008) and the very first chapter is about relocalization as a strategy to combat climate change.  Since the name of this blog is The New England Localist I was most interested to read Mr. Shaeffer’s take on this mini-movement.  He suggests that a new  framework for thinking about our current economic system can be found in a model called Ecological Economics, where the activity of the human economy is placed in appropriate and therefore limited scale as one of many interdependent subsets of the Earth’s systems.  The University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics (www.uvm.edu/giee ) offers extensive material on this concept. Shaeffer notes that while relocalization is a relatively new term, the concept should be  familiar to those of us who have been following the recent growth in the the local food movement.

Relocalization is about scaling back the impact that our human economy has had on our planet. When our communities once again become self supporting — relying on local people and local resources to produce our food and our products — we decrease our demands on the environment by reducing our reliance on resource intensive transportation and distribution networks.  However, relocalization must also be understood as a core strategy to regain our economic independence and revitalize our communities. 

When we reclaim responsibility for producing the food and other products we need for everyday life, we also reclaim our local economy and our community.    

Our current economic model logically assumes that the aggregation of production into specialized centers– now occurring on a global scale-will result in the the lowest cost possible for the food we consume and the products we use.  This model further assumes that a lower cost of living leads to a greater quality of life for all people but most especially for those from the lowest income levels in our society. This theory essentially reduces the complex efforts of human beings into inputs and outputs, without regard for our human social needs.

While it is true that an income sufficient to meet our basic physical needs is important to overall life satisfaction, it has also been demonstrated that 

overall satisfaction with life does not improve with more money once our basic needs are met. What does improve our overall happiness are our connections with each other, a feeling of purpose, of being needed, and of having a clear role in our community.  

By this measure our overall well-being has not been positively influenced by improvements to our standard of living over these past 50 years or more.  We now know that the myth that affluence necessarily leads to happiness has led many of us to make choices about our lives that require an ever increasing income to maintain pace with an ever increasing “standard” of living.   

Some of us are old enough to remember the “back to the land” movement of the 60′s and 70′s. We have a few neighbors near our property in Maine that are still living this way– close to the ground and out of the mainstream.  But most of us who subscribed to Mother back in those days had only an idealized view of that life.  We dreamed the fantasy and bought the magazines, but in the end we had little real intent of giving up the comforts that a house in the suburbs and a regular paycheck offered.   Now that we have begun to understand more fully the consequences of our consumer culture, we better understand the prescience of our young selves.  That homesteading fantasy represented an intuitive understanding of the importance of our roots and the role true interdependence with the land and the immediate surrounding community has on our core well-being.