Meditation is not an escape from life; quite the contrary. The total understanding of the whole complex process of living from day to day with all its variations, pressures and strains is part of meditation. To observe what we are doing, our thoughts, our deep inward activities, without any distortion, is part of this meditation. It is distortion that brings conflict in life. It is distortion that makes for separation, brutality and violence. It is distortion that brings about aggression, competition and the continuous craving for pleasure. It is distortion that prevents the mind from seeing exactly ‘what is’. To observe without distortion, not only the external happenings but the inward movement of thought and motives, is part of meditation. There is distortion when there is the observer. The observer is the whole content of consciousness. It is this content that divides. This content is the factor of distortion because it is conditioned. This conditioning is belief, opinion, personal attitudes and temperament. Meditation is the understanding of all this, for if this
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Meditation is not an escape from life; quite the contrary. The total understanding of the whole complex process of living from day to day with all its variations, pressures and strains is part of meditation. To observe what we are doing, our thoughts, our deep inward activities, without any distortion, is part of this meditation. It is distortion that brings conflict in life. It is distortion that makes for separation, brutality and violence. It is distortion that brings about aggression, competition and the continuous craving for pleasure. It is distortion that prevents the mind from seeing exactly ‘what is’. To observe without distortion, not only the external happenings but the inward movement of thought and motives, is part of meditation. There is distortion when there is the observer. The observer is the whole content of consciousness. It is this content that divides. This content is the factor of distortion because it is conditioned. This conditioning is belief, opinion, personal attitudes and temperament. Meditation is the understanding of all this, for if this is not completely understood, distortion will remain, and so illusion. It is the distorted mind that gets caught in the many varieties of pleasurable happenings and entertainments, whether they are religious or secular. Meditation is to observe this fact of distortion and all its complicated ramifications.
Ever needed to talk about your #MentalHealth but not sure you can walk through that door* and sit with a group of strangers? Why not take this chance to have a short 30min walk to meet some of the lads outside. Volunteers and some regular attendees will be there so you can get a few perspectives on the first visit. And they won't be strangers.No judgement or forced advice
*There's an online meeting if you can't travel to a venue on a Monday at 7pm #AndysmanClub
Because of the times you’ve recommended this to me. I went looking for something similar near here. Going to try this out next week. toughenoughtocare.help
@BenCotterill Well done. Very pleased you were open to looking. And touched you said so so I know this is worth it (even though I don't need confirmation it's still heart warming) There also the talkclub that meet online and in groups first and third Wednesday of the month Try them all and go with the one or combo that suit you
One has to learn the art of listening, the art of seeing and the art of learning. Listening is not to interpret what you hear according to your own accustomed, easy ways, but rather to try to find out not only what the speaker is saying, but also to listen to your own thoughts, emotions and reactions – not try to change them, not try to suppress them, but merely watch them. So, listening plays an important part if you are willing and serious enough to listen very attentively, patiently and quietly. Also there is the art of seeing, not only with your eyes, with the optic responses, but also to see beyond the words, to read between the lines, as it were, to see what lies behind those words, because the words are not the actuality. A description of a mountain is not the mountain. The flowing river, with all its vitality and volume of water behind it, that river, the word ‘river’ is not that which is alive. So one has to observe very acutely, with great care, attentively.
From The Magnitude of the Mind
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One has to learn the art of listening, the art of seeing and the art of learning. Listening is not to interpret what you hear according to your own accustomed, easy ways, but rather to try to find out not only what the speaker is saying, but also to listen to your own thoughts, emotions and reactions – not try to change them, not try to suppress them, but merely watch them. So, listening plays an important part if you are willing and serious enough to listen very attentively, patiently and quietly. Also there is the art of seeing, not only with your eyes, with the optic responses, but also to see beyond the words, to read between the lines, as it were, to see what lies behind those words, because the words are not the actuality. A description of a mountain is not the mountain. The flowing river, with all its vitality and volume of water behind it, that river, the word ‘river’ is not that which is alive. So one has to observe very acutely, with great care, attentively.
El Niño is here, which means it's time for me to dust off and refine my old collection of ENSO-related climate visualizations. Check out how much sea surface temperatures have already warmed this year across the equatorial tropical Pacific. Wow!
All data are referenced at My visualizations: Arctic Climate Seasonality and Variability Arctic Sea Ice Extent and Concentration Arctic Sea Ice Volume and Thickness Arctic Temperatures Antarctic Se…
Meanwhile, sea surface temperatures across the wider tropical Pacific have set new daily record high levels since April, including a new *all-time* record for this region. 🔥
May 2026 was the second-warmest May globally. Europe experienced its seventh-warmest May and its third warmest spring, with an unusually early and intense heatwave affecting western Europe towards the end of May.
Meanwhile, sea surface temperatures across the wider tropical Pacific have set new daily record high levels since April, including a new *all-time* record for this region. 🔥
May 2026 was the second-warmest May globally. Europe experienced its seventh-warmest May and its third warmest spring, with an unusually early and intense heatwave affecting western Europe towards the end of May.
When we look to carbon emissions along all the COP meetings, yes, we must be very afraid. It not only was inefficient, but also it was a waste of public money.
Definition: 1. Life out of balance. 2. Life of moral corruption and turmoil. 3. Crazy life. 4. Life in turmoil.5. A state of life that calls for another way of living.
Origin: Hopi. According to Hopi Dictionary: Hopìikwa Lavàytutuveni, the prefix koyaanis means “corrupted” or “chaotic”, and the word qatsi means “life” or “existence”, literally translating koyaanisqatsi as “chaotic life”.
A serious mind has to be aware of conflict. I mean by being aware, to observe, to listen. Listening is an art. Really, it is quite an extraordinary art to listen to a sound. I do not know if you have ever listened to a sound – the sound of a bird in a tree, or the distant hoot of the horn of a car. By listening, not by judging, not by identifying that particular noise with a particular bird or car, or a particular radio in the next house, but merely by listening, you will see, if you so listen, how astonishingly sensitive you become. Your mind becomes astonishingly alert if you merely listen – not interpreting what you hear, not trying to translate it, not identifying what you hear with what you already know; all these prevent you from listening. But if you merely listen – listen to your thoughts, listen to your demands, to the despair of your being, you will see your mind becomes astonishingly clear. And only a very clear mind, a healthy mind that is sane, rational, logical, that has no conflict, conscious or unconscious – only such a mind can proceed to d
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A serious mind has to be aware of conflict. I mean by being aware, to observe, to listen. Listening is an art. Really, it is quite an extraordinary art to listen to a sound. I do not know if you have ever listened to a sound – the sound of a bird in a tree, or the distant hoot of the horn of a car. By listening, not by judging, not by identifying that particular noise with a particular bird or car, or a particular radio in the next house, but merely by listening, you will see, if you so listen, how astonishingly sensitive you become. Your mind becomes astonishingly alert if you merely listen – not interpreting what you hear, not trying to translate it, not identifying what you hear with what you already know; all these prevent you from listening. But if you merely listen – listen to your thoughts, listen to your demands, to the despair of your being, you will see your mind becomes astonishingly clear. And only a very clear mind, a healthy mind that is sane, rational, logical, that has no conflict, conscious or unconscious – only such a mind can proceed to discover for itself if there is a reality. It is only such a mind that is a religious mind. And it is only such a mind that can solve the problems of this world.
does not depend on capacity. It is not a technique that you develop, cultivate and increase through time, through constant sharpening. This awareness of oneself can be tested in the action of relationship; it can be tested in the way we talk, the way we behave. Watch yourself without any identification, without any comparison, without any condemnation – just watch – and you will see an extraordinary thing taking place. You not only put an end to an activity which is unconscious, but, further, you are aware of the motives of that action, without inquiry, without digging into it.
To understand, there must be self-awareness, for out of self-awareness there is self-knowledge. There is no self-knowledge without meditation, and meditation is not possible without self-knowledge. Self-knowledge comes through alert watchfulness of all our thoughts-feelings; this awareness is dulled if there is identification. Realising that we do identify and so prevent understanding, we must perceive the necessity of kindly, tolerant detachment, suspending judgement. We must observe the conflicts of our thoughts-feelings, their contradictions, their appetites, their hidden pursuits. If we attempt to do this earnestly and alertly all day, we will find that we naturally need, without any artificial enforcement, periods of intense self-awareness and self-observation during the day. Out this self-knowledge, right thinking comes. Meditation is to free thought-feeling so that it can discover, for that which is discovered, being truth, is liberating and creative. When there is the cessation of becoming, of craving in its many forms, there is the falling away of dualism – the
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To understand, there must be self-awareness, for out of self-awareness there is self-knowledge. There is no self-knowledge without meditation, and meditation is not possible without self-knowledge. Self-knowledge comes through alert watchfulness of all our thoughts-feelings; this awareness is dulled if there is identification. Realising that we do identify and so prevent understanding, we must perceive the necessity of kindly, tolerant detachment, suspending judgement. We must observe the conflicts of our thoughts-feelings, their contradictions, their appetites, their hidden pursuits. If we attempt to do this earnestly and alertly all day, we will find that we naturally need, without any artificial enforcement, periods of intense self-awareness and self-observation during the day. Out this self-knowledge, right thinking comes. Meditation is to free thought-feeling so that it can discover, for that which is discovered, being truth, is liberating and creative. When there is the cessation of becoming, of craving in its many forms, there is the falling away of dualism – the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’, the one who prays and that which is prayed to. And then we shall experience true being. Our happiness lies in its discovery and not in the delusions of craving, however noble.
Meditation is the attention in which there is an awareness, without choice, of the movement of all things, the cawing of the crows, the electric saw ripping through the wood, the trembling of leaves, the noisy stream, a boy calling, the feelings, the motives, the thoughts chasing each other and going deeper, the awareness of total consciousness. And in this attention, time as yesterday pursuing into the space of tomorrow and the twisting and turning of consciousness, has become quiet and still. In this stillness, there is an immeasurable, not comparable movement; a movement that has no being, that is the essence of bliss and death and life; a movement that cannot be followed, for it leaves no path, and because it is still, motionless, it is the essence of all motion.
@FranceskaMann Even more depressing, they will die never knowing that the most impactful outcomes of their efforts were to strengthen the fascists they "protested"
exactly. Organizing on a Nazi platform gives the Nazi all your moves and strengthens the Nazis platform. It also loads the guns they're going to use to shoot you in the face.
Our local indivisible has a Facebook page and they take photos of people at their meetings then they post the photos to Facebook. Facebook runs facial recognition software. They've doxed every person who attends their meetings. They did this after I expressed privacy concerns about Facebook. They didn't ask permission. I stopped attending their meetings. We all lose.
@FranceskaMann Yup. It's idiotic, and there are so many of them. You just have to pathetically beg them to stop as you watch them plummet full speed off a cliff, with your ankle tied to the same endless, tortuous knotted line that for better or worse connects us all.
Sea surface temperatures are already surging to record high levels for this time of year in key El Niño monitoring areas.
➡️ Sign up for our next monthly state of the climate webinar to learn more: climatecentral-org.zoom.us/web…. We'll also be talking about the hurricane season outlook.
But the economy! We need to focus on the economy! Warm temperatures? Just face your AC towards outside to cool the air. That helps the oil industry *and* cools the planet along with the neighbouring datacenter. So much winning.
El Niño is here (cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/ana…), and it's going to be a highly impactful event! We'll cover what this means in our briefing early next week. Sign up above in my previous post!
… Along with China submerging data centers in the ocean so they stay cool. Some zillionaires are going to argue that increased storms, drought and pre-cooked seafood from a hot ocean is good for the economy.
Hey, this is kind of an informal announcement, but my budget is tight and I’m a full-time student. I figured that I’d post here that I’m looking to do some freelance work, particularly when it comes to writing. Most of what I specialize in is open source, exploring technology, how-to guides, interviews, and media production. I also have experience with brand voice, and wouldn’t mind helping with community engagement.
This is Sean Tilley's personal website. Sean is a Fediverse veteran who has been involved in the open source and gamedev communities for over 16 years.
If you are inquiring into what meditation is, then the formulas, the repetitions, the mantras, the various things that you do must be put aside, and the mind must be entirely quiet. Either what you are doing now is meditation, or it is not. If it is meditation, there is no problem. But to find out if what you are doing is meditation, you must be free to look at it, to question it; you cannot merely accept it. To inquire into what meditation is, surely that freedom is the first necessity. So, can you be free from all your practices, from all your disciplines, from all your various conclusions and compulsions? And if you are freeing yourself from those things because you are inquiring into what meditation is, that very inquiry is meditation.
Student: “So Elon Musk is a trillionaire?” Me: “Yup.” Student: “How did he get that much money?” Me: “Well, he doesn’t really have a trillion dollars cash. He just owns a lot of stock in companies that are valued at a trillion dollars.” Student: “So those companies make huge profits?” Me: “Oh gosh no. They all lose billions of dollars a year. All of them. Huge losses.”
The Economist headline: “Gen Z Mysteriously Hates Capitalism and No One Can Figure Out Why.”
@ananas @zeenix It doesn't make sense to compare the share prices for different companies. Any company can have whatever share price it wants by issuing or buying back shares, by having stock splits or (whatever the opposite is called, I've forgotten). You need to compare the market capitalisation (share price multiplied by the number of shares). And that makes it look even more ludicrous.
Tesla's market cap is $1.506 T.
BMW's is €43 B (around $50 B).
Tesla's market valuation is around 30x that of BMW (not the 5x that the stock prices alone would imply).
A market valuation for a company is typically a combination of how well it's doing at the moment (profit) and how much people expect it to grow. BMW is probably a relatively stable company, but the price for Tesla is assuming that it will grow by a factor of about 300. Tesla sold a bit under 2M cars last year (including
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@ananas @zeenix It doesn't make sense to compare the share prices for different companies. Any company can have whatever share price it wants by issuing or buying back shares, by having stock splits or (whatever the opposite is called, I've forgotten). You need to compare the market capitalisation (share price multiplied by the number of shares). And that makes it look even more ludicrous.
Tesla's market cap is $1.506 T.
BMW's is €43 B (around $50 B).
Tesla's market valuation is around 30x that of BMW (not the 5x that the stock prices alone would imply).
A market valuation for a company is typically a combination of how well it's doing at the moment (profit) and how much people expect it to grow. BMW is probably a relatively stable company, but the price for Tesla is assuming that it will grow by a factor of about 300. Tesla sold a bit under 2M cars last year (including some slightly dodgy accounting with Musk's companies selling to each other). That's close to 2% of total car sales. So a factor of 50x growth would mean that they have 100% of the total addressable market. More than that requires the market expanding significantly or them moving into completely new markets.
This is why Tesla is referred to as a 'meme stock': the valuation has absolutely nothing to do with how much money the company is expected to be and 100% to do with the supply of greater fools.
To be precise, only the circulating or outstanding shares should be considered. When companies do stock buybacks (instead of paying taxable dividends), they're effectively reducing the outstanding shares to increase the stock price. In sum, the market value should remain the same though.
This entry was edited (Saturday, June 6, 2026, 8:50 AM)
@failedLyndonLaRouchite There are two plausible pathways to that projection coming true:
1) Elmo invents magic, conquers time and space, and personally leads/profits from humanity’s colonization of space.
2) The Us govt gives SpaceX that much money every year in exchange for a rocket that is totally going to work and definitely deliver human colonization within the next ten years and this time boy oh boy we are serious.
3) The AI bubble crashes the US economy so badly that there's hyperinflation on the US dollar and $3.4 T is roughly the cost of a small loaf of bread in 2040.
I do wonder if this is the goal for a load of the datacenter investors: buying a load of land and so on as fixed-interest bond debt and pushing inflation up so much that inflation is much higher than the interest rate so that the debt evaporates.
@failedLyndonLaRouchite SpaceX loses money because the only profitable arm is StarLink. SpaceX and X.com lose some money, and xAI loses a ton like every other AI company.
LLMs are very expensive to make and operate. All LLM companies have burned through billions trying to hook customers through subsidized pricing. Datacenters have physical world realities that software does not and bringing them online is slow. So compute hungry LLMs are getting real world limits imposed, so LLM companies are moving to usage based billing. Enterprise customers are getting a taste of what’s to come with exploding LLM costs. Learning these tools are actually not cheap.
So SpaceX hiding xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. need to IPO before the truth comes out. Their investors want a return ASAP so they don’t take huge losses when the truth is exposed. To do this they changed the rules of the Nasdaq to allow these upside down companies to be placed on the index so i
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@failedLyndonLaRouchite SpaceX loses money because the only profitable arm is StarLink. SpaceX and X.com lose some money, and xAI loses a ton like every other AI company.
LLMs are very expensive to make and operate. All LLM companies have burned through billions trying to hook customers through subsidized pricing. Datacenters have physical world realities that software does not and bringing them online is slow. So compute hungry LLMs are getting real world limits imposed, so LLM companies are moving to usage based billing. Enterprise customers are getting a taste of what’s to come with exploding LLM costs. Learning these tools are actually not cheap.
So SpaceX hiding xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. need to IPO before the truth comes out. Their investors want a return ASAP so they don’t take huge losses when the truth is exposed. To do this they changed the rules of the Nasdaq to allow these upside down companies to be placed on the index so index funds and other algorithmic buyers push the risk to the public.
The public buys and takes on high risk, early investors can cash out to a level of risk they are happy with. A handful of billionaires and new trillionaires laugh all the way to the bank because their latest confidence game worked.
Privatize profits and socialize losses at its finest.
@huntingdon as I've gotten older and been exposed to more of the world, it's become impossible to see economists as anything more than bootlickers for whichever powerful status quo needs a pseudoscientific veneer of validation this decade (the concept of "revealed preferences" is about as damning for their field as "oppositional defiant disorder" is for psychiatry).
Unfortunately, you can't really say that kind of thing at an average cocktail party without sounding like one of those people who drinks their own urine and thinks 5G puts a chip in your head. But we're slowly getting to a place of deserved skepticism for fields that have long played fast and loose with academic rigor.
Anyways, the Economist is a hilarious example of exactly the material you'd expect, from people who would name themselves "the Economist" without a hint of self-awareness or irony.
@dpflug It's not well known. I could maybe talk about it with more nuance under better conditions, but I happened to just wake up in the middle a medical incident *and* ODD doesn't deserve nuance, so I think flippant should be fine.
Imagine there was a diagnosis in the DSM5 that pathologized not accepting authority, especially the authority of psychiatrists. If you refuse any part of the treatment regimen they demand, it's further proof that you're sick and need intervention. Imagine further that black people were diagnosed at a much higher rate than white people. Okay stop imagining, that's ODD.
I have no personal skin in this specific game. I've never been diagnosed with something like that, and with my complexion, it's unlikely. But as long as it's on the books, it can be selectively enforced, and if that sounds like a tiny part of a big picture that psychiatry is an arm of the carceral state and we're just used to downplaying the cop-adjacency of the industry, you're on the money.
@dpflug Another way to say this is, "if anarchism is something you can be diagnosed with to justify indefinite involuntary psychiatric holds and non-consensual chemical lobotomies, maybe this entire industry isn't just a sham in service to the seats of political power, and we shouldn't trust our most mentally vulnerable community members to the self-declared expertise of such people."
@dpflug thanks! Walking seems to be helping, other than the anxiety of doing it in the middle of the night. With any luck, my unreliable meatbag will get its act together and I'll be able to go back to bed.
As Rovics points out: George Bush is a moron and Tony Blair's a liar? Think it would be fun to hit a Rush Limbaugh punching bag? Hate your local Walmart? Have you called your congressman a corporate tool? Does bombing other countries make you feel appalled?
Well then, you have a problem with authority.
The minor detail that it's based on reason or fact is beside the point...
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
nitpick: Elon Musk is the only billionaire. Everyone else claiming to be a billionaire is only a milliardaire. I thought this battle was lost in the 1980s, but recent self-immolation by the country that foisted the incorrect definition of billion on the rest of us has encouraged me to revive it.
It is important to meditate, but what is still more important is to understand what meditation is; otherwise, the mind gets caught in mere technique. Learning a new trick of breathing, sitting in a certain posture, holding your back straight, practising one of the various systems for silencing the mind – none of that is important. What is important is for you and me to find out what meditation is. In the very finding out of what meditation is, I am meditating. It is enormously important to meditate. If you do not know what meditation is, it is like having a flower without scent. You may have a marvellous capacity to talk, or to paint, or to enjoy life; you may have encyclopedic information and correlate all knowledge, but those things will have no meaning at all if you do not know what meditation is. Meditation is the perfume of life; it has immense beauty. It opens doors that the mind can never open, it goes to depths that the merely cultured mind can never touch. So meditation is very important, but we always put the wrong question and therefore get a wrong answer. We say,
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It is important to meditate, but what is still more important is to understand what meditation is; otherwise, the mind gets caught in mere technique. Learning a new trick of breathing, sitting in a certain posture, holding your back straight, practising one of the various systems for silencing the mind – none of that is important. What is important is for you and me to find out what meditation is. In the very finding out of what meditation is, I am meditating. It is enormously important to meditate. If you do not know what meditation is, it is like having a flower without scent. You may have a marvellous capacity to talk, or to paint, or to enjoy life; you may have encyclopedic information and correlate all knowledge, but those things will have no meaning at all if you do not know what meditation is. Meditation is the perfume of life; it has immense beauty. It opens doors that the mind can never open, it goes to depths that the merely cultured mind can never touch. So meditation is very important, but we always put the wrong question and therefore get a wrong answer. We say, ‘How am I to meditate,’ so we go to some swami, some foolish person, or we pick up a book or follow a system, hoping to learn how to meditate. Now, if we can brush all that aside, the swamis, the yogis, the interpreters, the breathers, the sitting-stillers, and all the rest of it, then we must inevitably come to this question: What is meditation?
If there is order in one’s life, real order, then what is meditation? Is it following certain systems, methods: the Zen method, the Buddhist meditation, the Hindu meditation, or the methods of the latest gurus? If meditation is determined, if it is following a system or method, practised day after day, what happens to the human brain? It becomes more and more dull. Is meditation something entirely different? It has nothing whatever to do with methods, systems and practices. Therefore, it can never be mechanical. It can never be conscious meditation. It is like a man consciously wanting money and pursuing money: consciously you meditate, wanting to achieve peace, silence. The man who pursues money, success, power, and the man who pursues so-called spirituality are both the same.
Powerful economic groups, at both national and international levels, have shaped and maintained a trade-based system that prioritises profit over human and ecological wellbeing, thereby undermining attempts to move towards trade-free products and services. Advocates, researchers and campaigners who promote systems based on access, cooperation and sufficiency remain relatively powerless compared with these organised interests.
This suggests that attempting to solve social, health and environmental problems within a trade-based framework—by placing responsibility on individual consumers—is, so far, a largely insufficient response to the question: How can we make a difference?
It also indicates that deeper structural change is required: a transition away from trade-driven production and distribution towards systems organised around shared access, sustainability and collective need. Such a transformation would require confronting entrenched economic power, dismantling profit-centred incentives, and challenging the political structures that sustain the current t
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Powerful economic groups, at both national and international levels, have shaped and maintained a trade-based system that prioritises profit over human and ecological wellbeing, thereby undermining attempts to move towards trade-free products and services. Advocates, researchers and campaigners who promote systems based on access, cooperation and sufficiency remain relatively powerless compared with these organised interests.
This suggests that attempting to solve social, health and environmental problems within a trade-based framework—by placing responsibility on individual consumers—is, so far, a largely insufficient response to the question: How can we make a difference?
It also indicates that deeper structural change is required: a transition away from trade-driven production and distribution towards systems organised around shared access, sustainability and collective need. Such a transformation would require confronting entrenched economic power, dismantling profit-centred incentives, and challenging the political structures that sustain the current trade-based society—one which drives many of the problems it claims to solve.
The ideas relevant to actions that are difficult to achieve—such as transitioning away from a trade-based system—depend on the scale and nature of those actions. While individual efforts alone are often insufficient, meaningful progress can be made by developing and participating in collective, trade-free alternatives.
One approach is to collaborate with others to share time, skills and resources, creating local systems based on access rather than exchange. For example, communities can organise food growing, repair networks or shared services that operate without monetary transactions, thereby reducing dependence on trade-based structures. These initiatives demonstrate practical models of provisioning that prioritise sufficiency, cooperation and sustainability over profit.
Another approach involves forming or joining networks of like-minded individuals to advocate for broader systemic change. This can include lobbying for policies that support commons-based systems, public access to essential services, and the gradual replacement of profit-driven production
... Show more...
The ideas relevant to actions that are difficult to achieve—such as transitioning away from a trade-based system—depend on the scale and nature of those actions. While individual efforts alone are often insufficient, meaningful progress can be made by developing and participating in collective, trade-free alternatives.
One approach is to collaborate with others to share time, skills and resources, creating local systems based on access rather than exchange. For example, communities can organise food growing, repair networks or shared services that operate without monetary transactions, thereby reducing dependence on trade-based structures. These initiatives demonstrate practical models of provisioning that prioritise sufficiency, cooperation and sustainability over profit.
Another approach involves forming or joining networks of like-minded individuals to advocate for broader systemic change. This can include lobbying for policies that support commons-based systems, public access to essential services, and the gradual replacement of profit-driven production with needs-based provisioning. Such collective action can challenge existing economic power structures and influence political decisions at local, national and global levels.
Ultimately, scaling up change requires both grassroots experimentation and coordinated efforts to transform the underlying structures of society. By combining practical alternatives with collective advocacy, it becomes possible to move beyond a trade-based system towards one that better addresses social and environmental challenges.
Stretching over 3,800 hectares, the Rothbury Estate in Northumberland is abundant with opportunity. It’s the largest continuous area of land to appear on the market in 50 years.
pinkittymarie.23
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