TTV

Apparently "consumers" are changing habits significantly since the times got tougher (financially).

Some interesting data here.

BTW I dislike labeling people as consumers - we are people, living breathing souls, collectively influencing and co-creating the future.

Zopa peer to peer banking as it has grown from an attempt to vision the future.

"We discovered a group of [people] we termed Free formers, a group of people best described by their own personal self-reliance. These people have given up on the institutions of society to look after them, and they want to be more individual, they want to be more authentic, they want to live a more fuller life for themselves."

Here is another part of the Us Now film, I posted a few weeks ago.

I can imagine versions of this sprouting up all over the world, and becoming an integral part of building vibrant resilient communities.

Janine Manyus (Author of Biomimicry) speaking at Bioneers (2008), starts her simple and inspiring talk with a description of a gathering she had just come from. It was at the beginnings of the financial crisis.

At the same time that we were meeting there was this economic quake going on. All these crystal goblets sliding off the table and crashing (she says with such a smile). We'd wake up in the morning and come from our hotel rooms and there'd be all these newspapers from all over the world, and they all had the same pictures. The tryptic of pictures of people going (gasp, and their heads in their hands, and hands over their mouths in astonished shock), like a Godzilla film - aaagh!

[Pause]

That's the sound of the old paradigm falling.

Yes, I remember it well. I was heading for the Eco Show in Taupo to celebrate the one year anniversary of Transition Towns in New Zealand. We stopped at a service station to fill up with petrol, and the newspapers were screaming at us. It was the same next morning, it was as though we had become so entwined with the arbitrary artifice of money, that when the inevitable collapse of the bloated over inflated, baseless system began tumbling, we (in the industrialised West) went into shock. And it was the shock that allowed what followed and which now one year later we can look back on and be shocked, but perhaps in a different way. The elite of our industrialised world are showing their colours...

As the weeks and months past we saw the outrageous levels of new-cash funds (printed or computer generated), being pumped into failing banks so that as the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and recently surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefited the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” [1 of 15 indicators of societal unravelling]

This is our moment. This is where we can let go of the old defunct operating system (to borrow Douglas Rushkoff's analogy) and create a new system of peer to peer value creation and exchange.

Over the last few days I have focused the videos on money. It's a popular subject and also one that has a lot of emotional energy behind it. We desire it, and yet it seems scarce - Rushkoff showed why very well, (before pointing to the way to radical abundance). The rich are getting richer and... the money is, well losing its buying power. Meanwhile people are printing their own for use in regional communities, and others suggest it's time we began firmly and lovingly questioning the rules we thought we were obliged to live by. If you want more then you might want to look at these from Fora TV, or search youtube for New Currency or Federal Reserve or Community Currency.

The financial implosion is almost certainly directly related to the state of our global energy reserves. Since Transition Towns look the energy issue and its related Climate issue squarely in the eye, I thought it was time to hear from Rob Hopkins about how people in communities all over the world are responding, to these very real challenges of the day.

Oil - as we love it and leave it.

We've been astonishingly lucky [to have lived through the oil age]. Let's honour what is has brought us and move forward from this point, because if we cling to it, and assume that it can underpin our choices the future it presents to us is one that is really unmanageable. By loving and leaving all that the oil age has done for us we are able to begin the creation of a world which is more resilient, more nourishing, and in which we find ourselves fitter, more skilled and more connected to each other.

Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel.

Where I live in New Zealand, the Transition model has been growing steadily, and offers a means for people to get involved and take some practical action towards building the brighter future they know is possible.

I'm not sure how to introduce this except to say, if you find this hard to accept, don't sweat it. Just set it on the shelf in that part of the brain where things are not forgotten and can be taken down for later inspection, when new information comes to light.

This is what I did with these ideas, when they were first offered to me some years ago. Some new information came along recently and I felt compelled to find out more and came across Mary Croft. She has an unusual, sometimes blunt style, but her words and ideas have given me cause to stop and think. She put together a book, which is free for download and if you are curious go grab it.

This is not a quick fix, and if you want to find out more, it will require study of the concepts and their intentional application. I admit these ideas be hard to embrace but is that because they run so counter to the ideas I have been told (over and over and over). I understand there are growing numbers of people engaged in study and application of the principles of common law.

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Thanks for the tweet, Pete. This is doubley brilliant.

If you're reading this, you're looking at a computer screen, and therefore what is offered here is relevant to you.

Douglas Rushkoff's offering of "Radical Abundance: How We Get Past "Free" (at the Web 2.0 Expo NY 09), lifts the lid on a whole lot of assumptions. Here is a vision that acknowledges the history we have been living through, before launching into a picture we have probably all imagined a version of at some time. This remarkable talk, offers an abundance of clarity and perception - and in just 15 minutes!

"...the next big thing (if there is a big thing, it's a lot of small things actually), but the people who make the next big amount of money, are the people who create genuine, alternative, electronic currencies and means of peer to peer exchange that do not involve cash.

Cash is artificially scarce, cash has been taken away, it's out of the system, cash has lost its utility value, as its been sucked out into investment capital onto the speculative marketplace."

...

Genuine peer to peer, would lead to bottom up value creation. I dont think this next era in the internet is about - scaling up anymore. I think it's about figuring out how to exchange value, instead of extracting value. We are at a crossroads, right now, we have the ability to optimise our systems, our technologys and our currency to humans, rather than optimizing humans to them. And I implore you to do that, and I think you will be happy and rich as a result. Thank you.

No, thank you Douglas - and yes, I'll now drop you an email to ask if you are happy for this post to remain as it is.

The currency revolution is here now, and as we embrace it, we will build that bright future, one exchange at a time.

Following on from Financial crisis explained, and the Money-Fix videos which I posted in the last few days, Douglas Rushkoff lifts it into another realm altogether.

Tomorrow's post will offer some views about our current legal system, and the common law that exists prior to contract and corporate law.