Occupy London at St Pauls and Economic Justice part 2

"The human soul can be very powerful when it is sufficiently aroused; even in the context of changing our flawed economy! Alastair McIntosh tells the tale (1) of how in the last decade of the twentieth century the might of a great corporation was broken by spirituality and theology. Scientific and economic values clashed head on with spirituality. Against what seemed like overwhelming opposition the soul in the end prevailed.
The Community of the Isle of Harris, in the Western Isles of Scotland, was threatened by the development in their midst of a devastating super quarry, a wound and scar of massive proportions. With the assistance of a Native American Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney and what was said to be the first ever theological submission put before a public enquiry the islanders were able to prevent a large corporation (Redland Aggregates Plc) from going ahead with their plans. Overnight the share price of the company on the London Stock exchange fell a massive 8% or £160million pounds! If the project had gone ahead who would have gained from the cruel ravages inflicted on a finely balanced community such as Harris?

The flaws of human nature

Some while ago a series of bank advertisements on the management of wealth appeared in the glossy weekend media. One of these featured a lone and pretty girl cantering away on a lovely white stallion into the beautiful and totally unblemished distance. ‘What...[is wealth]…to you?’ the headline asked. ‘It’s being able to tell the world to get lost.’ Whoaaa!
How can any single one of us afford to turn our back on the world in this way in any sense. How can any of us ride away to an unblemished horizon while so many basic human rights are not available to so many? That surely diminishes us as human beings. But someone, indeed a team of people, wrote that advertisement.
In our materially rich Western society it is too easy to be wooed by the power of marketing and advertising. Psychological insights developed to help us understand the healing needs of our souls are instead cynically used for marketing purposes. The advertisers play on our feelings of guilt or fear and our need for love and comfort, which often reflect in some of the worst aspects of human behavior, our insecurity, envy and discontent. These traits fuel our over-consumption and greed for material possessions.
If we would only understand our behavioral faults and allow them to be healed rather than exploited, there may yet be hope for the plight of our global brothers and sisters who through accident of birth are far less privileged than ourselves. Then we can hope to build an economy that is globally just and contributes to a healing world.
Before looking at ways we can all act to help our world towards some monetary justice, let’s look at our current situation.
The current world situation
The divide between the materially wealthy and the hungry poor is massive and the gap is apparently widening. Statistics from the World Bank tell us that in 2005 26% of the developing world was living below US$1.25 a day, representing 1.4 billion people. If we look at the number living on less than $2 a day, that represented 48% of the world population, or around 2.5 billion men, women and children, a massive testament to human suffering. (2) At the same time we have the ‘super rich’, to be found among the celebrities of sport, television and movie, the top bankers, investment fund managers, lawyers and doctors. It is true that many on the ‘rich-list’ are extremely generous in giving their time, talent and wealth for the global good. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is particularly keen to stamp out the world’s worst diseases that afflict and kill millions each year, most often the young and the poor. He has pledged $25 million to buy 100 million oral polio vaccines for Nigeria, and announced in 2009 that he was giving £115 million towards developing a vaccine for Malaria, which kills up to 2.7 million people a year, 75% of them African children. Bono, the Irish lead singer of U2, best known perhaps for his key involvement with the Make Poverty History campaign, uses his celebrity status to fight for social justice worldwide.
There are others whose lavish life-styles breed an envy and greed, particularly it would seem among the young who are being taught by example that material wealth and celebrity status are the measure of ‘success’. And in the developing world others are attracted to our consumer life style and aspire to similar ‘wealth’. Meanwhile the poor of the world continue to struggle for survival.
The truth is that we have forgotten how to live simply and sustainably with totally unselfish regard for those around us. We have lost the ability to generously share, to ensure that everyone in the same household has had their fill before going ourselves for second helpings.
Consider also that we have an obesity epidemic in the developed western world. Indeed obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the USA. An estimated 65% of U.S. adults, aged 20 years and older, and 15% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. Around 34% of adults are obese. That amounts to c. 59 million people! The figures elsewhere are not much better. In 2006 24% of the adult English population were obese, and in children up to 15 years of age the figure was 16%. And both figures are increasing. (3)
We need to find ways to adapt to sustainable living in a world where we can be sure that our good fortune is shared, where everyone has their basic human needs met, where both extremes of wealth and poverty do indeed become history.
We need to build our economy on principles of sustainability and justice for all. Only then can we hope to heal the world.
We must never lose sight of our part as individual players in the world economy. Whether we like it or not, we are all involved as consumers and as investors. Even if we believe we are doing all we can to help, by maximizing our recycling, curbing our expenditure, avoiding waste, and investing ethically, we are still unknowingly or blindly fuelling a wounded economy that is perpetuating the world’s injustices. The responsibility is ours…

And that is why I support the essence of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London Stock Exchange protests.

to be continued


1. Alastair McIntosh Soil and Soul Chapter 14 et. seq.
2. World Bank poverty statistics available for 2005 as at March 2009.
3. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, statistics at http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/index.html and Statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet: England, January 2008


© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Excerpts from Healing this Wounded Earth

Occupy London at St Pauls and Economic Justice

So the Occupy Wall Street protestors have been evicted from their tent city in Manhattan. I went to London the other day and walked around the Occupy London Stock Exchange tent city outside St Paul's Cathedral. And I met and talked with many very pleasant, very thoughtful and intelligent people who understand very clearly what they are doing and are peacefully calling for economic change. They are fed up with the "fatcats" getting richer, the poor getting poorer, the huge inequalities and injustices in the world, etc etc etc. The site is very well organised, very peaceful, attracting much public support, and the police looked bored stiff! These people are echoing so much that I have written in Healing.... and so I donated a copy of my book to their library as it will be of interest to many of the protestors there. And I thought it appropriate to post some excerpts here over the next week or so, in between postings on Apocalyptic thoughts! (Perhaps there is a link!):

"When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat money..."
Greenpeace message on one of their longest banners. (1)

"This notion of spiritless existence can be described as materialism. All is matter; land, forests, food, water, labour, literature and art are commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace - the world market, the stockmarket, the so-called free market… Business without spirit, trade without compassion, industry without ecology, finance without fairness, economics without equity can only bring the breakdown of society and destruction of the natural world. Only when spirit and business work together can humanity find coherent purpose."
Satish Kumar, “Spiritual Imperative,” Resurgence (2)

In 1976 an economics professor Dr Muhammad Yunus conducted an experiment. He gave the equivalent of $26 to each of 42 workers. From this they all bought materials, spent a day weaving chairs or making pots and were able to sell their wares and repay the loans. Thus was born the concept of microcredit.
Microcredit refers to small loans of less than a few hundred dollars, with no collateral, at nil or no more than commercial interest rates, made to help the poorest of the poor in the third world to start up small enterprises. This enables them to spread their productive capacity and gain some measure of independence and a better standard of living. For Yunus’ subsequent work with Grameen Bank, which was founded to foster this use of microcredit, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to them both in equal shares, for ‘their efforts to create economic and social development from below’, while improving the lives of millions of people in Yunus’ native Bangladesh.
As a young child I won a ten-bob note. That was a considerable prize in those days. I was so excited. I could buy another nature book to add to my collection! How did I win this? For spotting the deliberate error in an article in our village church magazine, which misquoted the Bible as saying money is the root of all evil. Much to my dismay my mother suggested I should immediately volunteer to return this prize to the church. I still vividly remember having the collecting box held under my nose in the vestry by the priest and putting the note very reluctantly back through the slot under my mother’s watchful gaze.
The lesson I had to learn was a hard one and it obviously made a deep impression! As a Christian I should be generous to those more in need than myself. But the ethics of the situation were lost on an eight year old. I had always been told we could not afford those things that my best schoolmates enjoyed, such as a pony or dancing lessons, perhaps a new bike. I was quite discouraged from entering similar competitions again. And I certainly learnt the meaning of voluntary compulsion!
In fact as with so many Biblical references the saying is taken out of context and is not complete. The full quotation reads: ‘For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.’ (3)
So I believe the lesson of the ten bob note was more profound than my mother may have realized. I was learning the hard way that I had to avoid any love of money for its own sake: that there is so much more to being human in this world than striving for the accumulation of monetary wealth and possessions.
Real wealth is not about money: it is about spiritual wellbeing. It seems that we have largely lost sight of the spirit that is in all matter. As the human ecologist Alastair McIntosh observes in his inspirational book Soil and Soul, ‘We are materially richer than ever before and yet suffer a spiritual poverty…we live, but suffer spiritual death. Our very accomplishments cut us off further from the soul.’ (4) Real security and happiness that we all seek, consciously or unconsciously, will be found in spiritual wealth, for which we have a great hunger.

1. Greenpeace website.
2. Kumar, Satish, in ‘Spiritual Imperative: Elegant Simplicity is the way to Discover Spirituality,’ Resurgence (March/April 2005) issue 229 at http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article653-SPIRITUAL-IMPERATIVE.html
3. Holy Bible, RSV, 1 Timothy 6.10
4. McIntosh, Alastair, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, London: Aurum Press, 2004p. 4.

© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Excerpts from Healing This Wounded Earth

Occupy Wall Street and St Paul's - Again

The Occupy Wall Street and St Paul's Demonstrations both have a very good point. We do have a fundamentally flawed current economic system. I've written much on this both on this blog and elsewhere.
Yes we may feel impotent in the face of bureaucracy and the power of the banks and the seeming lack of any progress in addressing the flaws.But there are things we can all do, that will not necessarily change the world's economy in any immediate significant way, but will certainly help at a local level and nibble away at creating more sustainable and responsible living.
There are millions of citizens worldwide who are already making their own practical contributions using local money systems, barter schemes for goods and services, for example. Perhaps you are already involved in some way. Well Done! But none of us can be complacent in the amount we do. Suppose that we all start just one more ripple? The global effect could be profound.
Just as one example, I have in mind the Complementary and Community Currencies.
These flourished in the United States in the Great Depression but did not survive World War II and the post war economic boom. They have been successfully resurrected and now there are thousands of schemes in the United States alone and many more worldwide.
LETS (The Local Exchange Trading System) is probably the most widely available and best-known system and is well established globally. This system trades in Green Dollars, a unit invented and designed by Michael Linton and David Weston in British Colombia Canada in the 1980s.
The principle of these schemes is simple. Units issued by individuals as part of a transaction between provider and recipient of services create an instant and simultaneous debit and credit. No debt is built up with an outside agency, but there is a commitment on the part of the recipient to give service to someone else in the community. Likewise those who have accumulated credits have a commitment to give the opportunity to others in the community to balance their accounts by requesting services from them.
Some of these systems allow for both national and community money to be used, so while they do not have value outside of the particular community where they operate, they allow members to conserve national currency. In this sense they complement national currency.
At community level these schemes are proving to be extremely successful in their various forms and act as cohesive forces to bring communities together in a true spirit of trust and cooperation. They can give a sense of self worth to the poor and marginalized, the unemployed or unemployable. They recognize that everyone has an intrinsic value, has unique and individual gifts. We can all offer something of ourselves to others in such a barter arrangement.
Time Dollars represent another simple system for the provision of labor. With this, one hour is represented by one credit. Everyone is valued for their own contribution regardless of skills. This appropriates equal value to the previously unvalued non-monetary economy, including traditionally unpaid caring skills for example. As a result such systems have a profound and positive effect on a person’s self value.
There are many other variations on the basic idea of the complementary currency, such as Ithaca Hours, Philadelphia- Eastern Neighborhood Exchange (The PEN Exchange) and the WIR in Switzerland that celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2009.(1)

No one solution is ever going to be the right one or the best one to the exclusion of all others. We must see any of these initiatives within the overall big picture and we should celebrate and build upon common features rather than dwell on differences that can stifle progress. Whatever we do should be within the spirit of community and cooperation.

I'd love to hear readers' own experiences of any of these schemes.

(1)See for example: Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money – Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World, and Thomas H. Greco, Money: 2001.

Occupy London Stock Exchange - and Ancient Futures

So the Wall Street demonstration has gone global. In London we have the Anti-capitalist demonstrators from Occupy London Stock Exchange camping in the churchyard surrounding St Paul's Cathedral. Today the huge main doors have been closed to the public because of health and safety issues surrounding the demonstration. I have to say I am in some sympathy with the demonstrators. I have joined other commentators for years in lamenting the unsustainable economic system that we have across the world, based as it is on growth, debt and spending. I’ve blogged about this quite a few times, even have a chapter about it in Healing….with suggestions for change. But even now, when we seem to be a crisis point, what do the governments continue to urge? Spending!! And I have seen very little to indicate that the powers that be may be considering any of the other ideas that have been floated for a sustainable economy. It seems that the answer may have to come from ourselves at local level – with our own currencies for example - small, after all, is beautiful.
But all this reminded me of a wonderful book that I reviewed for Amazon quite a while back. It’s called Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World, and it is by Helena Norberg-Hodge , an analyst, it says on her Amazon bio, “of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide and a pioneer of the “localization movement”. So she is clearly on my side in the debate. Her book is an urgent call to foster ancient values of compassion and wisdom before Western values of consumerism and growth.

This is what I said in my review:
“Ladakh (part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir), is a beautiful part of the Western Himalayas. It used to be a synergistic society. That is, the economy was shaped by mutual aid or co-operation, not competition. This concept of sharing everything was seen in the conduct of all aspects of the people’s lives, from farm work to funerals, animal herding to partying. There was no waste; everything had a further use, all was recycled. Even human waste, mixed with ashes and earth, was spread annually on the fields. Money was scarcely needed, only being used for a few luxuries such as jewellery, salt, tea and a few metals for cooking pots. Otherwise the people were self sufficient, living a life of frugality in the true sense of the word, not being mean or stingy, but rather using scarce resources in a careful way, getting more out of little, being “fruitful.”
And most important of all, the people were really and truly happy. They shared a deep contentment, a strong self- respect and sense of their own individual values. Women had equal status and respect with the men, the old people had active and respected roles in their extended families, even the boys were brought up to help with the nurturing and compassionate care of the young and old alike, and this was in no way deemed to be “sissy” or unmanly.
Then in the mid 1970’s the Indian government opened the region up to Western tourism.
Over the preceding centuries changes had occurred, but at a pace whereby they could be absorbed into a gently adapting culture. Now the changes were rapid. The people were exposed to money and a seeming Western wealth that they could not comprehend; but of course they were tempted by what they saw. The youngsters saw the fun their Western counterparts were apparently having, with cars and consumerism. The adults saw technology they could not have dreamed of. And a “need” developed that they never knew they had before! And with that need came greed, and all the inevitable trappings of a global economy that relies on continuing growth and consumerism for its furtherance.
The problem was that neither side really understood the other side. The Western tourists only saw what they perceived as poverty, deprivation, lack of education, lack of “basic” conveniences. The Ladakh did not see the darker side of Western society, the aggression and stress, the cancers and heart disease, the pollution, the lack of respect for many of our old folk, left to stare at walls in nursing homes, unloved and lonely.
The author is well qualified to write of this. She has spent much time with the people of Ladakh, since the mid 70’s just as these changes were beginning to happen, to the present day. She speaks their language and has many friends amongst them. She can therefore readily observe and understand both sides of the equation.
In Part One she writes with sensitivity and with first hand knowledge of the traditions and ancient wisdom of the people, witnessed in time before they became tarnished by Western values. In Part Two she charts the changes she saw over the ensuing years not only on their material culture, but more worryingly on their minds, as their lives were significantly and substantially changed, their culture severely damaged. And of course many of those Western societal afflictions came to Ladakh.
In Part Three the author then writes of the lessons to be learnt, and how we should react and behave to limit the evident damage brought by Westernization.
How long is it going to be, she asks us, before we sit up and take notice of the damage inflicted on our world by our global economy, based as it is on unsustainable consumerism and material growth.

We can learn so much from the Ladakh story. When will we listen to our hearts not our minds?”
Norberg – Hodge makes an urgent and vital call to us all to challenge our assumptions that economic growth is good. Influenced by Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, her work continues within the International Society for Ecology and Culture, promoting locally based alternatives to the global consumer culture, and “a non-profit organization dedicated to the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”

I am with Norberg-Hodge all the way on this one. This has to be the way forward. We cannot go on in the same unsustainable ways. And that is pretty much what the demonstrations are about I guess.