When the fall-out from 2008 (and 70 years of industrial revolution & Cheap Oil) hit me in 2012 I lost everything and I could have gone back, started over, friends & family invited me to come live with them to ‘get my feet back on the ground’ – but I didn’t – because I had the dawning realization that my feet were never on the ground, they were on a treadmill.
I got my online PDC from Geoff Lawton in 2013 and have not looked back since then. I am changing everything. I am decoupling from the Monster. But for the web, I have ditched all forms of superfluous media (MSM), TV, Cable, radio, technology, bank accounts, credit cards, utility payments, car, and more. I use the web for all it’s worth to stay connected to you and others who are leading the way. There is a lot to learn and in the beginning the slope is steep, with one foot on awareness of the world and the other firmly rooted in the soil. After four years my life is neither destitute nor boring, in fact each day, it has become richer, more connected, and more real.
All the best to you and your readers
sheila
I aree wholeheartedly. I am currently reading (among other things) Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’. I am not even halfway through yet but the outrageousness of what’s going on in the world, mainly courtesy of the corporations and financial controllers to whom the governments bow their heads truly boggles my mind. I have also but have yet to read Joanna Macy’s ‘Active Hope’. I keep looking at the title and wondering how …
Thanks for this article Colette. How strange! this is the very subject I have been discussing with my children. It’s about how we are controlled from the cradle to the grave. It’s always about greed and profit from corporations and taxation from governments. The manipulation is truly evil. The enemy of government is self-sufficiency, they hate it and will stamp it out. They separate families, every one must have a separate house which not only raises more taxation, but encourages everyone to use paid “services” rather than families helping each other. I remember one of Tony Blair’s women saying that working mothers should not leave their children to be looked after by grandparents, and that they were unsuitable. Oh no, leave them with a registered “taxpaying” childminder. What a brilliant scheme, mum pays tax and then the child minder pays tax on the same money that has just been taxed. Children are herded into schools at far too young an age, so mum can go out and earn taxation and the child can be groomed to be a good future taxpayer. I know things have to be payed for, but do we have any say in what?
I don’t think we have ever had so many young people as depressed as they are at this time. Children are herded into universities and many come out with a useless degree or the same fashionable degree as thousands of others, only to find they can’t find a job, or at least not a job they were led to believe they deserved. This has happened within my own family and it makes me very angry.
What a shame that children who aren’t particularly academic but would excel in other areas are simply thrown on the scrap heap, because we have no alternatives like for instance trade schools.
End of rant for now, I’m off to my knitting group.
xx
Great rant and so true. If I may carry it further, let’s also include commuting to and from work. Keeps the auto industry humming + we need more and more highways to accomodate all the cars – that keeps the aggregate companies + the construction companies happy. The people who run my country at various levels are only now realizing that we need good public transit infrastructure so everyone can get to their worky-jobs in a more environmentally sustainable manner. But of course they need more of our tax dollars to make that happen, nevermind all those corporations who benefit greatly by public transit and contribute zilch. So while everyone is commuting 2-3 hours a day, where are the children? They are in before and after school or daycare programs. Who is making supper for the family to sit down and enjoy? No one. Mom and Dad are tired so they stop off at the grocery store for a ready made chicken and a premade salad. So that keeps the grocery stores happy, they can always sell their processed food. And do parents help their children with their homework? No, not qualified, they need private tutoring companies, every plaza in my city has them. And when families are together? They watch tv. Or go into separate corners to play xbox or text or whatever…sadly, I could go on.
Thanks Colette for letting me rant too, didn’t mean to, lol, just overcame me…
Here in France children have the choice of following an academic education or a vocational training ,which is why we have so many well qualified artisans………..and artisans are valued !
Its a one world agenda where money has become the God. We seemed to have no say in the decision making process. I guess we can best make change happen by changing our own life styles to consume less and not support the system that does not represent what we feel is best for the common good and for our natural world. I cling to the hope that ever slow it be, the shift in consciousness will come to those in leadership roles and power positions.
I like the principles of degrowth, the more I learn, the more excited I get. It is a paradigm shift that is worthwhile, if not increasingly necessary. Also minimalism, another excellent practice. And let us remember, civic action does work!
Collette, I agree with you, for your USA readers, I just finished reading Dark Money by Jane Meyers. I’m sure the same story applies to many other countries, and I don’t think one political party is better than the other, they are at this point all owned by one corporate power or another. The book is not an easy beach read by any means, but it is gut retching how deeply ingrained corporate powers the elections and law making in our country. Sad world/ We need to permaculture our lives and the world around us.
When the fall-out from 2008 (and 70 years of industrial revolution & Cheap Oil) hit me in 2012 I lost everything and I could have gone back, started over, friends & family invited me to come live with them to ‘get my feet back on the ground’ – but I didn’t – because I had the dawning realization that my feet were never on the ground, they were on a treadmill.
I got my online PDC from Geoff Lawton in 2013 and have not looked back since then. I am changing everything. I am decoupling from the Monster. But for the web, I have ditched all forms of superfluous media (MSM), TV, Cable, radio, technology, bank accounts, credit cards, utility payments, car, and more. I use the web for all it’s worth to stay connected to you and others who are leading the way. There is a lot to learn and in the beginning the slope is steep, with one foot on awareness of the world and the other firmly rooted in the soil. After four years my life is neither destitute nor boring, in fact each day, it has become richer, more connected, and more real.
All the best to you and your readers
sheila
A wonderful story, and, I feel, just the beginning…
I aree wholeheartedly. I am currently reading (among other things) Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’. I am not even halfway through yet but the outrageousness of what’s going on in the world, mainly courtesy of the corporations and financial controllers to whom the governments bow their heads truly boggles my mind. I have also but have yet to read Joanna Macy’s ‘Active Hope’. I keep looking at the title and wondering how …
Thanks for this article Colette. How strange! this is the very subject I have been discussing with my children. It’s about how we are controlled from the cradle to the grave. It’s always about greed and profit from corporations and taxation from governments. The manipulation is truly evil. The enemy of government is self-sufficiency, they hate it and will stamp it out. They separate families, every one must have a separate house which not only raises more taxation, but encourages everyone to use paid “services” rather than families helping each other. I remember one of Tony Blair’s women saying that working mothers should not leave their children to be looked after by grandparents, and that they were unsuitable. Oh no, leave them with a registered “taxpaying” childminder. What a brilliant scheme, mum pays tax and then the child minder pays tax on the same money that has just been taxed. Children are herded into schools at far too young an age, so mum can go out and earn taxation and the child can be groomed to be a good future taxpayer. I know things have to be payed for, but do we have any say in what?
I don’t think we have ever had so many young people as depressed as they are at this time. Children are herded into universities and many come out with a useless degree or the same fashionable degree as thousands of others, only to find they can’t find a job, or at least not a job they were led to believe they deserved. This has happened within my own family and it makes me very angry.
What a shame that children who aren’t particularly academic but would excel in other areas are simply thrown on the scrap heap, because we have no alternatives like for instance trade schools.
End of rant for now, I’m off to my knitting group.
xx
A truly magnificent “rant” I so enjoyed reading it…and agree 100%!
Great rant and so true. If I may carry it further, let’s also include commuting to and from work. Keeps the auto industry humming + we need more and more highways to accomodate all the cars – that keeps the aggregate companies + the construction companies happy. The people who run my country at various levels are only now realizing that we need good public transit infrastructure so everyone can get to their worky-jobs in a more environmentally sustainable manner. But of course they need more of our tax dollars to make that happen, nevermind all those corporations who benefit greatly by public transit and contribute zilch. So while everyone is commuting 2-3 hours a day, where are the children? They are in before and after school or daycare programs. Who is making supper for the family to sit down and enjoy? No one. Mom and Dad are tired so they stop off at the grocery store for a ready made chicken and a premade salad. So that keeps the grocery stores happy, they can always sell their processed food. And do parents help their children with their homework? No, not qualified, they need private tutoring companies, every plaza in my city has them. And when families are together? They watch tv. Or go into separate corners to play xbox or text or whatever…sadly, I could go on.
Thanks Colette for letting me rant too, didn’t mean to, lol, just overcame me…
Wonderful to read your rant, as it fills out the picture in a more substantial way! Blessings to you Alana X
Here in France children have the choice of following an academic education or a vocational training ,which is why we have so many well qualified artisans………..and artisans are valued !
I love that approach…much more human!
Greed.
Enough is never enough for some,they always want more at what ever cost……………….
Its a one world agenda where money has become the God. We seemed to have no say in the decision making process. I guess we can best make change happen by changing our own life styles to consume less and not support the system that does not represent what we feel is best for the common good and for our natural world. I cling to the hope that ever slow it be, the shift in consciousness will come to those in leadership roles and power positions.
I like the principles of degrowth, the more I learn, the more excited I get. It is a paradigm shift that is worthwhile, if not increasingly necessary. Also minimalism, another excellent practice. And let us remember, civic action does work!
Collette, I agree with you, for your USA readers, I just finished reading Dark Money by Jane Meyers. I’m sure the same story applies to many other countries, and I don’t think one political party is better than the other, they are at this point all owned by one corporate power or another. The book is not an easy beach read by any means, but it is gut retching how deeply ingrained corporate powers the elections and law making in our country. Sad world/ We need to permaculture our lives and the world around us.