mmm surely theres a better way....
Another world is possible but only if we build it ourselves:
As capital penetrates life-worlds it alters them in ways that foster its accumulation, chiefly by introducing a sense of dissatisfaction or lack-so that it can truly be said that happiness is forbidden under capitalism, being replaced by sensation and craving…..buy less live more.
This was the first christmas that i have not been excited at all. i was unconvinced by the whole bullshit of buying presents, the christianity aspect a few years back but i had kept positive, happy even in the knowledge that christmas provided a holiday, a time for my family to get together. not this year, why the fuck should my families holiday be determined by some warped consumer driven motive, a time when news headlines fret about the 'lack of spending this year'. to get me through uni i work as a 'Chugger' apparantly according to The Daily Telegraph people like me 'fundraisers who get paid' are charity muggers....now if they can find someone willing to stand in the streets for 7 hours flat, in the freezing cold, taking all the bullshit the beautiful shopping public can throw, still remain cheerful and NOT get paid id give them a medal.
People were just sooo stressed. what is meant to be a national holiday, a time of 'good will' really sickened me. Shopping bags bulging yet no-one looked particularly happy. the thouht of giving money to a natinal housing charity (homeless and badly housed...3,000,000 at present in the uk. 4th 'richest' country in the world) was unthinkable because...'I JUST DONT HAVE TIME OR U REALLY DONT WANT TO TALK TO ME YOUNG LADY'. now perhaps im being too harsh, people work incredibly hard, they work more hours than under previous economic systems yet call me crazy i thought the capitalist world was supposed to cut the working week in half?
9 to 5?
“For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands and I found that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living” Henry David Thoreau.
we are potentially our own masters and yet slaves to our own greed?
the one thing that is offered to us for free, the trees,
the lakes, rivers, our natural environment are rapidly dying in the name of competition, how many different types of fucking bottled water do we really need?
We work 12 hour shifts-we get taxed
we effectively sustain our economy, sustain our developed industrialised position on the world stage....
yet surely if we didnt desire so much, we didnt consume so much, we werent taken in by the likes of MTV fucking 'cribs' and the need to fit in with the next passing trend. if we were able to feel secure with who we are and not who we aught to be we wouldnt need to work so much?
yet we work more, we work harder, increasingly knowing less and less about what we do and cover up our lack of empowerment in the only way we know how, the power of purchase. great stuff.
we wouldnt have such a high standard of living, of whats acceptable. Social exclusion, people made to feel inferior, a consequence of the wests materialistic reality would end perhaps?
answer: well what would we do?
maybe just maybe we would start using our brains again, allow them to wake up from sleeping....im not saying this from a jumped up condescending perspective (though i try not too im a sucker to the system myself)we would be creative....not just in the sense that we would sit around and talk, read etc but we would learn to start dong things for ourselves, stop relying on super markets to provide our food, we would have time to grow our own. Think of all the things u would do if you had more time and i bet realistically they dont demand an excess of money....how many people do job that involves sitting at a computer desk, pressing buttons for which they have no idea what they are doing. i know i did for 9 hours a day! sucked.
new methods/alternatives:
Development defined at its most basic, simply ‘good change’ is an inherently ambiguous concept. Both ‘good’ and ‘change’ are relative to the diversity of nations, societies, cultures, and individuals. Critics of participatory development highlight the myth of homogeneous community with a more realistic approach perhaps of communities differentiated by gender, class, age, ethnicity and religion. Parallels can of course be found in the process of majority democracy. It has taken western nations many years to evolve to this level of participatory democracy. Yet for many reasons the mass of the populations within liberal democracies are excluded from real decision making. Key decisions that effect individual communities are determined by politicians who are not even part of that community. Under such a system the potential homogeneity of a community has no say let alone the individual. The current approach to development that of neo-liberalism, is similar in that it has little room for alternatives. Both adhere to top-down methods that create a hierarchy for intelligence. The effect of this is a significant reduction in the feeling of empowerment felt by citizens within this system. I personally dispute Fukuyama in his claim that liberal democracy and capitalism signify the end of history. This would suggest the world is homogenized. I disagree. Participatory development is perhaps the next step in the evolutionary process, a grass root bottom-up process that aims to empower a diversity of peoples. Of course whether it will successfully achieve social transformation on the global scale is highly disputable. The beauty of many grass root transformations however is that they do not wish to achieve the conventional state revolution. Capitalism has marginalized so many people all of whom simply want to control how they live in respective manner to others and their environment, a wise alternative and a basic human right.
Nuclear power: i thought the link with nuclear power and the 'one ring to rule them all' was pretty sweet.
A weapon that will change our fortunes in this war, you can not wield its power to do good. FUCKED?
Such much death so much hate what can men do against such wreckless hate? By rights we shouldn’t even be here-but we are. How can a world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened…..? There is still some good in this worlds and its worth fighting for.
As capital penetrates life-worlds it alters them in ways that foster its accumulation, chiefly by introducing a sense of dissatisfaction or lack-so that it can truly be said that happiness is forbidden under capitalism, being replaced by sensation and craving…..buy less live more.
This was the first christmas that i have not been excited at all. i was unconvinced by the whole bullshit of buying presents, the christianity aspect a few years back but i had kept positive, happy even in the knowledge that christmas provided a holiday, a time for my family to get together. not this year, why the fuck should my families holiday be determined by some warped consumer driven motive, a time when news headlines fret about the 'lack of spending this year'. to get me through uni i work as a 'Chugger' apparantly according to The Daily Telegraph people like me 'fundraisers who get paid' are charity muggers....now if they can find someone willing to stand in the streets for 7 hours flat, in the freezing cold, taking all the bullshit the beautiful shopping public can throw, still remain cheerful and NOT get paid id give them a medal.
People were just sooo stressed. what is meant to be a national holiday, a time of 'good will' really sickened me. Shopping bags bulging yet no-one looked particularly happy. the thouht of giving money to a natinal housing charity (homeless and badly housed...3,000,000 at present in the uk. 4th 'richest' country in the world) was unthinkable because...'I JUST DONT HAVE TIME OR U REALLY DONT WANT TO TALK TO ME YOUNG LADY'. now perhaps im being too harsh, people work incredibly hard, they work more hours than under previous economic systems yet call me crazy i thought the capitalist world was supposed to cut the working week in half?
9 to 5?
“For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands and I found that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living” Henry David Thoreau.
we are potentially our own masters and yet slaves to our own greed?
the one thing that is offered to us for free, the trees,
the lakes, rivers, our natural environment are rapidly dying in the name of competition, how many different types of fucking bottled water do we really need?
We work 12 hour shifts-we get taxed
we effectively sustain our economy, sustain our developed industrialised position on the world stage....
yet surely if we didnt desire so much, we didnt consume so much, we werent taken in by the likes of MTV fucking 'cribs' and the need to fit in with the next passing trend. if we were able to feel secure with who we are and not who we aught to be we wouldnt need to work so much?
yet we work more, we work harder, increasingly knowing less and less about what we do and cover up our lack of empowerment in the only way we know how, the power of purchase. great stuff.
we wouldnt have such a high standard of living, of whats acceptable. Social exclusion, people made to feel inferior, a consequence of the wests materialistic reality would end perhaps?
answer: well what would we do?
maybe just maybe we would start using our brains again, allow them to wake up from sleeping....im not saying this from a jumped up condescending perspective (though i try not too im a sucker to the system myself)we would be creative....not just in the sense that we would sit around and talk, read etc but we would learn to start dong things for ourselves, stop relying on super markets to provide our food, we would have time to grow our own. Think of all the things u would do if you had more time and i bet realistically they dont demand an excess of money....how many people do job that involves sitting at a computer desk, pressing buttons for which they have no idea what they are doing. i know i did for 9 hours a day! sucked.
new methods/alternatives:
Development defined at its most basic, simply ‘good change’ is an inherently ambiguous concept. Both ‘good’ and ‘change’ are relative to the diversity of nations, societies, cultures, and individuals. Critics of participatory development highlight the myth of homogeneous community with a more realistic approach perhaps of communities differentiated by gender, class, age, ethnicity and religion. Parallels can of course be found in the process of majority democracy. It has taken western nations many years to evolve to this level of participatory democracy. Yet for many reasons the mass of the populations within liberal democracies are excluded from real decision making. Key decisions that effect individual communities are determined by politicians who are not even part of that community. Under such a system the potential homogeneity of a community has no say let alone the individual. The current approach to development that of neo-liberalism, is similar in that it has little room for alternatives. Both adhere to top-down methods that create a hierarchy for intelligence. The effect of this is a significant reduction in the feeling of empowerment felt by citizens within this system. I personally dispute Fukuyama in his claim that liberal democracy and capitalism signify the end of history. This would suggest the world is homogenized. I disagree. Participatory development is perhaps the next step in the evolutionary process, a grass root bottom-up process that aims to empower a diversity of peoples. Of course whether it will successfully achieve social transformation on the global scale is highly disputable. The beauty of many grass root transformations however is that they do not wish to achieve the conventional state revolution. Capitalism has marginalized so many people all of whom simply want to control how they live in respective manner to others and their environment, a wise alternative and a basic human right.
Nuclear power: i thought the link with nuclear power and the 'one ring to rule them all' was pretty sweet.
A weapon that will change our fortunes in this war, you can not wield its power to do good. FUCKED?
Such much death so much hate what can men do against such wreckless hate? By rights we shouldn’t even be here-but we are. How can a world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened…..? There is still some good in this worlds and its worth fighting for.