Thanks for this Mike. There are added values to engaging in any of the many organized activities you’ve listed. In “economist speak”, the externalities include intergenerational relationships, offsetting the alarming degree of social isolation that now affects us worldwide, and has serious mental health effects. Under Skills & Education I’d feature community choir singing — the multiple benefits to overall well-being for group members are being shown in research studies such as the 10-year Sing Well Project at Toronto Metropolitan University. The secular choir I’ve been with for 20 years (Shout Sister Community Choir) is a women’s social enterprise that has never received outside funding, and has raised over $200,000 to support local and international charities. From a language learning and crosscultural education standpoint, we have a repertoire of politically conscious songs, the latest being Laura Nyro’s “Save the Country”. We’re now engaging with schools and health initiatives on several continents, offering free training for international organizations that provide community support to women and girls.
It’s an extremely important point you make about intergenerational connections. I grew up with it and it’s only now that I realise the grounding effect it had on me. Helena Norberg Hodge has verbalised it so well through her experiences with the Ladak https://www.localfutures.org/about-local-futures/who-we-are/helena-norberg-hodge/. Community activities such as singing is also a feature of the blue zones.
Yet another thought-provoking piece that deserves discussion!
Organisations/corporates often try to help people who have been explicitly disempowered by using a business model. I think that is a flawed approach. Of course there is more than enough to go around, yet resources are greedily slurped up by a decreasing percentage of the population.
Taking any kind of assistance into such a community needs an understanding of the particular challenges. For instance, bringing flashy corporate courses that add nothing to impact day-to-day life into these environments is not only a waste of people's time, it also abuses funds that could have gone very far if used more appropriately.
Inhabitants of a refugee camp do not need a branded plastic water bottle, pen or T-shirt. Yet these are the benefits corporates spend the funds on. I think it is insulting to spend training funds on nonsense, expecting trainees to be walking billboards for that brand.
For the dollars wasted, the organisations could have provided a mosquito net or similar useful object. Stationery for the under-resourced schools in the area? How about seeds? Or nutrition sachets? And how about some research to find out what training will actually make a difference?
I'll probably come back with more comments. Thank you for keeping these crucial conversations going, Mike!
I’d add one thing which I did experience in my early childhood (up to age 10): we had a small community (within our own apartment building, which is the well-known communist block of flats), where mothers helped each other out with money as well. They knew when each others’ salary will come and they bridged the gap between each month (both ways). They gave back the money immediately when their salaries came to the other that was able to give something that month. Interest and other obligations-free exchange.
It was there to ensure no kid went hungry. It was there till around 1989, then sadly disappeared with the capitalist mindset - please don’t get me wrong, I do not advocate for communism/socialism as it was in those years!! Far from it, but we need to find a balance here instead of saying everyone should just fend for themselves, as later, my family had serious issues, I went to school on an empty stomach not once and nobody ever asked a single damn question…or nobody ever asked why I worked to enable me to go to school from age 14 upwards...
While I’m fully aware that this is by no means a solution to the root cause of the problem, it helped those families struggling in the moment. The problem hasn’t been solved in my home country ever since and they aren’t willing to look at solutions that actually work (anyway, that’s just a side-rant).
It was the same during those years with produce, regardless of money. If someone needed something (even if they just forgot to buy it earlier the day/week), they got it from one of the neighbours and they could give it back when they bought it again.
In my current neighbourhood in CH, we have some of these local community driven UBSs as you mentioned (repair cafe, language cafe, community co-working mainly), but it is still developing. I’m keeping an open eye on them, but it is hard as the information sharing about the sheer existence of these options is borderline mediocre (the info sharing works best in larger cities and in mountain areas, it is really difficult in the so-called sleeping towns here as well).
What you describe Zsofia is mutual aid, which is neither capitalistic nor communistic as it is not anchored in consumerism. What you described is the best safety net of all!
Thank you Mike, Renia, Elsa and Agnes. I enjoyed reading your thoughts. The UBS list is a remarkable effort 👏 but I was wondering Mike if you agree with Bioregional Earth’s emphasis that bioregions are unique ecological and cultural landscapes — each with their own local actors, histories, ecological dynamics, and time dependencies — and that regenerating Earth at scale means working with those differences rather than applying one universal method. The reason I ask is related to the use of the term “blueprint” in relation to the UBS list which I guess also has its place and time-based context and actors?
Thanks for this Mike. There are added values to engaging in any of the many organized activities you’ve listed. In “economist speak”, the externalities include intergenerational relationships, offsetting the alarming degree of social isolation that now affects us worldwide, and has serious mental health effects. Under Skills & Education I’d feature community choir singing — the multiple benefits to overall well-being for group members are being shown in research studies such as the 10-year Sing Well Project at Toronto Metropolitan University. The secular choir I’ve been with for 20 years (Shout Sister Community Choir) is a women’s social enterprise that has never received outside funding, and has raised over $200,000 to support local and international charities. From a language learning and crosscultural education standpoint, we have a repertoire of politically conscious songs, the latest being Laura Nyro’s “Save the Country”. We’re now engaging with schools and health initiatives on several continents, offering free training for international organizations that provide community support to women and girls.
It’s an extremely important point you make about intergenerational connections. I grew up with it and it’s only now that I realise the grounding effect it had on me. Helena Norberg Hodge has verbalised it so well through her experiences with the Ladak https://www.localfutures.org/about-local-futures/who-we-are/helena-norberg-hodge/. Community activities such as singing is also a feature of the blue zones.
Yet another thought-provoking piece that deserves discussion!
Organisations/corporates often try to help people who have been explicitly disempowered by using a business model. I think that is a flawed approach. Of course there is more than enough to go around, yet resources are greedily slurped up by a decreasing percentage of the population.
Taking any kind of assistance into such a community needs an understanding of the particular challenges. For instance, bringing flashy corporate courses that add nothing to impact day-to-day life into these environments is not only a waste of people's time, it also abuses funds that could have gone very far if used more appropriately.
Inhabitants of a refugee camp do not need a branded plastic water bottle, pen or T-shirt. Yet these are the benefits corporates spend the funds on. I think it is insulting to spend training funds on nonsense, expecting trainees to be walking billboards for that brand.
For the dollars wasted, the organisations could have provided a mosquito net or similar useful object. Stationery for the under-resourced schools in the area? How about seeds? Or nutrition sachets? And how about some research to find out what training will actually make a difference?
I'll probably come back with more comments. Thank you for keeping these crucial conversations going, Mike!
Similarly, with western recycled clothes that are thoughtlessly dumped in developing countries who have no use for them!
Absolutely spot on as usual Mike!
I’d add one thing which I did experience in my early childhood (up to age 10): we had a small community (within our own apartment building, which is the well-known communist block of flats), where mothers helped each other out with money as well. They knew when each others’ salary will come and they bridged the gap between each month (both ways). They gave back the money immediately when their salaries came to the other that was able to give something that month. Interest and other obligations-free exchange.
It was there to ensure no kid went hungry. It was there till around 1989, then sadly disappeared with the capitalist mindset - please don’t get me wrong, I do not advocate for communism/socialism as it was in those years!! Far from it, but we need to find a balance here instead of saying everyone should just fend for themselves, as later, my family had serious issues, I went to school on an empty stomach not once and nobody ever asked a single damn question…or nobody ever asked why I worked to enable me to go to school from age 14 upwards...
While I’m fully aware that this is by no means a solution to the root cause of the problem, it helped those families struggling in the moment. The problem hasn’t been solved in my home country ever since and they aren’t willing to look at solutions that actually work (anyway, that’s just a side-rant).
It was the same during those years with produce, regardless of money. If someone needed something (even if they just forgot to buy it earlier the day/week), they got it from one of the neighbours and they could give it back when they bought it again.
In my current neighbourhood in CH, we have some of these local community driven UBSs as you mentioned (repair cafe, language cafe, community co-working mainly), but it is still developing. I’m keeping an open eye on them, but it is hard as the information sharing about the sheer existence of these options is borderline mediocre (the info sharing works best in larger cities and in mountain areas, it is really difficult in the so-called sleeping towns here as well).
What you describe Zsofia is mutual aid, which is neither capitalistic nor communistic as it is not anchored in consumerism. What you described is the best safety net of all!
I did not know of Emma Goldman until today but her theory makes a lot of sense and wouldn’t it have been nice if it had been applied in her time and then on ?https://kasperbenjamin.substack.com/p/emma-vs-karl?r=5fae3g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true!
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSSfdb8DbDS/?igsh=MWUzY2Ixd2FhZGh5Zg== We need more such mutual aid actors creators!
Thank you Mike, Renia, Elsa and Agnes. I enjoyed reading your thoughts. The UBS list is a remarkable effort 👏 but I was wondering Mike if you agree with Bioregional Earth’s emphasis that bioregions are unique ecological and cultural landscapes — each with their own local actors, histories, ecological dynamics, and time dependencies — and that regenerating Earth at scale means working with those differences rather than applying one universal method. The reason I ask is related to the use of the term “blueprint” in relation to the UBS list which I guess also has its place and time-based context and actors?
PS: Did you coin the term “UBS” Mike?