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Annie Leonard has a great site storyofstuff.org And she has a new video on Solutions! She is promoting that we aim for 'Better', and I think the ideas on this site could help achieve that. I'll email them and see what they say.
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So I was given a book to read with the person telling me "It's really well done" and "It just shows that utopia will never work", and it had an interesting title which seemed like it might be based on something real, even though I was pretty sure it was fiction.
So the book was Agenda 21 by Glen Beck, and it is a fictional future scenario based on where he sees the real Agenda 21 taking us. It however was not very good in my opinion. And did not show that utopia is impossible. He did manage to make Agenda 21 and everything that is not 100% Christian cut throat US capitalism look evil. It seemed like he worked on hitting a lot of key points rather than make a really strong argument against Agenda 21. He worked in, loss of land/private owner ship/freedom of speech/freedom of religion, no more material possessions, feed the wildlife over humans, and loss of family and freedom to choose a partner. He worked them all in there, but he didn't really depict that bad of a living conditions, it seemed more like some mismanagement of the social conventions. If people weren't forced into marriages, and they could help raise their babies, it probably would've gone a lot smoother. Oh, I forgot he worked in the fact that they lost their guns. Anyways, the whole thing didn't make sense, they didn't live in high density housing, they didn't seem to have heard of solar power. Everyone seemed to have a house nicer than the majority of the world today, and they didn't really need to work, other than the rickshaw guys. And that was only tough because they opted for heavy wooden carriages rather than rickshaws. Anyways, Agenda 21 is a real thing, and if you watch the you tube critiques on it, it will clash with the way North American's operate, and if imposed on them they will not accept it willingly. I'm not an expert on it yet, but I think it has some merit, and it's success and the future wellbeing of people and the planet relies on how it is implemented. I think my employment agency idea could be the thing they need to implement some of their initiatives. People would volunteer to sign up, and they start trying things out. You know, the whole early adopter thing. Try it out, keep what you like, fix the rest, repeat. I like to think of it as an analogy to digital music. Let's say the UN declared cassette tapes and CDs to be causing earth's demise. Imagine they forced new rules on us declaring digital downloaded media played on rewriteable devices as the only legal way going forward. This forces you buy a new device and a new computer to run the device, which will put you into debt to pay for these, and you will then be charged $1 per song to replace your collection, and not all songs will be available, and you won't be able to share music like you used to. If that was forced on us I could see people getting really upset and pushing back. But look at what happened, we were presented with the options, the new way was heavily marketed as being more fun, and easier, some adopted it right away, they figured out the kinks and now just about all of us have adopted it, many of us committing a lot of our money and time to it, and making the sellers of the tech very wealthy, and lots of people loving it. Often forgetting about the old CDs and tapes we have, but those that want them still have them. What I'm saying is, we need to design and present options which meet the goals of Agenda 21 and make people's lives better. We need to have programs where we can have early adopters make use of them, living alongside those that are not. And we need to make these new solutions so compelling and superior that everyone will want in on them, no matter what the cost. I think the way to do this is focus on happiness. It is what everyone strives for continually, it is what all consumer good are marketed on, and recent research shows it can be achieved for a lot less than the resources North American's are committing towards it today. It's could be the perfect solution. From looking into Agenda 21 I came across the Earth Charter. It looks like a great foundation to build on. Not a great marketing tool, but a good starting point to base the Happy Employment Agency on. Similar to Agenda 21 I feel like the Earth Charter would freak people out, so if that happens I would point them to the guideline to be flexible, and not in the sense that they need to be flexible, but that the charter has flexibility built in and if something isn't working or won't go over well, then it gets redesigned into something that does work. I was checking out the Green Party of Canada's website and came across a few interesting things in their vision. #1 is the most relevant, the others were just interesting.
#1 - They are big n Co-Ops!! And apparently the UN declared 2012 the year of the Co-Ops, ... hun? Well that makes me feel like I'm not totally out to lunch. http://www.greenparty.ca/vision-green/p1.11 #2 Ending the war on Drugs. Didn't realize this was part of their vision. http://www.greenparty.ca/vision-green/p4.8 #3 Reforming the Divorce Act. That sounds long over due. I have heard a lot of first hand stories of divorce destroying families financially, and tearing them apart emotionally. And it just seems like there has to be a better way. Considering divorce impacts everyone (it seems statistically impossible not to have someone related by blood or marriage who has been through or will go through one, but I guess a few people wouldn't) so good for them to try to fix this. http://www.greenparty.ca/vision-green/p4.11.2 
Help support them here http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nomad-micro-home-easily-assembled-under-30k
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November 2017
AuthorI'm always finding interesting videos and articles, so I thought I'd share them. Categories |
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