the economics of happiness

site above..

trailer below..

econ of happiness is a project of local futures: https://www.localfutures.org/

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via thought maybe site (1:08:16):

the economics of happiness (2010)

http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-economics-of-happiness/

ladakh, tibet

ladakh

4 min – there was this radiance i’d never experienced… no one went hungry.. they didn’t have our luxuries.. but what they did have was a way of life that was vastly more sustainable than ours.. and vastly more joyous and rich

in mid 1970s – ladakh suddenly thrown open to outside world… cheap subsidized food, advertising/media, romanticizing western culture.. people started to think of selves as backward, primitive, poor

we don’t have any poor houses here… 10 yrs later.. same person – please help us we are so poor

so clear – cause and effect… a people so spiritually grounded… now devisiveness and depression

not result of innate human greed or evolutionary force – clearly direct result of outside economic pressures.. breaking down community and culture… ladakh’s intro to globalization

8 min – globalization – most powerful force for change in the world today… an ongoing threat… about deregulation.. freeing up big banks.. focus on profit not people

rapid expansion of process that started about 500 yrs ago.. dismantling self-reliant communities.. a more subtle form of displacement… debt…

David Graeber – debt

1o min –

8 inconvenient truths about globalization..

1\ globalization makes us unhappy

rising levels of depression in west.. 2-10 fold

Juliet Schor – stresses on ave household have increased tremendously

constant pressure for more – material wealth has never brought us happiness

12 min – Bill McKinnon – #’s of americans to say – yes happy with life peaks at 1956 – gone down ever since.. interesting when we’ve gotten richer and less happy – undermines community

Vandana Shiva – only people who are happy – people who know they’re not alone in this world.. lonely people have never been happy people – globalization is creating a very lonely planet –

12 min –

2\ globalization breeds insecurity

more and more corps sell to kids – Juliet

14 min – vying learning mult tables against farming.. degrading farming

15 min – marketers – don’t worry if you don’t know who you are.. we’ll give you a packaged identity – previous to this – identity came in community

16 min – sales of blue contact lenses and skin lightener

3\ globalization wastes natural resources

encouraging consumerism stresses the natural resources of entire planet

17 min – there’s not enough resources for india to consume at the level of u.s. –

18 min – resource needs shoot up in city.. food once grew for self must now be grown for them and brought in on large trucks… water involves enormous dams.. energy – huge power plants.. transmission lines… waste – including valuable compost – trucked out of city.. urban consume significantly more non-renewable resources than land-based relatives

if in the name of fairness.. industrializing entire world – will result in – universal starvation/famine

20 min

4\ globalization accelerates climate change

the very logic of globalization requires transport of goods/resources… ie: butter trucked in cheaper than local butter

21 min – we’ve developed a system that could not be more wasteful… flying/trucking back and forth

22 min – lists of countries importing/exporting nearly identical quantities of nearly identical products…. raising co2 emissions.. threatening survival

5\ globalization destroys livelihood

1 major causality is our jobs

earn a living ness

give us our land and we’ll work hard to make something of it..

24 min – Shiva – removing people from land is the root of all unemployment, creation of slums, and the rural urban migration –making people disposal in terms of working with the land.. is creating probably the biggest human crisis.. 100000 indian farmer have been driven to suicide

6\ globalization increases conflict

25 min – force of land – forced into competition for few available jobs…. creates terrorism.. a lot of disharmony

you destroy language, the roots of who you are, history,… you become nobody in the world..

26 min – in ladakh buddhists and muslims have lived side by side for 500 years without any conflict – Helena – but as competition for jobs rose.. after only about a decade – buddhists and muslims were literally killing each other

7\ globalization is built on hand-outs to big business

27 min – widely believed that globalization is unstoppable.. natural,.. inevitable..process. driven by free markets and the efficiency of scale…

Andrew Simms – new economics foundation, uk

28 min – Zac Goldsmith – member of parliament, uk: we could not be doing what we’re doing w/o enormous support from govts around the world.. we’re about as far away from a free market as we possibly could be

support for big business from subsidies.. and increasing de regulation of finance/trade – world trade organization

freeing banks global level… with red tape tighter at national level… 100s of 1000s going out of business.. regulate local, deregulate global

29 mi – speculation is king and real people are an after thought

8\ globalization is based on false accounting

gdp ness – can solve every problem… ie: poverty/unemployment/environment/health.. is the problem, more economic growth is the answer

bad health, economy, environment… et al… all of these things involve a change in economy – so that results on plus side of the balance sheet

31 min – not just the measurement of growth coming under scrutiny – but the whole concept of growth

32 min – all supposed solutions perpetuate the problems – superficial solutions…ie: drive less… consume better products..

33 min – trying to persuade us that we can personally solve the problem

Juliet – there’s a limit to how far we can go with individual solutions.. we have to do something about the institutions that are at the root of the problem… a system run amok

systemic change

run amok ness

34 min – they remain in power because we accept their legitimacy

1972 – king of bhutan – penned term: gross national happiness

35 min – Ron Colman – 1 means – gpi – purpose of genuine progress index… count things more accurately – to take into account our natural wealth.. count full benefits/costs…

36 min – answer – localization – 1. the removal of fiscal and other supports that currently favor giant transnational corporations and banks 2. reducing dependence on export markets in favor of production for local needs (often confuse with isolationism, protectionism, the elimination of trade)

37 min – localization is a systemic far-reaching alternative to corporate capitalism.. – Helena

focus on 3 key mechanisms that govt’s use to shape economy: what they choose to regulate; what they choose to tax; what they choose to subsidize… at the moment – all govts using these to favor the big global

38 min – 113 billion dollars a year that is making local less competitive… if a fraction of the subsidies… incredible what we could achieve

40 min – redefining economic problems as local

we need global cooperation -but that’s very different than the globalization of the economy

50 min – localized – rather than mechanized – produce more food per acre – 15 yrs research – Shiva – biodiverse small farms.. 3-5 times more food

we don’t need stuff.. we just need to be left alone to do our farming..

51 min – we need to get back to basics to see what our real needs are – Helena

just wish it wasn’t always about – giving people more jobs..

better to use de centralized energy infrastructure than to build up the large globalized – fossil fuel – energy structure

54 min – people realize – the standards, the culture, role models… are right there among them – when children identify with real flesh and blood people…

i saw this so clearly in ladakh – there were no celebrities – everybody was somebody.. overwhelming respect for others.. and earth

local knowledge – grandmother knowledge – Shiva

56 min – eco villages, transition towns, .. post carbon communities.. there is good happening all over… using best of modern design .. with local materials

58 min – town’s own currency

1:01 – we’ve lost many of the things ladakhis take for granted, ie: we don’t have time – something the ladakhis have plenty of

there is an alternative

local futures

1:03 – as we decrease the scale of economic activity we increase the level of well-being.. because at the deepest level – localization is about connection, interdependence.. a fundamental human need

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rethinking modern schooling:

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2015 – free showing – This is a clip from The Economics of Happiness (2011). Thanks to the filmmakers, you can watch the full documentary online for FREE through the month of August, 2015 here on Films For Action. Watch it here.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/how-a-land-high-in-the-western-himalayas-can-help-us-understand-the-crisis-of-the-modern-world/

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on farm\ing via econ of happiness

WEAll (@WEAll_Alliance) tweeted at 11:37 AM – 5 Jun 2019 :
What are the farms of the future going to look like? @EconofHappiness
gives us a peek into #regeneration and farms operating as true #livingsystems. Read more here:
https://t.co/54ceKw9NCo (http://twitter.com/WEAll_Alliance/status/1136326064341508096?s=17)

In the end, you could say it comes down to this: if we all divest our time, energy and money from the corporations that fill megastores and supermarkets, and invest instead in ourselves,in local farmers and small local businesses, then we can keep *money and precious resources circulating in our communities.

rather.. we can let go of thinking money (any form of measuring/accounting) is a natural/humane thing

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find/follow economics of happiness:

The Economics of Happiness is a 2011 documentary film directed by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick, and John Page, and produced by the International Society for Ecology and Culture.

helena

It has won “Best in Show” at the Cinema Verde Film and Arts Festival, “Best Direction” from EKOFilm 2011 (Cech Republic), “Judges’ Choice” and “Audience Choice” at the Auroville International Film Festival (India), an “Award of Merit” from the Accolade Film Festival, and several other awards.

The film features many voices from six continents calling for systemic economic change. The documentary describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. While government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power, people around the world are resisting those policies and working to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm: an economics of localization.

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