Evolving from the Spore

What an amazing evening -- a room full of friends you didn't know you knew. A couple of ideas for direct action:

1.) Everybody Be Quiet Day: for 12 hours on (TBA), turn off all non-essential machinery that's louder than a human conversation. (Details at http://metaphorager.net/2009/06/silent-running/.)

2.) For the folks who were talking about disaster planning, one model of neighborhood organization (modular and adaptable) is COPE (http://www.cope.srcity.org), which started a few years ago in Santa Rosa.

3.) Anent that, I would urge those who can to help spread the word by working with local governments. During the past 10 years as a city-beat reporter, I've seen an amazing shift in perception from "green" (say) as far-out-hippie-wacko stuff to green as public policy (at least, here in Sonoma County), and I predict that matters will only get better.

Be well,

Neal Ross Attinson
http://metaphorager.net

Hi All,

Yes Ditto! It was an awesome evening and it was so nice meeting everyone!

This morning I was chatting with a healer/artist friend from Washington state about the ills of our global monetary economy. Well yeah, but it was a sick system before the crash too cuz it undervalues the core economy. I mean what gives with the fact that I get paid 5 times more for sitting in an office managing others to manage software programs, (meanwhile spending my time writing poetry, making connections and thinking about the painting I'll work on tonight), then my disabled son's aide makes!
Whew, I'm out of breath! Lol!
Well I happen to think the work I'm doing is important, cuz the other stuff I'm not paid to do is feeding into the core economy. Hey that's what art and poetry and making connections is about in my mind anyway. (Yes it's way right side but making a momentary excursion to the left, to the left)
It's intended for healing, it's intended to connect us into what really matters and collecting green stuff ain't it!
I mean DUH!
Right now a part of the art world is plugged into the monetary economy but I believe a larger part is not. All you have to do is spend 5 minutes on the internet and find all kinds of "free" art, music, writing. My vision is that art is a gateway between the monetary and core economy.

So what would happen if everyone pulled their content down from the internet for a single day?

What would happen to our world if the payment for art had to be made as time into the core economy?
"IBM you want my poem/ K let me get out my calculator (my 10 fingers).
That'll be 5 hours into the time bank TY!"

So I'll be the first convert and sell my artwork for time into the core economy.

Here's some more info.

http://www.timebanks.org/core-economy.htm

A word to my fellow artists. Being paid money for art is not validating in fact it's a invalidation because art has no price. If it did have a price, the price would be your life. Besides the Art was never yours anyway, only the work was and that is time.

Blessings

Doug

Veering slightly from the subject of time banks and related alternative currencies, I have a freshly read copy of Life, Inc. by Douglas Rushkoff that I'd like to give to the first taker.

I loved the book, but I've gotten what I need from it, and since the ultimate point of the book (spoiler alert) is that we're weakened as communities and as people by literally buying into the idea that money always has to be tied to debt and that that debt always trickles upwards to benefit the rich, who extract wealth from the value-producing working classes, I just can't reconcile the idea of selling this book back.

Anyway, hit me up if you want the book. I can drop it off if you're in San Francisco. markkus@markkus.com