27 Apr The Real Urgency Before We Can Re-Open
The question on everyone’s minds seems to be, “When can we get back to normal?”
For those who are cooped up in a small apartment, living without a paycheck, or trying to work from home with small children around 24/7, this question has an understandable urgency. When will the pain and inconvenience stop? In times of uncertainty, it’s natural to want to go back to what we know.
But what if we’re not going back to that old normal? What if all the running around, flying and buying, looting and polluting was actually abnormal? What if this period of confinement is for sobering up from our relentless addiction to consumption and busyness? Maybe the clean air and quieter streets is the actual normal.
Then, like children sent to our room to think about what we’re doing, we can’t come out until we understand the error of our ways and change our behavior.
This virus has given us a profound teaching. Tiny as it is, it has created massive global movement in the direction we needed to go: toward less pollution, lower carbon emission, and more balance in how we live. It’s taken us places we didn’t think possible, and with amazing speed and thoroughness. It has shown us the behavior needed to stave off disasters from climate change, or even more destructive viruses in the future– if we can learn from it.
The trouble is, doing what we need to do for the health of our planet, and ultimately ourselves, doesn’t work very well with our economic system. Do we have to make a choice?
Just as the virus is magnifying our weaknesses – in health care, politics, education, even relationships – the flaws in our economic system seem the most blatant. How can we assure adequate food, shelter, and health care for everyone, when people can’t earn money in the traditional ways?
Maybe going back to commuting and polluting, and running ourselves ragged, isn’t the way back to health. Maybe the question of how many people could become infected isn’t the only one we should be asking when we consider opening things up again. Maybe we should be asking about how we maintain the more peaceful, sustainable practices, and not return to the same way of living that is creating these problems in the first place.
The time is ripe for new economic solutions, for rethinking the entire system upon which we are based. Many are taking on the challenge and asking these questions, developing new ideas and possibilities.
Join me and my evolutionary co-heart, Michael Wayne, Tuesday at 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific, for a one-hour call on the future of economics, where we’ll discuss things like Universal Basic Income, Wikinomics, alternative currencies, Gift economies, Collaborative Commons, Generocracy, and why this time of disruption is such a fertile time to shift the paradigm.
Join us!
Investing in and Creating Our Future: Innovating New Ways for Thriving, with Anodea Judith and Michael Wayne
Tuesday, April 28th at 7pm Eastern Time.
Here’s the call details: https://zoom.us/j/207782666
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