Doing my share (and a goodbye)
November 26th, 2008The forest is burning. All the animals are staring blankly at the blazing fire, paralyzed with stupor, watching their world come to an end. Alone, the little hummingbird is flying relentlessly back and forth, each time sipping one drop of water from the river and spitting it over the flames. One of the animals finally says: “your efforts are useless; you are much too small to make any difference.” The hummingbird replies: “I know, but I am doing my share.”
Maybe not everybody is conscious about it, but our world is coming to an end. Runaway global warming in a few decades; peak energy in a few years; economic collapse in a few months. Nobody can deny that most things we’ve grown used to will stop. If this is true, why hold on to our little habits and carry on our little routines pretending, and then watch the world fall apart, aghast and helpless?
I will be putting all my efforts in my community, starting a Local Exchange Trading System, so that we have a local, social and economic safety net, as all I am seeing from our governments is bailout plans and unconditional support to the very system which brought us here. I hope they succeed in slowing down the fall. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and I believe I should devote every minute of my free time to this project (while I am gradually stepping back from my wildly funny, unjustly well-paying, and insanely useless job of inventing space machines which will never fly).
Maybe I’ll be back in a couple of months/years, when my project is up and running and I see the end of the world is not as near as I had thought. In the meantime, it is au revoir everyone.
Amicalement,
Mandarine
Good luck (though I hope you’re wrong about the world)! Your wisdom will be missed!
coucou
intéressant comme tout de suivre tes divers blogs et l’évolution qui est la tienne, et la votre par ricochet
bon courage pour ce nouveau projet, j’espère qu’on aura l’occasion d’en reparler bientôt
I respect the course of action you’re taking in light of your beliefs. So sad that you’re leaving, but hopefully it’s just a “see you later”… You know where to find me…
BTW… If you do come back, I’ll be very interested in hearing about your experience with the LETS. A long time ago, when I was younger and an idealist, I conceived something like this as the system in which I’d love to live. Didn’t think it was possible. Didn’t know that the idea already existed somewhere else (duh!)… So, do let us know how it goes. And best of luck with your efforts.
Bon Chance! I will miss reading your insights here. Perhaps you will stop by sometime and let us know how your project is progressing.
You will be missed Mandarine! I hope you can let us know how you’re doing by commenting our blogs!
Do let us know how things are going now and then, when you get the chance.
Oh, you will be missed, Mandarine. I hope you can find the time to stop in now and again and let us know how things progress.
Goodbye (sob). But I am very excited about what you’re doing. Hope you will keep in touch from time-to-time.
Don’t worry, I’ll certainly stay around. In fact, I do not think I can stop writing here altogether. There’s at least one more post I have to write soon.
And will probably comment on my project too, but it’ll be short posts. For the big picture, you’ll have to go over to my other blog (and learn to read French.)
All the best in your efforts with the LETS. I’ll look forward to updates even if they are infrequent.
I ought to mention that the Chris Martenson link you had provided was quite an eye-opener for me. I watched the entire crash course and its message is sobering to say the least.
Indeed it is. I do not like how he ranks his final advice though (like stash cash first then turn to your neighbor). My personal course of action is to make my community tighter and more resilient (as well as more informed, so that we are not sitting stupidly not knowing what hit us).
That is quite a step, and good luck with it. I hope you do keep us up to date.
Good bye and good luck!
I will miss your presence. Plus I am looking at the idea of the LETS and thinking that would not be such a bad idea to get started here locally. If you are right, we will all be engaging in a barter economy soon enough.
I certainly hope you are wrong about the pending economic collapse. But I’m not so sure that you are. There certainly are enough terrible things going on to make one very worried.
Becky: there will be short updates. And I will still be reading and commenting blogs. The way I see it, if I have too little time for both, I’d better be reading than writing.
healingmagichands: I hope I am wrong too. In any case, even if I am right, history shows that collapse does not happen overnight - it generally takes a couple of years for the economy to be completely wrecked.
Talking about LETS, I believe it deserves all your attention. All the more so as in this system, the value of some good or service is generally reckoned by assessing how much time it took to make or to provide. This would fit nicely with your philosophy of money.
Good luck with your project. I hope it is a success! Please do post about it now and then.
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