David'sPageL:- a Response to: David's declaration of purpose in his remaining life.

Thank you for sharing your latest thoughts with us. I understand, support and largely share all four of your "desires", so thought I would comment .. on some of the "conflicts".

Your phrase "living suicide" really appals me, but it is so inconsistent with the rest of your letter, which sets very worthwhile goals in life, that I assume and hope that you are now looking for a way to move beyond this to a life which feels worth living. It seems to me that you have largely done this by recognising that it is not enough just to feel one is refraining from doing harm - a satisfying life needs a feeling of doing positive things as well.

I am sure you are right to work on _both_ withdrawing support from the present economic system, _and_ building and encouraging the new shoots, because the TNCs will not crumble just because people like us withdraw support - there needs to be alternative models to encourage the mass of people to change direction too.

I also think you've hit on a major issue in recognising that saving money is (often) quite different from reducing environmental impact, and that sometimes the most environmentally appropriate action costs more. You have both goals, but sometimes they are in conflict.

You identify your resources, and therefore what you have to offer the growing movement to sustainability, as: money, time and skills. At present you have rather little of the first, and a great deal of the last two, so it would seem that you could contribute most through your time and knowlege, rather than your spending or investment power. At the same time you need to take care of your personal energy levels and health. I personally believe that both of these would improve if you had better (and possibly more, but mainly better) food, and were working with the movement to self reliance and sustainability.

There is always a trade-off between time and money, and you have chosen a lifestyle that uses time to substitute for money. But there are various ways this can be done, which might be worth thinking about.

Use time to earn $$$, then spend them to get what you want. This is the route the industrial system expects us to take for all our needs and is what we are all trying to get away from, to varying degrees.
Use time to produce one's own needs so one doesn't have to rely on the market system.

This is what everyone did before the industrial revolution and most societies still do to some extent. This makes possible a very high quality of life with much less money and much less environmental impact. I have always done this, but much less today - I no longer make my own clothes, keep hens, fix things myself. Taken to an extreme it is very hard work and rather inefficient.

But it doesn't have to be food production - I just happen to enjoy that. It could be producing all one's own fuels from biogas; or building one's own house; making clothes; repairing things.
Green dollar exchanges allow the best of both worlds. You specialise in a few things you like to do, and trade for other people's surpluses, knowing that none of your green $$ is going to TNCs or in fact outside your local community. It is _community_ self-reliance, rather than individual, and it builds social structures which can eventually be an alternative to those relying on the TNCs.

If you want to eat organic food but don't like growing it, there is a lot of organic produce traded through green $$ and in return you could offer your computer skills which are often in demand. Green $$ are a real "people controlled" enterprise. There are two I know of in Thames, and lots in Auckland.
The fourth way is to live on less and work voluntarily for an organization building sustainability - which is what you did while working for FoE and what I have been doing this past year. Maybe there are groups who would love to have someone scan PlaNet for them regularly to pull out and pre-digest stuff on certain topics?

With regard to your other conflicts, start by admitting you can't do everything at once! Perhaps while your children are students their education is the most important project you have, and [an investment in] Prometheus can wait a few years?

I agree that the most sustainable place to work is locally. For me that is quite a conflict ... [Joining a green $$ group] will start to shape how much time you spend in [any particular] place.

Do you get the Prometheus newsletters? They have news of some sustainable enterprises. There are other sources - I ... will meet a lot of people at Tauhara this week who work in that field, so will see what I can dig out.