Timelessness is Bliss

Having studied philosophy at university I tend to shy away from it now. However, it seems we need to have a little think about time. The woman who taught me philosophy was actually a specialist in the philosophy of time. She dwelt at the top of a flight of concrete steps in a brutalist building in my college grounds. She was immensely small with an oversized head and nobody has ever better exemplified for me the philosophical thought experiment of the brain in the vat.

Imagine our amazement when she upped and left one day - ran away with a male philosopher she had met at a conference. Whispering sweet nothings about Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein had clearly led on to more bodily interests. Good for her! And perhaps she was on to sometimes that I wasn't able to grasp as an opinionated 21-year-old.

Ecofeminist Teresa Brennan has said that ‘nature is the source of all value, and ultimately of all energy, but the inherent dynamic of capital is to diminish this value and this energy in favour of time and technology.’ This seems to imply that if we spent more time in country walks we would begin to see through the hollow sham of our technotopia and probably find we had more time on our hands too. I can't be the only person who finds that when I work less I feel as though I had more time - and sometimes get more done too.

Rethinking time is valuable when it comes to rebuilding a local economy. It is clearly irrational, if you take time for granted, to bother to do anything for yourself at all. The rational response is to work a large number of hours, for the highest rate of return you can negotiate, and purchase everything in the market. Thus a fixation on time strips everything of value out of human lives.

E. P. Thompson pointed out that one of the hardest things for the early capitalists was to train people to respond to factory time rather than natural time. Like laboratory rats they were trained to respond to a system of bells and whistles. Over time this seeped into the culture: we were trained to believe that 'time is money', we were softened up for having our lives stolen from us via working time directives and by the Time-Life Corporation.

In 'The World as Will and Representation' (great title!) Schopenhauer wrote that 'the will transcends time and space, which together constitute the principle of sufficient reason of being. Time and space are conditions for manifestations of the will, but the will itself is unconditioned by time or space. The plurality of things in time and space is an objectification of the will.' And remember he also had a dog called 'World's End'. Nothing helps to re-evaluate time like an awareness of how short our span on earth is. Tweet

From ethical to bioregional consumption . . . and production

As we move towards a world of less trade we need to be thinking about how we will get hold of the things we really need. We can start making the adjustment now in our own consumption. This has two big advantages. First, it means that when the changes come - and they may be sudden and rapid - we will already be mentally prepared. Secondly, we can support the development of the markets offering the kind of goods we will be buying in the future, thus easing the transition.

Here are a few examples. I have a beautiful mug that I bought at a Christmas fayre. The local potter had just dug a hole near the college where she teaches and burrowed out some clay. She had spent a long time refining it and then turned it into a mug. This is an exceptional mug because she usually buys in clay from Staffordshire. She was as delighted as I am to see the exact colour of pottery made from Stroud clay. It is also unique since she only made one.

I also have a rush hat made by Sheila Wynter. Sheila goes every year in the right season with her son to the river Avon just above Tewkesbury. Here they dabble in the mud and cut the rushes. She brings them home and dries them in her workshop before weaving the hats. They have a curious rustic look which my daughter points out is just the look of the hat worn by the artist in the famous Van Gogh portrait.

For me these items exemplify everything about bioregional consumption. Obviously the first and most important factor is that they are made locally with local inputs. But there is the depth of relationship between me and the person who made the item that fills me with delight every time I have a cup of coffee or go out wearing my hat. Of course for me they are also object lessons which people I meet - unfortunately for them - cannot escape.

Perhaps most importantly of all, they are expensive. In the global economy you seek the lowest price. In the bioregional economy the adman's slogan 'reassuringly expensive' may be a better guide. My rush hat cost £24. Given the amount of work for Sheila in cutting the rushes, preparing them, and weaving the hat this is an absurdly small amount of money. But if it had been made by a Chinese slave it would have cost a fifth of this price. So when you consume bioregionally you will have much less stuff, but it will be of vastly better quality.

It's not just about consumption; it's also about production. I came to know Sheila because I am learning basket-making from her. If you are the sort of person who bemoans the fact that there is so little available to buy from local producers you can start by choosing to buy what there is and paying a just price. But the next step is to start making something yourself - the guidelines are that it should be something that is genuinely needed in the community and that you can find the materials locally.

And remember the other hint from Robinson Crusoe: use what the global economy has already invested energy in to the maximum before you resort to buying new of any sort. So patching and mending and buying from charity shops is a good solution for stuff your local economy doesn't provide yet. Why not go for showy, artistic patches: make a political statement with your darning! Tweet

Trading on the Yin

It says something about the relentless pressure of capitalism that I feel a need to apologise for having taken the whole month of August off work, and mainly offline and away from computers. I am torn between celebrating this and recommending to others that they live their principles in this way, and feeling guilty that I have dared to step off the treadmill.



It has been an interesting few months of talks, rest, reading and festivals. I know that most of the original and creative work I do happens during what is officially labelled as 'holiday' and that most of my good ideas come when I'm sitting on a bus or lying in bed. Strange, then, that I value the hours spent here, staring into a luminscent screen, giving myself RSI so much more.



Of the many things I've learned over the summer the most exciting is about Country Markets. As part of a commitment to encouraging local trading we developed a concept of 'fayre trade'. This takes as read the principles of fair trade, but supplements them by a commitment to reducing consumption and substituting local production and exchange for involvement in the globalised market wherever possible. However, having learned about Country Markets I am beginning to think we may have been reinventing the wheel.



My own product is face cream, based on my own need for something to deal with my arid skin which splits and re-splits throughout the winter. Producing it to a standard I'm happy with is surprisingly easy. I'm using organic ingredients and recycled jars collected from friends, and trying to keep inputs as simple and local as possible. The energy embodied in conventional, petroleum based skincare products is shocking, not to mention the unpleasantness of smearing paraffin on your skin.



Creating a market for such products is more of a problem. Legislation is widespread and intimidating and probably devised by the corporate-dominated EU mandarins to deter the small trader. But Country Markets, formerly part of the WI but now hived off, has found ways around this, including fighting the notorious Jam Law through the House of Commons in the early 1980s. Their local markets offer the opportunity for the small, local producer or enthusiast to trade at minimal cost. Despite the traditional jam and cakes image of the WI market, produce is not limited to food. It costs only five pence to join and is genuinely co-operative. For more see http://www.country-markets.co.uk/content.php Tweet