I've been racking my brain lately over "The Economy." The current failure looks a lot to me like the failure of an outlook and value system, rather than something simply broken down and in need of tinkering and repair. I wonder how an ethic could be created to support an economy based on improving the overall quality of life for people, rather than simply producing more and more stuff, much of it crap.

I've also been thinking about the connection between economy and ecology, to the point where I've been toying with coining new words like economology, ecojomy and ecogeny, to bring together the sense that ecology and economy share a common root, eco, which originally meant house or household in Greek. In our currect evolutionary state, we realize that our house is the earth -- our economy is globalized, but our ecology has lagged behind. We've got to put our house in order.

I came across an article by Robert Costanza this morning that covers some of these points:

The intro says, "[W]e need to move beyond 'growth at all costs' and reorganise the economy based on the quality of life rather than quantity of consumption."

Here's the full story.

Posted by Josh Wachtel @ 8:38 AM   |  0 comments  |  permalink  |  

Saturday, March 28, 2009, our good friend Sarah Stockwell is putting on a concert/community-building event at the West Cummington Church, in West Cummington, Massachusetts, with doors opening at 7:00pm, concert beginning at 7:30pm. Kim and I are joining Sarah on a number of tunes, and singing a couple of our own. (Sliding scale admission, $0-$5 for unemployed adults and $5-$10 for employed adults.)

This is a very exciting one-of-a-kind event, a model of New Ruralism, with implications for regenerating our communities, our environment and our lives.

Come early to meet local sustainable builders, farmers, alternative energy experts and more. There's more meeting time at intermission, and we'll turn the lights out at 8:30pm to honor the Earth Hour movement.

Listen below to an interview about the event and the local sustainability movement with Sarah Stockwell and Anna Hanchette of Manda Farm on WAMC's The Round Table:

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Here's a short interview with Bob Dylan to accompany the April 28 release of his new album, "Together Through Life".

I'm bloody close, but I'm too exhausted from a busy weekend to finish tonight. Check back in the next day or two for Podcast #11.

Neil Young rants about the economy, the war, the Internet, digital music ("Download this / It sounds like shit ... ") and a bunch of other stuff.

Neil Young - Fork In The Road

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