Changemaker Meeting | October
On October 22nd at 12:00 BST we gathered as a network and held a community discussion around the topic, New Economies. As part of this meeting, we were kindly joined by Danisha Kazi from Positive Money UK, who guided us through her work as a senior economist within an organisation aiming to make money work for people and planet. Following a conversation and Q&A, we closed on a wellbeing practice led by Rose Bonham-Carter: Emotional Freedom Technique. Scroll down to watch recordings from the meeting, and to read more about our topic, our guests, and a list of learning resources.
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New Economies with Danisha Kazi from Positive Money
Find an edited transcript here.
Meet Positive Money
“Right now the money and banking system isn’t working for most people. It causes house price bubbles, high levels of debt and rising inequality. It lays the foundations for financial crises and it harms our environment. Big banks have too much power and there is a large democratic deficit in the way the Bank of England makes decisions.
To deal with the big social, economic and environmental challenges we’re facing today, we need to reform our money and banking system.”
Positive Money is a not-for-profit research and campaigning organisation; their vision is a money and banking system that enables a fair, democratic, and sustainable economy. Based in London, England, their Advisory Panel includes economics professors, authors, entrepreneurs and people from the financial industry; together, they work with stakeholders across civil society and other sectors to promote their ideas.
Find out more about Positive Money, including their research and latest resources, here.
Emotional Freedom Technique with Rose Bonham-Carter
Meet Rose
Rose Bonham-Carter is a certified EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) facilitator and energy worker. Blending 9 years of body-oriented and tantric studies, with her experience as an in-house EFT & Reiki practitioner at Lifespace Healing in Notting Hill, Rose’s gift is in helping others to help themselves. In asking her clients to ‘drop’ into their bodies and feel, sometimes for the very first time, they co-create deep, embodied and lasting transformation.
What is Emotional Freedom Technique?
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), also known as ‘tapping therapy’, is a transformational body-based psychology practice that brings us home to the body. It integrates the Chinese meridian energy system with modern Western talking therapy, but its touch component means quicker results.
At times of extreme stress or grief, manifesting in panic attacks or waves of bodily anxiety, EFT provides a fast and efficient method of self-soothing and restoring a sense of self.
Studies show a high success rate in clinical trials, with EFT, used to calm schoolchildren and reduce bullying, aiding athletes’ adrenaline-anxiety and by war victims and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
How does EFT work?
Tapping works similar to acupuncture, in which we stimulate energy meridian points through touch. If these acupoints are tapped in rhythmic motions, while we bring negative patterns to the surface, we can attempt to transform them.
EFT does this by asking us to ‘reframe’ the conditioned negative response of our brain when exposed to personal triggers. Teaching ourselves to shift energy in this way changes the way our brain processes that information. We call this neuroplasticity; our brain's ability to modify, change, and adapt.
Discover more about Rose and her work here.
Instagram: @rosebonhamcarter
What do we mean when we talk about New Economies?
Economy is present in almost every element of our lives & dominates global culture and society. It is connected to the food that we eat, the land that we live upon, the climate, and even our everyday human interactions. Whilst ‘economy’ is primarily used now in relation to money, the word actually originated from the Greek oikos, meaning home. Economy originally meant household management, and was linked to ideas of thriftiness and the careful management of available resources.
Our modern conception of ‘the economy’, however, is predominantly linked to the rise of a mass-consumption economy. Economy has come to no longer mean the careful management and preservation of our home, but rather has become linked to human self-interest and the rising wealth of the private sector. This linear and hierarchical conception is completely disconnected from the reality of our ‘home’, our oikos: our ecological system is an amazing web, not a line of growth.
Exploring New Economies means reevaluating and reimagining how we can undertake this ‘household management’; what we choose to value, and how we value it; how we can create systems of exchange that don’t depend upon the exploitation of our planet’s resources or cheap labour; and ultimately reaffirming the relationship between our economic and ecological systems.
You can read more about New Economies over on our EcoResolution site, including new economic models such as Donut Economics, Living Economies, and the call for a Green New Deal.
Recommended Resources
— Positive Money Introductory Videos
Here you can find an amazing collection of introductory overview videos provided by Positive Money. Have you ever asked: What is Money? Why are the Rich getting Richer? Why is there so much debt? If so, then these are your go-to resources to start learning more.
— 97% OWNED: Monetary Reform Documentary
When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it’s essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked – questions like: where does money come from? Who creates it? Who decides how it gets used? And what does that mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when money and finance breaks down?
97% Owned is a documentary that reveals how money is at the root of our current social and economic crisis. Featuring frank interviews and commentary from economists, campaigners and former bankers, it exposes the privatised, debt-based monetary system that gives banks the power to create money, shape the economy, cause crises and push house prices out of reach. Fact-based and clearly explained, in just 60 minutes it shows how the power to create money is the piece of the puzzle that economists were missing when they failed to predict the crisis.
Produced by Queuepolitely and featuring Ben Dyson of Positive Money, Josh Ryan-Collins of The New Economics Foundation, Ann Pettifor, the “HBOS Whistleblower” Paul Moore, Simon Dixon of Bank to the Future and Nick Dearden from the Jubliee Debt Campaign, this is the first documentary to tackle this issue from a UK-perspective, and can be watched online now.
— Positive Money | The Tragedy of Growth PDF (May 2020)
To protect human wellbeing and avoid environmental disaster, we must escape the growth paradigm once and for all. This requires stopping the publication of GDP figures and focusing instead on dashboards of alternative indicators, such as life expectancy, carbon emissions, and education. To support this reorientation of policy goals, decision-making guidance must be made fit for high uncertainty in a crisis-prone world.
This report makes several key recommendations for the Treasury, the Bank of England, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
— The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | Naomi Klein
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies around the world.
You can read an excerpt here, or explore Klein’s writing and similar ideas in the following articles:
— How Power Profits from Disaster | Naomi Klein
— Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature” | Naomi Klein
— Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order | Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky takes on neoliberalism: the pro-corporate system of economic and political policies presently waging a form of class war worldwide. By examining the contradictions between the democratic and market principles proclaimed by those in power and those actually practiced, Chomsky critiques the tyranny of the few that restricts the public arena and enacts policies that vastly increase private wealth, often with complete disregard for social and ecological consequences.
— Noam Chomsky’s Green New Deal: A chat about his new book with co-author Robert Pollin
“We don’t have time to totally overturn capitalism. We have to get to net zero emissions in no less than 30 years, and capitalism is still going to be around then. So we have to think about ways through which we can incentivise this transition that will also be egalitarian, in the sense that it will open up opportunities for small-scale enterprises. It’s going to generate jobs, and we have to make sure those are good jobs, union jobs. There will be jobs lost in the fossil fuel sector, so we have to create a just transition. But that’s all within the institutions of capitalism.”
— The Corporation
Taking its status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, this film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?"
The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics - including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.
The Corporation explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Part film and part movement, The Corporation has been transforming audiences and dazzling critics with its insightful and compelling analysis for almost 20 years.
The film is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel was released this year.
— The Economics of Happiness (Film)
The Economics of Happiness is a film from Local Futures, an international non-profit organisation dedicated to renewing ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening communities and local economies worldwide.
The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalisation and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, people around the world are resisting those policies – and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to rebuild more human-scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localisation. You can find an accompanying PDF guide here and read more from Local Futures founder, Helena Norberg-Hodge here:
— What Indigenous Wisdom Can Teach Us About Economics | Helena Norberg-Hodge
You can also watch our interview with Helena from 2020 here.