Big Picture Activism with Helena Norberg-Hodge and Morag Gamble - World Localization Day Series Part 4 of 4

Welcome to the fourth and final part of this special localisation series on Sense-making in a Changing World podcast with internationally claimed localisation activist Helena Norberg-Hodge . 

We all know that a radical shift in the way humanity is living is essential for our future. Where do we spend our energy as activists to have the most impact possible? Here we explores the concept of Big Picture activism - acting locally and globally simultaneously and what role permaculture can play.  In the first 3 parts we talked about the global economy, localising our food system and the importance of focussing our efforts on building community and restoring ecosystems. Here in part 4 we dive big picture activism. 

Helena is the founder and director of  Local Futures, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to renewing ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening communities and local economies worldwide. 

Helena has just released a new film, Planet Local: A Quiet revolution. Her first book Ancient Futures, written in 1991 has been translated into 40 languages and sold over 1 million copies. She’s been the subject of hundreds of articles and written many books, including her latest book, Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness which accompanies her award-winning documentary, also called The Economics of Happiness. Helena’s work spans almost five decades, with support and collaboration from leading ecological thinkers. She has been the recipient of a right livelihood award, also known as the alternative Nobel peace prize and also the Goi Peace Prize. 

I first met Helena back in 1992 at Schumacher college, and was absolutely inspired by the work that she was doing and subsequently volunteered with her in Ladakh or little Tibet. 

So again grab your notebook, listen with friends, follow up by watching Helena’s films and delving into her study group materials and localisation action guide, and feel free to share widely.

Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I’m meeting with you today. I’m here on the unceded land of the Gubbi Gubbi people and on the banks of the Moocaboola river. 

So sit back and enjoy, and thank you so much for being here as part of this series of conversations with Helena

Transcript

Morag: Hello everyone. My name is Morag Gamble from the Permaculture Education Institute and welcome to the fourth and final part of this special four part series on localization on the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast.I'm here with internationally acclaimed localization activist, Helena Norberg-Hodge. Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to renewing ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening communities and local economies worldwide. Helena has just released a new film, PLANET LOCAL: A Quiet Revolution, But she's been publishing for a long time. Her first book, Ancient Futures, was written back in 1991 and has since been translated into 40 languages and sold over 1 million copies. She has been the subject of hundreds of articles and written many books, including her latest book Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness, which accompanies her award winning documentary also called The Economics of Happiness. Helena’s work spans almost five decades with support and collaboration with leading ecological thinkers. She has been the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize, and also the GOi Peace Prize. I first met Helena back in 1992 at Schumacher College in England and was absolutely inspired by the work that she was doing and subsequently volunteered with her in the dark or little Tibet and have stayed in touch ever since. In the first three parts of this series, we talked about the global economy, localizing our food system and the importance of focusing our efforts on building community and restoring ecosystems. Here in part four, we dive into big picture activism. We all know that a radical shift in the way humanity is living is essential for our future. But where do we spend that energy is activist to have the most impact possible. Here we explore the concept of big picture activism, acting locally and globally simultaneously and explore what role permaculture can play in this. So again, grab your notebook again, listen in with friends, follow up by watching Helena’s films and delving into her study group material, her books, and her localization action guide and feel free too, as always, to share this widely. Remember, this series is available in both audio and video podcasts. You can find the links below in the show notes as well as to all of Helena’s materials and our links to the Permaculture Education Institute as well. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of land in which I'm meeting with you today. I'm here on the unseeded lands of the Gubbi Gubbi people on the banks of the [inaudible] river and I'd like to pay respect to their elders past, present and emerging. So sit back and enjoy and thank you so much for being here as part of this special series of conversations with Elena Norburg-Hodge. 

Thank you for joining me again, Helena. It's been wonderful having these conversations with you over the last few weeks. We started with that big picture, thinking, looking at economics. We then flowed into exploring food systems change and then into looking at community, the importance of community and so today, what I really would like to focus on exploring is with all of that and thinking about the kind of change we need, what are the sorts of education, action and leadership we need to help bring that forward?

Helena:

I'm very happy to be here and I’m so glad that we're doing this work, which I think is a big picture activism. So I do think there's a huge need for education, meaning sharing both examples and information, but also sharing a framing and bigger picture of what's going on. Because for us, this is absolutely vital. We believe that most of our crises are connected to this dominant economic system and even if people don't believe that that's the case, what I think they will be seeing is that whether their concern is the health of their children or what's happening to their school or whether they're concerned about climate change or poverty in the third world. Whatever their concern and whatever multiple issues that we're facing, money to deal with them. It's just disappearing up there in that sort of ozone cloud where fewer and fewer people make more and more money and in an obscene way and even in my native part of the world, Scandinavia. So we address that at the beginning. But I think, now coming back to looking at what we can do in activism, I just want to really remind people that it is actually an opportunity, looking at the bigger picture is an opportunity to help people come together in a united voice. Doesn't mean that we all become part of the same organization, doesn't mean that we abandoned our particular concern. But if we could just take a little bit of time, step back a bit, to think about the problems we face and what we're saying is, if you take the time to go deep enough and broad enough, you will see that these crisis are connected and, as I say, even if the crisis is just that everything you care about hasn't got any money, anyone, and including your child going into the workplace today, has options that are a fraction of what you had as a parent, and why is this happening? So we're looking at that why and we're really urging people to share the bigger picture so that we can unite in our effort to really bring about systemic change. Now, when we do that, we'll also see that there is so much we can do at the local level and that we've been sort of misled, because, essentially, we've been subjected to a framing of the issues and I'm talking about this enormous environmental and social problems we face. The framing has been done by big money, by a big corporate interest and it's not that they are all evil people trying to do everything they can to destroy us, they are just fixated on the bottom line and then as these crisis become apparent and they deal with them and they frame them, they’re framing them in a way that prevents us from seeing how much we can do at the community level. They prevent us from seeing how much we could do at the political level, if we understand the global situation. 

So this video picture needs to be shared and it needs to get out there and just like you're doing now, promoting karma culture. But with this bigger picture that shows how important permaculture is and how it can solve so many of our needs and solve so many of our problems. Well, it turns out that we've been essentially manipulated in a way into a framing where we've been told for these last 35 years, that we are going to solve these problems as individuals. So we should just focus on recycling plastic a bit better, driving our car less, not buying so much stuff, we need to deal with our greed and our personal addiction and now we're being told that we also have to deal with humanity's resistance to handling information, we're being told that people don't want information, they don't need information, we shouldn't be talking anymore. Just let's get on with the action and the action that's occurring. These are very narrow, small steps that individual consumers can engage in. What we're saying is when we look at the bigger picture is that no, please do it together and come together in a community group. Make it between 2 to 20 people and then examine this bigger picture and figure out what you might be able to do jointly. And I think I talked earlier about how important it also is as part of that group, to really embark on a deeper psychological healing, which has to do with deeper connection to one another. But at the same time, as you examine these issues from a deeper level, it becomes so apparent that we have been prevented from seeing that community initiative, where we change I to a we, can certainly bring in this more multiplier effect and be so empowering and we can know that what we're doing is so rare and has these multiple benefits. So this is the whole field of localization. But again, when you understand the global bigger picture, you will see that what happens to food and farming, what happens to farmers is really what happens to our health, to our bodies, and to the planet. So focusing on that and taking any number of community initiatives. From edible school gardens, to community gardens, to food co-op’s, and it doesn't always have to be a co-op, you can link up with private shops and get them to carry products from local growers. Now, all the time, as we do these things, we also need to be aware that part of the information or the education we need to spread is that we are all acting inside a system that makes human labor, human care, human intelligence, too expensive. So we're all running faster and faster and we're also short of time is one of the biggest costs in the dominant system, the time pressures. So we need to be very kind to ourselves, to others, to everybody, basically.

Morag:

How do you respond to that question about time and urgency and scale? Because we're all hearing, “We've got to act. We've got to act fast. We've got to act big.” So where is your response in amongst all of that?

Helena:

I remember so clearly sitting at an environmental meeting in Germany. It's probably, at least 30 years ago, and it just dawned on me how crazy it was that we were hearing about these urgent issues and it was so clear that we need some of that. Well, there is actually not a contradiction there. As a society, we need to slow down. That means we need to start looking at the mechanisms whereby our society is being pushed to operate faster and faster. So coming back to looking at the economy, it comes back to seeing that our elected representatives are actually choosing to make us poorer, both financially and in terms of time, while enriching, essentially, foreign cooperation and this is not about being anti-foreign. But it is about saying, “Wait a minute. I thought you were supposed to represent us. We have voted you into the government to be helping us and looking after our needs” and even when it's not for corporations anyways, it's the super rich and is essentially the structure of the corporations getting more and more, while we're getting poorer and poorer. So yes, that system needs to slow down. 

However, if we understand the urgency of the issue, we need to be willing to speed up with our activism. But let's be careful that we don't fall into the trap of running faster and faster, just because that's the way it operates. That's quite selectively chosen to reduce some of the time running that might be connected to buying consumer goods or that might be connected to this idea that we did have certain things that we don't actually need. Now, that is also one of the key things about that, is that when we tell our young children, “No, we're not going to be running far too fast to buy a new iPad every year. Sorry, you can't have it.” Then it's like a verdict for them that says they can't be part of a community, because they've been brainwashed in a mono-cultural education setting to believe that the only way to get the love and respect they want is to listen to the mandates from a corporate consumer monoculture and so the idea is if I don't have those Nike running shoes and now if I don't have those latest black tights with lace in them and if I don't have the iPad, I will not get the love and connection I want. So again, it comes back to one of the millions of reasons why we should always be able to find community with like-minded people. We urge people to try to find, even schools, that might be a little bit leaning towards the importance of community, ecology, spirituality, sustainability, rather than just conventional schooling. But even if your child is in a conventional school, we would urge you to try to connect with other parents or at least your child can have some mates who have similar values. Because the social need to belong has been perverted and twisted and, particularly with young children, in a way it is so evil, it's really terrible. There are natural human needs to be loved and to feel you belong to that community and it's been twisted into if you want that, you gotta have those latest gadgets and we're not reminding ourselves enough of that and doing enough to help our children find a sense of belonging and community with those different values.

Morag:

That's great. I wanted to take that another layer up and talk about so once you are sort of out of school and going to university, then where are the places on? How is it that we can educate ourselves? Where do you point to say, “Okay, this is what we need to be learning about” Where is it that we can learn about this in a broad sense?

Helena:

Well there are hidden alternative organizations, which side schools, Schumacher College is one that you're familiar with, that I was involved with from the very beginning and that offered a holistic link to ecological, spiritual and community values and when you do look around the world, when you look at the global ecovillage network, you look at transition towns and for us in our organization, Local Futures, all of those movements and activities are part of a broader localization and that localization movement is about returning to our home, the natural to nature, is about coming back to who we are as human beings, needing that community fabric, as I said, or needing to feel connected to life. Discovering the wealth and the richness that comes from being in tune with the complexity, the diversity, the constant change in life, we've been herded into a world of static permanence and led to believe that the cement building which was never dragged down is better and safer than the natural building. As it turns out, it's the opposite of the truth. The natural buildings, in hurricanes, in earthquakes, and all around the world, you can see that they're safer by looking at so many places, it will be the older parts of the cities, where buildings were built in mud and with wood that are much safer. We have a sort of propaganda machine that tries to tell us the opposite and in many countries they're making it illegal to use natural materials in other countries, like in Mexico.

A couple of years ago, there was an earthquake near which your time and our colleagues wanted to try to help with rebuilding houses in the natural style, where there are local materials available. Materials are virtually free. I mean, mud and stone are available virtually everywhere. But the government was only going to hand out money if you use cement and steel. So they want to make it illegal, but what they're doing is they're making human labor so expensive that it becomes almost impossible to do the right thing. However, when you know that this is going on, and then when you step back to see how much is happening. Then you feel inspired again, you feel depressed about what governments are doing. It's shocking what big businesses are doing. But then, you regain faith in humanity when you see, literally, hundreds of millions of farmers in our gathering to stand up for the truth, basically, and when you see the activities going on, literally everywhere. I mean, honestly, every day in my inbox I get as much good news as I get bad news and because I know that the good news is suffering under these incredible constraints, I was so inspired by it and then for years, it was becoming so apparent that the people who were engaging with more life affirming healthy ways of living, were not only healthier, but much happier, they found it meaningful. So when students now are off to university, the first thing we would urge them to do would be to maybe show a film that depicts some of these inspiring initiatives and certainly, we have on our website, lots of examples of things that people could show to then see who might be interested in coming to that event and then talk to them afterwards to find like minded individuals who have the courage to go against the dominant culture which exert so much pressure. And because we all want to belong, people end up often going with that, but in their hearts, in their deep wisdom and their knowledge, they know we're going in the wrong direction, they know there's something very wrong and they have the potential to really light up literally, as they start hearing about this other alternative.

Morag:

That's my experience, too, for a very long time. I've been showing your films in different contexts from when I was working with you in Ladakh to the permaculture courses and community centers. and because you touch on so many different aspects of life and point to some of the things that people go off. It's kind of a realization, sort of lifting a veil off of the world that we've been sort of corralled into and all of a sudden, we see it differently. So I think your idea in terms of self education and a form of activism and finding people, showing the materials that you have your films or opening up conversations around that, I think is a beautiful place to start and connect.

Helena:

As we were saying earlier, we're just launching an action guide for people who are interested in going local and that's a really wonderful tool. But an introduction to that, films like Ancient Futures, so The Economics of Happiness are really good because they're addressing that bigger picture. Also the economic system is established but also addressing the human need for love and connection, the human desire to be happy. I used to be really attacked often by the left for talking about happiness. It was so vague and woolly in any way you can't measure it and I always used to say, “You know very well that you know when you're happy or when you're unhappy and you know that there's a huge difference and you know that you'd rather be happier not unhappy.” So don't tell me that we shouldn't think about it and if there is any more important goal and as it turns out, when you recognize as indigenous content shows, that the ecological wellbeing, the wellbeing of all that lives, is the same kind of the same system that makes you feel better and healthier. So your wellbeing and the wellbeing of life itself are connected and the same path in the direction of using more natural materials, having more faith in our senses, in our embodied wisdom, in a much deeper knowing, all of that is being revitalized across the world and it's definitely women who are leading the way. Women who are more in touch, obviously, with their bodies and through birth and being part of the miracle of creating life. Women are carrying deep wisdom about nature and about how we can, in an embodied whole way, in a whole way, actually start living closer to that. 

Now in the COVID epidemic, whatever your thinking is, where it comes from and about vaccines, what we can see is that women started saving seeds in Japan because they knew that this is one of the most important things for health is to have access to fresh, healthy food. Women started growing herbs and painting attention to ways of preventing illness and staying healthy. So this is all part of the picture that we need to share and we need to raise the status of it. Because now in our society, as we know, women don't have status isn't there?

Morag:

I'm hearing very much what you're saying about finding a group locally. But then there's the bit that weaves together those local groups everywhere, so that is elevated into this global movement. So how do you see that happening? Where is that? Where is that connective tissue and how do we nurture that and compost that?

Helena:

Well, I'm so thrilled you brought up that question because I feel like a real party pooper when I do go on to urge people to look at precisely that. Because all around the world that we live in at the very local fabric between people and nature and starting all that work, not just gardens, but renewable energy that we're building, finance, local finance, local energy systems, all of that really decides our effort and all of us will gain greater joy and will be contributing to something very real by supporting them being part of it. But very, definitely, once we step back, we get up in the big picture, we need so much more effort to spell out the vision of what this represents and to be really clear about the vision behind the dominant trend, behind the government policies that are leading to a sort of a corporate and banking takeover of our world, the pressures that are leading to the psychological pollution that is so intense for our children, but for all of us. So we need to look at that bigger picture and we need to come together, as I was saying earlier, with a collective voice about policy change and that starts by having clarity about the current policies that have led to this craziness and that's, again, I just hope most people would realize that it's actually very hopeful when you realize where this comes from because it does not come from the majority of the human race pushing for these changes. On the contrary, for a very long time, there's been resistance. In fact, I would argue that the resistance from the human race, for the majority of people on this planet, has actually started already back in the Victorian age. 

The Victorian Age was a sort of cultural nadir. I can't remember we talked about that earlier. Although so the cut for me the cultural nadir was when the table had been pushed off the land into the urban slums and part of the pressure on them was the dirt, the body, the Earth, all of that was dirty and shameful. They even covered the piano in legs, because they don't want to see legs. They didn't want to see body parts. So it's very much connected with the sort of Christian rejection of the body of a census connected to this economic trajectory, where you were fine and you were respectable. If you dressed in those clean clothes and if you no longer had people just dropping into your house as they used to do to save and tell stories and be part of the community. Now you had to have a very formal sitting room with nice lace curtains and people only came by appointment and I saw this later on happening in Ladakh, would happen in Victorian England, I got to sort of experience in the gap, as people suddenly moved away from having the kitchen, be the center of the home, and in a relaxed way, be cooking and talking and socializing at the same time. But now, just like in Victorian England, the formality of the separation was the breakdown of the nuclear family and the separation of nature with a real overt fear and hatred of nature and the natural. So that was sort of, I would say, the cultural nadir, but very rapidly as people felt the alienation from nature, Lydian cities value started changing. In the early days, the values also were racist, it was fine to hunt indigenous people, was worldly out in nature, so sad and misogynist. But what we've actually seen is a cultural progress since then, where people's values have changed where the feminine, the indigenous and nature have gained more and more and more prominence, love, and respect. However, from my analysis, I'm pretty alone in looking at it like this, and it's because of Ladakh, but from my analysis, the economic trajectory, which had started even before the Victorian age with global traders pushing and closures on slavery, these global traders kept gaining more and more power. So this is the big issue. What happened to global traders and how it is that even what has been sort of left inclination politics, to create better conditions for the poorest, to be concerned about the abysmal conditions created by this rampant capitalism and later on, where the aggregate fossil fuels, I suppose, became invisible, very cheap and in both world wars and so on. There were people who believed that actually, the best way to avoid another world war or another depression is by rolling out the red carpet for global trade. But the way it was framed was that we need to integrate the whole world into one interdependent whole, that this is still a big problem, even with Western environmentalists, that they believe that the internet is actually integrating us into one interdependent hole. So with very idealistic values, they're embracing a technology that actually is a tool for corporate expansion for centralized control and surveillance. It's a tool that's magnificent, for mechanical, speedy reduction in numerical transactions, which is why it's intimately linked to the financial procedure, which helps

gamblers to invest in our mortgages, in our lives, in our trees, in our water, and with the speed to now it's a big, it's a big thing.

Morag:

I think it's really important point. I do recall you talking about the internet 25 or 30 years ago, and I remember hearing you and now here we sit, talking across the internet, and trying to find ways to utilize it to amplify this perspective. I get stuck in the point thinking well, I can't not use it, because otherwise I won't be able to reach out. So we actually feel that.

Helena:

This is where distinguishing between your individual choices and your ability as an individual to be the change. You can't be a healthy society, you can't be a community, you can't be the thriving health that we're talking about, a healthy society and a healthy ecosystem, there's no way that you as an individual can open and deal with that change. That change has to come about through collective action and so first of all learn to distinguish between those two so that we don't fall into the trap, which we're being pushed into by big corporations that says, “You say the car isn't good while you're driving a car. So how do you dare speak out against the car? How can we use the internet like this and then express our doubts about it?” Well, sorry, I've got a very logical, common sense answer to that. We right now have almost no other choice in terms of communication. 

First of all, this system, this corporate system has destroyed, essentially, the democratic postal service, where everyone, CEO or grassroots activists, the communication was operating at the same speed, victim of the same processes. Now with the internet and these tools, from the outset, the big and wealthy, and the military have had these tools way before activists still have following computers, have data centers, have engineers galore, and the money that is being created by this internet system, basically and so now, what can we do as activists, we'd be silly, I believe, to say, well we're not going to use it and I'm never going to drive my car and yet I am motivated to try to bring change in the world. We have to be willing to distinguish and be willing to compromise and to talk about it. To show this is in no way hypocritical. I know that a lot of people on the surface, especially people who don't realize how much I hate traveling, almost no one really believes me except John, my husband. He tries to get me sometimes to go on a holiday, getting into a plane or even getting into a car. I would have visited you so often. I love crystal water. But even getting into a car for me, if I'm doing what I want to do, walking, or maybe cycling or maybe riding a horse and so I traveled so much, because I was so motivated to get this picture out and one of the ways I could do it was through public speaking and then I ended up helping to set up movements and so on. But it's been a huge relief for me that I can't say yes or no, because I get tempted. Not if people say we will come in on holiday with you. I got all kinds of offers. But no, if they say you come and start some initiative, spread the word. I have.

Morag:

I think what you said is a really important one and it's something that a lot of people get stuck on is this being criticized for being partly in the system and not and it's like unless you've got it 100% or even 200%. You get slashed down, really.

Helena:

You're also being slashed down when people try to set up different systems like an ecovillage and there is so much friction, there's so much trouble, because these are people living in a pressure cooker, where like I said, one of the key things is that everyone is so time poor and for deep communication, meaningful communication requires a lot of time. The kind of work we could do, if we weren't swimming in the sea, where this oil slick and all these technologies intervene all the time. We could do things so much more easily and in a much more leisurely way. So that again, when we when we understand the pressures that people are struggling under, we need to be much more, first of all, appreciative of the number of things that are happening that are positive, much more understanding of the conflict, and also much more urgently, the thing we're here to understand is, where can we intervene strategically, remain strategic intervention is number one. A better understanding of the system that is shaping the world and we need to distinguish between the man made system and Gaia herself. So we have a manmade system that is now engulfing Gaia, the infrastructure, particularly with the internet, but even before that we the oil and the roads and the ships, the whole infrastructure, the perversion of value, so that slaves on one side of the world could benefit their local elites by producing for nothing virtually and then selling in countries where money creation was going on. So that as a global trade, you could produce in India for almost nothing and then sell in America or England, where there was value, now going up as people had some money. Now that has continued and what is led to is head global corporations benefit when we do our transactions globally. If everybody ate local food tomorrow, no global corporation would earn money, but billions of people and small businesses would and so instead now everything is criss-crossing back and forth and we can't build our own furniture, we don't make our own masks, we don't grow our own food. 

Morag:

I think that's a really important thing, isn't it? That one of the strongest things is like you're saying, being aware, but being aware of it and then being a non-participant in that system.

Helena:

No, it's not about being aware of it. You could be as far as I'm concerned, I would love it. If you are a corporate lawyer and you are willing to sit down and understand this system and as far as I'm concerned, keep doing corporate law and lots of money. But I will be asking you to help spread the word. I'd be asking you to help get out the clear analysis and to be talking in the corporate world, about the fact that even doesn't matter how big you are, you're always threatened by murderers. So what this is is me chasing his tail where the speed and the competition affects everybody. So the goal of understanding this system isn't that you as an individual, try to remove yourself from it. The goal of understanding is that you're trying to come together at the local level, to create the foundations of healthy systems, which are needed now and which will be needed forever. Because the only way that we as human beings can feed, clothe, house ourselves and do that in a way where we do not destroy diversity has got to be linked to having local knowledge systems, but locally living realities and so localization is an absolutely necessary and inevitable path forward. 

Now, as the global supply chains are crumbling a bit and there's some discussion of it, there is hope that we might get political change. But be aware that there's a lot of local washing going on. That is absolutely counterproductive. Many corporations are coming back from China to now produce things like washing machines in America with robots and is not a step forward. The mining in China, the mining in the Congo, that’s going on to replace people with technology, while people in America can't get a decent job is so we need this systemic view to understand that we are setting up those local systems, which cannot be perfect under the current climate, but that can do a lot, particularly in the area of local food and real human connection. So I would say for anybody thinking about their children's future, for sure, investing in community and land and the skills that are needed is essentially important. We need even in the local communities much more attention to education and awareness building. In the local communities many of the growers whether new permaculture students or older farmers have not started the global economy and the global system. So they're often really embracing myths around supply and demand around the market and its price setting, when actually it's a government setting, a pricing system that destroys the majority at the expense of the minority and so we have to be quite savvy at the local level to do this in a strategic way,

Morag:

So this was kind of part of the education question and the understanding about how to do life more locally is kind of really accessible now. There's lots of places, there's permaculture courses, there's Transition Town, as you mentioned, there's the Ecovillage movement. But where to find the information, the detailed information, about what you're saying? I would love it if there was like a council of elders or some kind of place where we could say, “Right, we need to learn more about this. This is how we can unpack it and have a movement at that level of talking.”

Helena:

Well, we did set up what we call the International Alliance for Localization and that is that sort of umbrella of several partners that we have our network and its global, because the whole idea is that this is essential, also that localization isn't some retreat into your own local and the truth is that one of our biggest problems is that people are thinking too locally and so many of these local initiatives suffer because they don't have a global view and a global view isn't just about understanding financial personal results or understanding what is actually going on on the ground, in the so-called Third World, but there's this huge divide between land based traditional regions that are in Brazil or India or parts of Africa, Indonesia, and so on, and the urban industrialized western parts of the world. So again, that global picture is essential and I guess if I were to point to other organizations, besides no computers, are internationalized for localization and also the people who participated in our world localization day, so we were collaborating with 80 groups. Beyond that, I would say that Schumacher College society and also Schumacher society in America are closer to our view and I would say, there are people like Kristian Felber, in the German speaking world, who's working on the economy for the common good. There is an emerging new economy movement, which is moving in this direction. But a lot of it is still from my point of view, to Western and to techno naive and the techno naive, I think, has to do with not having studied the basic principles.

Morag:

What's techno naive? What do you mean?

Helena:

I mean that most of the people are engaged in the new economy, first of all, they tend to be mainly men. But they also believe that the internet will be a real positive tool and that the only problem is in whose hands it is and they're also even in the current climate. They're very excited about blockchain and using Blockchain for this new healthier economy initiative. They believe that blockchain would create more accountable structures than what we have now. I find that unbelievably naive

Morag:

Can you talk more about that and the type of local economic system you think we need to be working towards?

Helena:

Well, I would say that we, first of all, need to realize that as we serve local things and the proliferation of local initiatives that have worked have been primarily around food and we have also been part of setting up local currencies and they ran for maybe 10 years. Did we cover that? I can't remember.

Morag:

No, we didn't talk much about that. I think it's an important part of activism.

Helena:

It is, because also, by the way, I've worked with the first economists to take it all good seriously and that was written down halfway to an English economist and he studied around the world where local economic initiatives were happening and one of the most successful was in Mulaney, near you and he even came out here.

Morag:

He came and stayed with us here in our house, actually. I have a ring on my table [inaudible]

Helena:  

He was very impressed with the lady and crystal waters. But I don't want to say when I was right and he was wrong, but the truth is that I was from the Ladakh experience, remember, I was living in an indigenous culture where money played a very small role and where farming and food was so central and community was so central. So I was more focused on both those ecological realities and the social reality and now I would say, without a doubt, what has actually survived and flourished not enough, that is the local food initiatives, the local currency initiatives, whether their time dollars, or well let schemes or actual physical money haven't worked and then I often, especially the men are interested in local economists, they get quite annoyed when I say that, that I feel an obligation not to encourage people to embark on activism that is not likely to succeed. I've seen this for over 30 years and, like I said, we started with one from our book and they both ran about 10 years. But the farmers markets we've helped to start are the ones that we've inspired people to start all the local food stuff usually, not only survive, but going on to see many more.

Morag:

Why is it that the local food, the local money?

Helena:

I'll tell you, because I ended up studying it. I was quite perplexed in many ways and what appeared was that the people who were willing to join a local money system tended to be more marginal people and that often meant either people who had very few resources or people who were well off enough to not worry about income. But it was a sort of marginal minority and, like I say, they didn't dream of what many people would still say to me earlier now say, but it's a good educational tool. So as far as I'm concerned it's not going to fail. I think that we've had this to study and I'm not at all saying I don't think they can never be useful. So when my friend, who's the mayor of Bristol towards Ferguson, brought in a local currency and even his salary and other salaries in local government were paid in the Bristol Pound and people could pay taxes, local taxes in the Bristol parliament. Well, maybe now's the time to embrace this. But no, it's not taken off. I don't know if you'd be happy to say it happens. I have always been very involved in local food and the Bristol local food movement is amazing. But then what I have seen in the local food movement is the opposite. In other words, white conventional people from all different directions, including often more conservative farmers, and also sometimes conservative shoppers as well, but often very green and sort of left consumers coming together in this beautiful marriage using conventional currency and managing to pay farmers 10 times more than they would get paid in the dominant system and because the market pressures for diversification, the market, the consumer says, “I don't care if each other code is the same size. I don't care if there's a blemish on it, then I know you didn't spray so much.” So suddenly, to this is where there's this structure of vitally important difference between local and the global system and so this is using the conventional currency, but creating structures that create that proximity, that really communication and community fabric in the whole chain from production, processing, to consumption, that's where you can do amazing things still and is still need the education to get more pressure so that we can pressure at the local council level, local governments in cities to move in the right direction.

Right now to COVID, it's really important that we have our eyes open and that we engage at least part of the time, not just in gardening or the renewable energy project. But in this educational part, to build up more pressure, because we're in this now in this V, where there's huge pressure to take us further towards robots, which means huge amounts of minerals and in the name of renewable energy we're going to be using up the earth in a horrific way. So now all of a language, renewable energy, sustainable, local, regenerative, all that language has to be examined. Because in all those arenas, we've got big business active and one of the key things is when we talk about business, let's not allow people to push us in this corner where we're either pro-business we're against business, where we're either pro the private sector or against it. No, the distinction is between the local deregulated monopolies that are ordering our governments telling them that they'll be sued if they don't do what they say and this is what our governments are going along with and in the meanwhile, businesses operating even at the national level, but especially at the local and regional level, are under far more visible, accountable surveillance, general social surveillance, that is beneficial, that is necessary. So that distinction is now vital and is part of the whole education process.

Morag:

So you'd say your inbox gets filled up all the time with such great examples of things people are doing. I wonder, as well as the success of the local food movement, what are some of those other directions that you see are opening people to this way of thinking successfully?

Helena:

Well, I would say, right here, I'm surrounded by these wonderful women who started a group called Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond, and it's all about really supporting women at whatever natural home birth and this, now again, requires a lot of education, as you were lobbying because the midwifery as is brought into the dominant system is becoming less and less what people want is not allowing the more natural way. I mean, first of all, part of Islamia should be that births should never have been seen as some kind of illness. It should never have been part of this fear mongering. But they will get quite a lot of education. I saw it happening in Ladakh, where women dying in childbirth was virtually unheard of. But the sort of propaganda was, “Oh, my God! They gave birth at home, it's dirty, and isn't taken into a place full of disease” and then they tell women, your hips are so narrow, you've got to have a cesarean and then doctors are so busy that not evil people at all, but they're in the system where it suits them. Let's do the boys at six o'clock on Monday and it all gets we all ended up in a machine. So countering that machine requires the big picture and so much of it is connected to having guided the experience of a more natural, indigenous way of doing things and there is a lot of evidence. 

A part of the education is also reading up on the earlier observations of traditional cultures. Because one of the most preferred, profound and important parts of the brainwashing that's been going on is the idea that with progress, things are just getting better and better. To further back, we go to the past, the worse things were. Now it turns out, when you go back in the past, they were worse in most cases in the West, because you're going back to the initial rupture. So like Dickensian London, complete mess and illness and crime and no social cohesion, super wealthy, poor people and so yes, it was a mess and things on a certain level have improved since then. But if you go back further and you look at what happened before those people were pushed off the land and you look at land based, more indigenous ways of living, find a very different truth, ancient futures, sort of coming full cycle, not to go back to exactly what we had is not possible and on a crowded planet, the new ancient will be a bit different. But I actually believe that it could possibly be even better than the old ancient because of the new agent or versus the old, local and the new local as well. I am convinced that we could add a certain level of communication, a bit more travel, a bit more of a shield from the vagaries of nature, all of that without costing the earth, destroying our health, exploiting others, if it's done, within the understanding of localizing instead of globalizing, the globalizing parties, one will be exploited on the other side of the world, we don't even know that we're exploiting and the localizing one is where we try to do as much as we can, from my local resources and then through human scale institutions, not monopolies. We have exchange and trade and information.

Morag:

Another question that I get asked as well is, “Well, that's alright Morag. But that's okay for you because you live in the countryside. But we can't have the whole entire population living like this.” How would you respond to that?

Helena:

I would say that this is, again, it's one of those things I was dying to try to do animated or illustrated films to cut there and that is that already from the London mess, till today, the big cities, news, more resources, per capita than rural communities. So on a crowded planet, we need to move towards supporting villages, smaller towns and smaller cities, to reduce the human impact. The system now driven by corporate interests is literally on almost automatic pilot to push the entire human race into mega cities and so the system now operates to encourage a bigger and bigger ports near those cities, and so that the global corporations can deliver their global products in smaller numbers of central they can't deliver to every village in India or China. So this concentration is completely led to economic exploitation and to a monopolistic control of the finances, but also of our minds. So it's so heartbreaking for me to see young, idealistic, ecological architects now all believing that, “Oh, are we going to go to higher rates? There's so many immigrants, we're going to have climate immigrants, populations going up, we've got to go higher rise.” Because this is an understandable, simplistic idea that if we're all gathered one bit of land, there's so much more land. But that's ignoring the realities, especially when you use compost, including human compost for the trees and the land, and where you're able to have a connection between human consumption and the waste. The animals that animals produce in ways that are then used to fertilize the soil, you're actually reducing the impact and increasing the productivity of the land. So even in terms of wilderness, people being more spread out, we would have far more wilderness.

Morag:

And more productive landscapes and I think that's kind of the bigger picture I see, as I explained, permaculture in a way, it's not just about gardening, it's actually about how we think about designing human habitats as a whole. I see that we've talked for an hour already. I wondered whether we could just close this.

Helena:

I'm okay. I'm alright, I could talk a bit more. I want to edit some of what I did earlier. If I said, for the third time or something?

Morag:

Well, when I listen to the whole thing, I'll get to see if there's any repetition.Sometimes it's hard to know, because it comes in from a different angle.

Helena:

In each of the other ones. Did we do an hour each? Is that what we did?

Morag:

We did about an hour each, yes.

Helena:

Yes, I'm happy to do a bit more now. So we can finish it off, maybe a bit better, because I might have gone a bit too long, but some of those aspects. 

Morag:

So I think the key things that would be really good to try and just to bring it all together is just really, we started to talk about this a bit last time, too. But what are your calls to action? If people would like to find out more about this, the kind of education that you would like to encourage them to do and if you could maybe even design a program, what would you include in a program of education that will give people the information? Or are there experiences that you would like to encourage people to take? Because what I'm hearing, as you're talking about is, it's your experience in Ladakh, your experience in indigenous communities and that connection, that really visceral connection with a place of communion, noticing that spaciousness of time of observation and participation, not just as an observer, but actually being intricately involved. How do we cultivate that shift?

Helena:

Our dream was always to have an educational center. So when Schumacher college was first set up, we were about to set something up ourselves, but then we got involved there and then for various reasons, including my husband's health, we've ended up here in Australia, part of the education that we were always encouraging was that people do spend time in more land based traditional parts of the world and I think now, those projects that I would urge people to visit are a blend of people who come out of the urban industrial, to support land based and traditional ways of doing things. So they remember in the urban industry, one of the key things is that the extended family breaks down. So when people come to the more rural traditional parts of the land of the world and are very inspired by intergenerational families, they can also see whether they are articulate or not, then generally speaking, that way of life is more feminine. It allows for more nurturing relationships, men have more to do with the care for the children, for the animals and so on and women are more engaged in the vital central parts of provision of the economy. So already the male female divide is not as polarized, there isn't the same fear of growing old. So all of that, when it's linked to support from Westerners and often white Westerners, often white and male, Western and those projects can be extremely rich and fertile. In that you have was that people who had a taste of the emptiness of the consumer culture were living in a high rise flat on their own with no connection to life, discovering the vital importance of reconnection to their to another and supporting those traditional communities who are now being brainwashed into believing that they're backwards, stupid and have nothing to offer. So that offers a really beautiful combination and I know you're working in Africa and I think the marriage between primer culture and some of those traditional ways that we have is really fertile and they offer learning experiences. We would like to and we plan to do an online course and we hope that part of that will be able to be linked to supporting young people to visit some of these places with COVID is definitely become quite difficult and it even before COVID, there were forces underfoot that will make it more and more difficult for the communication between the urban industrial West and non western cultures. 

So what we're seeing is a pattern where the nonprofit world, the environmental and social activist world is being stopped quite dramatically from international engagement. So even coming to Schumacher college was becoming far more difficult for students and teachers. In the last year, it's before COVID and even sending a donation to India from the West was becoming virtually impossible at the same time. Not only could Monsanto send money to India, but let them go into India and do as they like, in free trade and this, again, is why it's so vital that we understand that bigger picture, not to say, “Oh, it's so depressing. It's so big, we can't change it.” But to understand that, if most people knew this was going on and if they could see the picture whereby they were being so curtailed, what big business is having who have more freedom, we would have a huge humanity would stand up, retirement 99.9% being imprisoned and preventing the goodwill of nonprofit and charity supporting people on the other side, while the for profit sector is being encouraged.

So I think the education that I would definitely offer people right now in COVID, is certainly our website. If people do have questions, they should write to us. But we have a wealth of material. We have material from authors, looking at indigenous culture, we have a study group curriculum that addresses all these points from the sort of indigenous to this sort of globalized corporate system. We've got a series of films and we have excellent talks from these 20 conferences we've had around the world on this theme, on this big picture thing, they were called The Economics of Happiness conference. So we also plan to organize that as a course and hopefully it will be probably based as a physical band in Australia near us, but also hopefully a collaboration with some of our partners around the world. Because we've worked localization, David collaborated with 80 organizations in 30 countries and even for people to visit from the Anglo world even to visit villages in Spain, or Italy, or Japan or Korea, there's a huge amount of learning that can go on to clear away the debris of this individualistic country, consumer oriented environmentalism, and to clear away the debris of left right politics that are not showing us anything about what's going on nothing and so the real politics is when we understand the driving forces of the global economy and its influence on every government, its influence on the psyche of children around the world, and all of us adults as well. So that's where the real political power is, that's when we really have to have some ideas so that we can have a collective voice. So that we're coming from this essential clarity about the fact that until now, even though I would say generally the left was not looking at the fundamental, absolutely essential need to protect the sort of triumvirate of ecology community and the spirituality that connects life that connects community to equality. That was not part of the spectrum of critique of a very exploitative and destructive capitalist system. So this is again, where the language of capitalist critique and the left and so much of what we've been trained to believe in doesn't capture, it misses life, it misses the story of life, of what human beings need, what nature needs, and how that is the real economy?

Morag:

Well, I think there's an enormous amount. When you look at your website and this, like you’re saying, the study groups and organization, action guide, the new film, local, a story of hope, you've got Economics of Happiness, Ancient Futures, your books, all of that material. I was just thinking, as you were speaking, it'd be so great to maybe have an opportunity where I know you have world localization day, but whether there's a chance to create more open sort of forums where people who engage in this material can engage with other people, whether there be some way of creating that kind of community of global community of practice somehow.

Helena:

Yes, well you see I just do that to some extent. So if you join the [inaudible], you will have an opportunity to communicate. But I am now more looking at how we can process this summary of individuals, so some are representing groups. Some, I think there are people from 58 countries or something. But I think, more fertile soil is going to be when there is some kind of human connection between the various groups and when it doesn't get too big and so somehow, I think the way things will need to be organized is sort of concentric circles and then social representation. It's a really tricky issue, actually trying to promote, what I would say ,we're trying to promote small scale on a large scale. We're trying to promote it globally, but then to have the ability to have genuine collaboration and feedback and encourage the sharing. It's a major, major job.

Morag:

Well, thank you so much, Helena. It's been an absolute delight to spend these last four sessions with you and I hope that we can continue talking as online courses and all sorts of things emerge and if there's ever any way that I can help and support in anything that you do, I'll be the first with my hand up to say, “Yes, I can help.”

Helena:

I'm thrilled about that. It's wonderful that we had such a long relationship already. Really, really, very proud, we would do amazing, I still think of you, you were so young. How old were you?

Morag:

I was like 23, or something. I'm 52 now. I think I was old. I'm probably older now than you were when I first met you. So thank you so much for taking the time with us, Helena, to really paint these bigger picture issues that we need to get our heads around and also our hearts around and to find how it is that we can locally with other people with our communities make the changes that we need and bring forth and this news story and to look around and see what's happening elsewhere to look into the big system, to looking at what's happening in other communities, talking what's happening in nature around us and in our own life like we need to bring that there as well, but have these sort of multiple dimensions to our activism and be consistently learning and being open to seeing what's really going on in the world. I think that's what I get from these conversations.

Helena:

I'm very glad that you're interested in the picture and it can absolutely sound overwhelming and it can sound very depressing when people are quite aware of how destructive things have become. But again, I just hope that you will have heard in these conversations that the wealth that comes in you puts on these different lenses and you start looking at affirmation that life, including human beings or human race, is actually well motivated, deeply needing love and connection and belonging. That's not a crime. That's a natural human trait and what this movement is about that we're trying to support is about listening to that and supporting a way forward that will allow us to flourish from that sense of connection to life, all of life.

Morag:

So thank you so much for listening in to this episode of Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, this is the last of our four part series celebrating and exploring localization with Helena Norberg-Hodge of Local Futures. So that's a wrap. I hope you got a lot out of this localization series and we'll carry it forward into your life and work wherever you are. We invite you to stay in touch and to explore the resources in the show notes below and to continue the conversations in your local communities about these important issues. Thanks again. Take care and stay safe.