Check out this matchbox advent calendar. Amazing huh? Alas, at the time I was planning this all out I was stuck at home with no way of obtaining the requisite number of matchboxes. I then tried making my own origami matchbox/slide box, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as stable as the version that used authentic matchboxes. And then there was the issue of the time it would take to fold my own… it would have taken me weeks.
Other ideas I was kicking around:
Ones with with felt pockets like the one shown here.
And then there’s this one … slightly different and v.v.cute.
There’s the cookie sheet advent calendar (cute, I guess, but I can’t get past the cookie sheet thing…) Oh, and speaking of magnets, there’s this one, that can be affixed to a magnet board. Gorgeous huh?
Anyway, there are a lot of great ideas out there. (If you start googling you will be sucked into a vortex you might not be able to get out of, so consider yourself warned.) But I was considering an idea posted on the now-defunct Kiddley. What could be simpler than paper envelopes? This was something I could manage.
In the name of corporate profits, jobs and economic growth, products like light bulbs, automobiles, clothing and computers are designed to break. This is known as planned obsolescence.
The documentary below, The Lightbulb Conspiracy, is an interesting story about the real conspiracy between light bulb manufacturers in the 1930′s to limit the life span of bulbs to 1,000 hours. During the Depression, one Congressman even tried to make planned obsolescence the law of the United States. Well meaning, but insane.
For us to live sustainably, the things we make or buy for ourselves need to maximize their useful lifespan. This holiday season, buying quality second hand gifts at sites like eBay.ca is a good way to keep useful items out of landfill and in the hands of someone who will love them.
Sustainability is another word for “immunity from government tyranny.” We cannot possibly be “free” of something we despise, if we are still entirely dependent on it.
Believe it or not, growing your own food or visiting your local farmers market is more revolutionary and constructive than burning down your own city and killing security forces…
They need us, we don’t need them. That’s the big secret. We get our freedom back as soon as we take back our responsibilities for food, water, security, the monetary system, power, and manufacturing; that is independence. Independence is freedom, freedom is independence. We’ll never be free as long as we depend on the Fortune 500 for our survival.
Fixing these problems unfolding overseas starts with fixing the problems in our own backyards. Boycott the globalists, cut off their support, undermine their system, and they lose their ability to commit these atrocities. That will be a real revolution and it can start today. Not burning cities and masked rebels waving flags, but communities no longer dependent and fueling a corrupt system we all know must come to an end.
Where are farmer markets in Montreal? Jean-Talon is the city’s largest farmer’s market, but there are others.
The news around the world is making it clear that the current central banking/fractional reserve/crony capitalist system where wealth gets sucked to the top of the pyramid, is slowly breaking down.
Unfortunately, there is no hot replacement system waiting in the wings. Barter anyone? Yawn. Communes anyone? Scary. A return to gold-backed money? Possibly. Holographic power structures. Say what?
In any case, to start creating a NEW, sustainable economic system, we each need to hold a vision for the future that we desire to live in. Just sit down, close your eyes and make a wish; an intention for how you want to live in relation to people and the Earth. Then, with help from the universe, we can start to fill in the growing economic void and throw out the current system.
What we are witnessing is thus not another recession, but the end of the world capitalist system and the protests in the US against “Wall Street” may be an indication as good as any of this. One however gets the impression that as long as the old system survives there is no real opening to create a new world to replace it. To do so would be too much in conflict with the legality of the current dualist power structure and only after some kind of full collapse has occurred would people in general be compelled and inspired to create a new way of living and relating in the realms of politics and economics. To prevent such a new world from being born we can also be certain that when the collapse comes this will be presented by the powers that be as nothing but a temporary downturn.
THRIVE is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what’s REALLY going
on in our world by following the money upstream — uncovering the global
consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together
breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, THRIVE offers real solutions,
empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and
our future.
A growing number of individuals believe our economic and societal status quo is defined by unsustainable addiction to cheap oil and ever increasing debt. With that viewpoint, it’s hard not to see a hard takedown of our national standard of living in the future. Even harder to answer is: what do you do about it?
Charles Hugh Smith, proprietor of the esteemed weblog OfTwoMinds.com, sees the path to future prosperity in removing capital from the Wall Street machine and investing it into local enterprise within the community in which you live.
“Enterprise is completely possible in an era of declining resource consumption. In other words, just because we have to use less, doesn’t mean that there is no opportunity for investing in enterprise. I think enterprise and investing in fact, are the solution. And if we withdraw our money from Wall Street and put it to use in our own communities, to the benefit of our own income streams, then I think that things happen.”
Although I don’t subscribe to the belief that Western civilization will collapse (it is more likely to wind down or power down slowly), there are two separate, active discussion groups on reddit, one for societal collapse, one for post-collapse each with useful discussions on a variety of useful subjects.
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post-collapse:
This Subreddit is for planning and preparing for what comes after a collapse of society. Head over to r/collapse for tips and info on preparing for the days leading up to and during any sort of apocalypse or general collapse of society as we know it.
On the end of the world as we know it. Crashes, disasters, wars and famines. Diminishing resources, decadent culture. The decline of civilizations, empires & societies. But not necessarily The Apocalypse.
There is a lot of great information and inspiring quotes in the Indigene Community web site. Their premise is that there is no need to re-invent the wheel in terms of re-learning how to live sustainably.
They argue that Indigenous Knowledge (IK) provides many blueprints for a post-post sustainable world. This organization was inspired by Stewart Brand’s Long Now project.
Built in 1955 by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, LASALLE-GARDENS was inspired by Frederick Law Olmstead’s ‘garden-city’ concept. It currently has 2000 people living in 700 apartments & 50 town-houses on a 33 acre property. Peripheral roads require 1/3rd the number of streets in similar population density as in the rest of Montreal. Park-lands surround most buildings where residents are commonly seen playing, walking and interacting. Some members planted over one hundred maples and pines over 45 years ago which currently reach 50 foot heights providing natural beauty, shade and clean air.
Blueprints for sustainable development and humaine society are still held by indigenous societies and indeed our own indigenous heritages worldwide. ‘Indigenous’ is not a function of race but of openess, involvement and inclusion for everyone. Around the world ethno-historical (indigenous worldview) efforts are being made to compile Indigenous Knowledge IK from thousands of First Nation societies and fragments held by all of us in order to reintegrate this into inclusive living-ecology-economy, abundance and connected cultures today for everyone….
Human culture has perverted its original kind and sustainable operating system due to a pervasive colonial (empire) ‘virus’ by which, we are destroying the planet’s ecological capacities and productivity. Analogy: When a computer has a ‘virus’, we reboot it back at a time when the Operating System was integrated, whole and vibrant. Indigene Community website compiles and attempts to describe the indigenous period, principles and practices, which cover hundreds of thousands and millions of years of human life on earth. Humanity can find abundance and guidance from indigenous roots. We won’t reinvent our way out of problems using the same understandings which create them.
The trajectory of our modern economy is clear: people are redundant.
Corporations would rather buy robots to make things. They are cheaper, more efficient, more accurate in most cases and won’t unionize or commit suicide in defiance of poor working conditions.
Corporations are making enormous amounts of money not hiring people and why should they when machines will do the job faster, cheaper and better? Apple (AAPL) sits on about $76 billion of cash, Intel (INTC) about $20 billion and Microsoft (MSFT) about $40 billion. They won’t hire a single person unless they can make money from that hire. That’s just the nature of business.
This isn’t news if you’ve been paying attention. The real question then becomes: how do we feed, clothe and house people who do not serve any corporate interest outside of consuming corporate goods?
How do we sustain people who no longer are a cog in the capitalist wheel? And do not assume that you are immune from such a fate. Practically any job title besides “Owner” can be outsourced or replaced by a machine.
Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.
The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers’ dance party Friday night.
The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou.
Awesome idea. Imagine building a tractor so that you could start your own Organic CSA farm! Imagine creating a pressed-earth brick maker to assemble your own house!
You’ve seen them in the supermarket. My son is asking for one: Over-packaged advent calendars with non-fair trade chocolate inside.
