“John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave, his soul is marching on!” If ideas can self replicate (like the original conception of a meme), which ones do you want to see marching on?
There are a lot of good, helpful people in the world that want to work together to create progress and a better society for all. And positive change is possible. Don’t get too caught up in the loud voices to the contrary.
Moving away from rat race for those who don’t really desire making money and allowing them to realise their other passions.
I regularly wonder how people could come together within capitalism and make this happen.
Best I can think of is establishing minimum overhead living conditions through some sort of commune type structure where you can either pay a minimal rent to live there or contribute a base amount of labour and spend the rest of your time doing what you think should be done.
It would probably work best if it were a kind of temporary measure, something you’d swing in and out of. Tough part is getting started. But I’m sure if enough people doing relatively well got together and chipped in stuff could happen.
It’s extremely challenging for many right now due to insanely depressed wages. No doubt about that.
But for those lucky enough to have savings and their very basic needs covered, there are quite a few people deciding to live with less instead of constantly gunning for more. The FIRE movement is a pretty decent example. But even things like vanlife and rural homesteading are also along the same lines.
Others spend like crazy, barely staying within their means even when incomes skyrocket. Of course, this is what capitalism allows/causes/benefits from the most. And it’s easy to get sucked into. But it’s not the only way.
I think about this a lot too. One idea I think about is a worker coop where the stated goals are to improve worker quality of life. So first maybe a four day work week, and initiatives related to affordable housing, free healthcare, education, etc. Inevitably would probably need to be an ecosystem of organizations, since how do you spin it up from nothing.
But we’re constantly getting more efficient in our work, it doesn’t have to be the case that when we do a job in less time or with fewer people then the reward is more work.
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I can’t say for certain where it’s from either, but the longer version is now very popular in certain outdoor groups and at US National Parks:
“Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.”
Apparently one researcher was able to trace it back to a newspaper article from 1954 about Bandelier National Monument (an amazing spot in Utah).
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/05/30/footprints/
And I agree that it has many crucial implications today. We should doing more to live in harmony with nature. We are part of it, no matter how much our concrete jungles try to seem otherwise.
Paying it forward.
For me I’m thinking about things like environmental sustainability, workplace democracy and universal basic income.
