I’m quitting my job to save the planet.

For over a year, awareness raising about conscious living has been my job. Trouble is, my awareness got so raised that it can’t be a job any more, it has to be my work. A job is what people do to live; it’s what you do when you have no option - economically. Work is what you do when you have no option - ethically and conscientiously; it’s for life, not just for christmas presents. I’m no longer sure the two can be merged and seemlessly integrated, as I’d previously hoped, and thought I was actually doing.

There’s something insidious about ‘job consciousness’; the distinguishing question being: “would you do it anyway, regardless?”. If it’s to “pay the bills”, it’s a job. And jobs don’t save the planet. Jobs are part of that time-buying conspiracy that helps us kid ourselves that we’ll do something we really want to do, or that needs to be done, when the bills have finally been paid, goals achieved and to-do lists checked.

And just as it’s immoral to apply tax before profit, it’s morally indefensible to delay the ethically inevitable. The work of the past year especially has convinced me that the planet needs saving NOw, not when I’ve sorted my lifestyle out, got rich or achieved a level of acceptable comfort.

The phrases that sum up my raison de fait (did I get that right?) are Inspirational Dissatisfaction (I found this in Rob Hopkin’s Transition Handbook, from Rob’s interview with Chris Johnstone) and Blessed Unrest (the title of Paul Hawken’s recent book on “How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming).

Sure I’ve still got bills to pay. But that cart will now go behind the horse. It can’t be any other way.

Paul Hawken and Blessed Unrest

Rob Hopkins and Transition Culture

Free Transition MP3s

What I’ve been doing for the last 12 months

“Daddy, what did you do at the beginning of the 21st Century?”

Talk of a New Age, 2012 and a ‘quickening’, as well as general agreement that these are interesting times (credit crunch becoming recession, peak oil and more wars than ever) plus the very notion of post-modernism, all suggest these are transformational times for humanity. But don’t humans always think this is the case, whatever time they are born, live and die in?

Probably. However, I only know these times and they feel pretty turbulent and full of transformational energy to me. I don’t know about you, but I’m going for it. I’m convinced there’s more to life than medication, “education”, debt and fear (that’s my 4-word synopsis of peri-modern industrial society by the way, not just the editorial guidelines of the Western media).

I’m with Willis Harman, who in his book Global Mind Change, claims: (Read on …)

When I had my first major life crisis (breakdown, enlightenment, spiritual emergency, ‘Saturn return’; call it what you will) about 20 years ago, one book that appeared in my life was E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (pictured). Associated with it, was a subscription to Resurgence magazine (hear my interviews 20 years later with its luminary editor Satish Kumar), membership of the Schumacher Society and a pilgrimage to the Schumacher Lectures in Bristol - what a painful, yet glorious time in my life!

In recent days, ‘Fritz’ (as I think he was known among friends and family), popped back into view via the Tom Hodgkinson book I’ve been raving about (see last few posts) and yesterday, I stole his book back from my ex-wife’s bookshelves, whilst dropping off our daughter.

His ‘Buddhist Economics’ have stood the test of time. Check this out from the sleeve-notes: “Dr Schumacher challenges the doctrine of economic, technological and scientific specialisation and proposes a system of Intermediate Technology, based on smaller working units, communal ownership, and regional workplaces utilising local labour and resources. With an emphasis on the person not the product, Small is Beautiful points the way to a world in which Capital serves Man instead of Man remaining a slave to Capital.” (Read on …)

The inspiring, vindicating, validating words of Tom Hodgkinson are still ringing in my ears. His plea to have us live free of supermarkets (chapter 25 of How to Be Free) puts it simply: they are “evil”. If you need more than his completely understandable hatred, his claim that Tesco’s take £1 of every £3 spent in the UK on groceries should chill your blood, if you are in any way sentient.

I enjoyed buying one of Tesco’s finest loaves the other day for just 24p, imagining I’d hit them where it hurts - its fine taste made all the finer by my successful late-night, hunter-gatherer mission.  And today, as my youngest daughter and I hunted down bargains in the Boxing Day city-centre, I got a similar sense of satisfaction buying an £80 coat for just £30 as well as helping Zavvi’s new owners (or liquidators) by taking a few cheap, but brilliant, DVDs off their hands.

As a retail plains-drifting, punter-gatherer I feel like I’m doing my bit to exploit, de-value and bring an end to, the “crap towns” as Tom puts it; the kind that Tesco’s help create by driving small shops and businesses out of business. Tom states in his book that small retailers are closing at the rate of 2,000 a year and may be extinct - as a species - by 2015 (this from a UK government report, not just Tom’s idle, yet vitriolic being).

Do take Tom’s advice and as a hedolist, visit the independent, specialist shops that offer the best deal to you, the local community and the planet. And in so doing, restore (or, if you’re lucky, maintain) the individuality of your neighbourhood. They may not be the short-term cheapest, but remember the words of Ruskin who warned those of us who buy on price alone: “There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man’s lawful prey.”

Another thing you might like to do is surrender your loyalty cards. See the article I wrote on the full horror of being loyal and thinking you’re getting a good deal from a symbiotic retail relationship. Don’t kid yourself!

Just as it’s said a prophet is never known in their own land (a good way also to ease the indignation of not being listened to), I figure you don’t get the most open of ears and minds when it comes to your own kids. I’m a father of two and feel I have a pretty good relationship with my two daughters, aided - I suspect - by the fact that they are daughters, but don’t doubt their indifference to my ‘wisdom’.

Older daughter has, for years, ridiculed my interest in holistic matters, summing it up one afternoon (taking inspiration from the communal, organic, hippy-fied dwelling where I lived) in a mock-guru-ish way, saying, with flipchart pen in hand: (Read on …)

In my last post, I spoke of using today - Christmas Day - as an opportunity to birth the Christ principle in myself.

Lo (topical!) and behold, and to my surprise and delight, I watched Channel 4 TV’s alternative Christmas message as offered by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who gives a great insight into Christ-ness. (Read on …)

Several weeks ago on a CopperStrings journal, I made a post - “Why I won’t be celebrating Christmas”

Thinking about it, the word berating can be found in the word celebrating and I suppose that’s what I did; I scolded the event and those who take part (especially those who take part against their better judgement).
It’s Christmas Day as I wite, and I’m on my own. No surpise really. My abstinence (from the mindless custom, not necesarily some of its associated actions) and protestations have drawn surprise, pity and the one I’m most familiar with - that knowing and understanding posture from those who understand, but have no intention from the ridiculousness they see, but can’t quite let go of.

I’ve had a fry-up. Communicated with nearest and dearest by phone, text and email. I’ve been out on my bike (ear is healing nicely - see yesterday’s entry) and it was a joy to ride through a post-apocalyptic-like Exeter city centre (just a few muslims wandering around waiting for things to blow over). Dropped off my divorce petition to the deserted County Court building. Called in on a friend and gulped some lovely port. Dinner is in the oven, chocolates have been eaten and I’ve nearly finished Tom Hodgkinson’s puritan-bashing How to Be Free book, which informed me that Christmas was banned in 1647.

It’s not that I want to ban it. How can I put this? (Read on …)

I was slow to discover The Idler (there’s an obvious joke in there, but I won’t stoop to it) and its founding influence Tom Hodgkinson. Sure, I’d heard of it and him, but it wasn’t until something stirred in my waters yesterday, that I felt an urgency to visit www.idler.co.uk. Once there, my eyes went straight to Tom’s book - How to Be Free. I immediately called Waterstone’s, Exeter, who said a copy had just come in and they’d put it by. Within minutes, I had it in my hands and I was/am still enthralled. In a word: vindicated.

Names and keywords like John Seymour, Satish Kumar*, Eric Gill, Schumacher, Ruskin, permaculture, mulching and cooperation as well as Tom’s obvious hatred of CCTV, banks and watches struck an immediate chord and re-arranged years of random references into a recognisable constellation of vision and hope. I’m even thinking of taking up the Ukele.

And this afternoon, Tom popped up again on a BBC Radio 4 show - Nowhere Fast? - quizzed by (Read on …)

Some way into a ‘guilty pleasure’, fry-up breakfast in a supermarket this week, I was upstaged by a more nutritionally reckless individual – a schoolboy tucking into a pot noodle accompanied by a cola drink.

I’d caught sight of him as I was reading with great interest, the work of another newspaper columnist, bemoaning the fact that most people don’t understand the significance of Easter and just make good use of a couple of work-free days – oblivious to any spiritual significance.

The combination of the nutritionally-challenged youth and a spiritually-challenged nation got me thinking, and excuse me if this is sounding like a sermon, but as sure as food is nutrition for the body, spirituality is surely nutrition for the soul – or whatever you choose to call that hidden, yet deepest part of yourself.

Put another way: as sure as what we put in our mouths builds our bodies; whatever we put into our hearts and minds builds our ‘being’. And to push the analogy further: if it’s junk food we eat, it’s likely we’ll build a junk body, prone to disease and lethargy; and if we starve or compromise ourselves spiritually, it follows that we might feel a bit empty and lack the resources to face the facts of our lives with strength and courage.

Going back to my brother in print, he seemed to take it further by suggesting that our general lack of understanding in the Easter department caused a national crisis of character. And whilst I’m with him on the idea that putting worship before - or at least within - bank holiday-based leisure might make the world a better place, I’m not sure that you necessarily need to be a Christian to be an upstanding pillar of the community.

And anyway, why should living a good and principled life be confined to one church-going day of the week, or even a couple of bank holidays a year?

But let’s return to the way we nourish our souls for a moment and consider the folk - a majority according to a recent BBC report - who “believe in God, pray and think of them selves as ‘Christian’, despite not going to church”, those who are “believing without belonging”, as well as those who follow the world’s other spiritual diet plans, the many millions, if not billions who get their soul sustenance elsewhere.

Let’s remember that church-based, corporate Christianity is a means (not the means) to an end. And of course that end is not an end in itself. You cannot be a Christian, or any moral position, once and for all. Like any true spiritual practice it lives or dies in the moment, and the challenge to live what you believe to be right and true, is there in every second and opportunity of your living life.

On the matter of shrinking congregations and the “curse of apathy”, maybe the churches aren’t empty because we are becoming an increasingly god-less lot; maybe they’re empty because we are ‘cutting out the middle-man’ and finding our own, new ways to connect with the divine. For me, worship is gratitude, contemplation, meditation, awe and love; what better time than a Bank Holiday weekend - free from the stresses of every-working-day life - to remember to do these things?

But insiders don’t share my positivity about ‘disintermediation’ – the aforementioned side-stepping of the middleman that’s happening in many areas of our daily lives like the Internet, where consumers connect directly with manufacturers, upping convenience and cutting costs.

Recent research by Christian charity Tearfund, says 26 million adults claim to be Christian, whilst 32 million have no connection with church. Terafund’s President Dr Elaine Storkey, a Christian academic and broadcaster, seems to think it’s a sign that people want everything - including Christianity - on their own terms.

She says: “People are used to instant gratification, they are used to having what they want, when they want without putting in too much effort. Having a connection with Christianity is not a problem for most people; it’s when something is asked of them that they start to struggle”

“Some sort of ‘vague Christianity’ acts as a way for people to keep their options open, they don’t have to think too hard about life and aren’t pushed outside their comfort zone,” says philosopher Dr Julian Baggini, adding to the idea that most ‘believers’ are part-timers or are in some way cheating.

I’m not sure. In my experience, more and more people are seeing themselves as ‘spiritual’, rather than ‘religious’ and for the churches it’s a problem of ‘market-share’ because they just don’t get it. Modern spirituality, though understandably critcised as “having things your own way”, is a much taller order than generally portrayed.

Rather than following dogma and doctrine, the people I know - who might say they are more spiritual than religious - are well-read deep thinkers, open to discussion and put things into practice that make sense to them at the deepest level. Their lifestyle choices are conscience-driven and they see the ups and downs of life as an education that allows personal development and spiritual awakening.

I think the image of a secular UK where everyone has embraced consumerism as their modern-day God, is misplaced. ‘St Pixels’, an internet church complete with daily prayers, readings and a chat room for its online congregation proves there’s a timeless human need that longs to met in new ways. Whether religious or spiritual, I maintain we’re all looking for God – to be nourished spiritually - each in our own way; however strange, shallow or fickle it may seem from another’s point of view.