You know when your children grow up surrounded by living role models by real people, they know that nobody is perfect. Real people whom you know, you know someone might be quite good looking but they are not good at dancing or making jokes or cooking or whatever it might be. Nobody is perfect in the real world, because these images impose these ideals, this ideal of perfection. I would like to just add something. I would just like to add that was really frightening is that now in Facebook and the whole gadget are the latest incarnation of this consumer culture. Our young people are now internalizing and promoting these images themselves. So now it's becoming recognized that when young people get off facebook they often feel depressed, because it looks as though their friends were having a better time, and they looked more sexy on the selfie photos they posted, looks like they were having more fun and looking better. So it's actually now being transmitted by young people themselves, it's something we really urgently need to wake up to.
The solution in all of this is not so difficult as you could sound, it sounds like this huge system, and what can we do. The key is that we start turning towards each other, starting to talk the real talk, be willing to expose our own problems and doubts and start rebuilding human, direct relationships and getting away from the screens that really separate us instead of connecting us.
HNH: I might want to say just one more thing also previously, Cultures shaped the economy. We had diversity of cultures different races, different languages, I myself learned a lot of languages and I travelled to different places and it's just incredibly exciting, and rich and joyful when we allow real life to flourish and life is diversity. Each and every one of us is unique as an individual. We have groups that connects with ourselves, groups that are quite different from other groups.-- cultural, regional differences and all of it arose out of the fact that human culture was born out of a response to a natural biological diversity. We have responded to different climates, food and different ways of being, the diversity of cultures is a response to biological diversity. The dominant consumer corporate system is pushing Monoculture whether on the land and farming, whether human consumer mono culture. Which means it is empty life, so we are really talking about the Economics of Happiness is also the Economics of Survival. We must maintain and revitalize diversity. So, having Culture shape economic activity, so having society, be, as a word, top dog, not commercial enterprise be top dog, is essential for survival and also essential for democracy. When we vote for representatives, we are expecting them to be listening to our voices to our needs What's happening around the world, as people try to get elected they speak to the people, to the 99% who are the voters. When they get in power they are suddenly listening to something else and it's actually Global Capitalists, Global Corporations and Banks. So that means at every level we are allowing for profit, blind institutions to shape our culture and partly they are doing that through shaping our Government, shaping our Policies.
Rob: You've said that we need a Global moment to deal with a Global problem which is the Global Economy, that's part of the plan for this conference, right.
HNH: That's right, it's a launch to introduce people to this International Alliance and to get people to sign up to this entity. To be more aware that economically localizing is how we can take back the power, is how we as people can start shaping the economy rather than having it be shaped, basically, through blind speculation.
In know all of that what so fundamentalists scale and why we need Global network and Global collaboration is so that our voices can sing to the same Hymn Sheet, and what we are actually talking about is respecting more diversity. So we are not talking about imposing the same model everywhere, but we are talking about an interlinked movement that is in favor of a shift from Global to Local in terms of the Economy and that needs Global collaboration.
Rob: Now what would that look like? Give me some more details what that would look like.
HNH: One thing I would say is that already, if you compare United States to Europe, Europe compared to the United States is already taking slightly in the direction of what I am talking about. Europe in the same area if you have in the United States you have much greater diversity of language, architecture, values and ways of being.
Now those European countries were able to function perfectly well as neighbors, they were even able to have infrastructures that allows you to go by train from Italy to Sweden, even if they didn't have all the same systems or anything, they were able to connect and collaborate, but they did maintain those differences and so that is the step in the direction that we are talking about. Even in Europe and even in my native country of Sweden after the 2nd world war, when this whole system of Globalizing through Trade Treaty was set up in a formal way-- Previously earlier on in the industrial period we still had giant traders dominating. After the 2nd World War when the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) was set up at the Bretton Woods, they also set the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and that was a tricky process that we have been not paying attention to until recently. That was an attempt to pull every economy around the world under this Global Umbrella. Many people though it was about keeping key, that it was about preventing another depression, but actually what it turned out be was Corporate control and the control by the large banks, particularly the World Bank and the IMF.
So we are talking about a process where we build up a people's movement and I think I would like to say this in the light of what happened in Italy, where a comedian named Beppe Grillo, was quite a well known comedian. He started talking about how corrupt the policy was, Government was and there seem to be no point to vote, whether left or right was again the same thing-- unemployment, insecurity, more environmental problems and he said we need a People's Movement. They built up a People's Movement by using the internet and, very importantly, encouraging the people to meet up locally. So they set up local groups that then started running local politicians with this agenda of moving away from this corrupt centralizing system. And within six years they grew big enough to go into the National Elections and take 30% of the votes. Whatever we think of them what they stand for, the actual structures were by they built up this People's Movement and then went in to make fundamental change, that's what I am talking about, that's how we can change things.
We need to realize that we need to talk to one another, we need to build up a People's Movement with clarity not only about what's wrong, but we need to look more clearly and how things got so wrong, in order to see how to improve it. So number one on the platform what we need to change is this corporate freedom to move around and pick the cheapest labor over here and the cheapest resources over there, and that free movement of the corporate entities and including the banks-- that's the main problem.
So first thing we do once we build up a People's Movement to actually shape policy would be to reverse those Trade Treaties, to actually say no, we are going to be regulating the banks and corporations. At the same we would be de-regulating local and national economic activities, because local businesses are dying because they are being bound up in Red Tape and Bureaucracy, that is often bought in by big business.
Rob: Now that's an important issue I just want to emphasize that actually Global Regulation has meanly may given freedom to Big Trans National Corporations while making it harder for the small companies or operations to do business.
HNH: Yes, and again it's a systemic thing because the Global de-regulation has been accompanied by a lot of national and local regulation. A lot of it is over regulation. So especially say if you take the example of farming-- the farmer who has 10 chickens running free on an acre of land happy and healthy has to have the same health inspection and expenses as a factory farm with 1000's of Chicken crowded in a small space. You have farmers who have been farming for generations suddenly told that, in the name of the Hygiene, they got have tiles in their ceiling, a new stand of this and a new that all of it which has nothing to do with Hygiene, but it's the expenses that destroy the small players.
Years ago we found out that big hotel chains in America were lobbying in Washington to bring in stricter regulations for bread and breakfasts. You know it's amazing how these giants are stumping out small things. So the bread and breakfast, people who could live in a house and serve, suddenly if they are going to have a paying guest a few nights of the year, they had to have fire doors, fire mattresses, handicap ramps and all kinds of things that were too expensive.
So this is also in process of over regulation of smaller businesses has also led to a tea party mentality, and this is happening in other countries too. People end up furious with Government and they believe that the problem is that government is over-regulating across the border. So they just want to see laisee fare, economics, free trade, not understanding what's actually going on. They don't realize the real problem behind the scenes is the big giant mobile Corporations and Banks. So I think again with greater awareness in getting these ideas that we could build a very powerful coalition of people who care about their jobs, want to keep their small businesses going, with people who have main concern with CO2 emissions, people who have main concerns with unemployment and job insecurity. Now there is almost every issue you care to mention is either caused by or exacerbated by this Global Economic System and even if you believe in not caused by exacerbated by, what is guaranteed is that if this continues there will be no money to deal with the problems that you are trying to deal with. The money is just disappearing from NGO's even Non Governmental Organizations, Non Profit Organizations are getting poorer and poorer. Government is getting poorer and poorer. The Government is going with begging bowls to big Corporations, saying please will you do a Public Private Partnership with us. They are blindly promoting this Global de-regulation. They are impoverishing themselves relative to the Global Privatized Capital.
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