Please feel free to distribute this Avatar-Freelender leaflet on behalf of all freelenders

•  Here's a link to the pdf file we produced of the leaflet text below
  
• Here's the Freelender Community Page, which also includes the link to the leaflet; feel free to distribute on behalf of all freelenders; either outside cinemas showing Avatar, or just through neighbours doors.
  

What difference does the James Cameron film Avatar encourage you to make to your life?

Who is the character in the picture: Neytiri or.........................................?

(other interpretations welcome on the shared Facebook discussion started by Paul Crosland on 12/1/10)

"The Na'vi have a closeness and community that we, in our solitary, high-tech squalor, have lost on earth.

If we learn nothing else, we must learn again to trust when everything in our diminished lives says we can't."

  "Avatar - An Activist Survival Guide" - request your free copy at freelender.org

Also available - 'The Age of Stupid' DVD.

Now that governments lacked courage in Copenhagen, the UK release of the 'Age of Stupid' is a call to reduce consumption. Reduced consumption can increase the quality of life if we become more consciously inter-dependent in our world (and less dependent on the well-being of an unsustainable economic system).

The 'Age of Stupid' (staring Pete Postlethwaite) film is about the world in 2055; though the exact date of that level of environmental and cultural destruction is of course dependent on what you do with this leaflet.

Who is the character in the picture: Neytiri or..........?(other interpretations welcome on the Facebook discussion started publically by Paul Crosland on 12th January 2010)

"I see you, I depend on you and I'm looking for something bigger than a 'win-win' outcome.

Let's work together for systemic win i.e. No losers." 

(Paul Crosland,co-director of Freelending Community Interest Company)

Whatever you want, ask to borrow it.

Whatever you have to share, offer it.

Gain friends and build trust locally.

freelender.org

-and also try these other UK wide (or wider) websites, all of which are being invited to join a consortium of community organisations with a mission of caring for how household resources are used:

• Freecycle UK - uk.freecycle.org
  
• Freegle UK - ilovefreegle.org
  
• Freeconomy - justfortheloveofit.org
  
• LetsAllShare - letsallshare.com
  

The money fix video

Starting to watch this; which comes recommended by people whose insight into economics and social change I rate highly. When will we get to the point whereby buying something that more than one person could use (without sharing the purchase cost or having checked out the ways you could get it for free) will be seen as a sign of being porly connected to others; something requiring remedial action by concerned individuals? Probably when the big economic collapse comes. (Come it will; I don't wish it on us; I just have a sense of how unsustainable current economic strategy is). And when will the big economic collapse be? Who knows? Someone else I know and respect predicts that in 2011 renting and hiring household items is going to make a whole lot more economic sense to people than it appears to now. Start freelending now, to build your freelender credit rating and establish connections strong enough to withstand the money you have losing its value. By lending out your stuff you are (through trust stats etc) creating a new measure of trust. Why have trust tied up in bank notes? Is it because we've not dared to imagine have the kinds of connections that diminish all our 'needs for money' whilst increasing our quality of life? Food is a need, warmth is a need, and more needs are listed here. Money is not a need; it's just a strategy for meeting our real needs whilst often creating distance.

Preparing for UK Aware in April

Let's all meet at the ethical living fair at Earl's Court -UK Aware- in April.

"UK AWARE 2010 tickets are now available for our Facebook group at just £6.00: http://bit.ly/cL7Q35 compared to £10 on our website or £15 on the door."

Community Resource Care Consortium - a vision for the near future

Comments on whether this vision might be achievable by April 2010 please?

The relationships between trust, money and connectivity

The key part of the issue of 'trust and happiness' referred to below that I'm interested in are the relationships between:

• trust
• money 
• connectivity

eg some people's connections are such that they have lived for 1-13 years without money (eg Mark Boyle & Heidemarie Schwermer respectively).
Those of us who use money are often shielded by the indirectness of the exchange (middle-men/middle-women) from any 'inhumane' consequences of our purchasing decisions.
Is this distancing, enabled by money, the root of unhappiness?
Money enables us to privatise our lives and whilst private transport/ entertainment / washing etc has its benefits, the loss of connectivity, sense of safety with others and trust, is surely a matter warranting review individually and collectively?
Are we served best by money? What does the hybrid look like?
-It would involve monetary exchange and sharing of goods and servicesin a way that built trust, humane treatement of all and respected both people's wishes for autonomy and community, which are present (in my humble opinion) in us all.
For me, I will trade some of the autonomy of money for the collectivity of Giving/Taking, Lending/Borrowing, Renting/Hiring, Selling/Buying Collectively. In this way my limited money will go further and the benefits of community will come more to the fore in my life.
Is this more idealistic and/or pragmatic in your opinion?

How building trust in communities builds happiness too

I've been listening to a lecture on happiness (given by Ratnaguna at the Manchester Buddhist Centre and available from itunes as a free podcast).
What was of greatest interest was the indication of research (that I haven't yet fully sourced; links welcome please) showing the methodology for measuring the level of trust in UK society and the corresponding levels of trust. The happiness lecture starts from Lord Leyard's well publicisied work and then goes to the sources from Selegman and from the author of 'Flow'. The trust/happiness relationship is the one I'm keenest to follow at present:
"It is Layard's contention that, during the past 50 years, consumer society has become dominant and yet happiness has declined. We are richer, healthier, have better homes, cars, food and holidays than we did half a century ago. Unemployment and inflation are low, and yet so are levels of reported happiness. This is due, he says, to a series of things - the break-up of the family, fractured communities, a loss of trust. "The same thing has happened in America, but it hasn't happened in the same way on the continent. I think this shows we are suffering from the extreme individualism that we have reported from America. We are unhappier as a resultLayard talks in simple ways about these problems. "People would be happier if there were nice people when they went outside. But there is little confidence that there are nice people out there. Here and in the US levels of trust have fallen from 60% to 30% in the past 50 years." (From article about the government's happiness tsar)

Will freelender.org be clearly able to demonstrate the increase in trust and happiness achieved over the next five years? (Within certain neighbourhoods, I reckon so).

Wise advice about refusing money which is offered in ways that don't work for you

I'm reading "Banker to the Poor" by Mohammed Yunus, and was moved and refreshed by the combination of "acknowledge and move on" that is contained in this exchange with someone who has receieved the wisdom of old not to borrow money:
'when my mother died the last advice she gave me was never to borrow from anybody. So I cannot borrow.'
'Yes, your mother was a wise woman, she gave you the right advice. But if she were alive today she would advise you to join Grameen. When she  was alive there was no Grameen project. She did not know anything about this experimental project. Back then there was only one source she could borrow from - the money-lender, and she was advising you rightly not to go to him, because he charges 10 per cent per month, or per week! But if your mother had known about us, she would definitely strongly recommend you to join us and make a decent living for yourself.'
(page 96)