How to sell ‘a world without money’?
How do we fund a film about a moneyless society? Can we all get rich enough so that we stop counting our wealth? Did warfare and waste become a value to us because it is valuable in economic terms? Is labour-saving technology still good for us if it makes us lose our means of income?
FUTURE MY LOVE is filled with contradictions and paradoxes, as was the process of making it. But within these contradictions and paradoxes we might also have our way out. Most of the problems we face today have a positive side. Let's go back to the basics of economy – how do we keep a household with our global resources and manpower?
Doesn't our problem with unemployment actually mean that we don’t all need to work full-time to satisfy our needs in society? Just as the fact that we waste enormous amounts of resources means that we still have a lot to play with – should we dare to manage our time and resources differently? There have been not just one, but several technological revolutions that completely changed the balance between production and working hours. Yet, we have not updated our economy to these new conditions. It’s as simple as that, at least in mathematical terms.
We don’t need to change the world, we need
to adapt to changes we have already made
We know we are caught in a rat race that is damaging the very planet we live on, as well as our own quality of life. We know it is not sustainable, it poses a real threat to us as a species. We should be scared, yet like a hamster, we keep spinning the wheels of the global machinery that is taking us nowhere.
I believe we have to stop looking at these things in a one-dimensional manner, stop thinking for or against, left or right. If we want to change the system, we have to understand that we are part of it. We must realise that trying to step outside of it also has its consequences. We are in a situation where the same thing can be destructive and constructive at the same time; war is a multi-billion industry that the rest of the economy depends on.
In economic terms it’s constructive, in human terms it’s destructive. The more we work for free, give away to those in greater need and live our lives according to different values, the better we get at being humane and the more damage we do to our economic system. It’s destructive to be healthy and happy, have time to take care of our own children and elderly, to be satisfied with what we have and repair things ourselves should they break; in economic terms, this behaviour doesn’t generate any money.
We have to go back to the fundamental questions: What is actually important to us? What do we want? What do we have? How can we produce things that we’re missing and how do we share them fairly and sustainably? But first of all we have to find out why we are so reluctant and even sceptical of change, when we so desperately need it?
"Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity."
KARL MARX
We know more than we think we know,
the solution is simple
I think our personal relationships can show us many other ways to organise a society. I think we already have the experience to re-negotiate our economy. We do it all the time. In every relationship we form, we negotiate the terms, and when we love, the terms we set are far from just self-serving. Economy is not a mystical monster, it’s an agreement between people that live together in a finite physical world. It is a contract we have to make and remake if we don’t want to live a life of loneliness.
"The problem is not changing people's consciousnesses - or what's in their heads - but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth"
MICHEL FOUCAULT
If we really go back to the bare bones of the economic system, we only have three known forms of economic transactions to play with: theft, exchange or gift. Supposedly the most used form within our monetary system is exchange, but far too many times it’s outright theft.
Gift is often forgotten about since it’s not accounted for in this economic system. When gifts appear on the market, or wherever money is involved, we get suspicious and for good reasons. But it’s a shame! Giving is incredibly powerful and surely the most satisfying transaction for all parties. What feels better: giving someone a flower bouquet or to sell a flower bouquet? And if we add love in the equation: what feels better, to give or sell flowers to the one you love?
I don’t know who said it, but it often comes back to me as one of my most rigid truths (and they are all constantly in revision):
"In the end, all we have is what we have given to others..."
They say you should not make business with people you love, but perhaps that’s the only people you should trade with? If you care for the person, you would want to make it a fair deal for everyone. Perhaps we should never trade outside our ability to care, or we must learn ‘to care globally’. I believe we all have the capacity to care more widely, for our neighbours, cities, countries and planet. But instead of waiting for universal enlightenment, I would rather re-base our economic system on such values that equal a healthy economic transaction with a healthy environment and well-being, and this is certainly possible today.
