Helena Norberg-Hodge: Artisanal futures and economics of happiness (ep398)
“Once you start rebuilding more localized systems, they are, almost without exception, going to be kinder to the environment and kinder to people structurally. ”
In this episode, we are honored to welcome back our guest Helena Norberg-Hodge, a linguist, author, and filmmaker, and the founder of the Local Futures. As a pioneer and proponent of localization (decentralization), as well as her experience living in deep relation with the people of Ladakh over a 40-year period, Helena encourages “locality” grounded in community accountability, slowness, and (bio)diversity.
Join Helena and our host Kamea as we explore the systemic barriers surrounding notions of philanthropy and investment, gift economies, and re-structuring community fabric from the bottom up. Throughout the conversation, Helena urges us to sit with the complexities of modern economic and agricultural practices that extract, monopolize, and homogenize cultures and lifeforms. Ultimately she asks: how might we avoid falling into the pit of “shame and blame” responses to these atrocities, and rather, shed light on historical matrices that have shaped where we are today? In doing so, how can we encourage and learn from existing practices and cultural paradigms that embody localization at its core?
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Artistic credits:
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Oropendola
Episode-inspired artwork by Art Twink
Dive deeper:
Learn more about Helena Norberg-Hodge through her website
Learn more about Local Futures
Small is Beautiful, a book by E.F. Schumacher
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Transcript:
Note: Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Helena Norberg-Hodge: If we're only voting with our consumer dollars, it means that rich people have many more votes than poor people. When I started in my work, almost all environmentalists were aware that we needed policy change. In other words, we needed to shift how our taxes were spent to support unecological and very large scale extractive industries. And we wanted to shift that towards more decentralized and ecological ways of doing things, which brings with it also the rebuilding and restructuring of our community. So I would like people to think more about that, I would like people to think about having their voice heard in a more political way, but it means going beyond party politics.
The party politics we've had almost from the outset have never looked at this relationship between humanity and the living earth and have not been clear about how we need to shift to protect a healthy and genuinely sustainable relationship with the earth.
So in terms of the activities that we want to encourage, we encourage two main directions. One of them is to try to link up in the area wherever you live, even in a big city, try to identify a few like-minded people so you can form a bit of a group. A hub can change the 'I' to a 'we'. And then look at what can we do as activists to try to support, build, or protect systems that are healthier. And they will be almost everywhere in the world. When you look, you will find that the good things that are restoring biodiversity, bringing health and joy back to people at the same time, are human-scale, they are small, they generally have an ability to slow down. They're about rebuilding the community fabric, the fabric where we know the person who's growing our food, or the person who's helped to make the furniture, or who built the house that we live in.
These more personal relationships actually do, almost without exception, tend to reduce prejudice, blindness, when you put a label on people- look, these people are Catholics, these people are Protestant, these people are Muslim, these people are black and these people are white- so all these labels are labels that come about when we don't have a more intimate, ongoing relationship with people. So in that way, when you really start rebuilding genuinely local economies, they won't be these extractive businesses, because what we're talking about is, as I say, more human-scale businesses. Now, where people can get confused is you could have a giant chicken factory farm in your local area, and then you call that local. But see, the whole point of what we're trying to do is to say we're not talking about individual local businesses, we're talking about a local system. So we're talking about shortening the distance between producer and consumer, and between the producers and the natural resources.
Once you start rebuilding more localized systems, they are almost without exception going to be kinder to the environment and kinder to people structurally.
One more thing to say about that. I've seen again and again how motivating it is for a business or an individual developer who's living in a community and then starting to do some kind of investment in that community, when they get praise and affirmation from the community, they are motivated to do the right thing. When they're investing on the other side of the world or even hundreds of miles away, and they don't even see the impact of what they do, and and no one else sees the impact of what they do, that's when you get much more irresponsible, destructive development.
Kamea Chayne: Certainly, I can envision this form of localism that you refer to involving and enabling more accountability when people are just closer to the sources of everything that they engage with. And a lot of these activities become avenues of building trust and building relationships at this more human-scale level, so that maybe we can reach a point where things like certifications aren't even needed anymore because we can witness and feel these things in a more intimate way.
One of the key things that I've kept after our last conversation was this idea that there are different forms of poverty. And I remember you telling me about how you witnessed the land-based communities of Ladakh being detrimentally impacted by economic globalization in all sorts of ways, from their community relations to pollution, with the increasing need for refrigeration and packaged foods, to their senses of scarcity and insecurity that they had not had before. And I also remember you pointing out that while some communities could on paper look like they are doing better in terms of their average daily wages going up, if that coincides with people formerly with more subsistence and local economies being integrated and kind of consumed into market economies tethered to global capitalism, then that increase in wage does not necessarily equate with an improvement in their quality of life. All of this really challenges organizations and institutions that use the reductive measures of financial figures in order to determine poverty or well-being.
So I guess the question that I've been sitting with is, if part of the problem has been this reduction of the diverse forms of richness and relational wealth and more-than-monetary currencies into economies, that privilege, that representational currency, at the cost of anything and everything else, then could this also imply that in some ways, not always, but in some ways that the work of rebuilding rooted communities actually cannot be bought or invested in through fundraising or philanthropy? Or do you think that, at large, people have become so consumed and incorporated into the global market economies that the work of rebuilding local economies and community also is contingent on economic injustice at the larger scale being addressed first?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: This is a very interesting question, because I now know a number of people who are talking about investing in eco-villages. Someone I was in touch with was planning to do hundreds of eco-villages, and as an investor, I have been part of this globally eco-village network, which was philanthropy trying to support the bottom-up communities that had been created by the people themselves who were living in these communities. And that's a really determining factor between something that can really work and that's something that's healthy, and something that's going to be sort of dead, and tends to standardize, and it's coming from someone outside.
Remember: whenever anyone invests, the whole point is I'm putting in money in order to extract more than I put in. That's what investment is about. So today, we really need a discussion about philanthropy as opposed to investment.
One of the things that's going on right now is that a lot of the philanthropy is actually coming from foundations that are linked to the whole profit-making machinery, and the philanthropy that they employ is actually pulling people into dependance on the dominant growth economy.
So we have to distinguish between the types of philanthropy that we're talking about. Even if it's not an investment, philanthropy can still be something that we should be wary of. However, I would urge people not to think that they're the way to go now is straight into a gift economy or even to think, let's just do time dollars or our own local currency. I say that because of 50 years experience now seeing that what's happened with the attempt to go straight to a gift economy or let's or a genuinely local currency, it just hasn't worked because it's extremely difficult to get people so unplugged from the dominant economy that they can just leap into this other world. And one of the main reasons for that is that you need significant numbers in order to have an economic fabric around you that can really work. It's just very difficult if you go out, even with ten or even a hundred families, to trade and live off the land on your own. Now, I would not say that people shouldn't try that, but I want them to try it with a more sophisticated and more global understanding of the global system. They need to understand the regulations, they need to understand the heavy subsidies in the opposite direction and the psychological pressure, particularly on young people, to join the dominant narrative and the dominant consumer culture.
I want to come back to say that when a group of people want to try to start taking those steps to rebuild a local economy, local community fabric, I would urge them to think about trying to find philanthropists who might be willing to support that bottom-up, genuinely community-led way of doing things, because we have to realize that we're swimming in a heavily subsidized system that is completely deregulated. So the Amazons and the Monsantos have no rules, heavily subsidized. And as we try to do things as individuals, or local businesses, or even at the national level, any place-based business is suffering from these huge handicaps of heavy regulations and heavy taxation. We're in a completely unfair playing field, so we should recognize that in order to kick start and get things really going, we need a different type of subsidy. It shouldn't be an investment, but it is genuinely aiding the creation of a more self-reliant and ecological, community-based ways of doing things, let's welcome that money.
I also just want to add to that, that many groups who can afford it are starting to raise money among themselves, once they realize. I was just talking to a group last night in Sydney, and there they've been meeting regularly, they've been inspired by our film, and they found it very nurturing to connect spiritually, socially, psychologically. It's been really nourishing. But they've found as they try to do practical projects like getting a community garden started and so on, it's been very difficult and very slow. And what I'm urging with people like that is if they can afford it, try to pool some money to employ someone who can actually then have a wage from within the mainstream currency to help get things started. And for instance, here where I live in Byron Bay, we need more farmers markets, and we need more diversified small farms to feed this region. But again, to get us started, we really need someone working full-time, or half-time anyway, identifying the various opportunities, the land, the land owners who might be willing to have part of their land shifted, and who might be willing to welcome some young farmers.
There's so much that could be done and needs to be done, but it does need some funding in most cases, and it can work really well if you use the national currency as it is now. Once you set up more localized structures and things have really created closer relationship, then it would be easier to shift to a local currency.
Kamea Chayne: There's certainly a lot of systemic barriers and it's very difficult to just hit exit when currently, most people are so entangled. And unfortunately, it's also a challenge when we consider current trajectories of land ownership and the erosion of the commons. And certainly, there are some people occupying unused land and using them for community gardens and so forth, but most other people have to have a certain level of economic security and economic resources to be able to purchase land and then contribute that towards more community-serving purposes. It's definitely necessary still for most people to work within the existing system in order to create cracks for other ways of being and building community.
From engaging with the content that Local Futures puts out, I know that your organization has been keen on pushing back against this conclusion that it's what you eat, not how far it travels that matters, because if that were true, then it kind of puts into question the whole premise of Local Futures. I can personally say just from my initial impressions, I already am troubled by over-generalized conclusions that don't take into account context and nuance, because as an example, a lot of the environmental impact assessments that fixate on what types of food are, 'more environmentally friendly' and start off with this presumption that all landscapes and all terrains and all climates are the same. So the more water something uses, the worse it is, the more land something use is, the worse it is, the more fertilizer input something needs, the worse it is. But we have rainforests that are too wet for the crops that actually can't tolerate that constant wetness and humidity, we have dry lands that are too dry for other species that need more water, we have terrains with different soil ecology and composition, and we have landscapes that have different life cycles and speed in which that process of decay can regenerate compost and fertilizer. So that's the first thing that stood out to me as the idea of environmental impact being over generalized and problematic when they're completely contextualized.
With this in mind, I'm curious how you would address this point that it's the what that matters, and not where or how far they are brought in and imported from?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: Well, the thing we need to realize is that the distance that food travels is related to the foundations of the modern economy, which again, if we look back, what happened was that traders that were able to push people off the land through force, we're talking slavery, we're talking genocide, so that people were pushed away from producing or we're harvesting, hunting, gathering food from their region for their own needs, a diversity of foods, maybe not a huge diversity, but actually the more that archeologists are even looking at early hunter-gatherers and so on, they're finding an amazing diversity and what looks like very healthy people. So we have to completely rethink this.
We have to rethink agriculture completely, and we have to do that in the light of the modern economy that started with slavery and genocide and later colonialism.
Then the modern thinking, the foundation of the economy is comparative advantage, this is the idea that it's in your interest to specialize for export. Don't waste time trying to grow cherries in Scotland. You can grow oats really well. Just focus on oats, export those, and then import what you need. Well, in a certain way that can make sense, it sounds quite logical, but we don't realize that it was brought in hand-in-hand with an extractive system where global traders were able to amass wealth, and that in the process of encouraging this moving away from self-reliance, they were encouraging monoculture. And so if there's anything that we should look at as the enemy, as a structural enemy to life on this earth is monoculture, because we need to really keep in mind that the absolute principle of life is diversity. Every single cell, every single moment in life is unique. The cells in our bodies, every leaf and everything that lives is not only unique but changing. So they're not even the same moment to moment.
So when you talk about context, remember how important local knowledge is, because local knowledge systems that evolved as people lived in those different ecosystems we were talking about, in drylands, in wetlands, in the rainforest, those knowledge systems were knowledge about that complex living life all around them. The complexity meant also that people were so much more humble, so much more aware of the power and the constant change and process in the natural world. What happened with the modern economy, and at the same time modern science, we do need to look at critically. We cannot today dismiss science or technology, and money is another technology, and I'm saying we can't just say let's just exit. We're not having anything to do with science, technology, or the technology of money. No, where we're embedded in it is now very much part of our lives.
But we need to step back and look at it honestly, critically, and look at what are the real avenues of healing, the real avenues of the sort of knowledge that we need to regain health, our own health and the health of the planet. And that has very much to do with recognizing the damage that was done. And so when you asked me about distances, what I'm saying is that the distant market naturally imposes monoculture. A distant market will be centralized, it will be incapable of say, today you can have some letters that you deliver to the farmer's market and a few apples or whatever it might be. The distant market has forever imposed monoculture and today worse than ever.
So therefore, the distance is of fundamental importance, and there is this structural link between shortening the distance between the land and the market, and the localized market actually encourages, creates economic pressure on the producer, whether it's in fishery or forestry or farming, towards diversification. If they can diversify, they'll do better.
Kamea Chayne: I think that's a really important point, that centralized systems tend to drive processes of simplification and homogenization, and localized systems can better support the opposite trends. And I think what's also really key to bring in here is, I believe trade is not even accounted for in each country's emissions that the climate conferences try to address and seek to rein in.
You can correct me if I'm mistaken in that, but otherwise, what should people know in terms of this idea of free trade and who benefits if countries are often importing the same amount of the same category of foods as they're exporting? Like in reality, who are the ones doing that trade? Who gains and at the cost of whom, or what?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: Again, without demonizing the people in big corporations, we need to be really clear that the drivers of this system have been, from the beginning, global traders. We need to remember that if we're talking about trade in money as well, we're talking about a system that pressured governments to open their doors, have no controls over the value of their currencies, and open their doors to import and export. If we need to look at what has to change, it is the freedom of giant corporations to essentially give the marching orders to our governments.
In many cases, we're talking about corporations that we don't even know the name of, we're talking about a financial casino that now operates at a speed that is incredibly dangerous. I was very pleased to recently hear an English economist, a mainstream economist, address this. I think once people really wake up to the role of a deregulated marketplace, both in terms of the import and export of identical food products, beef in beef out, milk in milk out, food being sent to the other side of the world to be processed, from Australia, from Norway, from America. Fish has been sent to China just to be processed, sent back again. This insanity and that trade is not discussed in the climate negotiation because the climate negotiations are essentially dominated by big business. Unfortunately, almost all the global negotiations, treaties, and so on, have been more and more dominated by big business, with governments essentially taking their orders from big business.
We should remember that in 2008 and there was this enormous financial crash which destroyed the lives of millions of people. There was such a clear recognition that we need to regulate the banks. But we got the message, too big to fail. Now, what that meant was, they're so big and powerful that we don't dare to challenge them. And this, again, is where I'm trying to encourage the sort of 'we' mentality, so that we realize that, maybe with the exception of America, but for most countries to say, taking on this, what in effect is an interlinked empire of banks and corporations, is very difficult. But if we, as what I call big picture activists, if we can get that picture out that, okay, get together with other countries, let's have a situation where governments are pressured by those of us who are thinking about this thing to get back around a table to discuss with other countries…
How can we collectively start minimizing our dependence on these giants? How can we collectively strengthen our own genuine economic potential and rebuild the foundations of a living, healthy economy?
Right now, with this high technology of blind men leading us into a metaverse where the actual living and the way life itself is seen through a haze of numbers and fantasies about technology, fantasies about living forever, and is based on a war machine of going off and fighting over scarce minerals on Mars and also in the deep seabed. So we need to really be very clear about what the big picture is.
When we talk about contextualization, as I say, the role of technology, the role of genuine democracy in shaping the future is what we need to be thinking about. And we can start these discussions at the local level and start actually doing things at the local level that regenerate. By the way, I don't like using the word regeneration was has been pushed by big business, but that rebuild, renew and yes, regenerate living systems co-operative systems. And it means ultimately, it's a cooperation between humans and the rest of life.
Kamea Chayne: There's so much in everything you just shared. And in terms of the technology piece, whenever I do a quick search for the word futuristic, I disproportionally receive results centered on automation, AI, robots, and these kind of grayish visuals, devoid of plants and trees, and the richness and colorful diversity of the more-than-human world.
I also think about the promise of automation, to automate everything so that nobody needs to work anymore, and we can just all have leisure time for our entire lives. First of all, that is not at all the trajectory that has been playing out as technological advancement has continued, I think primarily due to the incentives driving innovation, not that innovation or technology couldn't serve purposes of supporting our collective well-being. In the big picture, the increasingly fast pace of the world and of consumerism cycles and the increasing wealth gap, all of this happened leading most people to actually have to work more for less pay, so it really puts that premise into question. But also I genuinely am concerned about the spiritual aspect, as in my understanding is that people need a sense of purpose and connectedness to something greater than ourselves in order to feel fulfillment, to tend to community, to tend to each other, tend the land, to not create for the sake of creating, but to create with deeper intentions in mind, and then, of course, to care for and love, and to be cared for and loved by real people and other living beings as well.
I wonder what other thoughts you might have on our spiritual crisis tethered to the dominant visions of futuristic, and whether it's really kind of perhaps the over-commodification of labor that leads to those acts losing their meaning, and not that a more joyous and liberated future means nobody needs to cook anymore, nobody needs to care for the land and farm, no one needs to watch their elders, no one needs to pack things or pack gifts for their friends and so forth. Obviously an exaggeration, but hopefully you see what I'm trying to get at.
Helena Norberg-Hodge: My amazing experience of living in a culture that was completely pre-industrial forced me to see things so differently. So in Ladakh or West Tibet, where I lived for many years over a 40 year period, and my organization is still working there. But it was this remarkable experience in the first few years of speaking the language fluently and living with them and experiencing how gentle and how easy life was, experiencing people were so at peace with themselves. It was this deep, relaxed self esteem, self acceptance. And of course, over many years, it took me a long time to realize how it all fit together. Even for years, I was somehow thinking, well, actually life is pretty hard, it was very cold in the winter, there was no heating, and people carried things on their back and it seemed hard. And yet it was one of those experiences after several years where I was in the peak working season, which is the harvest season, and the snow could fall any time, so there was a certain time pressure.
I was sitting with Ladakhis during the harvest and they would sing to the animals as they were threshing, they were singing as they were harvesting, and then there was a whistling tune when they were winnowing. And so there was all this singing going on and whistling. And as it happened in the house next door, the monks were performing harvest ceremonies and their music with drums and horns, the song was coming out. And there we were, having a picnic, laughing, relaxed in the peak working season. And then some tourists come by taking photos and then they go off, and a Ladakhi said to me, 'Why the tourists always in such a hurry?'
That was one of those aha moments where I suddenly realized, yeah, it is remarkable that Ladakhis are never in a hurry. And that got me to see, over the years, the amazing things that were happening. I was going back to Sweden, I was going back to America, and I was seeing literally before my eyes it would be their life speeding up, not to mention Ladakh, because in Ladakh, as the doors opened to the outside economy, life also started speeding up. One of the remarkable things that I've seen in that ancient pre-industrial culture of Ladakh where, yes, there was physical work and people did carry things on their back, but actually on the whole, they were healthier than we are, they were infinitely happier than we are.
And what I realize is all the things we care about take time.
We want to be known for who we are. Once we get into these speedy relationships, fleeting relationships, and have far too many, none of them deep, we actually don't feel affirmed for who we are. We know that if someone thinks we're good looking or think we have a nice fancy car or a fancy home or flashy anything, we know we're not really being appreciated for who we are. We become more lonely and deeply traumatized identities. Not to mention, the fundamental thing of being breastfed and being held as a baby. But it's not just that, that's not enough to satisfy for our lives. We need deeper ongoing relationships with others. We need them with animals. We need them with the plants, with life around us. So technology has been speeding life up, I've seen these dramatic changes in Ladakh. I've seen a culture where there was depression didn't exist, they could not understand.
When I tried to explain that in the West we had doctors who actually dealing with our mental and emotional problems, they could not comprehend. Suicide was something that might have happened one in a generation, now it's at least one a month, and it's mainly the young people. I've seen in Sweden, as the doors of the global economy opened up more and more to the outside products, the destruction of the local economy shifting people, in Ladakh, in Sweden, also in Spain, and these are places where I lived for long periods, but I've also lived in America. So in all those places, I've seen very clearly what happens to people as the fabric of community and connection breaks down. And as there are more and more pressures that, as I said, destroy that local fabric, and then when that's accompanied by immigration, which in Ladakh and Bhutan, in very traditional places was also an issue, because what this system does is to pull in people from the periphery who are not yet as urbanized or industrialized.
So in the case of Ladakh and Bhutan, it is people from Nepal who had already been driven out of their villages and who were poorer, who were coming in to do the the work that now people who are getting advanced in the economy weren't doing. And that led to terrible prejudice, even bloodshed.
We need to look at the mobility of people. We need to look at the mobility of goods and how it's all linked to an extractive economy. And we need to look at why people are being uprooted, both within the industrialized world but also across the globe.
Kamea Chayne: It really just sounds like a lot of this fabricated and later on, realized scarcity and fears of scarcity and loss of belonging kind of pits a lot of people against each other and leads people to blame things that they otherwise may not have turned against, if that makes sense.
So these conversations are really eye-opening in the sense that they help us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of what is really going on and what is it that's driving all of these different forms of exclusion and discrimination—because there are bigger things behind that.
Helena Norberg-Hodge: Yeah, and again, it's everything to do with the economic system. That is the investments, it's the infrastructure that's built up, and it's the media, it's the marketing of an urban consumer culture that tells people all around the world that they are no good the way they are. So we're talking about even so-called, quite privileged people in the West who are locked into a nuclear family. And the images, television, media and so on romanticize the lives that were meant to lead. And they feel that they're not living up to that, and they're not able to share with others their fears, the fact that one of their children may be trouble, that someone might have an eating disorder, that the husband gets drunk at night, whatever, because they're locked into this tiny nuclear family where inside the four walls is where people know what's going on, and outside of that, there has to be a smile and everything has to look perfect.
We're not allowed to be vulnerable, we're not allowed to be imperfect. So I do want to say that it's very encouraging that people intuitively around the world are developing ways of dealing with this. They're developing women's circles, men's circles, sitting in a circle and beginning to share, beginning to be able to be vulnerable. And there's also this huge increase in nature connection as an absolutely healing and essential way of recovering our humanity. So both are reconnection to others and to nature is happening.
And I think what we've just talked about in us is quite overwhelming and negative, and yet I'm so much more positive than most of my colleagues, especially my age. People seem to have lost their faith in humanity. And of course they have, because the dominant narrative makes it seem as though we're seeing all this destruction because people are too greedy. People don't want to let go of their car, they just wanting to consume more. We're not hearing the real story, that's not what's happening, that is documented by economists. People are not actually buying more because people are actually poorer. And we're talking about an increase in poverty now up to the even upper-middle class in the industrialized world. And we have to look at, as you said earlier, it's about how many hours we work a day or a week to put food on the table, to have a roof over our head. We are poorer and poorer and poorer. And yet because big business locked into a blind growth agenda is dominating the narratives not just in the media, but also in science and in academia, we're getting this completely false picture. So people are losing faith in humanity and becoming quite depressed and and hopeless.
Whereas what I'm seeing is that there is this intuitive waking up. Everywhere I look, I see evidence that people actually want that reconnection with others. Of course, everybody wants more time to look after their children, to look after themselves, to have connection with nature. And of course, no one actually wants this mega urbanized existence that the algorithms and our blind leaders are pushing us into. Every day, the farmers are having a hard time surviving. What is happening also is the antidote, is the local food movement where people are connecting with the farmers and shifting things around so that they can earn 90% of what we spend, whereas in the supermarket they only get 10%. And so this countermovement, fundamentally about localizing, is showing the way forward and showing that people want to move in that direction.
Kamea Chayne: Hopefully, with the spread of alternative narratives, with the increasingly deep sense of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment and exhaustion that a lot of people are experiencing, people will be inspired to not attribute those troubles to the wrong sources, but be invited to come together and share those with each other so we can have more imaginative ideas of how we can work towards that shared collective, more vibrant future together.
Whenever I bring the topics that we just discussed to people who typically aren't tuned in to these conversations and haven't really been exposed to alternative narratives, I often hear this remark that we can't go backwards. That leads me to believe that a lot of us have been so deeply indoctrinated by this idea that advancement means growing the economy. It means development as defined in these very monolithic, top down ways. It means automation and so forth. We don't even stop to think about what all of that might mean for our human-level senses of joy, fulfillment, connection, well-being and sense of aliveness.
I think a lot of this is rooted in language, too. Like what growth has been centered on, how progress and advancement have been portrayed and determined, what efficiency refers to. And even as Charles Eisenstein questioned in our past conversation, and you put quotations around this word earlier too, even how the word 'privilege', which suggests being better off, is defined, and the values that implicitly reinforces.
To this point, I actually am realizing that I don't love the term subsistence living or subsistence communities because it portrays them as only having the bare minimum of just getting by, which really isn't true at all when we consider all of the riches and relationships that a lot of these communities are so incredibly wealthy in. But in any case, I would love for you to address this idea that we can't go backwards, as well as our need to shift our cultural stories and language and worldviews so that we can reorient ourselves towards an advancement that actually aligns with our growth of our collective well-being.
Helena Norberg-Hodge: I also would just like to say that we hope that if people hear an alternative narrative, or you've made it plural, alternative narratives, that they won't assign blame in the way they do now. This is what's so tragic, is that the blame that's being assigned so often to the outsider, to the immigrants, to the people who are different, as people become more and more fearful, difference becomes such a threat. People are also blaming themselves because the dominant narrative, particularly the middle class people in the West, who are being told that it's their fault that people are poor on the other side of the world, it's their fault that climate is continuing to become unstable, that they're selfish and greedy.
There's also a deep self-blame as people feel they're told by the environmental movement it's all their fault.
Then they feel guilty that they're not spending more time with their children, that they're not looking after their parents better. So it's tragic to see that. I also see a tendency for people to blame their own culture. So when I'm in Sweden or when I'm here, I say, well, it's because here in Australia we are like this, or it's because in Sweden, we're like that. Actually, when you look at it globally, the problem comes back to this global system that started with slavery, and it got this huge support after the Second World War, when governments sat around this table at Bretton Woods and they set up the World Bank, the IMF and the trade treaties through something called the GATT. And they were convinced that in order to avoid another world war, in order to avoid another depression, we needed to integrate economic activity worldwide. Now, what that meant was giving these giants the privilege of going in and out. And of course, those leaders, they weren't looking at that- that meant destroying the local businesses that inevitably were more adapted to the diversity of the ecosystems and diversity of culture.
I see this huge potential for a path forward where we liberate the human race to become more creative, more productive, with artisan production for every one of our basic needs: food, clothing, shelter. Artisan production, meaning very small scale machinery and hands involved in the work, in growing the food and having the sort of mixed farming we need, that everywhere in the world, from the dry lands to the wetlands, the diversity means that we can be more productive. We can actually get more out of the land, that needs more people. Building houses with a group of people using local, natural materials. Most people are so urbanized, industrialized now that this may just sound too unrealistic, but I'm seeing this happening in the localization movement, which includes the permaculture movement, the transition town movement, where people are doing this. I'm seeing beauty, I'm seeing joy.
I'm seeing inter-generational collaboration that occurs much more naturally when you're able to work this way without the huge dangerous machinery, without the noise from it.
And again, my view of this comes from Ladakh, where, as I was telling you, during the harvest season, there was all that singing going on. And I remember once having started a letter back to the West to say, this year in Ladakh was particularly enjoyable because there was construction going on our house. So we lived in a big old farmhouse with a Ladakhi family downstairs, and we were upstairs, and there was construction going on. And then I realized how insane that would sound anywhere in the industrialized world, that it was because people were coming up, bringing mud bricks to the to the roof above, singing as they were doing it. And as it happened when I was writing that letter, there was also harvesting and the monks in the chapel. And it was just this amazing, joyous sound all around.
From that, I've seen how much easier it is if we have more people doing things, almost anything like gardening, building a house, doing the laundry, even cooking, looking after children. All of these things are so much more enjoyable and you're doing it as a group. And that's how we evolved. That's how we managed to evolve on this planet for tens of thousands of years, being replaced by machines isolated from each other and appendages to the machines to create this monocultural world where the houses have become identical, the materials are more and more dead. The soul in a mud brick house, the health of the mud brick house in terms of being warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer, and so completely different from the cement house.
Another thing with this, which will probably sound crazy, is that we introduced solar energy and made changes that brought in some of the modern ways of doing things, we discovered then how in the traditional situation, every single window was different from every other. When it was handmade, there wasn't that assumption that everything had to be standardized. So when you would see a traditional carved balcony or something on these houses, they were so beautiful. And I came to realize afterwards it was because actually none of the window panes were identical. In other words, they mirrored that incredible diversity of life.
So much of what we think of as beauty you would call imperfection in this industrial, mechanical way of looking at the world.
But of course, that is the mystery, the richness, the unending richness of the living world. So when we produce things in a more artisan way, when the clothing is actually made to fit your body, it's not been prefabricated and it's in a size 12 or the size 14, it's actually to fit your body. And maybe one shoulder is a little lower than the other one. Adaptation to the diversity brings greater beauty and greater satisfaction.
Now, what we need to recognize is that here we are after a couple of hundred years of this really mechanistic, monocultural, top-down system, and it's about 500 years since the beginnings of this Western culture reaching across the world and starting to impose the monoculture. But we're only talking a few hundred years, whatever. And we really do need to step back and question, and we really do need to look at how industrial agriculture has been a disaster from beginning to end. I'm now arguing that industrial architecture and engineering has been a disaster. I'm arguing that industrial production of the clothes we need is also in no way increasing in any way the well-being of ecosystems or people. But it's challenging, a lot of people seem to lack imagination. I think that we need to understand we have an overabundant absolutely overabundant renewable energy, which is human beings. And I would argue that one of the main reasons our leaders are locked into a path of anti-life and I would say ultimately total destruction- it won't destroy all of life, but it will ultimately destroy itself because it cannot work.
But this anti-life system is based on raping more and more of the living resources and people to impose an artificial deadly system that is anti-life. And the main reason is that everywhere in the world, human labor is too expensive for us. We can't afford ourselves. If you and I want to build a house, if we wanted to have it with the artisans and people helping to build a house, only a few billionaires are doing that now, we can't afford it. We have to use mass produced materials, materials that have been transported for thousands of miles.
Often, we're trapped in a system where subsidies, taxes, and regulations make human life and us ourselves too expensive for ourselves.
Kamea Chayne: Maybe we might not be able to fully realize a fully artisanal future, but it could still act as seeds of inspiration. I personally love and really resonate with this dream because it also points back to my train of thought earlier, just about questioning what liberated futures actually mean, and whether it's really driven by automation or otherwise. It could be liberated futures where everything we do actually contributes to building relationships, and building joy and meaning. So not meaningless mass production, just churning things out, but artisanal creations that strengthen community and also makes life more beautiful and no longer work, but everything becoming acts of love and care and creativity.
And in a sense, I would say that advancement as it's currently defined, with people becoming appendages to machines, as you said, it's kind of driving dehumanization and a simplification of how we engage with the world and what it means to be human. I think I'm more interested in realizing future is where people can turn everything into passion projects and acts of love and creativity. I'm cooking because I want to cook for these people that I love. I am helping build this building because it's going to house my community. Having every act becomes something that builds something deeper, builds intimacy and relationships in a community. And I know that's idealistic, too, but hey, just going to put it out there.
Helena Norberg-Hodge:
I would say that in traditional cultures as well as in the permaculture movement and in the eco-village movement, I'm also seeing how that slower pace of building houses, of growing food with people around you, is so suited to intergenerational collaboration.
The children, the older people are all there, and the children are learning from the elders. It's a continual process of learning and teaching. So there's there are so many other aspects of this that have to do with really flourishing wellbeing. And one of them we do have to think about is how this industrialized urban life, what it does, even just the fast cars coming, the danger for children, the danger for old people even crossing the street. All of that plays into a whole way of life that is either more fearful, more dangerous, more anonymous, or a way of life that is slower and more enjoyable for all generations. In connection with this artisanal future that I experienced in Ladakh, that it would be entirely possible to bring in some genuinely decentralized renewable energy technologies to create a significant layer of greater comfort, a bit more distance from nature, a way of of having a little more heating and cooling, and reducing some of the labor where it might not be desirable, it's entirely possible to do that without destroying the earth. And I think most of us who have tasted both the really traditional way of life and the modern life would probably choose to have a bit of a middle ground like that.
I'm sort of torn in the sense that I've always said that I would without a doubt choose to be reborn as a traditional Ladakhi rather than being reborn in this Western system. But but having having lived with greater comfort, I did find the lack of heating in the winter and the dark to be very difficult. But as I say, there is a very clear trajectory forward where we could make use of certain technologies, but I don't think we will find that we're going to need this level of top-down mega systems that the Internet has heralded and now AI is bringing in. I think we're going to find that we need to subjugate technology to more genuinely democratic scrutiny, and that these technologies don't lend themselves to that. So there are people who are becoming alarmed about the role of AI, and I think very rightly so.
One more thing I would like to say about technology is that right now, at the level where we are today, let's make use of the technologies we have to communicate a bigger picture, to communicate the truth of what's going on in the world.
We use these technologies now, as you and I are doing, talking on Zoom, to share the message that we would all be better off if we could make less use of the Internet, be less dependent on our mobile phone. I'm hoping that people can see the nuanced conversation of saying, yeah, these technologies are there, they're being used often to expand this global empire that is so destructive. But we can use them to share information to try to bring about this U-turn that we want, the U-turn towards a better balance between human beings and the natural world, and technology should be a mediating force between humans and the natural world. Right now we are all being subjugated by a system where we've allowed economic priorities and technology to dominate us.
Once these technologies would be subjugated, I think we would want to reduce the speed. I think we would want to ensure that many of them are used primarily for communication that is necessary, not for everyday communication. So I'm thinking particularly for emergencies, climate upheavals and so on, the speedy communication can be very important. So there's a complex path forward in terms of finding the balance that we ultimately want. And one more thing I'd like to say is that where we are right now, we should be voting no to 5G. We should be voting no to allowing governments and big business to speed things up even more. Who needs the greatest speed? Where is it going to be beneficial? What is it actually going to do to our lives? It is about supporting driverless cars, it is about supporting a mega urbanization that humanity clearly doesn't want. But unfortunately, there is often not clarity about what are the forces and mechanisms that are increasing urbanization, and certainly 5G is one of them.
~ musical intermission ~
Kamea Chayne: What has been one of the most impactful books that you've read or publications you follow?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: For me, one of the most was Small is Beautiful, a very important book by Schumacher. I was involved in helping to set up a college by that name, Schumacher College in in England. And his book Small is Beautiful is very close to my heart. And interestingly enough, he was a mainstream economist whose thinking was transformed because he went to Burma in the 1960s and found there a culture where poverty and unemployment didn't exist.
Kamea Chayne: What is a personal motto, mantra or a practice that you engage with to stay grounded?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: My practice is to try every day to walk in nature and remind myself how much is still alive and flourishing and how much there is still of the beauty, the joy, the mystery of the living world. It's my church.
Kamea Chayne: And finally, what is one of your greatest sources of inspiration at the moment?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: Well, again, it is nature, but it's also, almost every day I get messages from people who feel that our holistic view and our faith in humanity, our emphasis on deep reconnection, the deep reconnection to others, very importantly to other human beings, but also to the rest of life, how healing that is. And that when we approach that in a more conscious, structural way, it is about meeting face-to-face. And that means, again, local. It's real experiential knowledge and connection that happens at the local level. So the path that we're encouraging, people are finding very helpful, and there are so many inspiring examples from around the world. And I get that feedback almost every day, and that inspires me and keeps me going.
Kamea Chayne: Helena, thank you so much for joining me on Green Dreamer for round two. It's been an honor to welcome you back here. What final words of wisdom would you like to leave us with as Green Dreamers?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: I would urge you to keep reminding people that the green dreaming is also dreaming of human well-being and joy. And I worry that people who are just struggling, more and more people are struggling to just put food on the table and have a roof over their head and they can perceive green as something that is going to take something away from them. So it's really important that with our green dreaming that we really remind people of this is about their health, their joy, their well-being, their families, their relationships, what they really care about.
