I want to write about how we cannot afford poverty, how stupid it is, how it degrades our economy and our spirit.

I want to write about the trends in our New Zealand economy to a power-crazed, corporatist, extractive, one-dollar-one-vote destruction of democracy; the destruction of local enterprise and family owned farms – and why those targets of the corporate agenda would even think of voting for their own turkey christmas.  There is nothing good in this trend.  There is no creativity, nor meaning, nor soul.

I want to write about how a strong community is your business friend, how treating people as things is stupid if you want a future for your own town and region.  The only people – if you could call them that – that benefit from treating us as third world colonial slaves are the corporates who do not live here.  Wake up.  We are being colonised – and that colonisation is supported by the right because they are paid by the colonisers and the media is owned by the colonisers.

I want to write about how the environment is your friend.  Not just in building your soul and a meaning in life, but in your business as well – unless you are an absolute scumbag who will pillage the kauri, the water, the soil, the fisheries for your immediate self-gratification.  Vice.  Business does not have to be vicious.  It can be virtuous.  Realise that building the hope and dreams and connections and laughter and spirit and trust and participation and esprit de corps of people – community – staff – *creates* and drives our world.

I want to write that only an unthinking moron would throw the capacity and value of their land down the stream by washing away soil and nutrients. Pure and utter stupidity. Dumb and dumber.  Fed Farmers type moronity.  I want to write that land capacity to cope with drought and flood is your friend. I want to write that you get benefits from a functioning landscape where diversity and biota are your friends. Free gifts, cashflow options, resilience, beauty, function, stock health, less need for inputs – more dollars made for less dollars spent.  I want to write that the environment means you have a story to sell, a market position essential to a premium while commodities continue their downward slide.  Better environment, more resilience, better economics, a better place within which to create and be.

I want to write about systems thinking and strategy and getting your head out of the technocratic falsehood of only looking at the measured things in a spreadsheet. At the insanity of discounting your future by 10% real.  The immorality.  The death of art, and with art, wisdom.

I want to write about the need to be able to differentiate lies from truth, to dig into the root causes and not – ever – be influenced by some empty cliche like “a war on P”. I want to write about scapegoating, and the nonsense of some economic theories, and the history of stupidity within various economic extremes. Beware of economics, especially when it involves absolutes – “the market will provide,” “the state will dissolve to a worker’s collective,” “there is equal powerlessness in the world,” and “people make rational all-knowing asocial choices to be poor.”  Think for yourselves.  Learn for yourselves.  Dig into the assumptions.  They are easy to find.  You’ll quickly spot the bullshit there and realise that the smartly dressed men in suits do not have superior minds.  They have no authority of thought – and we should never give them that.  They live within a social paradigm of unquestioned belief without internal critique.

I want to write about Modernity and finding our way back home to becoming native to place – to return to *being* *in* and *of* our lands and our communities where they are never defined by the measurement of stocks.  We do not raise children by measured calorie flows alone.  Why would we do that for economics or society.

I want to write about the radical radicle root core philosophical depths of wisdom.

And how we are not being wise in our political choices.

Chris Perley
Thoughtscapes

Chris Perley has a background in embedding himself in our landscapes and fields, in management, policy, consulting and research relating to land use, the environment, provincial economies and communities.  He is an affiliated researcher at Otago University’s Centre for Sustainability.