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Modest Income, Major Freedom with Anisa Rogers
1.1k Plays2 months ago
The first time I saw Anisa Rogers (who was basking on the grass reading a book) I thought: this person looks hekkin relaxed, has a tan consistent with living in reality, and the brightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
We got talking and I learned that Anisa is involved in all kinds of system-disrupting mischief in Naarm, Melbourne, as part of the Degrowth Network – and so many social justice, environmental, guerrilla gardening and new economy groups.
The reason Anisa can lead a rich life in community is that they’ve whittled their living costs down to such an extent that they’re free to be of service to their passions and values. Kudos!
🌟 Other stuff we cover
Quick & dirty capitalism explainer
Quick & lovely degrowth definition
Where activism falls short
Leaning into hard sharehouse conversations
Living on one day’s work per week
Mutual aid funds
Getting paid to process your shit
Friends sharing money
🧙♀️ LINKY POOS
Degrowth festival. November 30th in Coburg (Melbourne). Follow DNA Facebook or email [email protected] if you want to be involved
Four Day Residential Permaculture Retreat with David Holmgren + Beck Lowe at Larnook Community Farm
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Transcript
Introduction to Reskillience
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey, this is Katie, and you're tuned into Reskillience, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.
Acknowledgment of Country & Personal Story
00:00:20
Speaker
We're coming to you from beautiful Jara country in central Victoria.
00:00:24
Speaker
And I pay my respects to the Jaja Wurrung people, their elders, and the little button quail, no heavier than a cicada, who I found at my walk this morning and is now making soil with the mint bushes.
Corporate Growth Critique
00:00:39
Speaker
So work has been pretty interesting this week. I ended up inside the bowels of a massive shipping and logistics company, proofreading their annual report. Billion dollar behemoths aren't my usual clientele.
00:00:52
Speaker
I'm normally writing for permes and hippies who have one foot in capitalism and the other one kicking it. But when an advertising agency I used to work for asked me if I wanted a proofreading job, my initial distaste gave way to a budding curiosity to peer inside the gizzards of a mammoth corporation to see who or what they've been gobbling.
00:01:15
Speaker
Annual reports are designed to update shareholders about how the business performed during the year and include detailed information about earnings, challenges and future outlook. But to my eyes, the document in front of me was just one long and desperate love letter to growth.
00:01:34
Speaker
companies must grow at all costs, otherwise their shareholders will revolt. So their annual reports say things like, even in the face of economic headwinds, our underlying revenue grew by $300 million dollars and earnings per share increased by 50%.
Degrowth Perspective in Corporate Reports
00:01:50
Speaker
Or, unfortunately, three of our employees died and we can no longer deny that we're in the eye of a global recession, but the good news is we installed some solar panels so we can keep on growing sustainably.
00:02:03
Speaker
To soothe my despair, I imagined the report being rewritten through a degrowth lens. Like instead of emphasizing growth and profits, the managing director's statement might say something like, dear friends and investors, we are pleased to report that we've met our targets for voluntary shriveling this financial year. The executive team has taken 1000% pay cut and are enjoying more free time to grow food, plant trees and be in community.
00:02:33
Speaker
A reduced need for governance has seen the board reimagine itself as a bush school for children of the executive, with costs saved on private school tuition redirected to Donna, who runs a local wildlife shelter. Consistent with our pioneering vision of a habitable planet in perpetuity, we have composted our offices in Perth, Jakarta, Singapore, Beijing and London, and expect trickle-down fertility to benefit shareholders soon.
00:03:00
Speaker
or something to that effect.
Understanding Degrowth
00:03:03
Speaker
Perhaps you can perform a few degrowth edits to your workplace documentation and see how they land with management. Today's episode also has a down with capitalism up with de-growth vibe. And perhaps de-growth is the one thing we can safely channel our cultural growth fetish into because it really wouldn't hurt to increase the rate at which we do less. De-growth is about transforming our everyday practices so that they align and chime with the limited yet bountiful earth upon whom we rely.
00:03:36
Speaker
Rather than the dogged and robotic pursuit of profit at the cost of human and more than human wellbeing, degrowth networks everywhere are experimenting at the community level with small, slow and sensible solutions to our social and environmental predicament.
00:03:52
Speaker
Of course, this is something that many traditional cultures have been role modeling since time immemorial, but I suppose it can be seen as satisfying to reinvent the wheel.
Guest Introduction: Anisa Rogers
00:04:03
Speaker
So that's degrowth, and this conversation with Anisa Rogers will fill you in on the rest.
00:04:09
Speaker
I met Anisa at Tree Elbow, the home of Meg, Patrick and Blackwood of artists as family who you'll find in episodes 2 and 12 respectively. Anisa was there as a swap, a social warming artists and permaculturalists volunteer, lying on the grass reading. My immediate thoughts were, this person looks heck and relaxed, has a tan consistent with living in reality and the brightest blue eyes I've ever seen.
00:04:37
Speaker
A bit later I learned that Anisa and I share a common interest in doing less, working less, earning less, and saying yes to the simpler things. Anisa gets up to all kinds of system-disrupting mischief in Naam, Melbourne, Victoria as part of the degrowth network and so many social justice, environmental, guerrilla gardening and new economy groups.
00:04:58
Speaker
that they have time to be part of because, as Anisa elucidates in this interview, they've whittled their living costs down to such an extent that they're free to be of service to their passions and curiosities and community.
00:05:13
Speaker
This conversation
Anisa on Anti-Capitalism & Utopia
00:05:14
Speaker
is particularly relevant for those keen to pursue frugal hedonism in co-living situations or urban spaces, and I'm sure you'll love Anisa's kind and digestible communication of complex topics just as much as I did. Listener shout-outs and resculience things at the end of the convo, and for now, here's Anisa Rogers.
00:05:39
Speaker
I was really intrigued when I read that you described yourself as an anti-capitalist, pro-utopian, and I'm not sure if that's still relevant, but if so, I'd love you to expand on that.
00:05:51
Speaker
Sure. um Yeah, well, I think, I mean, the anti-capitalist is probably more explanatory, but I can go into that more if you want. I do love, I'm self-taught kind of economics. I got really nerdy into that during COVID because I was like, there's something wrong with the way mainstream economics talks. I want to understand.
00:06:12
Speaker
So yeah, I think I firmly more understand what capitalism is and can confidently say I'm against it. But the pro-utopia, I guess I've just learnt over my, I don't know, decade of activist-y social change-y kind of life is that I want to have a vision. I want to kind of know where I want to get to. And I don't know who described it, but someone describes it like as a horizon. So you don't, I don't think I'll get there, um but you just keep walking towards it and it helps.
00:06:45
Speaker
kind of, it helps me guide the actions that I want to take. um So, for example, I don't i don't really think a centralized state that kind of isn't really actually representative of us through this silly representative democracy.
00:07:01
Speaker
debacle. I don't think that that's useful. It's corporately controlled and people don't really actually have much power within it. So if I'm doing campaigning, I'm often not going to do campaigning that's around asking the state to change something. Because then to me, that strengthens the idea that it's the state that needs to come in and help us.
00:07:22
Speaker
Um, and so when I think of my vision, which is more kind of more democratic, more locally controlled, then I'll take avenues that are about building up community power, you know, trying to localize food systems, giving people the skills to make the decisions in their own life, rather than just saying, please.
00:07:39
Speaker
you know, government change this. So I love that. I guess that's what I mean by pro utopian. I have an idea of where I want to get to. Yeah, it's beautiful. You've got like that resistance and holding action, I suppose, in a traditional activist sense of the ante.
00:07:54
Speaker
Anti-capitalism you know like holding that line and pushing back but then you've also got the horizon as you describe the utopia that we may not ever really fully realize but at least you have something to track towards and that is an extremely intentional way of living your life and I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about how you carve out time to be so intentional and what it feels like to kind of push things through that filter. But maybe that's a little bit further into the conversation. I want to go back to something you mentioned, which is starting to feel like things were kind of wrong in our economic system. And I'd love that to be a bit of a primer, I suppose, for the rest of the conversation. Like what do you think
00:08:35
Speaker
is wrong with capitalism. And I would love an explanation of capitalism because sometimes it's like, ah, I'm that person who bandies around all of these terms that I don't actually fully understand. So if you're the person who can give us a bit of a ah cool radical dictionary definition of that, that would be great. And yeah, what you see is broken in that system. Yeah, great. yeah And I think part of me wanting to do my own learning was I realized that I was in the kind of lefty university sphere and we just said, yeah, screw capitalism. And I was like, wait, I don't know if I actually know what that means.
History of Capitalism
00:09:10
Speaker
And yeah, I don't consider myself an expert. So love it if anybody listening has better ideas, that's great. um But to me, I've really boiled it down to this pursuit of profit.
00:09:23
Speaker
um And so under capitalism, you know there's like humans have always had markets where we've kind of traded things. um That's existed for a long time. But then, what, 400, 500 years ago, a bunch of different historical things happened, I think, mostly in England, but also in Northeast Europe.
00:09:46
Speaker
to kind of that that that market started taking over a lot more of people's lives and people started the pursuit of profit. So instead of just living your life and trading and then having kings that just boss everyone around, there was people that started kind of having their rents. They would change their rents according to how much money they could get from the people living on them.
00:10:10
Speaker
and Then, all of a sudden, this started this competition. so All of a sudden, rather than just, oh, the landlord will take 10% from the peasant. that's like They realized, I could get more more money if I find someone else. and This pursuit for profit. so People invest money, and then they get profit. and then The competition is just so Oh, it's so intense. And as capitalism and this kind of profit drive took over more and more parts of our economy, you know and and as the enclosures happened in in England, so lots of peasants were kicked off their land because rich people wanted to have sheep because it made more money. Peasants being kicked off their land is a really interesting time in history because, yeah, that went from a time
00:10:52
Speaker
of yeah a lot of people who were meeting their own needs and in more kind of local communities. And obviously, things were far from perfect. I don't think we should over romanticise by understanding that some peasants had more control because they could meet their own needs on their land. And then, yeah, a lot of them were kicked off the land. They had to move into cities. And all of a sudden, we have wage labour.
00:11:14
Speaker
which is a really interesting time in history, because a lot of the peasants that came from the countryside, they didn't really understand or agree with this idea, I'm going to sell my time to who someone. um And then during that time, they they have control over me. And so, yeah, in early factories, they had to put in guards to stop people just coming and visiting their friends, which is pretty good. So it took a while to kind of beat out of us, the more kind of living on the time of nature into this idea of the, well, at the moment it's nine to five, but back then it would have been eight to eight, eight to 10, you know, 12, 14, 16 hour days. And so people, they couldn't meet their own needs, they had to buy lots of things. um They had to buy food, they had to buy their clothes. And so all of a sudden this
00:12:06
Speaker
kind of profit drive, which you know if you want to be a business in the capitalist world, you need to get profit. um Otherwise, you can't survive. and so This drive for profit and this competition just kind of start taking over more and more aspects of our lives until today when you just think of you know the privatization and how many parts of our life you know we need to go and buy something you know for our entertainment. so so To me, that's capitalism. It's this drive for profit, which then leads to competition and leads to wage labor and leads to destruction of the environment and of social fabrics and stuff. and it's It's really sad because you can't really point to this one big evil person that's making it all happen.
Convenience in Capitalism
00:12:51
Speaker
It's like if you want to run a business, you're caught up in this.
00:12:54
Speaker
m Totally, yeah. And I love that you touched on the non-romanticization of what life was like before. I remember talking to my grandma. She's like in her 90s. She's such a picture of health. She's into whole food. She's like the original organic, home-cooked, homesteading maestro, but unintentionally, that's just how she lives. But I remember talking to her about when the supermarket opened up in her little country town. and I was expecting her to be like, oh, they came and tore the fabric of our community asunder with their centralized produce. and And she was like, it was great. I could go to this one job and get everything I needed. And it made her life more efficient and simple and cheap. And it made me realize why we've ended up.
00:13:41
Speaker
where we've ended up because we had those opportunities, we transcended our limits somehow, we took the paths of least resistance, we sought comfort. What do you, in a big picture, deep down inside sense feel about why we're in this position? Like, do you kind of have compassion for us as human people just wanting to be a little more cosy and a little more comfortable and a little better fed?
00:14:06
Speaker
Yes, definitely. And you i mean just convenience. like It makes sense. The world is a big scary place. you know there's so there's There's way too many things to do that we want to do in life. And when these businesses come up with these ingenious ways to make things easier, you know and make more things accessible to people. I think of the diet that my parents grew up on from the classic Anglo house of meat and three veg every single night. you know I understand why they're so excited to go to the supermarket and buy all different types of food. Yeah. And I think, you know, there there is this kind of entrepreneurial story and how, yeah, you know, building businesses and making lots of money. That's what actually helps our community. We saw it in COVID. It's like, do you want to help? Just go buy, buy, buy more things. And so, yeah, I really understand why people get caught up in this way of life. And a lot of people don't actually have any other options. I mean, I think there's definitely been people in history that have probably could have made better choices, especially those that had a lot of power.
00:15:07
Speaker
and, you know, decided to go and cross the seas to find some lands that they thought was empty. But then when when you look at the kind of first, I don't know, colonizers of America or something, you say, oh, God, they really should have done better. But a a lot of them were in debt. And so they had this kind of feeling of they had no other option because they need to go and find lots lots of money to pay back their debts. Otherwise they'll lose their house. I think it is It's a kind of big system that we create as humans, but also is kind of we are dragged along with it. and so it's going to take but It is taking a lot of energy and time to kind of step outside of it and try and build something better because we really can't keep
00:15:46
Speaker
getting dragged along in it for much longer. Yeah, beautiful. And why do you think you're someone who has been critical of the status quo and has sought to find alternatives? Like, where do you think those seeds how and where and why were those seeds sown in you? That's a very good question. I mean I'm really lucky I've got these lovely lefty parents that have lived around the world and done a lot of kind of aid work and really helped me see from a young age how poverty is political.
00:16:20
Speaker
Um, and, and I was also really lucky when I was 14, we went and lived in Vietnam for a year as part of my mum's work. And so I was able to see firsthand kind of different ways of living and then come back to Australia and be like, Oh my God, each house could fit like three families. You know, where are the people
Anisa's Activism Journey
00:16:39
Speaker
on the streets? And, you know, and really kind of understand that our way of life yeah it is very you know the kind of average Australian you know way of life is very different to a lot of the world and it does take a lot more resources than the rest of the world. I remember there was in uni we had to do a essay about what's the biggest problem in the world and I was like oh for a joke I'll just do capitalism I don't think it's true but I'll give it a shot and then I was like oh my god no I think it is capitalism so now I feel like that was a bit of an accident
00:17:11
Speaker
But then it did take me many years to kind of realize I could do something about it. That was interesting. Like I went to uni. It's kind of, you know, depressed about the state of the world. But it took doing an exchange in Latin America and kind of meeting all these people kind of organizing in their communities. And the joy and the protest culture over there is so fun. ah There's so much louder and um more creative than protests here. And it wasn't until I came back from yeah doing exchange and studying in Colombia, that I was was like, okay, no, I need to. like I can actually join local groups. I can organize with people who I know. I can teach myself. I can try and actually see what impact I can make. And a lot of my early impact was the kind of protesting, blockading kind of side of things, because that felt
00:18:05
Speaker
I don't know, I guess it can feel more accessible to some people. It's just like, there's a coal mine over there. Well, yes, let's try and blockade it. And then it took a while to get more into the utopia side, to be like, oh, no, we can't just resist. We also have to know what we're fighting for. I'd love to speak to you about where you see that style of activism falling short.
00:18:28
Speaker
I mean, I think it's often the most accessible way to people to get involved. You know, you kind of hear about it. you I mean, you know, a lot of protest is about getting in the news. So it's going to be maybe yeah if people are angry or they're upset about what's going on. It's often the kind of first step.
00:18:47
Speaker
And I think it is so important, like I've watched it, you know, it empowered me. I watched it empower so many people, um especially the kind of community aspect of it. You join a group who actually cares about logging and cares about climate. And so you're so excited to be able to work with those people. I think it falls short.
00:19:06
Speaker
I mean, when people tunnel into one particular issue, I think that can be really, yeah, like it it it it makes sense. And often that's how people feel like they can make the most differences to be, you know, more of an expert on something. um But when you yeah tunnel, you know, for something like um fighting against blogging, which is so important. And we recently ran this really interesting event, kind of getting someone who's protested blogging for years and then bringing in someone from our degrowth network who's from an Indigenous person from Chile who's been fighting blogging over there.
00:19:41
Speaker
And that really helped broaden the conversation to be from, okay, we can focus on our logging, but if we you know win and the logging stops in our backyard, but we haven't thought of the broader systems, for example, the fact that we use a lot of you know forestry products, then will they just go and find forestry products elsewhere?
Limitations of Climate Activism
00:20:03
Speaker
And so without you know and this is what I see in the climate movement, which drives me crazy is this you know these wonderful people who are so scared about what's happening with climate and they're dedicating their lives, but they're just focused on carbon in the atmosphere rather than why is there carbon in the atmosphere. And so if you see it as a technological problem, then there's a technological solution and it's just switch off the fossil fuels and build the renewable energy. But if you don't have an understanding of
00:20:32
Speaker
yeah resource use, where you know just how dependent our whole society is on fossil fuels, not just electricity. there's If we turn to fossil fuels, like our lives will be very, very different. But when people are just focused on build more renewables, they you know and you know the global justice side of it as well, you know it's not you know the beautiful creeks in Melbourne that are getting dug up.
00:20:58
Speaker
It's for the lithium or the copper. um It's often places in you South America. and so Without this bigger picture, both of you know how the yeah how the kind of destructive elements of our society, how they interact through a globalized system, through systems of power, and how you know most of us prop them up just about every day with our depending what we buy, if you don't have that,
00:21:26
Speaker
then yeah i I worry that sometimes we can do more harm than good or just you know when I think about walking towards my horizon of the utopia I feel like sometimes if people aren't thinking the bigger picture they can veer off into solutions that are not actually useful for a lot of the world.
Defining Degrowth
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, such a great explanation and leads me right into the heart of what I'm very excited to speak with you about, which is degrowth and looking at our our own behaviours and why we have such a blind spot around the little things that we're doing every single day or the ways that we're making money or you know our household needs and context and culture, like why we don't scrutinize that in the same that in the same way that we do these bigger systemic forces. So yeah, I would really like to bring degrowth into the conversation and the do doing less of, given that you like laying down on the grass reading books.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah so maybe like the as a framing like just explaining what degrowth is and then how you see that working within our own kind of personal choices.
00:22:42
Speaker
Definitely. Yeah, so degrowth is often a misunderstood term. And so it's very specifically about kind of pushing back against the GDP growth and jobs obsessed economy and political parties and global economic system that we've got. And in terms of the particular kind of D that we want to grow, it's the overall material and energy use on the planet because right now overall we are using way too much where an overshoot is one term some people use but then you know it's not as though everyone in the planet is using energy and materials equally and so degrowth is very much like we need to reduce our overall impact.
00:23:24
Speaker
um But we need to redistribute and we need justice to be at the core of that. And so that's why I think it's a really useful term for a country like Australia, where per capita we are using you know way more than is fair. That is a conversation for us to have. But there are definitely, you know I mean, some people in Australia who you know need more material and and energy to live a good life. and There are lots of people, you know especially in the global south or majority world, that need more. so it's kind of i mean yeah Part of it that lives simply so that others can simply live is one really nice way of putting it. and then yet within the degrowth banner. It's a term that's been around for a few decades. It can be quite academicky, which is a good critique of it because you know academics are a specific type of people and they can have their own blind spots. and so There's a lot of people in the movement trying to bring in different voices um and kind of you know point out that a lot of different people have been living and exploring the degrowth ideas for hundreds, thousands of years. Buen Vivier is a really good example in Latin America, kind of good living that came from indigenous lifeways.
00:24:40
Speaker
it um it's definitely not. This is the word. And we've found the answer. And you know it's just a concept that I feel is really useful, especially because I've spent so long in the environment movement, you know in the climate movement, fighting against logging, and just feeling like, yeah, we weren't really hitting it on the head, as I was explaining before. So to bring in degrowth as a concept To me, it it can be a really good framework to add on to any of the fights that you're doing. so It's like, oh okay, climate, you know and you know we need to solve or do something about climate change, but let's put a degrowth framework work on it. Let's understand how that works for our campaigning. and Then when it comes to kind of everyone's individual lives,
00:25:25
Speaker
I think it it is a really exciting kind of way to think about, okay, you know I might have been trained socially to want to you know get a good job. you know That's what I'm told. you know That's what my family wants to hear about at Christmas. That's what what people want to hear about at the pub. What's your job? you know The fancy car, all this kind of story that we're told about happiness.
00:25:47
Speaker
It's like, no, you know, that's really not what happiness is. If we want to live within our ecology, then let's think about what is actually, you know, what do we actually need and what can we do without? And then what other parts of our life can we grow that that are not materially and energetically dependent? And so, yeah, there's a lot of I mean, to me, you know, one of the biggest things I've done in the last few years is kind of tried to localize my food you know, now I go to the farmer's market every week and I buy my groceries at the, you know, community whole food. Before I did, I would be like, oh, that's so hard and probably expensive and I'm too busy. But it's been so rewarding, you know, the relationships, the having less options. I love having less options because I'm not much of a cook. I just want to, you know, use what I have. um Yeah, getting to know people. So there's so much beautiful stuff that comes about when you put that
00:26:43
Speaker
kind of lens on your own life. And I think the kind of last part that I think is really important is the community element of it. Because I think it's important for us to remember that a lot of capitalist firms who have made a lot of money you know destroying the planet They've also tried to point at us and say, no, no, no, it's not us. It's you. It's you, the individual consumer, and you need to turn off your lights and have shorter showers and use your your keep
Degrowth Movement in Australia
00:27:09
Speaker
cup. And there's a well-documented kind of campaign for them to kind of distract us with this kind of individual consumption. And so that's where degrowth, I think, is a more holistic way to say we need to think about what we're consuming.
00:27:23
Speaker
but more in a kind of community orientated sharing using less way of doing it rather than ah I'll have all of my green, I'll have my you know electric car and I'll have my keep cup. And then I've ticked the box of sustainability.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, more about sharing, which is difficult, but necessary and worthwhile. Yeah. And when I was looking at degrowth, I was looking at that, the origin of the word and the translation of the original word, I think from French. And I came across this, the the original meaning had more to do with like a river flooding and breaking its banks and then kind of coming back to its original path and that imagery for me is really beautiful and somewhat more enticing than this but semi kind of sterile de-growth word that feels like it's just still tethered to the thing we don't want. But yeah, we can we can all visualise like the river in flood and that's been for many of us and especially in Australia, us affluent people and ourselves most heartily included like we have really kind of
00:28:32
Speaker
gone out and beyond that healthy kind of life stream that would mean that everyone had and enough. we We definitely when we started because there's a there's a DeGros network that we started about a year and a half ago and one of our first conversations was the name you know it is such an uninspiring word and you know and it's also a word from another place you know we we often kind of import lots of you know some really great stuff and some really awful stuff from other places so how do we kind of ground it more in our ecology and i do kind of hope at one point there will be kind of more yeah local inspired yeah ecology inspired words that we can use um so yeah please if you haven't you send them over um i'm not much of the narrative i'm not good at that side but there are some people that are working on that because
00:29:25
Speaker
Yeah, it does become academically and sterile. But one thing I will say, and um one reason that word is useful is because it's really hard to co-opt. So a lot of the time when there's these, you know, sustainable, thriving, all these beautiful, wonderful words, all of a sudden you get the business that is sustainable. And so, yeah, I don't think BHP or any of the big fossil fuel companies are going to claim to be degrowth. So it's harder to co-opt.
00:29:52
Speaker
And co-option is, yeah, unfortunately something that happens very easily in capitalism. So we've got to find ways to push back against it. Yeah, yeah. And in finding ways to set ourselves those healthy limits, like you were saying, you love not having so many options when you're shopping at the grocery store markets and things like that. I'm exactly the same. And I think It takes a lot of self-awareness and a lot of reflection and a lot of hard, honest conversations with yourself around what you're enough is and how to actually orchestrate things so that you are limited, so that you're answering to um systems in your life that don't let you become bigger than Ben-Hur. That's what I'm really interested in. like How do we actually honor these
00:30:40
Speaker
values and beliefs that i I suppose a lot of us would share and a lot of the listeners would share. But then I know for my part, if I just got you know suddenly a ton more money for what I do, I would definitely eat this like the delicious sourdough pizza at the Picture Theatre every night and cheers my like imported wine. like I just would.
00:31:00
Speaker
And so it's convenient for me that I am a freelancer and I don't have that like super high earning capacity and I live on on little. like It's convenient that that sits nicely with my values. But I just wonder, Anisa, how you see people being motivated to actively like relinquish some of their excesses or acknowledge and make peace with having less than what their friends do or what their parents expect of them or what they dreamed of having. like How do we actually find a new story for ourselves that we're accountable to? Yes, such a difficult lifelong journey. Help! um
00:31:44
Speaker
Yeah, ah keep walking towards the horizon. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing I've learned over the years that in order to kind of make these changes, we need a lot of time. And that's what often keeps so many of us caught up in, you know, this to have, you know, a nine to five, five, six day a week job, you know, and and other demands on our lives.
Living Frugally & Community Support
00:32:08
Speaker
you know If we don't have the time to kind of stop and think, then we're tired. and What do you do? You put on Netflix and you're ordering food. and so yeah it's how do yeah How do we carve out this space to then have these more deliberate conversations with ourselves, conversations but what but with each other and start planning it out?
00:32:27
Speaker
And I mean, yeah, it's very different because, you know, there's some people who've you know grown up with very little and so have a lot more fear around not having enough because they actually haven't had enough. And so that's I think, you know, I think that's really interesting how we think about how we can support people in our lives, understanding that their fears around not having enough are very real. And then for those, you know, like me, you know, my parents did middle-class with never really like I've never had the experience of not feeling like I could you know get food or pay for rent and so knowing that that gives me more space to then I guess yeah kind of go on a limb you know you know not get a career after I finished uni I decided I'm not going to you know get a job in an environmental org I'm gonna go on the dole yeah I'm gonna yeah go go on the dole and travel
00:33:19
Speaker
You know, use my government subsidy to help support my activism. The government welfare system's never enough, but we're very lucky in this country that it exists and that we can kind of take that space. And so I kind of had this two-year period to, one, kind of follow my activism how I wanted to, but also try and deinstitutionalize myself.
00:33:41
Speaker
Because so much, you know, we've gone to school, then some of us have gone to uni or straight into work. And we're just so used to kind of our routine being set by someone else. And so our motivation is very external. And it takes you kind of just got to sit and kind of freak out for a while and, you know, work out how to find your own internal motivation, how to make your own routine. I mean, some people don't need routine.
00:34:07
Speaker
good on them. I really need but routine. I love to know what I'm doing for the next few weeks. And so I had to, yeah, develop these skills of sitting with myself, working out what I wanted to do, plan that out. um And I think, yeah, having a gap if if people are able to kind of step back and have a few weeks, a few months, a few years, however that's kind of funded in your life. Because, yeah, we can't just go straight to not living with money. Well, very few of us can. Therefore, yeah, you can yeah to like kind of unpack what are your feelings around money? What are these psychological things? And then you can step by step
00:34:48
Speaker
kind of think of, you know, what do I spend money on? And try and work out what are the different ways to kind of cut that. And learn from the amazing people in your life, you know, like you, Katie, and like a lot of people. There's amazing skills out there, you know. Human beings, we are so creative when we have less.
00:35:06
Speaker
I think we get really lazy and boring when we have more because you just buy it all. But if you don't have access to that or you decide to cut off your own access to that, the creativity isn't. So you know share a house with more people but for a bit. you know Rent's probably the biggest cost for a lot of people. you know Or find a friend who's got a spare room in a big house and say, hey, I'll do your dishes every night. Let me stay for free for six months.
00:35:34
Speaker
You know, yeah, that's that's that's where I'd say is can be a good place to start. Totally, yeah, actually. taking a long hard look at your expenditure and finding creative ways of reducing that. And I think it was Tristan Gulley on a past interview talked about how we're naturally wired to solve problems. And he was speaking about finding clues in our landscape and reading the landscape. But I think this applies as well, what you're talking about, that spirit of resourcefulness, that creativity that allows that bubbles to the surface as soon as we have a real reason why to do something and joy and the thrill of that.
00:36:12
Speaker
is singular. like That is a really beautiful human thing that we don't often get to taste in this cushy, cushy life that we lead. But I want to ask you about yeah role models in your life and the culture and community that you're part of there in Naam because on reflecting on my recent existence, like in the last few years, I found this kind of thing far, far more easeful because I'm surrounded by people who actively pursue these frugal life ways. And in fact, as you probably saw up here in Central Vic,
00:36:45
Speaker
It's almost kind of frowned upon to be too polished and shiny or to be a theorist. That's just not the culture here. It's what can you pick up at the tip? What kind of thing did you find at the op shop? Like that shit is celebrated. So I'm really aware that the culture that I've been so lucky to find myself sutured into is supporting me in the most beautiful way. And I'm such a creature of my peers and influenced and buttressed by those people around me. And I'm not alone in that. We all are just so susceptible to role modeling. So I wonder what your experience is there in Melbourne, in NAMM and like who you found to surround yourself with who actively role model these kind of ways as well.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I guess a lot of it started in uni for me when I started getting involved in different campaigns. and i mean A lot of people in uni have got some good skills, um which is really good. I've been told that back in the day, yeah, uni was a bit different because you know nobody went overseas and nobody had fancy clothes. Nowadays, there's still quite a few people in uni that work extra two jobs so they can go to Europe every summer, which is really interesting, but there's definitely a lot of Yeah, really good role models you know in the whole foods collective, you know amazing people that are you know getting into the local food. and
00:38:09
Speaker
living frugally. um and then A lot of the role models I found is you it's in the kind of activist resistance community. ah People who've been living in and out of blockades for their entire life and they don't have the desire, you know it's not about personal gain, the money that they get you know goes into the community, goes into the blockade. so yeah I guess kind of people that have decided that their life is about yet protecting the environment, building their community. And so I guess that really helped me see that, okay, I don't, you know, ah yeah I think in my kind of lefty middle-class upbringing, it was very much like you get a nice job that helps the world and it pays your way. And so that was kind of what was spelled out for me and was just so great. Like I think, yeah, one of the things I'm lucky is I never, I've never had a full-time job. So I've never,
00:39:03
Speaker
you know, been caught in that. I've been able to, yeah, you know, I used our welfare for quite a while and was inspired by other people living on the dole and, um quite so that and then a friend helped me get this great casual job in disability support, which I love, i I love being a casual worker, even though I understand that,
00:39:28
Speaker
There's a lot of shit that goes around with with that because it's flexible. um and With my life, I only need to work one night a week and that pays my way. um and yeah That's yeahre tied into active share houses, community share houses. That's another great way to find people that live yeah people who are sharing houses and then you know they're going out dumps to diving, they're sharing things, they're fixing each other's bikes, sharing cars. You're right in that we it's so much easier when you find yourself stepping into a community of people who are already doing that.
00:40:02
Speaker
and I've watched that with our degrowth network as it's grown especially some of the people who come in who I don't think have been involved in much else before but they just yeah that kind of joy and excitement and you know people plan bike tours around and you know we share food at meetings and you know Sometimes we share money. I think it's really important that we're still around other people who aren't like that, you know to be reminded that our bubble isn't the rest of the world and to kind of practice having those conversations that encourages other people to kind of critically think and you know question things, but without you know shutting them down or shutting them out. But we also need our kind of community to get the strength
00:40:43
Speaker
to be able to keep doing it. Otherwise, yeah it's a very hard thing to do on your own. Are there times when you feel kind of resentful that you're beholden to people, that you might have to share things, that you might have to deal with someone's pubes in your bathroom? Like, what are the challenges of living more communally and distributing your resources in that way? I mean, yes, definitely lots of challenges. I mean, a lot of it is we need to learn or relearn the skills of giving each other feedback and leaning into the tension and the conflict. So, you know, I've been in share houses that have had less good ways of communicating and that can often blow out and people leave and a whole lot of stuff.
Balancing Work and Volunteerism
00:41:26
Speaker
um But in the last couple of share houses I've been in, like we have regular, you know, every month or so meetings where we sit down, we check in with one another, we talk through any of the, you know, boring rent bills kind of thing we need to, and then we share the things that are frustrating us.
00:41:42
Speaker
You know, kind of pet peeves, you know, so, you know, one of mine is when people leave, have one sink that's always empty. So it doesn't matter if people haven't done their dishes, I can always do my dishes. And so often you just got to remind people and kind of understand that.
00:41:57
Speaker
you know most of the time no one's kind of out to get you or like is deliberately you know messing with you know sometimes it's hard to feel like that you just we just need to remind each other cuz we're shared space you know very few people are perfectly clean for example which is often the biggest issue.
00:42:15
Speaker
So we just need those kind of constant reminders. And then when something's not working, we need to create a different system. um you know Or you might need to find people that are more aligned with you to live with. like I don't think we need to live with everyone. you know And some people might be better off living in the tiny house in the back or something rather than having to share walls with people. I don't think everybody needs to be in the share house. But yeah, I think the biggest thing for me has just been learning how to get over my conflict-avoidant socialisation and practice, giving people feedback and leaning into the conflicts. Yeah, very good permaculture principle. I like the apply self-regulation and accept feedback principle, one of the stickier ones.
00:43:01
Speaker
um You mentioned that you work a night a week to pay your way. Can you share a little bit more about how your weeks unfold, how you're filling your days and how you do survive on that amount of money?
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so I've um managed. I mean, one of the great things about my work as well and in disability sport, there's still weekend loading. So now that I've got the Saturday night shift, that gives me about I think 500 bucks for a week, which is pretty incredible. And it's incredible work strongly encourage people if you're thinking about kind of you know, non-alienated casual work to support the real things in life that you're passionate about. Disability support is one of the really nice ones in my opinion. And so yeah, it leaves my days. Yeah, I mean, a lot of, you know, I'm ah involved in a lot of different groups. So most days I'll have at least one or two kind of meetings, you know, discussing, you know, in the degrowth network, we're meeting up to catch up with each other or plan a conference. um
00:44:01
Speaker
or all those sorts of things. I do a lot of reading. As I was telling Katie earlier, I've got, yeah, I started to really worry about food and the food systems. And so I've been doing this deep dive into trying to understand how we can localize our food system. And just, cause I think for me, a lot of my learning is trying to find out what's already happening and then connect people up to that. Cause it's,
00:44:26
Speaker
Because, you know, it's so overwhelming, the crises that we're in. But once you start to kind of piece together, are there are people working on that and there are people working on that and you can. Yeah, it it can feel a bit more manageable and then people can step in to theirlight you know and and support eight age age each other. Because you know in our different areas, if we're cut off from one another, I think we're more likely to yeah maybe be co-opted or be you know entranced into, oh, there's some funding. Maybe that's attached to conditions or something. you know Or we're just too focused on what's going on. And so when we have more chance to connect across
00:45:05
Speaker
um I think that can really help. As long as we're doing you know constructive criticism, then we're learning and all getting better. So I think a lot of my days... yeah is reading um and then kind of yeah meeting up with different people learning about what they're doing like I've yet reconnected with this person I knew who's you know got a farm and is you know building has been yeah building local food systems you know I got to come up and stay with Patrick and Meg um up in Dalesford which is amazing so I guess having this flexibility in my life means that I am
00:45:38
Speaker
able to be really open to different opportunities and different connections and learnings that I can go to and then allows me to kind of yeah I do a lot of like I love running workshops and discussions um you know I think that the skills of conflict resolution and collective decision making for example for me are absolutely vital to any sort of positive future so I run workshops with other people on those Um, and I spent time in my garden trying and failing to get better at growing food. Yeah. What I'm hearing is you're actually passionate about the work that you're doing, but it's a really efficient way that also frees you up to do other work that you're beautifully positioned to do in the world. and
00:46:23
Speaker
I'd love to hear yeah more about your your skills and how you feel you're most effective and what you love doing the most. Because again, I think so many of us have this question of how do I find my way into the niche that's there for me in this ecosystem? And so hearing from people like you who are I think on their way to figuring it out can be really instructive. I think when I first started to get involved in stuff, I had this kind of paralysis because I felt like I had to find the perfect thing, you know, have to far you know because everything, you know, nothing's going to solve everything. I had to find the perfect
00:47:00
Speaker
um yeah, organization campaign, um but now I'm very much like I'm just going to do whatever, yeah, whatever feels the best as long as I'm kind of constantly, or not constantly, but just occasionally reflecting. So I'll have days where I'll sit there and I'll kind of write down all the projects that I'm in and kind of try and evaluate you know with my values and what I think is important like to make sure I'm prioritizing the ones that I think are most strategic and to balance you know the absolute love projects with also the like, okay, there's this work that I think is really important, but oh my God, it's such a slog. It helps me have that intrinsic you know internal motivation
00:47:43
Speaker
to keep slogging on stuff that is less fun um but I think is really important. So yeah for me it's very much yeah as long as I'm checking in I feel like well then all I can do is just celebrate what I'm doing now and enjoy it and try and do my best and I guess also be really open to critique. I find it really exciting when I find people that kind of have a different theory of change or a different way of engaging in change making. Because, yeah, then I get to sit down and, you know, as long as we've got our good skills and our self-regulation and our good hats on to be able to kind of respectfully disagree.
00:48:25
Speaker
I think that's also a really important one, which, which it helps me feel more secure in what I'm doing. I don't need to worry about it all the time, um because that is exhausting. And also just, I mean, it's probably the same way you are, because so much wonderful stuff is happening. But here in kind of yeah Melbourne, an uncooling country, is there's just so much, like there's so many groups, there's all these social centers, there's so many events. It's so easy to just kind of get caught in the winds of doing this and doing that and joining this and joining that. um And I think that's a really, especially, you know, when people jump in, it's like, just jump in, go to everything that you can, try and find out. But then at some point, you know, we're going to have to decide what to prioritise. And one thing my uncle said that I love, it's you can do everything, but just not all at once.
00:49:15
Speaker
So you don't need to feel like, yeah, you're sacrificing stuff, but you do, we do need to prioritise, especially if we're going to be effective. Kind of sticking to something for long enough to see if it works rather than getting kind of pulled away to something shinier, I think is also a really difficult but useful skill. um Because, yeah, we're building stuff. Building stuff takes a long time and there's some really boring, tough parts of, yeah especially building groups.
00:49:43
Speaker
You know, it can be easier to walk away when it feels hard, but that's to me, it's like that's the that's the bit you've got to dig in and kind of learn how to keep going. Yeah, constantly renewing those vows. And that's become that place of really feeling like one of the most effective things that we as individuals can do is work a little bit less. Because I've been around these activist spaces for so long,
00:50:09
Speaker
You know, one thing had a knife when I can feel myself getting a bit cynical and, you know, people are like, oh, we need to find more people, find more people. I'm kind of like. Yes, but ah surely it's more important to find out how to keep the people we've got before we try, you know, it feels like what we've got this bathtub that we're trying to fill with people, but the plugs open and heaps of them are just pouring out. And so I think that's when I got a lot more excited about, yeah, these projects, like, yeah, many years ago, some of us started running workshops on why and how to work less. um And originally was kind of, you know,
00:50:42
Speaker
we we were in the student activist world to kind of help people to unpack that career motivatedness and kind of celebrate, you know, being on the dole or having a part-time job and kind of, you know, validating that that is a very worthwhile life, that you don't need to have a career to feel like you are contributing to the world.
Redefining Work and Community Contribution
00:51:04
Speaker
And then, yeah, just realizing that A lot of people really love i mean both kind of sharing their tips, but also getting inspired by other people. and yeah here yeah i've had a lot of I've had a few people tell me that kind of you know my story has helped them open up their eyes to be like, oh, you know maybe I can live on the dole for a bit while I work stuff out, and then you know maybe I can have this
00:51:28
Speaker
um Yeah, that my part time work can be what sustains my, you know, activism or life passion, rather than trying to combine the two because, yeah, I mean, I feel for you, it's such a hard, a hard thing when we're trying to make money off the thing that we love because making money so much easier when you do things that the capitalist kind of way of life is really into. And so when you don't want to do that, yeah, it makes it really difficult. So yeah, sharing those skills of working less and celebrating it with people. There's just so much work to do and so much of the work is actually dealing with our own shit.
00:52:05
Speaker
and dealing with our relationships as well. And some people don't don't have enough time, they can often focus on the output oriented, you know, the protest or the garden or something, but we actually need double that amount of time to attend to our relationships and our relationship with ourself. Otherwise, yeah, you know, how many groups start and then fall apart within a year or two, or how many activists get involved in a fired up, but then leave within a year or two.
00:52:32
Speaker
I very much enjoy redefining things and I think work needs a dramatic redefinition, rebrand, um new examples of what work actually is and can be. And I was reading something that you wrote online and you said, to paraphrase, like a lot of the work that we need to do just can't be paid for by our current economic system or it's not valued by the system that we have. And I'd love if you could share some examples that come to mind around that the work of life. And you just mentioned attending those relationships, reflecting on your values, evaluating your behavior. like What are some of the things that we don't readily consider work that we probably should?
00:53:15
Speaker
I mean, yeah, one of the biggest ones is kind of attending to our own kind of mental health or, you know, for me, it was very much the Protestant work ethic, that kind of I'm only valued if I'm doing, so you know, outputting something. Yeah, that's, you know, and that's, no one, no business is going to pay you or very, very rarely to be able to do that kind of inner work.
00:53:40
Speaker
and do it with other people. And then, and then, yeah, the kind of strategizing for a world beyond capitalism. um You know, like, I know a lot of really good people that work in different kind of enviro NGOs. um And they I often talk about how there's just not the time, like, you know, the nine to five needs to be focused on these outputs that are kind of related to the grants or related to the the money streams, basically, and so this kind of bigger work of the visioning you know beyond just the reforms that we're trying to get.
00:54:13
Speaker
Like, yeah, it's very hard. You know, some some people carve out, are really creative at carving out time to do that sort of stuff. And that's wonderful. But yeah, you know, you you often really won't get paid for that. I also think about the kind of changing of the seasons, how sad it is that the capitalist nine to five day is the same all year round. um And it gets to winter and everyone gets sick and they're tired. And it's like, oh, if only we could slowed and yeah and There's also times in our lives as well, you know like I was sick earlier this year, I just kept thinking how
00:54:50
Speaker
incredibly lucky and you know how, like I guess, an excited that what what I've done with my life that I was able to really step back from most things that I was doing and just be able to focus on like learning more about how my body works and sitting in patients, practicing that patience and the silver lining of the clouds to just kind of you know help me get through this really annoying sickness. and ah Yeah, how the the toll that it takes on people's bodies when they can't take that break and have to push through, you know, when our bodies are telling us really important things about what's going on. And we just have to, yeah, ignore that and keep going. so all of but And then I think the another big part that we're not really going to get paid for is
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah, thinking through the kind of class and inequalities and practicing sharing so that it's not just, you know, the kind of, you know, people like me, classic middle-class kid that has access to this sort of stuff. Like, I'm really interested in mutual aid funds, for example. How can we collectivise money so that everyone has, you know, if something goes to shit, you know, we don't need to have our own individual savings. You know, if someone else gets sick, they can take time off there, you know.
00:56:08
Speaker
work their paid work so that they can focus on it or you know it'd be amazing it'd be amazing we could pay people to well I mean yeah even just kind of stipends or support them to be on the dole or help them get you know part-time jobs or help people build cooperatives where they have control over the work that they're doing um Yeah, so that more of us have access to this kind of you know ability to ah stay in our pyjamas all day and you know do the yeah do the inner work or the strategy work.
00:56:42
Speaker
Can you say a little bit more about mutual aid funds? Because I did want to bring in some positive examples into this conversation, things that you're seeing that are really innovative and refreshing and um edgy in this space. And that concept of like a shared pool of savings is definitely one of them. So if you could just unpack that a little bit more for the listeners, that'd be great.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yes, definitely. And I wish I had more concrete examples because I think this is a very edgy new one. um But the idea is basically mutual aid you know where we share our excess food and we share you know we share a lot of things. But when it comes to money, you know it's so easy. you know If you're sick, I'll make you some food. But if you're struggling you know for you to ask me for money or for me to offer you money, that's so much harder you you know for so many different reasons.
00:57:37
Speaker
And so i'm yeah i've yeah we've had a few conversations here, and I think in the DeGrothe Network we're going to do an experiment soon um about what it would look like. And it could look heaps of different ways, but I think the model that we're going to go on is whoever's got some extra money, we'll chuck it in. um And then we're going to kind of have a And if these are the things that we want that money to be used for, so kind of you know activist-related things. um We might have a separate one for health-related things because I'm really passionate about that. um And then, yeah, I mean, the kind of exact logistics I find fascinating about you know who decides who gets what, who administers the money, what's the transparency. you know Do people need to ask in front of a whole group?
00:58:23
Speaker
Does that mean that people are more comfortable with money or more confident will ask and those who actually really need it don't, you know, transparency versus, you know, like I think.
Alternative Economic Models
00:58:33
Speaker
we've got some ideas and we're just going to give it a go with the whole, we're just going to pick, okay, this is how we're going to do it. We'll run it for six months and then we'll do an evaluation. um So I don't think that's one of the only ones that I've heard of that's kind of more deliberate and communal. I know of you know a lot of people who morph through their kind of close relationships. I mean, yeah, the kind of intimate partner is
00:58:59
Speaker
ah often like the people just share money, but then through friends, you know friends having a shared bank account, I've heard of people who've lived together having a shared bank account, um and then just having to navigate the difficulty of you know some people who earn more need to just be okay with that, and some people earn less just need to be okay with that. um So yeah, I'm really excited to see. And I guess another example of that actually, if I've heard of you know There's people who might have a bunch of money and they help people you know buy houses or you know get in the land. I've actually heard of that happening. and i'm you know so I'm also you know trying to find stories of how people are sharing money um and the difficulties that go with it. It's not just this easy
00:59:49
Speaker
thing. So that's a concrete example. Yeah, watch this space. Hopefully we'll have some interesting things to report back on. And then one other example, like concrete example that I think is really interesting is I do, I do know some people have been building a gardening co-op and that's basically been, you know, they're activists and they're sick of having to have jobs where they don't have control. So they thought, let's build our own cooperative so we can be our own bosses and we can do our work as we want.
01:00:19
Speaker
and it's i mean it It's an amazing project in that you know you need to learn the skills of working together. um Unfortunately, there's the added, you need to be part of the capitalist economy and deal with the government bureaucracy, so it's definitely not for the faint-hearted. It's a lot of work.
01:00:35
Speaker
But imagine if we could build this collection of cooperatives that would support each other, get each other money. People can jump in and get hired when they need to provide services for one another. So I think that's really building the alternative economy. Yeah, I can feel my fossilized brain really struggling with some of these things and I think that's a good thing to feel because that's when you know you're really coming up against your edge and it might be something interesting to see there but I fully acknowledge that especially around money, it's just so tethered to our very, very, very primal fears around not having enough and
01:01:21
Speaker
dying, essentially. So I'm just yeah really curious to see how you go
Financial Self-Examination
01:01:25
Speaker
with that. and how we can move through not only those really swampy conversations, but our own internal kind of quagmire of ah resistance. So Anisa, coming to the end of the conversation, I did pitch to you an idea um that I've been flirting with a few of my guests recently, which I get really jazzed about because it gives me a structure and something to offer back to the listener community based on you know the things you're living and loving and your philosophy and
01:01:55
Speaker
you know practices and activities that can spring out of that. So I did mention to you the one resilient thing, which can be a provocation or a question or a an exercise that you could offer people listening to try out at home that really brings some of these themes to life. I wonder if you came up with anything for that.
01:02:14
Speaker
so good my brain was I have so many ideas and I will I will write a book about it and and and get back to you because there's just so many do little things that have helped but I mean one thing that came that I guess is kind of pushing yeah into that edge of difficulty is the kind of sitting down and like working out what you're spending your money on. I think you know I've done it before and it was fascinating and it can lead to really interesting conversations and maybe can help you think about what your resilience, what your resilience is in this kind of yeah one unfortunately really important aspect of our life which is
01:02:57
Speaker
meeting our needs with money and so you kind of look at you know where am I getting my stuff from and then you know you can take it from from there maybe it's like oh you know these are the ways that I could cut down and therefore I might have more time you know or I could try and get my stuff from other places you know there's community groups where you can you know volunteer and get other needs met so Yeah, that's a bit of a scary challenge. Yeah, no, I really love that. And I am trying to do these one resilient things and then give a bit of a glimpse to people at the start of the episode. So I have some hunches about what might come out in the wash of our expenditure in this household. ah Coffee beans would be a big one.
01:03:45
Speaker
so I mean that ah but but a huge part of it is also like learning how to do that in a generous way to yourself you know getting past this you know I feel like sometimes we can be so overly judgmental with ourselves and each other and this idea that we have to be perfect and like it's impossible to be perfect and you don't want to waste all your time trying to be perfect like Yeah, how can we, I guess that's probably a really important, ah den you know, an add add to this resilience thing is just do it with self-love.
Community Events & Conclusion
01:04:16
Speaker
Is there anything that I didn't ask you, Anisa, that you are absolutely burning to share? No, no I think you, we we covered a lot of really interesting ground and any other topics I can think of would lead to another one hour conversation. so
01:04:33
Speaker
Thank you so much. ah Thank you so much. I've absolutely loved all the places we've gone in this conversation. If this conversation piqued your interest in degrowth, there's actually a degrowth festival happening in Melbourne this November that Aneesa let me know about. I'll link the details in the show notes, but it's Coburg, Melbourne, November 30th. See you there.
01:04:59
Speaker
What else is happening? Well, we're coming into permaculture retreat season. You may know that when I'm not compromising my values, polishing corporate turds aka a annual reports, which was one time, right? I get to work alongside my heroes David Holmgren, Sue Dennett, Meg Allman and Beck Lowe to name a few.
01:05:19
Speaker
I thought I'd mention that they're hosting a four-day permaculture retreat at the start of November here in Central Vic, which is basically a camping trip with the co-originator of permaculture where workshops on energy systems are interspersed with dam swims and campfires and Sue Dennett cooks you every meal from beyond organic ingredients and and you might just meet your soul friends.
01:05:44
Speaker
Anyway, it's a really bloody good time and they're not paying me to say this, but I just saw in our Slack channel that there are still some tickets left and I thought I'd mention it to all of you. That's in November and I'll link it in the show notes too.
01:05:59
Speaker
And if you can tolerate just a little bit more enthusiasm, I want to give the biggest shout out to the show's patrons who are melting my brain with their generosity and community spirit. Special mention to new patrons, Martin, from The Roots and Bones, who is donating in Swedish Krona, which is super cool. Also to Erin Clancy, Jack Nelson, and Louise from New Zealand. Thank you, thank you for supporting Resculience and just generally rocking my world.
01:06:28
Speaker
We're all hanging out at Patreon dot.com forward slash reskillience if you want to join. But hey, there are so many ways to share the love beyond financial contributions, especially because times are so bloody tight right now.
01:06:43
Speaker
Leaving a written review on iTunes is free and priceless, as is a good old-fashioned verbal recommendation to a friend. But just to be ultra paradoxical, this whole episode has been about the perils of growth and scale, and the truth is, I'd be worried if Resculience ever got too big for its boots and needed an annual report for shareholders, because at that point, you're not really in service to life anymore.
01:07:08
Speaker
because life is quirky and niche and diverse and localized and big things tend to buckle. So whether you do or don't leave a resculience enhancing review, I just really appreciate you being here in this unfolding conversation. Thank you and catch you next time.