ConsumerismEconomicsEthical InvestmentPeople SystemsSocietyVillage Development

Investing: The Option They Never Told You About

Maximum security, maximum return. Who doesn’t want that? In a world of uncertainty and change, more than a few people are reconsidering where it is they want their money.

I grew up being encouraged to save and invest in savings. The two are not the same thing. To invest in savings is to invest in money itself. To put your money into money… such a strange idea. But in a civilization bent on growth, how can your money not grow as well? It really isn’t a bad idea if you have faith that growth never ends….

But the idea of saving, now that is not a weird idea at all. But we have to look beyond the context of this word around money to truly understand its merit. Saving is as old as any living thing. The chipmunk saves nuts for the winter just as the deer puts on fat. Likewise, humans have been saving seed so long that we can’t even trace back to when we started doing so. We encouraged the growth of our favourite foods and thus evolved with plants, speciating them to have an ongoing relationship with us. It was a mutual relationship and it really went both ways in that we also adapted to process these foods. This is clear in how an Inuit eats mostly protein and fats and can’t handle fast foods as surely as the Aborigines of North America can’t handle alcohol — they speciated themselves with their speciated diets; coevolution, if you will.

But I digress here into the need for seed-saving, heritage varieties, non-GMOs, and appropriate diets….

We have time and time is money. Where is it that our money is best invested?

In my quest for self and in my quest for discovering and then teaching humanity’s potential, I have come upon the answer to that question time and time again. It is an answer that provides maximum return and maximum security. It’s an answer that leads to happiness and meaning instead of scarcity and fear. It’s an answer that disproves that humans are a parasite.The answer is this:

Invest in yourself and invest in community.

The great thing is that to invest in one is to invest in the other; if you invest in yourself you increase your value to others as well as yourself. One thing I have been humbled into learning time and time again is this: "You can do anything, but you can’t do everything." There is this unreal goal out there to be self-sufficient, but the idea is a false-dream, an unrealistic farce. We are social creatures and true richness comes from being with others. The true ideal isn’t self-sufficiency, it’s inter-dependency.

For those who have come to view the beautiful interconnectivity of a forest, of how the tree feeds the soil, shades the moss, shelters the bird, homes the squirrel, shares itself to other trees in life and death, and in doing so provided for… well… this idea of interconnectivity is so, "duh!" (for lack of a more perfect expression).

Invest in yourself and provide for others and you will be provided for in turn, just like the tree. Perhaps you will own the cattle, perhaps you will make the cheese, perhaps you will make the metal objects that the cheese maker and the cow owner need, perhaps you will mine the ore for the metal-maker, perhaps you will program the computers for these community oriented and rooted businesses. The options are many. The market is endless and the need is greater than ever before for these meaningful connections to re-establish. The time of globalization has come to its sputtering finish and the time for local community, for interdependence, for connectivity, is rising.

It will be a while in coming but eventually you will come to let go of your tremendous attachment to the concept of money. The truth is that money has always been nothing more than a means to an ends — to facilitate connective trade — but somewhere along the way the means got confused as the end! Money is not an end! It is a means.

The time now is of transition, of asking yourself, where do I want my money? Where do I invest my time? Start with yourself. Research this idea of the Great Reskilling and ask yourself what you know already, what you want to know, and what you need! How can you be so much more than just a "consumer"? What can you produce? What can we produce together? Let’s produce a legacy worth saving.

Thank you for reading, for investing your time and being a part of producing hope in a changing world.

Further Reading/Watching:

6 Comments

  1. What an incredibly beautiful and encouraging post. Thank you for so eloquently putting into words this simple, yet vastly underrated concept. I hope you continue to write on this topic as it is so crucial.

    Many thanks!
    Jen

  2. How beautiful are these words? “The true ideal isn’t self-sufficiency, it’s inter-dependency.” “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” “Money is not an end! It is a means.” Sure, the obvious is being stated but when stated they are beautiful.

  3. Thanks for the encouragement and feedback. Finding time to sit and write isn’t always easy but I’m doing some “professional development” for teaching permaculture by WWOOFing across Canada… It leaves my evenings free for reading and writing. On that note of WWOOFing, a second article will be coming soon on some how-to for investing in yourself.

    Cheers
    Kenton Zerbin

  4. “How can you be so much more than just a “consumer”?”

    You can’t. That’s just another religious un-realistic farce. Every thing consumes and does just that, it’s just that the by-products of some things’ consumption provide for the consumption needs of other things.

    Even toxic chemicals eventually become the food for organism, even if that means that they adapt to the substance and evolve in mutation in order to process it.

  5. I see your approach Georgi and indeed we consume by our nature. Going down the rabbit hole we can get into how energy manifests itself as entropic cycles from which ideas such as consumption and production are misleading as to what we are actually doing.

    That aside, the point here is a practical call to connect with our potential to engage in community to “consume” locally, to invest in yourself so you can meet others needs around you and them yours. Its modelling social systems after natures systems, connectivity through placement of elements where the elements are people.

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