6pm Fri 29 April | The Edge Auditorium, State Library of Queensland | $15
‘Going local’ is a powerful strategy to help repair our fractured world – our ecosystems, our societies and our selves. Far from the old institutions of power, people are starting to forge a very different future…
The Economics of Happiness, screened in partnership with the Ideas Festival 2011, describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, an unholy alliance of governments and big business continues to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, people all over the world are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localisation.
Continue the conversations from our question and answer session in the comments section below.
I have just been at the screening and it is a most beautiful film, making complex issues available for all.
The obvious questions for those that are versed in this is:
What can I do from here? Most of us are already lobbying and acting and growing. However, it is preaching to the converted. It is really hard to talk to the not converted. Even getting them to watch the movie would be hard!
Yes there will be a tipping point and a trigger event. Yes people are incredible and can move mountains. But ….
How do I convince the Logan council that community gardens would be a good thing?
How do we stop Woolworth from placing a supermarket in Yandina and killing the local shops?
Helena’s answer to this in the session was very unsatisfying and non-specific and did not answer any of that. I would love a more direct answer.
Thanks, Gabrielle
I saw the screening of the film last night, and thought it was interesting and well made. However, I have a problem with the representation of globalisation as inherently evil. What the film generalised as globalisation was perhaps economic globalisation, or more specifically neoliberal globalisation. Many aspects of globalisation are wonderful – cross border communication, cultural exchange, knowledge exchange, etc. We should be cautious about allowing globalisation to be defined by economics, this is only one aspect of it. Helena herself implicitly demonstrated the positives of globalisation through her 30 year association with Ladakh – something that would not be possible but for the ‘shrinkage’ of time and space that characterises contemporary global society. Arguably the West are greater beneficiaries of globalisation than our developing world cousins, but given that the film hinged on the concept of globalisation, I believe of more balanced treatment of the concept was deserved.