The Economics of Happiness
A few years ago, I read an article by a woman who found an old recipe book discarded in a garbage bin on the street. In it were dozens of recipes written in old cursive handwriting, for making and preserving jam and chutney. It was a beautifully written article; an ode to the knowledge, skills and experiences of those gone before us, and a lament to what we are losing in our modern throwaway society.
I was reminded of this article when I saw The Economics of Happiness, a documentary that shows us why ‘going local’ may be just the answer to the multiple global crises we face. In the film, environmental activist Vandana Shiva says the key to overcoming these challenges is through local knowledge.
“Local knowledge is knowledge that tells you about life, about living. I call it ‘grandmothers knowledge’. I think the biggest thing we need is to create grandmothers universities everywhere so that local knowledge never ceases”. At the same time I read about the recipe book, I was learning to grow my own veggies and trying to live more in sync with the seasons. All of a sudden it became terribly important to me that I should know how to grow potatoes. For five generations my family have grown spuds in South West Victoria, and who knows for how long before that in Ireland. Mine is the first generation not to make a living out of it. ------------------------------------------- There is a free screening of The Economics of Happiness on Tuesday 3 May in Melbourne » ------------------------------------------ I went to see my ninety five year old Nana, to learn how to cut the eye out of a spud. I watched her flick her wrinkly wrists in a move she’d done a thousand times before, as she told me stories of life on the farm, a life before tractors and harvesters, when she’d sow and pick the fields by hand. “You kids don’t know you’re alive”, she’d say scornfully, never letting us forget our easy we had it in life. I could hardly argue, but began to wonder why for all our modern conveniences and high standard of living, there was so much stress, loneliness and depression in our world. Though Nana undoubtedly lived through great hardship, and had far less in material wealth, hers was a far more connected community with a much slower pace of life, in part due to a far more self sufficient lifestyle based on a more localised economy. The Economics of Happiness shows us that in the shift to modernisation, global trade and higher standards of living, we have paid enormously – environmentally and personally. As more and more people are weighing up the costs, people are beginning to resist the negative forces of globalisation and are coming together to re-build more human centred, ecologically friendly economies based on a new paradigm: localisation. It would be foolish to look through rose coloured glasses at the past, for there has been much to gain from modernisation. But it is also true that our increased wealth and higher standards of living haven’t necessarily made us any happier. Localisation was a whole way of life until recent history. It would be therefore equally foolish to discard our ‘grandmothers knowledge’, as there is much we have to learn from the past, in living fulfilling, happy lives.