Tonight I hosted The Art For Work’s Sake workshop at the my coworking space, run by my mate Doug.
Doug’s workshop over 2 years ago was the inspiration for me reigniting my love of art, that had been hidden since my childhood.
The picture above is my creation from the question Doug posed to us ‘what does community look like to you?’
My piece is titled ‘Borderless World’
Community is traditionally seen as a physical thing associated with a local neighbourhood. For me community is a thing that has more to do with shared values, than it has to do with being in close physical proximity to others.
Therefore the whole world can be a collection of communities, or tribes as Seth Godin puts it (sorry Doug couldn’t resist). So the centre of my painting is the world made up of the blurring of all the different shapes and colours that is the human race.
I love the diversity of cultures, languages, food, music, places, stories, traditions and so much more that makes the human race and the world such a wonderful place to be.
What I dream of is no more nations, flags, anthems and borders.
Since the homo sapiens became the only and dominant human species and 70,000 years ago migrated from East Africa all over the globe, they have been exactly that migrants. So the idea that we own bits of the planet and we have to put up fences is to me so wrong.
One human race, one planet, no borders and complete celebration of diversity, difference without judgement, hate or nationalism.
While having dinner on the beach with the everyone from the Copass Camp, in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, at the strangely named Waikiki restaurant.
Although sounding very touristy, it is not at all and the food was awesome. Half the group had amazing Chateaubriand steak, which they cooked to their liking on the hot stones at the table and other half of the group, we had super tuna fillets.
Not sure how relevant any of this is yet to the title, but in any story it is important to set the scene.
So at one point Stefano, co-founder of Copass, was talking about a trip he made to Peru, and especially he talked about these native people, who still lived on islands in the middle of lake Titicaca, and how they lived.
The interesting thing about these people, that even in the 21st century, they live a simple existence, relatively free of technology and the things we all take for granted in the ‘first’ world (not a term I like, but a label we can all understand).
We also talked a little about the nomadic people of Mongolia, and having watched Ewan McGregor’s bike ride round the world, where they passed through Mongolia, the thing that struck me about these people, is that to many they would seem to have nothing, but in fact they had everything they needed. They are happy.
Stefano also talked about the amazing community that Uru have and there is no money, people do everything for the community. So the little money they do have is raised from the ferry, enabling to buy some essentials they need from the outside world. Again they were happy people, not feeling unworthy because they didn’t have an iPhone 6s or troubled by poor broadband speed.
I blogged a while ago about the idea of not having money, of resetting everything and everyone to zero, and then perhaps using the Echo model, where everyone’s time is worth the same, 1 Echo for 1 hour of time, you could stop a tiny few on the planet accumulating much needed resources.
We would not need to work in the same way, as we wouldn’t need to earn so much money, as an element of what we all did would be for the community.
This may seem to many as fluffy and utopian, but you know what, with $61 trillion owed in debt, who to, I have no idea, isn’t it time we ditched money and found a better system. In fact in the time it took me to look up that fact $2m of interest had accrued.
One that will enable us to ensure as a human race that no one is hungry, homeless or poor, to ensure that the wealth of the community, is enjoyed by everyone in the community, not just a tiny elite.
Yet another interesting chat during our camp here and more evidence of when people get together to work, and live together, no matter where that physical connecting point might be, that you can discuss ideas and perhaps collaborations can form to help construct an alternative.
The way to save the human race is to connect, form communities of people from all over the world and to bypass the system, that most are forced to serve and comply with.
Philip Dodson 
