https://youtu.be/GfYIX\_-TJRg

What do rising sea levels in Bangladesh, the break up of public utilities in Ghana and austerity in the UK have in common?

This is not the story we're most often told. Instead, we're encouraged to see the many economic, political, environmental and societal crises faced by communities around the world as separate. In this story, rising food prices in Kenya, for example, have nothing to do with exploding student debt in America. But this simply isn't true. They are both inevitable outcomes of the same neoliberal logic that says that life must ultimately serve capital, rather than the other way round.

It's only when we connect enough dots that we can expose the deep logic and rules that govern the whole global economy. Rules like, "material growth, everywhere, at all costs"; a ridiculous idea on a planet with finite resources. And it’s only when we connect the dots that we can see that the people who have the most power in this system aren't the most thoughtful, talented or worthy, but merely those who most effectively obey these rules.

Like all stories, the way to undermine its power is to be conscious of it. Understanding and then exposing the deep logic and rules of the global system is one of the most important political acts we can engage in. It’s the beginning of our own de-programming, and it leads us to alternative solutions to these whole-system problems. Alternatives like strong local economies that can bypass debt-based currencies, and food sovereignty approaches that challenge the monoculture model of neoliberal ‘development.’ Alternatives that are already to be found all around us; from the Brixton Pound in Britain, to the Zapatistas in Mexico, to Rojava, the Kurdish free state in northern Syria.

The mainstream media is not set up to see these shifts and so continues to push the old story of “growth at all costs”. It’s up to us to connect the dots. To expose how oppressions around the world are connected. And to recognise that something wonderful and powerful is emerging all around us, outgrowing the cruel limitations of neoliberal capitalism by embracing life in all its glorious, indescribable diversity.

Change The Rules