As 2020 comes to end I was just reflecting on my ambition for this year to remove myself from as much community and collectives as possible (all the negative ones) and focus on private/ individual pursuits.
For the part of the universe I inhabit I have proven beyond doubt that working in community groups and attempting to join people and organisations is extremely inefficient verging on completely pointless. I guess these things might work better in more wealthy and smarter areas or areas with higher percentages of people with time, money and brains or where lead players are committed to an objective as opposed to in our case where an ecological objective was being used to facilitate a primary economic objective with the ecological objective being used as bait/con with an intent to negate on that objective once the economic objective was realised. I guess the stakeholder group at Beddington Farmlands would work much better if the primary stakeholder wasn't a multi-billionaire destroyer of the planet, people and nature. I guess that was a fundamental flaw in the whole thing :-)
Anyway, no matter how rational and ideologically sound the theory behind collective partnership is, in practise in my experience (which is indeed limited and very environment specific) most of the ideology I have read fails to take into account conflicting values, delusion, vindictive behaviour, plain stupidity, apathy, mischievousness and just plain awful and disgusting behaviour. We are dealing with humans not rational beings and from what I can work out most people are motivated by nano God complexes and would prefer death to defeat i.e. peace and working together. In many ways I can now see the need for the corporacry- it effectively crushes the spirits and dreams of these nano-Gods and puts them to some use- to work in the corporate-government hamster wheels. At least the paradises the rich construct from the hell of the poor is something better than just a democratic and egalitarian nightmare of bickering locals . Hackbridge and South London is just that part of the planet- where spirits are crushed and people are turned into slaves- the last thing the corpocracy wants is these people having access to nature which can liberate them.
It's been just this not just the fact that we have a multi-billionaire master of the universe hoarding wealth at the expense of nature and people but it also been the volume of members of the local community who queue up to be exploited and to facilitate in their own demise. I guess the veneer of respectability that nefarious corporations present is enough to delude many people into co-operating with them and also the sense of power (and hush money) small people get from engaging with them- even if that sense of power is the emotional levers being pulled by the corporation. Its a form of seduction which I guess powerless and broken spirited people are easy to be pulled into.
However, going it alone is not easy either, especially if one intends to maintain certain principles. I've worked out to build my own nature reserve in this country (in the south) I will need approximately one million quid (for a 6 hectare site with a dwelling) and will then obviously need a revenue stream to maintain it and to sustain things. By focusing on my business and giving up community work I've saved up an extra £60,000 this year (some coming in from previous years revenues) - however at this rate I will still need to save (or pay it off if I can borrow some) for over 15 years. (I'll be over 60 unless I can get a sizeable mortgage which is not easy for a self employed person nowadays and indeed a large mortgage is risky in these volatile times). I've already bought a small nature reserve project in Bulgaria (just less than a single acre site) but have failed to convince Holly to move to one of the most ecologically rich but economically poor countries in Europe. However leaving this country and doing this in a country where its affordable and where there is actually some wildlife left is obviously the best thing to do.
So some how I've got to work this out. I just hope it won't be the same complete failure that Beddington Farmlands and the Hackbridge Project has been or else I'm going to spend the next decade wasting my life too (I wouldn't mind knowing what's its like to actually do something that works!) . This is not an easy challenge! It's also not easy going into something knowing you've completely failed at the last major project. However so many great things have come out of my last great failure (you might be surprised that wasting life is actually very productive ((I was!)) and I cannot complain at all where it has led me- the main thing is to keep setting enjoyable and self inspiring targets- its doesn't matter if they don't work out I guess- something else amazing will).... and besides such fundamental and cataclysmic reasons for not doing something have never stopped me before.
