Today, as I was riding my bike home from singing with my choir in the church this morning, I stopped to pick stinging nettles and ground-elder. I am filling my freezer with quickly blanched nettles and ground-elder, to savor during the winter. And of course I am using the green gold on a weekly basis at home right now as well (green smoothies, pies and lots of other things).
So as I was picking I listened to Woody Tasch from Slow Money on Peak Prosperity, a podcast I’ve blogged about before. A lot of the episodes are way above my capacity, as it’s centered around economics, and I’m neither interested or knowledgeable about economics, I willingly admit. But this was really interesting. Slow Money is sort of the investment equivalent to Slow Food. In the words of the organization itself:
Slow Money catalyzes the flow of capital to local food enterprises and organic farms, connecting investors to the places where they live and “bringing money back down to earth”.
And possibly, the reason this episode was right up my alley is perhaps because:
This is about culture. This isn’t about economics. It’s about what’s more important, economics or culture? And guess what? In the United States, we have spent the last hundred years proving to ourselves that economics is much more important than culture.
And yes. It’s very deliberate that Woody speaks about culture, the word that both brings with it images of tilling the land, growing food and other useful plants, as well as the customs of the society I live and work in. And for me, it’s not an issue I have to think long and hard upon. Culture is more important that economics. Economics is a part of culture, and the culture within the economic system is part of the problem for sure. So there’s a challenge for us, to change that culture. That’s part of the reason why Peak Prosperity exist in the first place.
What’s more important for you? Culture or economics?
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