A few months ago, we started our own local time bank in Bloomington, Indiana. I think at last count we have about 50 members? Maybe more.
hourbloomington.org: “An economy that works for everyone”
As I blogged two years ago:
It’s long been my feeling that no one, but no one, should have a “job,” by which I mean something not personally meaningful that we crimp our wild and precious lives into doing for hours and hours each day — just “to make a living,” just “for the money.” This “jobs” shibboleth is, of course, one of the cornerstones of the wage-slave Old World Order now crumbling under the weight of rising “unemployment” worldwide.
What would happen if instead of “looking for a job” we all started doing what we love, and sharing that with one another?
We tend to think of “money” as the bottom line. But what if it is not? What if, instead, human energy is the bottom line, and money energy is merely an abstract, agreed-upon transposition of this ancient and fundamental bottom line?
If we think of “money” as energy fueling the circulatory system of the so-called civilized world; and if we think of a unit of money as, ultimately, the transposition of a bottom-line unit of human energy, then time banks are ways of circulating collective human energy without the need for money.
Just today, I saw this fb story from Teddie Mower, one of the founders of our time bank. Teddie is moving here from Louisville, which has a well-established time bank.
I remember hearing from writer and wordsmith Laurel Airica, http://laurelairica.com/ that the word “job” comes from a Hebrew word meaning “one who is persecuted.” And I notice the word “shekel” which is the Hebrew term for a unit of currency, sounds like the English word “shackle.” Can’t help noticing a lot of connections between the various words we use today and the way they sound like other words or concepts. There may be some truth in Airica’s contention that words are a form of spellcasting. As for jobs, I’m tired… I’m tired of working all day and coming home at the end of it, resting just long enough to do it all over again the next day. I long to break free of this yoke, but how?
For me, the secret was to get — and keep— my material cost of living way, way down. To live underneath the money matrix as much as possible. Ever since my one “job” during summer after high school, I realized that “jobs” were equivalent to slavery, and that if I continued, it would kill me. Right then and there, I set a very clear and conscious intent to never subject myself to the money economy. Given my own nature, I knew it would kill the spirit.