You might be wondering why we are featuring a book called The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle on a website about addressing environmental problems and creating a magnificent future. But if you have ever cracked open this thick, big-hearted book, then surely you know that it is about much more than frugality—it’s about living intentionally and creatively.

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image by LeeBrimelow

If our task is to create the future, then we need to be strong and energetic to accomplish it. For that reason, this month’s challenge is about fitness.

The fitness challenge follows up from our democracy and food challenges previously. It also connects to Megan’s piece, “What are we developing for?”

There certainly is no shortage on advice about how to be fit: TV and magazines are full of it. There is also still the fact that far too many of us are in less than optimal shape, and the consequences can be seen in a sadly wrong-headed healthcare system, our kids’ growing levels of obesity, the world’s food crisis, and our own loss of connection to the life energy.

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My dear friend and former housemate Tim Murphy is in the midst of making Money: The Movie, a documentary about where money came from, what it means, and where we must take it next.

From what I’ve seen so far, I believe this incredible film can and will cause a massive shift in how we see money and our relationship to it. Watch the trailer and let us know what you think.

image by brendan.wood

I have to go to work.

Why?

Because I need more money.

Why?

So I can afford to buy what want.

Why?

So I can be happy.

One of my favorite ways to get to the bottom of an idea is to wield the word “WHY?” like a 2-year-old. Why? Because it gets me straight down to the heart of the matter. And the heart of our belief about money is this: most of us think that money leads to happiness like A leads to B.

But is this true? And if it is true, how true is it? Does more money always mean more happiness than less money? Or is the relationship more complicated?

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image by greefus groinks

Yesterday we discussed how many of humans’ economic activities tie profit to suffering, and how the difference between economic or dollar value and real value makes that possible. But what if we could change the economic rules to encourage good design, zero waste, and human health and happiness? If helpful activities result in profit and harmful activities result in loss, then making the leap we need to make will become a no-brainer. Ordinary human greed becomes a force for creation instead of destruction.

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image by greefus groinks

Several weeks ago on Worldchanging I read about a project called Hero Reports, which captures data about people performing acts of heroism—whether it’s an everyday favor like giving a subway seat to an elderly woman, or something more dramatic like helping someone in medical trouble. Captured stories are plotted on neighborhood maps with the help of Google.

I had the pleasure of meeting the creator of Hero Reports, Alyssa Wright, not too long after reading about her project, and we hit it off immediately. In our conversation she told me about the goals of her project: to counterbalance the culture of fear we live in, to foster a sense of neighborliness, and even to possibly create economic value for acts of kindness.

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image by Derek Farr ( DetroitDerek )

Today is Labor Day in the United States, a day of celebration and rest for the workers on whom our economy depends. Some of us labor for love, but most of us work for a paycheck, so we thought it a fitting day to start our inquiry into money and how it both enables and inhibits our lives.

When I think back to the economics classes I took in high school and college, all I can hear is the droning wah-wah of Charlie Brown’s teacher. Supply and demand, macro and micro, interest and capitalization: words like this cure insomnia for me and I’m sure for many others. And this is part of the problem—the rules that form our economic system are inscrutable to most of us, and so we tune them out in favor of sound-bites and code-words.

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