Friday, July 24, 2009

Life and How We Live It

I finished reading Douglas Rushkoff's Life, Inc., and contrary to what I had feared, it turned out to be a brilliantly entertaining and engaging book that will make you rethink your relationships to money, your job, the house you live in, how you shop, what you watch, what you eat, and how you live.

The chapters that describe how money -- that is, centralized currency -- is always biased toward corporate interests will make you think about every dollar you spend, never mind the Matrix-y nature of credit cards and online transactions. Rushkoff argues that cities and towns need local currencies (as they did in the wealth-building period of the Middle Ages) that keep the center of economic gravity where the people are rather than leaching it out to corporations and shareholders -- a process that inevitably impoverishes and destroys the regions and industries that corporations pretend to serve.

Anway, it's great stuff and every chapter is a fresh kick in the butt that will remind you just how complacent, mediated and controlled we all are in our everday lives. Go read it.