My name is Edward Griffith-Jones.
My main passion is positive personal and social change.
On a personal level, I am interested in trying to practice what I preach, our relationships with nature, learning practical skills (such as growing and foraging food, cooking, building and bike repair), Freeganism, meditation and other non-consumerist and environmentally low-impact ideas of happiness and well-being. I also like to think about lessons from various religions as well as trying to be a good friend.
On a societal level, rather than purely focusing on opposition to existing systems (such as Stop the War and smashEDO), I feel it is crucial to learn from history and from other countries and propose and create new ones.
In particular, I am very interested in systems where citizens - as a means of social justice, empowerment and reducing inequality of wealth, power and opportunity - have more ownership and control over our workplaces (such as workers' co-operatives with equal - or low - salary ratio differences and, where possible, job rotation), our housing (such as housing co-operatives and cheap unmortgaged self-build), our land (such as community land trusts and land redistribution away from the 6,000 landowners who own around two thirds of the UK), our money (such as freecycle, Local Exchange Trading Systems, barter systems, libraries, socially responsible investment and community mutual aid), our banks (such as credit unions, building societies, co-operative banking and interest-free banking), our education (such as free/democratic schools), our democracy (such as decentralisation, participatory budgets and abolishing the monarchy), our culture (such as free culture, Wikipedia and Creative Commons), our technology (such as free software, OpenStreetMap, No Software Patents and No patents on life) and our media (such as Medialens, UK Watch, Miro, Indymedia, OneBigTorrent.org, Democracy Now!, ZNet, The Dominion and Brighton's very own SchNEWS).
Because of everything above, as well as my deep concern about climate change and peak oil, I am engaged in Green Party politics, ideas about sustainability, different trading systems and certain alternatives to capitalism (such as Participatory Economics, anarchism, socialism, Eco-socialism, Guild socialism, Libertarian socialism, worker co-operativism, Freeganism, Mutualism, Syndicalism, Autonomism, Georgism and reclaiming the commons).
When I can gather my thoughts together, I also write articles and papers about these things.
At the moment I'm living in Brighton. For fun, I love swimming in the sea, cycling, reading, watching films, listening to music, dancing and getting my hands dirty growing vegetables. Playing the guitar, hacky sack, poi and ultimate frisbee also make me smile.
Feel free to contact me at: ed --AT-- acrewoods --DOT-- net (replace AT with @ and Dot with .)
Family
To see the people that produced, raised and love me, look here:
