Valentines Day Love-In

14th February 2009 - Exeter - UK

"simpliCITY CirKus" is a street theatre group poking fun at consumerism, and celebrating Voluntary Simplicity.



This Valentines Day we had a Hugathon in Exeter's main shopping area.

Seven of us in the troupe set up a "hug zone", wore wigs and rouge, gave "hug tokens" to unsuspecting shoppers, and invited them to a valentines day hug. We reckon that we gave about 500 hugs over the lunchtime.

We had a good time. I think this was partly down to the fact that we were part of this change process towards a culture that is comfortable with the idea of trusting strangers and hugging them. And partly because this was a challenge to consumerism deep in the heart of the shopping area of Exeter.

The CirKus is planning others events. (Watch this space)




For more information, and some pictures of just a few of the 500 hugs click here ....

http://www.ihaveenough.org.uk

The Hidden Switch:

In each of us there is a switch. Most of us are unaware of it, or we've hidden it away in our subconscious mind. But its consequences are devastating, and it is very difficult to switch it off.

It is called the desire switch. It's easy to see it working now, in every High Street, when you see the madness that is called the January Sales.

At this time of the year the roads leading into Exeter are chocker. And I am informed that "retail footfall" (it's a marketing term) in Exeter is 4% greater than last year. And I thought that we are supposed to be in the middle of a recession.

It's easy to know when the desire switch is on? It's hypnotic power persuades us that we need to have more of something. We see it in Imelda Marcos - reputed to be the owner of 3000 pairs of shoes. I see it in myself when I collect more music (Almost 1200 CDs now).

What's difficult is knowing how to switch it off. The desire switch is part of our pre-historic wiring which causes us to store up food for the hard times. Nowadays though, hard times are few and far between, but the residual wiring is still inside us, pulsing away, constantly nagging us. And technology doesn't help either. There's always some new gadget that we really must have, because the Jones's next door have got one. And we are bombarded with about 3,500 sales pitches every day (that figure comes from the independent World Advertising Research Centre in Oxford). How can we resist such an onslaught?

For resist we must. For two reasons:
1: We are running out of resources. It's not just the problem of Peak Oil, but all resources (except for Bauxite) will reach their peak within the next 100 to 150 years.

2: And most immediately, climate change. We have to reduce our CO2 emissions very rapidly. Since material consumption makes up about 40% of all our emissions, this is a major part of our lives which cannot be brushed under the carpet.

We all, including myself, need a lot of help to turn off our desire switch, and this blog will be giving some tips for this later ... but if you want to start now, please read an excellent book by John Naish ... "ENOUGH - Breaking free from the world of more".