informage

shouldnt you be criticising the S African government, who from what i understand have denied HIV causes AIDS, totally failed to adress the issue, failed to buy and dsirtibute retroviral drugs, and generally swept it under the carpet? thats nothing to do with british govt.

I do indeed have deep criticisms of the ill-advised stance taken by the South African government and their abject neglect of the problem. I believe one of the underlying causes of the crazy positions they’ve taken is that the kind of state spending required to address the problem (with education, alleviation of poverty, and where necessary drugs) would be looked upon extremely poorly by the likes of the IMF and the World Bank.

My biggest criticism of the current South African government is they’ve decided to try and play the game of global capitalism and in doing so have tied their own hands in repairing the damage of colonialism and apartheid. Responsibility for this must lie both within South Africa and with the institutions of global capitalism that have effectively coerced our government with threats of withdrawn investment, even harsher loan repayment terms and reductions in aid.

You believe that global capitalism can be tweaked and improved to address the world’s problems. I do not.

What would you suggest replace capitalism?

In the sentence you quoted I specifically pointed at ‘global capitalism’ which I see as a specific recent form of capitalism that is moving (to a certain extent) away from class separation within Western nations, and towards a class separation that spans nations. If you look at those fulfilling the roles classically fulfilled by the “working class” in the UK, many of them are now either fufilled by recent immigrants, or in the further, somewhat hidden, reaches of the nation (call centres in Wales etc) or even more commonly just elsewhere in the world (the “third world sweat shop” phenomenon).

This also goes towards answering the question “who are the british oppressing now?”. It may not be as explicit as under colonialism, but the wealth of the UK is largely predicated on the favourable, and I would argue exploitative, trade relationships that were developed with the ex-colonies. That much of Africa suffers under both the legacy of colonial damage (both infrastructural and psychological), and the continuing harmful intervention of global capitalism, goes a long way towards explaining the ravages of HIV/AIDS in that continent compared with its comparatively mild impact in the West.

(Of course the UK is also complicit in the murder of tens of thousands in the middle east, although that is a somewhat different - though fundamentally linked - discussion: it is partly because economic exploitation is backed by the threat of force that the exploited nations generally accede to the demands of the West).

Is Capitalism fair? Of course not. But it works - and we all know it does.

I understand that being unfair is not in itself an indictment of capitalism. If your assertion is correct - that capitalism is the only system that works - then fairness is somewhat academic. However, I do not know this, and in fact I take serious issue with both elements of your assertion.

On the one hand, for me capitalism simply does not ‘work’. It may work for now for a privileged minority (which possibly includes a much larger proportion of the British population than in the past, but I’m thinking globally here). It is in many ways an admirable system, given that it allows essentially ‘dumb’ actors (dumb in the sense of having a worldview that extends little further than their immediate interests) to en masse enact a system of production and distribution that is at least basically functional.

However capitalism requires continual expansion and overproduction (what’s called ‘economic growth’). The rise of consumer credit is an adaptive mechanism so that growth can continue whilst the owners of capital continue to siphon large chunks of created value into profit. This is not something that can continue indefinitely. Either some catastrophe like climate change will kill us all, or we will deplete our natural resources to the point where our civilisation cannot continue in the same form. We can now in this era see very clear and scientific evidence for this assertion, more so than ever before in human history.

The oppressed masses of the world (remembering that the ‘richest and most powerful nations’ comprise a minority of the world’s population) will not suffer quietly forever. What’s called terrorism in the West is an early warning sign of the backlash that will only grow and continue unless this oppression ceases. Recognition of this is taboo for us; instead we are told “they want to destroy our way of life, it’s irrational hatred, any other opinion gives succour to the terrorists”. This is a taboo we maintain at our own peril.

Secondly capitalism is not the only system that works. Capitalism has a relatively brief role in the history of humankind; a few hundred years against hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. Every non-civilised society that we have encountered, we have destroyed. They did not destroy themselves by exceeding the carrying capacity of their surrounds, a fate we seem to be blindly speeding towards. To believe that our own system is not only the best, but the only workable system, is an amazing piece of arrogance and observer bias. It’s simply not scientific. (This isn’t meant personally by the way Marcus, you are by no means alone!)

None of this goes to fully answer the question “what would you suggest replace capitalism?”. It is far easier to defend an existing system than argue for a speculative non-existent system. I would point to countries like Venezuela and Brazil as undertaking brave experiments in alternate systems.

In truth I am suspicious of those who say they know with certainty of another system that works, is socially just and does not deplete and destroy the planet, just as I am suspicious of Marcus’s claim about capitalism.

New structures for society are created in action, through the living experimentation of open-minded and passionately motivated collectives of humans.

At the same time we must begin the task of dismantling this brutal, destructive and ultimately suicidal system that permits no competitors and tramples all alternatives. Marcus quite rightly states that “it is no coincidence that the world's richest and most powerful nations are capitalist”. On that we agree, on the conclusion drawn we differ.

Why don’t they donate the money they are spending on promoting this card (they spend $550 million annually on marketing)?

The answer is that that would be illegal. Companies exist to make profits for their shareholders, and directors are bound to act in their best interests. They go to jail otherwise.

You won’t be surprised that I find that particular law to be a very serious problem, and particularly so for our planet’s health. A Guardian blogger called Tony Juniper has written a good post about this. (Also, I’ll add that corporate donations to charitable causes are common, and can be justified as profitable by virtue of being good PR. I’m not necessarily endorsing that, but it is an alternative).

And actually, the 1% of the card that people donate would go to their pockets anyway, so are you suggesting that they keep that and they’ll still get your custom?

They certainly don’t get my custom, but if they want to give 1% of credit card spending to charitable causes I don’t have a big problem with that. What I do particularly have a problem with is their profiteering and objectionable ad campaign, especially when they’ve yet to give anything more than what is small change for a corporation that makes several billions of dollars in annual profits.

Surely the product red campaign does 2 things. It raises awareness by creating a product that advertises the issue…

Raised awareness cuts both ways. There is already reasonably high awareness of the African AIDS epidemic in the West. This campaign serves to suggest that the problem is being solved when it is clearly not, and to create the false notion that more capitalism is the answer when I believe that precisely the opposite is the case. Take Gisele’s recent interview in the Sunday Times for a striking example: “We can all start shopping more, and feel good about it. No more guilt!”.

…and it creates a precedent for ethical consumers to force big corporations to create products with an ethical spin. In effect this creates a tax on the very profits (which as I pointed out earlier they are obliged to create) which you find so abhorent.

You believe that global capitalism can be tweaked and improved to address the world’s problems. I do not. You believe that consumerism can be part of the solution, I believe it is a fundamental part of the problem.

I’m sure you’d like all multinationals to curl up and die. It won’t happen, swallow the pill, pay your money and make your choice.

As a South African I am deeply offended and upset that American Express and their directors seek to profit so crassly from the misery of HIV/AIDS in my country. The problem is huge. It is no solution to have British consumers believe that by purchasing some extra stuff with their credit card they can rest their consciences, whilst the West continues to extort debt repayments and impose neoliberal policies, both of which restrict the scope for wealth redistribution that might start to really address underlying causes. If British people want to make a difference to AIDS in Africa then they must address the legacy of colonialism and stop oppressing other countries. Then, maybe, they can start to feel “no more guilt”.

As a caring denizen of this planet I do not believe that seeking to increase consumer spending, particularly in the UK - one of the richest and most profligate consumer cultures in the world - is a solution to any of our immense problems. What is bought is often produced in sweat shops in the Majority World and transported between continents by a fuel that is fast running out; the burning of which is changing our climate and killing our fellow earth-dwellers. In the UK there are 67 million credit cards in circulation for a population of 59 million, creating misery for individuals, and enabling the overproduction that is a hallmark of civilisation and that is literally destroying our planet.

(Disclaimers: I’ve phrased these posts as though I am a South African and not British. In truth I am both, and I was actually born and raised in the UK. I now live in South Africa, hold South African citizenship, and have a father who spent decades of his life in exile from South Africa fighting to free it from oppression. It was the South African in me who reacted to the AmEx ad so vehemently, and so it feels authentic - and somewhat simpler - for that part of me to write these posts.

I am also a participant in this civilisation: I do use banks and credit cards, I do work for capitalist corporations, I do behave in environmentally destructive ways. I am in many ways a hypocrite. This will not stop me from saying what I see. I regularly reevaluate my choices and my life, and there are no easy answers or obvious paths. Right now writing this stuff is something that I can do, and I participate in various ways in trying to change this world. Is it enough? Never, but not doing enough won’t stop me doing what I can).

The profiteering nature of this venture is made explicit in an article by the Global Business Coalition:

AmEx believes the number of conscience consumers in Britain will grow from its present level of 1.5 million to more than four million by 2009…

…each of the partner companies will return a share of the profits from the sale of Red products to the Global Fund in return for the opportunity to increase their own revenue - and profits - by attracting ethical consumers.

One imagines that this large and growing group of British “conscience” consumers is not the traditional customer base for American Express, and they must be hoping the backing of Bono and the oh-so-fashionable “we fight AIDS in Africa” message will reverse their fortunes with the fairtrade crowd.

Of course this is aside from the potential kickbacks for the fatcats running the joint. A cursory examination of the American Express Board of Directors reveals that there may be a few profits coming to some of its members through any purchases of pharmaceuticals or medical supplies that get funded by the scheme:

• Robert D. Walter, also Chairman of Cardinal Health “focused on the high-growth healthcare market” (Cardinal Health website) whose product line includes the Reveal HIV test

• Jan Leschly, former CEO and Director of GlaxoSmithKline who produce three anti-HIV medications

• William G. Bowen, also on the board of Merck & Co., Inc. “a global research-driven pharmaceutical company” (Merck & Co. website) described by Wikipedia as “one of the top 5 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world” and as the manufacturer of Crixivan a “protease inhibitor HIV medication”. (Although Bowen is not listed on the AmEx page, he is cited as a director by Forbes, and searches on an SEC database demonstrate at the very least a significant ongoing relationship)

• Peter R. Dolan, former CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb “a leading provider of medicines to fight…infectious diseases -- including HIV/AIDS” (Bristol-Myers website), was recently fired from BMS over a patent dispute and was also until recently on the board of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America

• Daniel F. Akerson, also MD of The Carlyle Group “one of the world’s largest private equity firms…focuses on sectors…[including]…healthcare” (The Carlyle Group website)

Of course all this assumes that any real money will make its way out of AmEx coffers: after all “less than 1 per cent of the income received by Global Fund…comes from private corporate sources, rather than individual donations.” (the aforementioned GBC article).

Bono anticipated criticism like mine when he launched his “Red” campaign with a rather patronising and simplistic metaphor (and by the way thanks for wrecking my enjoyment of those amazing songs you performed back when you weren’t a shameful corporate marketing tool!):

“We’re working with big business. But the problem just has to be sorted and we can’t do it with governments alone. We’re fighting a fire. The house is burning down. Let’s get the water. You end up beside somebody who lives up the road who you don’t really like. Do you care if he’s polishing up his image by putting the fire out?” (Independent Online)

Well before that makes any sense let’s see AmEx do some significant firefighting instead of trumpeting their worthiness in advertising. A few million dollars doesn't douse many flames when 25 million are suffering. Why don’t they donate the money they are spending on promoting this card (they spend $550 million annually on marketing)? Why? Because profiteers don't operate that way.

Even if they do end up giving any significant amount to The Global Fund, I’m still left wondering about the overall economic structure of the relationship of Western big business to Africa. If most of that money ends up back in the pockets of AmEx directors and others like them, whilst Africans suffer from the straitjacket of imposed neoliberal trade policies, who are the real beneficiaries?

These were my experiences twelve years ago, on an anti-racism demo in Welling, south-east London, protesting against the presence of the neo-nazi BNP's headquarters in close proximity to the bus stop where 16-year old Stephen Lawrence was murdered. It was an almost entirely peaceful demonstration of around a hundred thousand who'd come to express their outrage at the flagrant racial hatred incited by this loathsome grouping. The menacingly impersonal riot police were out in force from the outset - despite later TV news reports to the contrary - and they very quickly deployed a pincer movement that had those of us near the front crushed so badly people were screaming and climbing up a steep embankment to escape.

I've been remembering those events because of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian at Stockwell underground station in south London. He lived in a block of flats in Tulse Hill, as did I four years ago. I can picture the walk past Brixton station - closed because of the previous Thursday's explosions - up Stockwell Road past the skaters and up to the station. What would I do if confronted by several non-uniformed heavies on the way. I might run, depending on my state of mind. If I was a non-native, and my English wasn't so good, I could well run. If I had an expired visa I might definitely run. Whatever happened this is a tragic killing, and a firm example of the violent force that is the state.

Now I'm not indifferent to the difficulty the threat of suicide bombers poses to the London Met. Personally, and - I admit - utterly simplistically, I think the best way to stop people wanting to kill us is to stop killing others. Yes, there's a lot more to the situation but right now I don't intend to go any deeper than that. I abhor the violence the US and its friends inflict on the rest of the world, and I abhor the violence of the counterattacks. I also abhor the hypocrisy of seeing the former as legitimate and restrained and the latter as evil and unscrupulous. In truth US military campaigns have little of the restrained or moderate about them.

The link between the death of de Menezes and my experience is simply this: the state is violence. It's easy to forget that the origins of the modern state are in the warrior kings of the dark ages who were simply the biggest and nastiest bullies in their areas, and thus able to establish hegemonies. We like to believe that our modern democratic states serve the interests of the people, but their real purpose is self-perpetuation through violent oppression. It takes a harsh reality like the cold-blooded murder of an innocent to tear away the veneer and expose the vicious core.

"Outside is Zimbabwe, here is Kufunda. Welcome!" declares the friendly dredlocked "kufundee" - who has driven me from the airport - as we cross the threshold of the farm. After a few days and a trip to Harare I come to appreciate his sentiment: Kufunda seems likes a world removed from the hectic bedragalled city life that lies less than an hour's drive away. The kufundees live in self-built housing around a central village circle and meet regularly for circle meetings, where overall vision and specific plans are discussed, every attendee garnering equal respect and listening. As well as developing the village itself, Kufunda is currently working with five rural communities, giving struggling Zimbabweans training in self-suffiency and sustainable methodologies. I myself am here to attend an 'Art of Hosting' workshop to learn about an practice hosting group workshops, with the focus on creating environments that foster open mutual learning.

The place itself is a picture of serenity, embedded within lush trees and vibrant flowers are the simple thatched roof structures where we eat, sleep and explore which ingredients make a conversation "that rocks". The nature around us spills over into everything: the suprisingly tasty organic food we eat, the ants that one night wake me up so that I can experience a bat swooping over my bed, the strange orange caterpillars that cluster together immobile on the trees like lichen - "we don't know what they are, they're a bit weird - don't touch them" I'm told. Every night the kufundees collect around the outdoor fire and sing, laugh and joke. It's like being invited into Tolkien's Shire for a five night stay, packaged up with some instruction on how it's all possible.

Although I have the privilege to see this positive strand within Zimbabwe, it's evident that even here political repression is the elephant in the room. There are a few light half-whispered references to "Bob" and his adventures, to "vote-rigging" when I collect feedback forms at the end of the workshop, but in general the topic is not addressed. I question one of my better friends amongst the kufundees at lunchtime: "No, that is not open here, cannot be open here. There is a ceiling, a very real ceiling, on what we can discuss". When pushed he concedes "maybe two or three of us, when we're alone together, maybe then we can talk about such things". It would be too much to ask him to state his own position - I am but an interloper, and don't wish to take lightly the risk that any politically explicit expression carries in this country.

One young workshop attendee has a vivid experience of that risk: his name is 'Biko' and, perhaps in honour of the man after whom he is named, he is a rebellious student activist and rap artist. He is currently homeless having moved out of his digs in fear of retribution, even of attempts on his life. Talking to him after the workshop finishes, there's no doubt that his highlight has been to meet his namesake's widow - Ntsiki Biko - who was a fellow attendee. She travelled here with two Canadian interns working in the original Biko's hometown in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, to learn some techniques that might improve communication in the HIV/AIDS victim support organisation where she works.

On my final day I am the last workshop attendee left behind, and so end up having breakfast at the main farmhouse with Marianne's mother. We drink delicious locally grown coffee and I refuse a boiled egg for a cheese and tomato toasted sandwich. Mrs K throws out a comment about returning from the office, I ask a throwaway question - "your office is in downtown Harare?" and her reply confirms something I had already heard allusions to but not quite registered: "actually I just went to the airport this morning. The president left on a trip for Nigeria, and I thought as the boss is away I'll spend the day at home".

I had noticed tensions between Marianne and her mother over a political conversation the night before. The topic of discussion had been "why Zimbabwe?" and that is indeed a good question. Sure, there is much to abhor about the regime, but why is it being particularly highlighted by western media? I think there is an element of humiliation that a country that was seen as a beacon for capitalist-friendly post-colonial transformation has slipped so far. Whilst many other post-colonial countries around the world have equally oppressive regimes, few of them were as deeply permeated by the colonial culture as Zimbabwe was by British culture. Of course Mugabe himself plays along with this tune, taunting the west with his absolute rejection of any kind of compromise.

I hadn't quite clicked until this last day that Mrs K - on whose land Kufunda lies - is actually on Mugabe's payroll. You could either see this as undermining the whole Kufunda ethos, or as a glorious piece of subversive community-building right under the tyrant's nose. Mrs K herself seems like a fine woman, from what I heard she does good work in the health department, encouraging community generated schemes that address low level opportunistic AIDS-related infections with properly tested and verified herbal medicines. One young Zimbabwean student here in SA suggested to me a few weeks ago that without the corrupt top layer, ZANU-PF may yet be capable of forming a democratic and equitable government. Certainly I've yet to meet a Zimbabwean who believes the MDC offers much more than the prospect of opening Zimbabwe to the ravages of economic explotation by agricultural multinationals.

So I'm leaving this real-life Mordor with more question than answers. I've witnessed a Shire-like environment that thrives under the protection of Sauron himself, albeit unknowingly. If only it were as easy here as in Tolkien to identify the good guys and the bad guys, the good places and the bad places. After my time in Zimbabwe I've come to believe that this nation's story is more complex and multi-layered than it seems from the outside. Zimbabweans are a warm and creative people, and I wish the country success through the many-pronged challenges they face in the years ahead.

I have been waiting for over a week for the opportunity to sit down and put together my thoughts on our experiences in Thailand, but now that I do have the time it seems like an odd thing to do. Most of me is focused getting into the Hong Kong experience, and I have been running around buying things and filling in forms and trying to fit into my tiny little 3mx2m niche in this crazy city (imagine London, except with much taller buildings and everyone speaks Chinese), so Thailand seems a long way away.

This may be because I want it to be far away, I want very much to move on.

There is also another feeling I have, something like shame, to be talking about this at all. It feels a bit like taking snapshots of the dead, or trying to paint myself a hero when somebody else was actually doing the dying. Survivor guilt is not unusual in a circumstance like this, and I think we all got a dose of it. And the sense of shame is magnified considerably by the feeling of being incredibly lucky, of being blessed, almost, to be alive. Yet there was no sense or order or method in the distribution of death, it was random. Death happened, and you were there or you weren't. So I feel like one of the chosen, as if I had been selected to be on the Ark when the flood came, but I feel absolutely undeserving and I also know that the choosing of me to be a survivor was arbitrary, meaningless, like a lotto ticket.

These feelings are a bit mixed up. Let me try and tell the story and maybe it will make more sense.

I woke up that morning to the sound of chugging diesel engines. We were on a yacht, the Jaya, and we had been popping around the most idyllic coastline imaginable. If you have seen the movie "The Beach", you can try imagining that, but add a few hundred islands of scenery like that, and imagine us sailing through them on a big old wooden barge of a yacht, a sturdy Ark, built from solid beams of hard Indonesian wood. Snorkeling, jumping off the ship into the ocean, exploring deserted islands, sleeping on the deck under the stars... we were having a very good time.

It had been strange Christmas, out there in the middle of the Andaman Sea with a boatload of Swedes, can of snow and a bottle of Thai rum. We had anchored on Christmas Day off an island called Ko Phi Phi Don, and had had gone ashore for some supplies – ice cream, beer, and candy for the two Swedish kids – and for me to send some update e-mails home from an internet cafe there. So when I woke up the next day to the chugging of the engines, we were on our way out of Ko Phi Phi Don, and on our way to her sister: Ko Phi Phi Lei. We wanted to get there early because this is the island on which "The Beach" actually was filmed, and its beauty is very quickly marred by the presence of hundreds of motor boats.

We made it there by 8AM and quickly headed into the water for some snorkeling. It was deeper water, and not as beautiful as the corals we had seen off Ko Phi Phi Don the previous day. I have to admit that the most colourful thing I saw down there that day was a school of Japanese tourists, in the most extraordinarily bright snorkeling gear, being towed along by a rope. The experience was also a little nerve-wracking, with the screws of motor boats mincing the water around us as the tourists pulled in. It felt a bit like leopard-crawling through a parking lot as it fills up on a Saturday morning, but it was a lot more beautiful.

Anyway, something made Joe and me decide to swim to the shore. Something makes him and me do strange things quite frequently, like a few days before we had nearly killed ourselves kayaking out to an island that looked a lot closer than it felt. So off we swam, dodging tourists and motor boats, until we got to The Beach and checked out the view. By then we had spent more time in the water than we had intended to, and we felt that the rest of the people must have returned to the boat and would be wanting to go by now. So we swam back, and the Jaya made her sedate way back towards Ko Phi Phi Don to pick up supplies.

On the way in to the bay, we started to notice some strange things. First, three major waves rocked the boat. We were in the back, reading, and noticed the waves as you would notice the sun covered by a cloud – we looked up and we sommer noticed it. It didn't seem particularly dangerous, it just seemed odd. "Weeee", we said, as the bow crashed and splashed through the swells. Then we noticed that a lot of boats were anchored outside the bay, out to sea, and that several motor boats were heading at high speed out of the bay. At this point we became aware that something was going on, and we wondered what it was.

Boatmen coming out started to signal to us, but none of the crew spoke Thai so we couldn't quite make out what it was they were saying. One pulled in close, showed us a young boy in the back of his boat, and motioned to the top of his skull. I thought perhaps the boy had been injured by one of those crazy speedboats in the bay. But this didn't tie in with all the boats being offshore. Someone mentioned a bomb, and that there had been some recent fighting in the area. But there was no smoke coming from the island and surely a bomb big enough to rock our boat would have made some smoke?

Then the strangest and most unsettling sign came: two moray eels, one after the other, came floating drunkenly past the Jaya. Moray eels stay on the seabed, tucked into the nooks and crannies of the coral with their ugly mugs sticking out, waiting for unsuspecting fish. In fact we had seen one the day before while we were snorkeling off this island. Why on earth would we see two of them, looking startled and lost, on the surface of the sea? Could it be some kind of bizarre current?

We began to feel fear. Anelka, the mother of the two Swedish boys, had a grim look about her – she knew the sea and knew that the wave had been highly unusual. Ron, the captain of the ship, took the dinghy off to find information, while we sat on the boat and waited. Life jackets were put on. Soon after Ron came back with the news that a tsunami had hit Ko Phi Phi, a strange kind of tropical hell broke loose in paradise. Boats started pulling up to the Jaya, mooring for long enough to unload shocked, wounded people.

One after the other, we helped them aboard and heard fragments of the story. One woman had been standing on the beach, photographing her husband, when he had simply disappeared. Ko Phi Phi Don consists of two large rocks joined by a narrow isthmus of flat sand. On this isthmus all the hotels and bars of the island are built. One elderly American couple had been on the far side of the isthmus when they saw the wave. They had tried to run but to no avail, the wave had caught them and driven them right over the island, from one beach to the other, and if they hadn't found a floating kayak they would have drowned. It occurred to me then that I would have been in the internet café on that isthmus if Joe and I hadn't taken that extra long swim that morning. I started to feel lucky, a strange, shameful kind of lucky, like someone who misses the plane and then finds out it crashed.

We had a seriously injured woman on board who needed to get to the hospital in Phuket, so we fired up the Jaya's diesels again and turned around for the four hour trip across the Andaman Sea. Shortly after we left, we heard word from the shore that another wave was on the way. We made phone calls home, wondering what they knew, whether they knew anything at all. At that time we didn't know that the thing was bigger than Ko Phi Phi. We were only just starting to imagine that some people might have died. Starved of information, we headed across the sea. We knew in our heads that the sea was the best place to be – a tsunami is only a wave near to the shore, out to sea it is just a bloody great swell – but in our hearts we didn't really know anything.

The first bit of news we got was from CNN on a cell phone. A wonder of modern technology, the little thing told us that 400 were dead in Sri Lanka, and 100 more in Thailand. An earthquake off Sumatra, it said. The seas, I remember, were eerily calm, almost glassy, on that trip to Phuket. But the wave never came, in the end, and we made it to Phuket without having to see again what a tsunami looks like.

We stayed at a luxury hotel that had been spared by being several metres up a rocky cliff, and the next few days were a strange blur. Hotel rooms with CNN tolling up the dead. Rumours of new waves, each one bigger than the last. Hotel bars, hotel pools. Survivors and their grazes and their stories. Everything in Thailand revolves around the beaches, everywhere are reminders of beaches that were destroyed. We watched the toll climb from 20,000 to 50,000 and up past 100,000, and wondered a bit more each day how we had sailed over this thing going "weeeee!" How had we missed it? We could have taken less time for our swim, but really that was an absurd thought, we could have done a thousand other things that would have put us directly in the way. If we hadn't decided to take the boat in the first place we would, almost certainly, have been sitting on the beach when it hit.

Eventually we couldn't take it any more. Trying to have a holiday doesn't really work in a disaster zone, you can't carry on a dinner party after the host has choked to death. So we returned to Singapore, and now I am in Hong Kong, dazzled by all this civilization and dazzled by where I was and what nearly, nearly happened. Everyone we met in Thailand after the wave has their What If story – if we hadn't done this or if we had done that – and all have their stories of where they were when it hit. A couple we met in the pool were scuba diving when suddenly a great big washing machine erupted around them. Another woman had seen it come in, she said it looked like someone had pulled the plug on the ocean, before it all came rushing back.

We weren't just lucky, we were very, very lucky. I suppose you could argue that we were unlucky to be in Thailand to start with, but the experience of such a close encounter is still the same – shock, luck, relief, shame. It makes you wonder, it really does.

And so that's the story, from my perspective. There are thousands just like it. 150,000 dead, now, and just as many wondering how on earth it missed ME.

This isn't a denial that the horrors and injustices I see around me are evidence of systems that contradict life. It's a recognition that right now, with this particular set of systems, is where humanity has got to so far. If I reject that I alienate myself both personally and societally from that which I want to improve and love, humanity itself.

It comes back to something that I heard during the pre-program for this year's Pioneers of Change summer school: "If you want to change a system, you have to be loyal to that system, you have to believe in it". If I wish to change human systems I have to believe and trust in humanity and human systems - the systems of the past *and* the systems of the present. And sometimes I find that very hard to do.

The introductory motto on the Pioneers of Change webpage is "A new type of action rooted in a new way of thinking". Of course what we put forward as a network isn't really "new", isn't entirely detached from the past with no relationship to it, and yet nor is it exactly the same as anything from the past.

The issues that we face as human beings today are radically different from those faced by peoples of the past. I believe that we can learn from their wisdom, some of which has been forgotten, and we can also learn from today's wisdom, and from all this wisdom we can synthesise something new and revolutionary.

I am passionate about free software, also called 'open source' (the 'free' refers to freedom rather than lack of cost). Through the Changing the Game workshop and through this article I've realised that free software is a new game played by different rules. The free software movement is all about giving users the freedom to modify and redistribute at will the software they rely upon. This runs contrary to the old rules of the 'proprietary software' game which were about keeping the means by which software can be modified (the source code) secret. The old game is about playing to win, about having my code triumph over competing code, and when I'm playing to win it makes no sense to give away my secrets.

Free software is an infinite, or win-win, game. The global community of coders collaborate to produce the best software we can. Within this infinite game there can be finite sub-games, just like Mille and Anthony's game of sustainable living. I can start a new project that tackles a problem differently to an existing project and compete with it for mind share (I was involved in one project whilst it underwent a revolutionary design shift through exactly this process). If my approach is better then others will move over to my project, and the developers of the old project will be free to join in. If my approach doesn't work then I can still participate in the old project. Through this kind of 'collaborative competition' the conditions for innovation are created. New ideas can compete with old ideas and every player can draw upon the work of every other.

The players of the old game of proprietary software don't always understand why I play this new game. I have been asked by programmers I used to work with: “Why would you give your code away? Why would I when that makes me more likely to lose out?”. If I ask them in return “Why would you keep your code secret?” they respond “because that's how I make money” - in other words because those are the rules of the game. The fact that I have successfully earned a living through my participation in free software won't necessarily convince them. I've even had a conversation with a potential business partner where he expressed great enthusiasm for free software, particularly for the benefits we could glean by making use of it, and then turned around and said “but of course we must keep our own code proprietary, otherwise how shall make any money?”

Sometimes just playing the game has been its own reward. During the time I did my most intense free software work I had the email signature 'humani sum: nihil a me alienum puto', a well-known Latin quotation that roughly translates as 'I am a human, nothing human is alien to me'. A conversation on our email list that began as a request for explanation ended with me being given translations of the same statement in about ten different languages – from French, German and Spanish to Czech and Polish – representing the diversity of the community's members. It was a great pleasure to rotate my signature through all these languages knowing that I'd been provided with each translation by a distant colleague.

Of course this new game is not without challenges. Within the rules of the old game the way in which my work as a coder earned me a living was well established: I kept my code secret and sold access to it. In the new game we are still experimenting with different survival strategies. I make money by doing custom modifications of free software and following up with support. Some make money by selling CDs and books and some are sponsored by institutions or companies.

One of the biggest challenges is from those, like my potential business partner above, who believe they embrace the new game but come to it with the old rules. They don't see the paradigm shift needed to play the new game, and so they think that they should still keep some code secret or they want to restrict the participants in the game (to just non-profits say). This creates legal confusions that threaten to undermine our new game. Part of playing the new game is helping myself and others to clearly see the differences between the games and their rules – and it is precisely in causing me to conceptualise in terms of games and rules that this article has hit its mark.