What creates value in our lives?

Value is one of those words that changes in understanding over time, and like much of our world has been sucked into the realm of quantification. Our default has become to measure it in financial terms, and then to give that priority. In the last thirty years, just about every facet of our lives has been "financialised".

We have effectively privatised every aspect of society, from child care to funerals in order to create jobs which are needed to meet the debts we incur to live. Thirty minutes on a treadmill versus a two hour walk outside. We've done that as we have run out of natural assets to privatise following several generations worth of extracting natural assets from the planet for which we have paid nothing in return. It seems rather like that parental nightmare of coming home to find the house has been trashed by a house party.

At the same time, we seem to have lost pleasure in what comes for free compared to what we have to pay for. Today sees the first day of "imbolk", an anci…