How Rare is Albion?
How rare after all would be a rare Albion? This we explored in Dr. Christopher Houghton Budd’s workshop Air Beneath Your Wings, held in Bristol, England in early October. The workshop explored the themes of Dr. Houghton Budd’s allegory Rare Albion, as a means of addressing the present global financial crisis, and specifically youth’s essential role in overcoming it.
Rare Albion is an imaginary but not unimaginable financial utopia. Normally, to be considered an upstanding youth in the 21st century, we are expected to be informed about the world, ambitious in our jobs, studies and goals. In Rare Albion, young people are expected first and foremost to be able to read a balance sheet and then explain with accounting how they will realize the lives they intend for themselves. Dr. Houghton Budd’s workshop wove in and out of the “real” world and the “Rare” world, showing that Rare Albion, more than being rare, is really an example of what our world today could become, especially in light of the financial crisis.
The workshop began with an explanation of Rudolf Steiner’s understanding of a person’s development, and most importantly the first 28 years of a person’s life, during which time Steiner believes one is meant to achieve his or her ideals. In Rare Albion, as Dr. Houghton Budd explained, youth attend Financial Literacy Colleges where they learn accounting and finance. Then they are appropriately equipped to express what they want and what they need.
The society of Rare Albion has two very important products that have not been introduced to 21st century finance: Super Savings and Hyper Savings. These products are based on a fundamental understanding of production and consumption, one that takes us away from the idea that money spent well must be spent on producing things to be sold for a profit. Super Savings are sums of capital put towards building schools, for example. Schools do not produce things; they cultivate able people. Furthermore, Hyper Savings are invested in such things as individuals’ doctorate degrees. Hyper savings are not attached to promises of repayment or loyalty; they simply support individuals who want to realize their ideas in the world.
In Rare Albion these super power funds are nothing less than the “air beneath the wings” of young people. Swoosh! and the funds are there, for anyone who expresses his or her goals on a balance sheet. Yet Dr. Houghton Budd showed that as young people, it is not a matter of us finding Rare Albion. It is a matter of taking our own initiative to convince the world that our ideals are important by expressing financially how we will realize them. That much is our responsibility. After that, it is up to others to listen to us. The most important thing is that the future depends on individuals taking up the project of understanding their lives through accounting, something Dr. Houghton Budd believes young people are well able to initiate. He believes that if youth start carrying their balance sheets in their back pocket, we will soon realize that we don’t need to find a mystical rare Albion. We will have already arrived.