I want to speak of the difference between “no exit” and “trap”. No exit is organic and part of life, born of the reality of being social animals.
For the most part, almost everywhere and every time, I have found conversations across power differences repeatedly unsuccessful.
In this third part, I want to look more clearly and fully at what we can do, both individually and as groups, communities, and organizations.
Many people, even those who live fully within the exchange paradigm and don’t ever think about maternal gifting, prefer going to a farmers’ market, if one exists where they live, or to a local store, rather than to a supermarket. Sometimes they prefer it enough that they are even willing to pay more money. There is a reason for it.
I [...] looked up economics, and discovered, with anguished relief, that scarcity was baked into the very definition of economics. The one I found at the time was “the study of the allocation of scarce resources.”
In a position of structural power and leadership, I fully accept my responsibility, in general, to hear impacts of my actions on others with less power before saying anything about my own experience of the relationship and any impacts I may have absorbed within it.
Finding our way back to flow means walking back, upstream and uphill. This is the path of nonviolence: walking towards in the face of powerlessness, walking towards in the face of separation, walking towards in the face of scarcity.
(An edited excerpt from the “Resource Flow Systems” learning packet)
Our modern forms of engaging with resources are based on a deep-seated belief about human nature that is so pervasive that it almost never gets said explicitly: that we are only motivated by self-interest, narrowly defined, and that we won’t …
For the last hundred years or so, significant portions of the population within so-called liberal democracies in the global north have known comfort, ease, and personal liberties that have been unprecedented since at least the patriarchal turn. It’s not a new phenomenon for some people within a stratified society to …
In an oversimplified way, when flow is interrupted, we need to activate either the decision-making system or the conflict system.
What if people — even longtime enemies — could transform conflicts into creative dilemmas they feel motivated to solve together? Check out Miki's new book!
