Material Risk Sharing for a Livable Future

Material Risk Sharing for a Livable Future
March 6 / 2022 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.

Liberation for All: How We Can Talk Differently about Power and Privilege

Liberation for All: How We Can Talk Differently about Power and Privilege
February 21 / 2022 For the most part, almost everywhere and every time, I have found conversations across power differences repeatedly unsuccessful.

From Exchange to Gifting Part Three: Reintegrating into Flow One Experiment at a Time

From Exchange to Gifting  Part Three: Reintegrating into Flow  One Experiment at a Time
December 15 / 2021 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.

From Exchange to Gifting Part Two: Beyond the Exchange/Gift Binary

From Exchange to Gifting  Part Two: Beyond the Exchange/Gift Binary
November 16 / 2021 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.

From Exchange to Gifting Part One: Why We Need to Find Our Way out of Scarcity

From Exchange to Gifting  Part One: Why We Need to Find Our Way out of Scarcity
October 27 / 2021 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.”

Grappling with Our Own Power

Grappling with Our Own Power
October 8 / 2021 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.

Every Tree Wants to Make a Forest: Choice, Togetherness, and the Maternal Gift Economy

Every Tree Wants to Make a Forest: Choice, Togetherness, and the Maternal Gift Economy
September 28 / 2021 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.

Visionary Functioning: Shifting Resource Flow Systems from Incentive to Willingness

Visionary Functioning: Shifting Resource Flow Systems from Incentive to Willingness
September 6 / 2021

(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 …

As Things Get Worse

As Things Get Worse
July 7 / 2021

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 …

Flow, Decision-Making, and Conflict

Flow, Decision-Making, and Conflict
June 11 / 2021 In an oversimplified way, when flow is interrupted, we need to activate either the decision-making system or the conflict system.