Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
SMPLE-KOIN will be introduced in this essay as a spiritual ‘thought experiment’ with economic implications, one designed to facilitate a real-world revaluation of how important material and financial wealth is to human prosperity.
So the new year has arrived, and the world’s power dynamics are shifting in a new Cold War. A revolutionary U.S. government has revived the Monroe Doctrine, gunboat diplomacy and the primacy of oil. In so doing it has kicked old-fashioned notions of law and sovereignty in the shins with a Putin-like swagger.
We must move from a finance that demands private benefits at scale, as purely transactional and extractive, to finance systems grounded in particular places and cooperative relationships, all closely aligned with living systems.
Cavalier and dismissive behaviour in the face of overwhelming evidence of impending danger is something which characteristically emerges from ‘normalcy bias’ (defined as the “tendency to underestimate the possibility of disaster and believe that life will continue as normal, even in the face of significant threats or crises”).
The bounty brought by rainfall, fertile soil, and biodiversity cannot truly be expressed through quantitative proxies, prices, algorithms, or markets because this “wealth” doesn’t exist in static, objectified forms or essentialist identities
As the natural resources that the modern world depends on become more and more scarce, countries will more and more resort to openly violent methods to secure access to those resources.
And you, fellow reader, what other words would you delete or add to sustain this conversation — and more importantly, the very cause for which it stands?
Realizing a vision of the Beloved Community requires that we practice beloved community daily, contributing to greater safety, dignity, and belonging for everyone.
In the face of capitalist economics and states intent on asserting their dominance and control, commoners have a mindset that is more expansive, experimental, self-reliant and localist than the market/state dares to imagine.
Farmers, following a bodhrán deftly drummed by Talamh Beo’s Fergal Anderson, brought themselves and their produce from their farms, telling a little of their stories of who they are, what they do, and how they do it. They stood front and centre, and it centred us too.
In this episode, Nate is joined by New York Times bestselling author and professor of psychiatry, Anna Lembke, to explore how modern society has “drugified” our lived experience through digital media, processed foods, and instant gratification, resulting in an environment that propagates addiction.
Bioregionalism offers a practical, politically accessible space for addressing climate change, social inequality, the eclipse of democracy, out-of-control oligarchs, and capitalist growth.
