The Things We Take for Granted
In this week’s Frankly, Nate shares reflections on what we take for granted in life at multiple scales: from personal health to meaningful work to relative ecological stability.
Nate Hagens
SMPLE-KOIN A Buddhist Cryptocurrency Optimised for Material Sufficiency within Game Theory Dynamics
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.
Venezuela and the New World Disorder
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.
Toward Socio-ecological Markets
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.
Normalcy Bias – A Latent Hazard
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”).
Toward a New Theory of Value (and Meaning): Living Systems as Generative
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
The Language of Sustainability & the Power of Words
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?
Coming Together in the Great Turning: Excerpt
Realizing a vision of the Beloved Community requires that we practice beloved community daily, contributing to greater safety, dignity, and belonging for everyone.
Commoning as Relational Provisioning & Governance
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.
Ireland | Feeding Ourselves, breaking new ground for the local food movement
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.
How We’ve ‘Drugified’ Our Entire Existence: Dopamine & Addiction In the Digital Age
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, Commoning, and Relationalized Finance
Bioregionalism offers a practical, politically accessible space for addressing climate change, social inequality, the eclipse of democracy, out-of-control oligarchs, and capitalist growth.
