Sublime

All human interactions are not forms of exchange. Only some are. Exchange encourages a particular way of conceiving human relations. This is because exchange implies equality, but it also implies separation. It’s precisely when the money changes hands, when the debt is canceled, that equality is restored and both parties can walk away and have noth

Under the delusion of the discrete and separate self, we see our relationships as extrinsic to who we are on the deepest level; we see relationships as associations of discrete individuals. But in fact, our relationships—with other people and all life—define who we are, and by impoverishing these relationships we diminish ourselves. We are our rela

To put the matter crudely: if one relegates a certain social space simply to the selfish acquisition of material things, it is almost inevitable that soon someone else will come to set aside another domain in which to preach that, from the perspective of ultimate values, material things are unimportant, that selfishness—or even the self—are illusor

l’admirable livre de Karl Polanyi, La Grande Transformation49.

She’s a Nobel Prize–winning economist who has identified eight features necessary to maintain a stable community property resource.1 This wisdom applies to many of the communities you’ll grow. While Ostrom’s work overlaps with ideas I have already shared, it focuses more on long-term community management than on creating belonging and is worth expl

Quelque chose de très approchant a été réalisé au Moyen Âge tardif avec le système déjà mentionné des guildes, comme l’ont montré Kropotkine et d’autres. Des gens ordinaires se sont levés à travers l’Europe, ils se sont libérés des nobles, ils ont formé leurs guildes et créé leurs cités. Le treizième siècle a connu un étonnant mouvement populaire n

We are projects of collective self-creation. What if we approached human history that way? What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures who deserve to be understood as such? What if, instead of telling a story about how our species fell from some idyllic state of equality, we ask how we came to be trap