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July 2012

Emerging EcoNomics #5: Gifting – and the gift economy

For years I’ve known people who gave away their professional services as a gift, explicitly encouraging (though not requiring) gifts in return to allow them to continue their work. I’ve also loved the idea of “paying it forward” – enjoying as a gi…

Expanding our capacity for “unitary democracy”

Below are highlights from Jane Mansbridge’s IN CONTEXT article “Unitary & Adversary: The Two Forms of Democracy”, which was itself an excerpt from her book BEYOND ADVERSARY DEMOCRACY (1983) which has had a significant impact on my thinking. I ofte…

“Empowering Public Wisdom” – The Book

A year ago Doug Reil, the associate publisher of North Atlantic Books, explored with me the possibility of writing a manifesto to clarify my vision of a wise democracy. The culmination of that conversation is my new book EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM: …

Living resonant, fruitful lives together

I have been lucky to experience healthy relationships, teams, and intentional communities. I’ve experienced them as enjoyable, rewarding and functional – as meaningful, supportive facets of my life and the lives of the others involved. I’ve also s…

Emerging EcoNomics #4: Community revolution growing with food

The remarkable article below speaks for itself and, since it is long, I won’t add much except strong encouragement for you to read it and a note that you can productively and enjoyably jump around in it (as I did) if you’d rather not progress from…

Vibrant, effective responses to disaster?

As powerful economic, ecological, and social imbalances work themselves out in and around our lives, we face some pretty hard times – some of us already, some of us more than others, most of us increasingly. Each of us hopes we can ameliorate the …

Entering Interdependence on Independence Day

So many thoughts on US Independence Day…. 1. For years there have been Declarations of INTERdependence and suggestions and organizing for INTERdependence Day. I first learned about this 8 years ago and wrote it up on the co-intelligence website….