Wealth makes you stupid.

So much of what we need to do is an exploration of the obvious. Enormity assails us with great predicaments. They should be obvious. We can only miss seeing them with great effort. Yet, they remain hidden in plain sight. How we see wealth is no exception. Civilization holds at its core a promise that

On Wealth

Wealth is an abstraction. It is the taking of value from the realm of the actual, the fabric of a living earth, and creating a gradient of poverty. What is read as wealth is a condition of lesser poverty than those wealth pushes into the maw of destruction and diminishment it shoves along ahead of

Wealth, Let’s see it for what it is.

Everyone is talking about wealth these days. Some want to continue to amass it without constraints. Others want to find ways to get theirs. And still others want to spread it around more equitably. All these efforts lead to so many infamously “unintended consequences.” Except they’re not so mysterious if we look at what wealth

Further Notes on the Meaning of Wealth

We all act as though what we mean by wealth is obvious and lacking in ambiguity. Wealth is enough money to wield power so as to conserve one’s ability to keep a lot of money. Hmmm… That’s probably not what you had in mind. Has wealth always been the same thing? Is it going through

Value, Wealth & Poverty

We compound our difficult position by maintaining ourselves in this state of confusion. Unless we look clearly at the loss of meaning that has hidden the true natures of these three decisive terms we cannot get on with unraveling our condition.

Investing in Trust

Investment is generally taken to mean following a strategy that allows us to siphon off value. A way of taking value from a living system and turning it into a quantity of abstract financial counters that we can then hold so as to use these at will to gain advantage. We strip a living web

Drowning in facts

You might say we’re drowning in facts. We have enough information before us to come to valuable conclusions concerning how we’re trapped in a vicious dynamic that can have no happy outcome. A dozen times a day we can realize how a particular institution or corporation is acting to further destruction. And…? We click on

It’s a Crime, part I

Money is the root of all evil. Sure, we all know this platitude. Why doesn’t it ever sink in? The debasement of language is part of it. What was once an insight is fossilized and words no longer convey meaning. It’s also what happens when a statement is too broad. Its indicators too vague. A

Awe and Wonder

It’s customary to link awe with shock these days. “Shock & Awe!” Followed by that grimacing grin primates and dogs instinctively make when something that pleases them also uncovers a deep well of shame. The look we came to identify with W…. Shock & Awe would come to be the signature spell of the late

Our Predicament is Both Tangible and Elusive

We stand at a portal of transition, neither here nor there. The things we do to maintain our selves this day and what will keep us going farther down our track have little in common. Our predicament could be said to lie right at this point of divergence. What works – however poorly – today

Dissensus, Hygiene, Quality, Rhetoric, and Integration; a Stab at a Synthesis…

Dissensus is a tough master. If I choose to follow dissensus I pledge that though what I espouse holds no intent to violate any other, I will refrain from destroying anyone, though they espouse my destruction and this refusal might lead to my own death. I see no other way to make a break with

The Proprioception of Power

Finding what needs to be said is a challenge. In large part it requires letting go of reacting to things and getting caught-up in complaining. Chasing disappointment… It requires allowing the force of what is not being said to make itself felt. This is a combination of internal listening with sampling what comes to us