The Garden and the Machine
For most of modern history, our financial systems have behaved like machines; cold, efficient, and designed for extraction. They take from the earth, from labor, from communities,…
Latest Articles
-
-
The Beauty of Natural Systems (and the Tragedy of Human Ones)
Nature has a knack for doing things in a beautifully simple way; and it makes human invention look almost comical. A tree, for example, doesn’t hold a…
-
Building a Bigger Life Around the Pain
You can’t get rid of painful memories. They’re not stains you can scrub away or files you can delete. They’re part of the structure now; like knots…
-
Why Relationships May Outlast Hierarchies in a Changing World
Hierarchies and Human Connection For most of human history, societies have leaned heavily on hierarchy to keep order. From monarchs and generals to managers and mayors, people…
-
The Antichrist, the Katechon, and the Shape of Things to Come
When Peter Thiel starts talking about the Antichrist, it sounds at first like eccentric theology from a Silicon Valley billionaire with too much time on his hands.…
-
Can Capitalism Ever Be Ethical?
Every so often, someone suggests that capitalism can be saved if we just give it a good scrubbing. Wash off the grime of corruption, ring it out,…
-
From Neighbors to Corporations: How We Lost the Directness of Living
I sometimes think we’ve all ended up working for a sort of ghost. Not the rattling-chains, moaning-through-the-wall kind, but something maybe worse: a superior who doesn’t even…
-
Could Your Neighborhood Survive on Social Capital Alone? Some Do.
I sometimes imagine what it would be like to live in one of those tiny Alaskan bush towns. Not the postcard version with moose sauntering down Main…
-
Marcel Mauss’ “The Gift” – A Summary
Marcel Mauss’ The Gift manages to be both deeply academic and strangely intimate. Initially, it seems like an anthropologist’s survey of exotic rituals in far-off places; potlatches…
-
The Weird Trick That Made Me Instantly More Liked (and Happier)
I have taken to playing an interesting sport, though I doubt anyone watching would recognize it as such. It requires no ball, no net, and not even…