What I find inspiring with grassroots economics and many other forms of co-operation, is that it is a 're-commoning' - an ACTIVE regeneration/resurfacing REMEMBERING of how things can be shared. And what particularly interests me as a realist, is whether these systems will actually out perform extractive, commons enclosing ones...i.e actually be more resilient, regenerative, and reproduce faster...industrial agriculture seems such a prime example...like how is the MATH of regenerative practices still not blindingly obviously better? And I suppose it's the state capture by the fossil fuel industry, that almost requires farmers to pour oil in the form of fertilizer, on their fields...
Over the past weekend, I finished a re-read of Things Fall Apart. I was left with thoughts and questions so beautifully echoed in this article. You state, “The question is whether we can design systems that remember how to heal.” It’s also interesting because I wonder what we have to learn from the Western systems that have unraveled indigenous systems of care. I wonder how the Western systems have been able to maintain and repair while operating from a relatively low density of trust. Perhaps, there is a value beyond trust that upkeeps the Western core. Nonetheless, I am still considering how we can regenerate systems that can heal. Thank you!
Western systems do operate with a relatively low density of trust, and yet they’ve found ways to persist. My sense is that what has “held” them together isn’t resilience so much as external enforcement .. i.e. law, surveillance, contracts, hierarchies, militaries, and financial extraction. In other words, what looks like durability is often just coercion substituting for trust....
That’s not to dismiss it ... there are lessons to be learned in how Western systems and technologies scale and enforce memory. But the cost has been alienation and fragility: when coercive scaffolding cracks (financial crises, wars, climate shocks), repair is slow because the underlying relational fabric isn’t dense enough.
Which is why I keep coming back to your final line: regeneration. The challenge is not to copy Western durability, but to weave systems where healing itself is the core protocol ... where trust density, memory, and reciprocity make rupture survivable without coercion.
This is the work before us! I have to take deep breaths and pause.
I’m so glad to be in dialogue with others like you asking these questions.
You are missing the central message of "When Things Fall Apart". There are two radically different catastrophes in the book. The first is when his gun is accidently fired on a sacred day, causing him to lose his farms, wealth, everything. But he is reminded of the traditional saying about kinship, goes to his kin, and slowly heals. That is because the resilience required is already embedded in the system; traditions like Mweria, and the equivalent in your CP system, allow for debt forgiveness, misunderstandings, drought, etc. Lets call that type 1 disaster.
The second catastrophe occurs outside the system: the invasion of the British. That is the event that causes him to take his own life, because colonialism is not simply another case of bad luck, it is dispossession of self-governance, land, even language and customs. Type 2 disaster.
Not sure what would constitute type 2 disaster for CP -- I would say when the government arrests you but they already tried that! Still its a good reminder that we need more folks in government, researchers in policy and perhaps even lobbying to get state and federal policy to align better with cooperatives, local currencies, CP networks and other forms of grassroots economics.
good to pull that out more. Type 1 (inside the system): shocks like accident, drought, or debt are absorbed by dense kinship ... Mweria‑style repair (forbearance, redistribution, mediation). Type 2 (outside the system): colonial imposition (loss of self-governance) breaks the fabric itself.
For Commitment Pools, Type 1 is routine and repairable; Type 2 would be criminalization/hostile regulation, platform shutdowns, or seizure. The antidote is policy and redundancy (forkability): cooperative/legal shields, federated multi-pool networks, offline/low-tech fallbacks, and allies in government and research.
Yes ... let’s organize for legal alignment so CPs, local currencies, and co-ops are protected and recognized - but don't wait for it to happen either...
Very inspiring Will. I do sincerely believe though that, rather like the fable of the frog slowly being boiled alive by cold water slowing becoming hot that many do not see the center falling apart. They see a need for more of a center. More power. More transactional control. We therefore need more frog boiling parables which can help people restore the consciousness lost! Any Ideas?
(yup) Many people don’t see the fabric thinning because they’ve been trained to equate “order” with more center/centrality, more control, more transactions. In a sense, they’re asking for hotter water without realizing they’re the frog.
The trick, I think, is not just more parables but lived counter-examples. Stories of networks where repair happens, where commitments hold without a centralized overseer, where trust density actually makes things stronger the more they are shared.
People change when the hear their peers changed.
We need YOUR story and everyone else's stories of trust ... and we need them right now.
In Igbo villages before colonial disruption, in Mweria work parties, even in modern-day credit unions, people already know this logic. The parables matter, yes .... but when people feel what it’s like to be carried by a network instead of trapped by a contract, the consciousness begins to restore itself.
Maybe the real work is to keep telling both kinds of stories: the “frog parables” that warn of collapse, and the “weaving parables” that show how the center can hold differently. But mostly for me ... it's the personal stories that matter the most. Told in honesty and care.
What I find inspiring with grassroots economics and many other forms of co-operation, is that it is a 're-commoning' - an ACTIVE regeneration/resurfacing REMEMBERING of how things can be shared. And what particularly interests me as a realist, is whether these systems will actually out perform extractive, commons enclosing ones...i.e actually be more resilient, regenerative, and reproduce faster...industrial agriculture seems such a prime example...like how is the MATH of regenerative practices still not blindingly obviously better? And I suppose it's the state capture by the fossil fuel industry, that almost requires farmers to pour oil in the form of fertilizer, on their fields...
The distinction between systems that prevent failure and those that repair trust is very important. Thank you for sharing this article ♥️
Over the past weekend, I finished a re-read of Things Fall Apart. I was left with thoughts and questions so beautifully echoed in this article. You state, “The question is whether we can design systems that remember how to heal.” It’s also interesting because I wonder what we have to learn from the Western systems that have unraveled indigenous systems of care. I wonder how the Western systems have been able to maintain and repair while operating from a relatively low density of trust. Perhaps, there is a value beyond trust that upkeeps the Western core. Nonetheless, I am still considering how we can regenerate systems that can heal. Thank you!
Western systems do operate with a relatively low density of trust, and yet they’ve found ways to persist. My sense is that what has “held” them together isn’t resilience so much as external enforcement .. i.e. law, surveillance, contracts, hierarchies, militaries, and financial extraction. In other words, what looks like durability is often just coercion substituting for trust....
That’s not to dismiss it ... there are lessons to be learned in how Western systems and technologies scale and enforce memory. But the cost has been alienation and fragility: when coercive scaffolding cracks (financial crises, wars, climate shocks), repair is slow because the underlying relational fabric isn’t dense enough.
Which is why I keep coming back to your final line: regeneration. The challenge is not to copy Western durability, but to weave systems where healing itself is the core protocol ... where trust density, memory, and reciprocity make rupture survivable without coercion.
This is the work before us! I have to take deep breaths and pause.
I’m so glad to be in dialogue with others like you asking these questions.
You are missing the central message of "When Things Fall Apart". There are two radically different catastrophes in the book. The first is when his gun is accidently fired on a sacred day, causing him to lose his farms, wealth, everything. But he is reminded of the traditional saying about kinship, goes to his kin, and slowly heals. That is because the resilience required is already embedded in the system; traditions like Mweria, and the equivalent in your CP system, allow for debt forgiveness, misunderstandings, drought, etc. Lets call that type 1 disaster.
The second catastrophe occurs outside the system: the invasion of the British. That is the event that causes him to take his own life, because colonialism is not simply another case of bad luck, it is dispossession of self-governance, land, even language and customs. Type 2 disaster.
Not sure what would constitute type 2 disaster for CP -- I would say when the government arrests you but they already tried that! Still its a good reminder that we need more folks in government, researchers in policy and perhaps even lobbying to get state and federal policy to align better with cooperatives, local currencies, CP networks and other forms of grassroots economics.
good to pull that out more. Type 1 (inside the system): shocks like accident, drought, or debt are absorbed by dense kinship ... Mweria‑style repair (forbearance, redistribution, mediation). Type 2 (outside the system): colonial imposition (loss of self-governance) breaks the fabric itself.
For Commitment Pools, Type 1 is routine and repairable; Type 2 would be criminalization/hostile regulation, platform shutdowns, or seizure. The antidote is policy and redundancy (forkability): cooperative/legal shields, federated multi-pool networks, offline/low-tech fallbacks, and allies in government and research.
Yes ... let’s organize for legal alignment so CPs, local currencies, and co-ops are protected and recognized - but don't wait for it to happen either...
Very inspiring Will. I do sincerely believe though that, rather like the fable of the frog slowly being boiled alive by cold water slowing becoming hot that many do not see the center falling apart. They see a need for more of a center. More power. More transactional control. We therefore need more frog boiling parables which can help people restore the consciousness lost! Any Ideas?
(yup) Many people don’t see the fabric thinning because they’ve been trained to equate “order” with more center/centrality, more control, more transactions. In a sense, they’re asking for hotter water without realizing they’re the frog.
The trick, I think, is not just more parables but lived counter-examples. Stories of networks where repair happens, where commitments hold without a centralized overseer, where trust density actually makes things stronger the more they are shared.
People change when the hear their peers changed.
We need YOUR story and everyone else's stories of trust ... and we need them right now.
In Igbo villages before colonial disruption, in Mweria work parties, even in modern-day credit unions, people already know this logic. The parables matter, yes .... but when people feel what it’s like to be carried by a network instead of trapped by a contract, the consciousness begins to restore itself.
Maybe the real work is to keep telling both kinds of stories: the “frog parables” that warn of collapse, and the “weaving parables” that show how the center can hold differently. But mostly for me ... it's the personal stories that matter the most. Told in honesty and care.