The Commons Matrix

The following comes from Peter Challen:

The Commons Matrix

Attend to
a common theory of value,

integrally rooted

in both spirit and matter,

found in

philosophy, anthropology,

linguistics, communication, organisational behaviour;

in technology, history, culture,

environmentalism, economics,

law and political theory:

to explore and expose

many of the leading myopic

extant presuppositions

in our present systems,

heading for decline.

Recovering our mutuality,

note ahead the...

QUILLIGAN SEMINARS

Away with straight-edged rulers

to save a fractal universe.

In nature's persistent emergence

treat money and land as social commons,

like air and oceans,

the bio-sphere and deep deposits

of past storing centuries,

to serve all generations ahead.

Join our proto-type of

systemic recovery and renewal

at the Quilligan Seminars

in twelve days of May,

2012.

The Quilligan Seminars are an intensive social innovation project of 12 interrelated seminars in 12 days involving leading NGOs and thinks tanks. This series will foster an educational and research collaboration for facilitating transition to a more equitable world. It will demonstrate how differing starting points can lead to a commons ground. You can participate in one or more of the seminars.

James Quilligan is a globally renowned commons theorist/activist, policy analyst, and founder of the Global Commons Trust. He writes: "Modern economics has turned labour into a utility of the market and government. But the principles of the commons (people's negotiation of their own norms and rules for the management of social and natural resources) show us how to transcend utilitarian economics by transforming the traditional division of labour. New forms of value are already being created by these commons, whether they are traditional (irrigation ditches, pastures, indigenous cultures) or emerging (intellectual property, social networks, collaborative innovation)." To learn more about Mr. Quilligan’s work, click here.

What is the role of the commons in the economy?

Rev. Canon Peter Challen of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice is one of the organisers for an intensive social innovation project of 12 interrelated seminars in 12 days involving leading NGOs and thinks tanks. What is the role of the commons in the economy? will foster an educational and research collaboration for facilitating transition to a more equitable world. It will demonstrate how differing starting points can lead to a commons ground. You can participate in one or more of the seminars.

James Quilligan is a globally renowned commons theorist/activist, policy analyst, and founder of the Global Commons Trust. He writes: "Modern economics has turned labour into a utility of the market and government. But the principles of the commons (people's negotiation of their own norms and rules for the management of social and natural resources) show us how to transcend utilitarian economics by transforming the traditional division of labour. New forms of value are already being created by these commons, whether they are traditional (irrigation ditches, pastures, indigenous cultures) or emerging (intellectual property, social networks, collaborative innovation)." To learn more about Mr. Quilligan’s work, click here.

James Quilligan's work on managing local and global commons is developing understanding of how in a commons-based economy:

• consumers become the producers of their own resources
• trusts set a cap on the extraction and use of a resource to preserve it for future generations
• businesses flourish by renting a proportion of the resources outside the cap for extraction and production
• governments tax a percentage of these rents, funding a basic income for citizens and the restoration of depleted resources
• the power of decision-making returns to the people, enabling them to participate in the decisions that affect them directly
• the traditional property ownership model is eclipsed by a trusteeship model of sustainability, quality of life and well-being
• the lessons of community based resource management have major implications for post-liberal forms of multilateralism and global governance.

He will present a series of 12 seminars, workshops and other educational events during his 12 day visit to London in the Spring. (Look up details here.) Those events will be convened by a variety of organisations. Confirmed conveners include:Finance Innovation Lab, School of Economic Science, St. James Piccadilly, IPPR, NEF, Civil Society Forum, and School of Commoning. The kick-off seminar will be hosted in the House of Commons.

Starting from many different points of engaged intellectual and scholarly concern, research and practice, the various seminars will explore the understanding of the Commons as perceived from each seminar’s perspective, guided by James Quilligan. Together, they represent an emergent curriculum of theoretically grounded and action-oriented studies in the key economic, political, and social issues of the Commons.

During his visit, these seminars will examine together such questions as:

• Economically, what steps are needed to adjust the rules of the present interest-driven, debt-based economy to the sustainable targets of our natural, social and cultural commons?
• Politically, how can the philosophy of individual wealth (ownership, division of labor, reciprocity) be reconciled with the interests of collective wealth (trusteeship, the unity of producers and consumers, complementarity)?
• Socially, would it be possible for people's trusts to create sustainable limits to protect our commons for future generations, then rent the remaining resources to business for production and distribution, and provide these revenues to government for the funding of social dividends and the restoration of the depleted commons?

The vital and complex questions introduced in these seminars do not have easy answers. The investigation into how the “commons” may connect and synergise the economic, social, philosophical, spiritual, and political spheres, and facilitate the great transition to an equitable and sustainable world, is an ongoing challenge.

"All I have is yours, and all you have is mine ..."

"All I have is yours, and all you have is mine ..." Within the Godhead, Jesus says, all things are held in common. There is no ownership as everything is shared or continually and mutually exchanged. This is, at least, part of what it means for the Father and the Son to be one."

That is how the latest Gospel Reflection by Jonathan Evens for the Mission in London's Economy website begins. To read the remainder, which suggests some contemporary economic applications that derive from this understanding of the Trinity, click here.

FiLE update

Emerging from FiLE's autumn seminars were two proposals for further action.

 

The first involved participation in the Finance Innovation Lab, an open environment in which people can come together to explore, innovate and evolve the financial system so that it sustains people and planet (http://thefinancelab.ning.com/). Jonathan Evens has recently joined the Finance Innovation Lab (and, in particular, Peter Challen's 'Faith & Philosophy influencing Finance' group) and will aim to input from a FiLE perspective.

The second was for a centre blending social enterpreneurship, spirituality and work as part of the Olympics legacy, an idea that is being taking forward by a Development Group. As a FiLE representative, Jonathan Evens is now part of the core reference group for this new initiative which has been named Sophia Hubs. Sophia Hubs are intended to be incubators and catalysts for new social and economic enterprises harnessing the wisdom and energy of spiritual traditions. If you would be interested in exploring further the idea of Sophia Hubs please contact the Development Group at tel: 0207-766-1129 or email: sophiahubs@yahoo.com.

 

Jonathan Evens, as FiLE Chair, has also agreed to be a signatory of a letter to the Independent Commission on Banking, initiated by Peter Challen. The letter argues that "without radical reform our banking system is likely to fail again and again with various dangerous social, environmental and political consequences including, not least, ceaseless magnification of the gap between the rich and all others." A basic sense of self-preservation requires that we tackle the root of this problem, that is, the processes of money creation and the letter urges the Commission to take another hard look at proposals that address the fundamental question of how and by whom and for what purposes money is created.

 

Finally, Jonathan Evens has been asked to speak at a Taste of Religion event organised by the Employers Forum of Belief and KPMG which will cover religious festivals. Other speakers include Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer, Khola Hasan, Shaunaka Rishi Das, Dr Satinder Singh and Simon Webley. More details can be found at: http://www.efbelief.org.uk/events.php/31/taste-of-religion.

Faith in Business features seminars

The Renegotiating 'value' seminar series is being featured in the Faith in Business quarterly. The current issue includes a summary of the Profit v Prophet seminar, while the next issue may summarise the Bonus v Pro Bono seminar. A previous issue of Faith in Business included a copy of the shared faiths response to the credit crunch facilitated by Faiths in London's Economy.

The Faith in Business Journal aims to:

• help readers discover a fuller sense of God's purpose and hope in their working lives, integrating their faith, their work and their worship
• highlight the necessity and value of wealth creation within God's creative and redemptive purposes, while bringing the processes of wealth creation under careful scrutiny
• encourage individuals to apply Christian values in their work, and help them to resolve the moral dilemmas they often face
• persuade the leaders of industry, commerce, finance and public services to operate within the framework of Christian principles and values.
• assist church leaders in understanding key issues in the changing economic environment, so that where challenge is called for it is based on an informed and up-to-date appraisal
• urge the churches to support people in their daily work and to declare the value of all honest work in generating wealth for the common good.

More, more, more

The Friday Essay from The Independent by John Lanchester and entitled 'More, more, more' is well worth a read, partly because it critiques our overconsumption in the light of the world's dwindling resources and also because it highlights the value of relationships in providing real richness for our lives. Here are some highlights from Lanchester's essay:

"... "Richness is a relationship between two people." This observation, by the Italian economist Ferdinando Galiani, was first brought to my attention by James Buchan, and it seems to me that it is one of the truest things ever said about money ...

much of the discourse about money is in some sense abstract, i.e. it is self-referential and circular – people talking about money in terms of its effects within the world of money. When we think about it in the non-abstract, i.e. the effects of money in the wider world, the one idea we need to hold in our minds is that richness is a relationship. Richness, the idea of having plenty of money, is not an inherent state, nor is it an absolute state. Richness is about the amount of money you have compared with the people you see around you. It's about where you are in relation to others, and where they are in relation to you, and whether you can have the things you want and other people have ...

We are a desiring species. We want. It goes very deep in us. Perhaps we should just accept that we want, and we particularly want what we can see that other people have but we don't.

Unfortunately, we can't do that, for two reasons. First, the incitement of envy is built into the mechanics of capitalism and advertising. We are made to want more and more, not just as an accidental feature of modern life but as a fundamental principle of the modern economy ...

At the moment, we are stuck on what is called the "hedonic treadmill": as you have more and more, your idea of what it would be to be happy keeps receding just out of reach. It's always the next pay rise, the next purchase, the next place you move to or where you go on holiday, which will make you happy. We in the West can do something that no people in history have done: we can show the world that we know when we have enough. As the planet runs out of resources, due mainly to the fact that everyone on it wants to live an equivalent lifestyle to those of us in the West, this lesson would have the potential to offer a new model for how we should live. If the people who have everything are content to live with less, maybe the whole world will consider the virtues of knowing when to stop. We have no choice other than to learn this at some point, because the planet is not an all-you-can-eat buffet. It's going to run out.

We are either going to be saved from the problem of over-consumption by some magic technological fix, or we are going to face planetary crisis, or we are going to learn to consume less. We have to start thinking about when we have sufficient – sufficient money, sufficient stuff – and whether we really need the things we think we do, beyond what we already have. "La ricchezza è una ragione." We are richer and more fortunate than most of the people who have ever lived. We should look less at what our next-door neighbours have, and more at what the rest of the planet dreams of having. Then, we should try to learn to be content where we are. In a world running out of resources, the most important ethical and political and ecological idea can be summed up in one simple word: "enough"."

John Lanchester will be delivering a sermon for the School of Life on 'Enough' this Sunday - see www.theschooloflife.com.  

The Genius of Savings Banks

Peter Heslam has posted a short piece on The Genius of Savings Banks at the Transforming Business website.

Transforming Business is a multi-disciplinary research and development project at the University of Cambridge. Surrounding it is a growing network of Christian business ethicists, economists, practitioners, consultants, psychologists, educators and opinion formers in research institutions and companies around the world. They are united in their passion to integrate their faith with their knowledge and skills to address the most pressing social, economic, and moral challenge of our time: the elimination of poverty within the constraints of finite natural resources.

Also on the site are details of Heslam's latest book, Transforming Capitalism: Entrepreneurship
and the Renewal of Thrift. This is the project's latest resource on the role of faith and entrepreneurship in creating a better world. The global economic crisis has confirmed the suspicion of many that business is irredeemably selfish and greedy. Against this background, Heslam highlights the potential of transforming capitalism for the good of the planet and its people. Only thirty-two pages long, the book is designed for busy people, taking only around ninety minutes to read. Commendations from eminent business leaders include the following:

'A compelling and timely call to a thrift-based capitalism that is truly transformative.' Dr Kim Tan, international entrepreneur and co-founder of theTransformational Business Network

'Healthy economies require entrepreneurship and investment. This booklet presents a cogent and lively argument that thrift provides both with a powerful stimulus.' Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell and Anglo-American

'Read this booklet to discover how thrift stimulates human flourishing.' Prof Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, CEO, The Roosevelt Group