WEAll Voices Community

[Kevin]

I would agree with your first statement. Further, I think the author makes a clear call for all of us to engage in what she calls “hyper-self-reflectivity,” and recognize how embedded modernity is in our methods of approaching our activism.

The metaphor of hospicing is probably the most important. Because raciial capitalism isn’t just something that happens “out there,” it is embedded in each and every one of us who grew up in its culture. Most telling I have found is how common capitalistic behaviours abound in activist communities and their approaches to the polycrisis.

If we want an economy based on love and care, why wouldn’t our approaches reflect that? It’s understandable to have complicated feelings about this process - to be angry and wish the destruction of racial capitalism. However, as someone who had to go through the process of hospicing an abusive narcissistic elder. What I learned was that the only way I lose in that activity is I become like them and give up on who I want to be in this world. So Ii cared for them, and I helped see to them passing with dignity because that’s who I wanted to be. And that was more important.

There’s a quote that I plan for my next tattoo: “The best revenge is none. Don’t become like the people who hurt you.”

[Toddsqui]

I appreciate this insight and understand where it’s coming from. But I also get deeply distressed with the ways the system conceals itself and thereby hides a lot of violence–violence that seems almost nonexistent, benign, calm…-- that doesn’t even go mentioned in our present discussions about what needs changing. The national discussion is largely dominated by a few key players who are either corporate sellouts or corporations themselves.

As important as it is to read books, it’s also important to read around books and the contexts in which they are created. On this front, I appreciate that Vanessa freely admits that she is complicit in the establishment as a professor at Brown. I also appreciate the bus metaphor that she uses frequently to speak on the multiple selves. However, writing a book like this is not “risky” in the least and could possibly be just another distraction from the very real changes that need to happen now, in the present tense, that would cause at the very least some discomfort to the establishment. I feel like Vanessa speaks to a primarily upper middle class readership, that although her suggestions are widely applicable, they’re still pretentious and self-satisfied. We are living in times of great violence, and just because we don’t see the evil in front of our eyes does not mean that (A) it isn’t there and (B) that we should just sit back and try to embody the change that we seek like monks. This is not to say that so much is in our control either, but a book like this tends to really perform a disservice to those who have the stamina to enact real change… a book that I feel veers off into self-help and lets us off the hook a little bit.

This is my two cents on the book, but to be fair, I also feel that a book like this also warrants in-person discussion and a fleshing out of the finer points so to speak where people have the space and bandwidth to ruminate and think through what it is they are getting from the book which can be hard to articulate without sufficient time and space. I’m more than happy to have this discussion if others are keen, especially since I learn best when I process books in group discussion. But if this is not to happen, as such things are hard to coordinate and many of us are living in great precarity (myself included), I want to at least make sure that I write this caveat for other readers in this forum to know that this book is (1) controversial and (2) many do not feel it is a north star.

Hope I’ve gotten my points across clearly, but if not, feel free to ask me any questions about what I’ve written above.

I don’t want to become like the violent capitalists who exploit me, and yet, I want to stop injustices where they occur and the utter cruel evil violence they beget. I just feel that living with integrity and a moral compass is just as important (if not more important) than just embodying some ill-defined sense of love and solidarity. Am I wrong? Eager for your thoughts (and others).

Thanks in advance to anyone who has read this far. I appreciate it.

[judybackhouse]

I tried to find out more about job guarantee schemes online, but I can’t find a simple explanation and would love to be pointed to one. Having spent 60 years in South Africa watching ongoing efforts at job creation fail and unemployment get worse every year, I am intrigued that there may be a simple solution out there that has been overlooked

[Kevin]

I think your criticisms are fair, and I don’t hink that it’s written to be a “North star.” However, I do think it’s an important lens through which folks working toward change need to self-interrogate. What’s not contraversial because we’ve experienced over and over in these movements, and I have a few decades of experiencing this, is the centering of modernity defaults - explicitly colonial and imperialistic modes of abusing power that are prevelant in academies like the University of Vidtoria, where Dr. Andreotti is now.and the instuttions and orgaanizations that dominate this work.

It is sometimes surprising how our movements will marginalize core aspects of the work reminiscent of the very capitalists they try to work against. Alongside the environmental crisis is a class crisis, a White supremacy crisis, an economic crisis, a gender crisis, hence the term “polycrisis.” All of it intertwined with the same myth of separability at its root…

And while I do feel that Dr. Andreotti’s book is an important frist step in being able to recognize out failure of direction, it itsn’t the direction itself. Andreotti does not offer answers, just a lens for seeing ourselves more clearly that we might take stock, and reorient on a more effective path.

Libieration practice is another piece of the puzzle. “How” we do this work. What do we mean when we say “wellbeing”? We can come up with all of the metrics we want, but at its heart, it is inherently subjective, and different people in different parts of the world see wellbeing very differently and in very different contexts. There is an art and practice to accommodating and facilitating pluralism in solidarity where a system could be said to exist that enables wellbeing on a global scale. Hell, there’s an art and practice to facilitating and organizing on a small local scale in a meaningful way that is nourishing a nurturing to the people involved.

This is where I would love to see the effort focused: on specific, practical, localized experiments with wellbeing culture. As we learned when the pandemic hit, our work became intensely local. There were very specific people with very specific needs that had to be addressed just for them to eat. It’s not hard to extrapolate from that experience (that I spent close to the frontlines of community service delivery in a local neighbourhood group alliance) to anticipate the needs that may emerge from the spread of authoritarianism and the subsequent drying up on social services on which more people rely on everyday as the modern economy enters its death throes. We need to be able to turn to each other, but we need established infrastructure when that happens. Other agencies struggled to have the impact that our org had because they didn’t have relationships already built with the people on the ground in the neighbourhood. People turned to us because of the trust we have been building over the orgs 8 years of existence. Because of the local partnerships with service providers and the municipality, we were able to coordinate and facilitate the wellbeing of our most at-risk neighbourhoods. We knew the people who lived there personally. We could show up with a station wgon full of food and clothing.in their drive way on short notice. And who had what dietary requirments and who were what sizes (how many kids, their names, etc)

That is the impact a system of wellbeing would need to accomplish in functionality, but at scale. In my experience, these networked local relationships are the key. It was in the context of this work that Dr. Andreotti’s book found me, and it rang true for me from what I was seeing in the trenches - even in our work. The recreation of capitalistic tendencies in non-profit - the battle for funding, the gatekeeping and power gaames, the explicit and unconscious deprioritization of marginalized concerns outside of Annual report covers. it was in the way we made choices with finite resources, and in the default practices we used in outreach and needs assessment. We are a part of the polycrisis. We aren’t exempt from it because of our good intentions. We are literally its children embedded with its DNA. Our process should start with being able to account for that lest in our urgent panic to make change we change nothing.

[Toddsqui]

I agree mostly with everything you’ve written @Kevin although I am not sure I would draw the same conclusion that we need organizations that build track records in communities, at least as a broad approach. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s nice if you have a group dedicated to what you’ve described, especially in times of emergencies like the pandemic, but if you’re like me and in a neighborhood where most people are suspicious of these 501(c)(3) type of people or where every day I have to fight just to justify my need for SSI (to cite just a few examples of incompetent bureaucracies I’ve encountered in my own life experience), then you obviously have to look at other options because the organizations I’m thinking of tend to be shaped by class structure and privilege and a shit load of accountability issues. But I guess that’s also why you’re saying we need more exploratory studies on this, which I agree with. But I’m still curious, why is Andreotti’s lens any more important than some other lens? The lens you select may end up being totally arbitrary, no?

And just as a general note to all the readers on this message board, by the way, it’s great that everyone here has 10-, 20-, 30- or even 50- years of experience doing this, that, and the other thing. But can we please explore the possibility that maybe EVERYONE has valid experience to impart on everyone and that even “street experience,” can be as expert as the experience found in board rooms? Just something to consider.

Anyway, I hope my reply to you @Kevin doesn’t come across as rude. I do appreciate you sharing what you’ve learned from your own readings of the world. I’m mostly on board with a lot of what you wrote (no pun intended), but just nitpicking here and there, mostly out of curiosity with your conclusions. Hope you don’t mind.

[Kevin]

Not rude at all. I appreciate the opportunity for exchange. I think the reason why orgs like the one I was a part of work is because they invest the time in the community and become a part of it. They don’t look at us the way they look at the 501(c)(3) types. But it took 8 years of investment. Another aspect is that the groups themselves are formed from the neighbourhoods themselves, they aren’t imposed by a bureaucracy. It’s neighbour with neighbour, and the org has mandate that honours that agency. We would provide a neighbourhood group with resources, including a budget and staff to support the programming they wanted to do. And after 8 years of that work, you have robust local epicenters of community collaboration that are living local wellbeing economies unto themselves.

What I have found about Andreotti’s lens that’s important is its focus on the reality of recognizing that we are a part of a biointelligent metmetabolism and of recognizing that the destruction of our planet started decades ago with the exploitation of the global South. This analysis is embedded in the questions she asks. There are other authers that I thinkare good as well, almost all indigenous. The lens isn’t arbitrary, it’s specific tothose willing to ask hard self-reflective questions about our approach to the polycrisis. I’ve heard other folks dismiss Dr. Andreotti’s work, none have managed to do so in a way that resonated as anything other than an unwillingness to self-investigate. As I was saaying in my conversation above: folks don’t like to intake information that doesn’t already agree with ther own worldview. It’s reason, illustrated very well by my previous conversation, that I said that messaging isn’t an effective tool for systemic change. No one can force anyone to esperince a shift in worldview if they are unwilling or unable to self-investigate and call bullshit on their own approaches when they mirror modernity.

I would love to be a part of a group that unpacks some of the questions in this book. In our community, we’re incorporating liberation practice into sessions that build group resonance, which is so key for community organizing.

In the decades of experiences that we’ve all had, there is clear data-driven analysis on the efficacy of particular approaches. That analysis should be used to clear our lens and refine our process else we spin our wheels. Like my first comment said - I’ve been seeing these same suggestions of strategies circulating for decades even though the datae says they don’t won’t.

I’ve seen and the data on the community-centered approach, and I’ve been a part of it. I’ve seen it work, and I’ve seen the analysis of the data that confirms it. That’s not choosing an arbitrary lens.

I would agree that many people have valid experience to impart. However, board room experience isn’t going to have the same level of validity of the street and vice versa. The specificity of the experience matters. We’ve seen this in pop science where astrophysicists sound like idiots when they try to make “expert” commentary in fields in which they have no direct expertise. Experience DOES have relevance. That should be self-evident.

[Toddsqui]

@Kevin Your projects would probably resonate well with Hilary Cottam who created similar community based enterprises in the UK (as an experiment, mostly). I would highly recommend reading her book, Radical Help (or at least watching her on your favorite video streaming website), and possibly connecting with her too if you haven’t already. She’s someone who would feel resonance with what you’ve described and perhaps become an important ally in the work you’ve dedicated yourself to.

Regarding all of what you’ve written above, thank you for clarifying. Yes, context does matter, and if your work is primarily bottom-up and emergent, a la adrienne maree brown or in this ilk, then I’m not really going to argue because I’m all for design work/justice that is locally based and bottom up (although of course there needs to be some top-down, possibly state-level solutions as well if the state is to continue to exist at all, which it very well may not). I do get wary of those who claim titles in organizational structures though and who unknowingly reinforce hierarchies, even if some hierarchy cannot be avoided. But also there’s this tendency for power to concentrate in certain individuals (or pockets of individuals) with privilege and soon enough it creates a sort of self-reinforcing cycle and an echo chamber and then we’re back with the problem we started with of not being connected to communities and participatory democracy/economics. But I digress since this doesn’t sound like what you’ve described. On the whole, I think the point is well taken, so thank you again.

[Kevin]

@Toddsqui

Hilary Cottam

Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve begun reading the 28 pages of her book that are available for free online while I wait to have an opportunity to purchase it later this week. So far there is a great alignment with the Second Wind theory of change, which I articulated earlier.

Although the majority of our work has been bottom-up, we are explicitly in a top-down process right now as we set up WeAll Canada. The challenge is continuing to center the work in the concepts associated with an entangled self rich with enmeshed relationships and connections rather than an isolated and disconnected, individual self. As well as reemembering that land is a living entity and not a resource of property. I do think that State has run its course as an organizational entity, currently we see that it has been functionally supplanted by the corporation as the fundamental global actor.

I love the work of adrienne maree brown.

We are in a transitional state at the moment, I think. Our experiments need to be able to thrive in the world such as it is, while still gesturing toward a future that we cannot know.

And you are correct, our approach is to foster a pluralism in solidarity, and even the core WeAll Can team is far from a consensus on the direction and path of the organization. We’re focusing primarily on convening invested participants, nurturing collaborative experiements, connecting aligned organizations and people, and continuing a variety of cultural knowledge-building approaches.

It’s mainly about nurturing the soil, and tending the garden that emerges.

[WayneMaceyka]

@Kevin @Toddsqui @JWGCox

I’ve taken the time to read back through many of the comments on this thread, and very much appreciate your perspectives and those of others. I particularly resonated with the idea that this work is emergent and by definition, unknowable. As the holder of a mechanical engineering degree and a sustainable MBA, this takes getting used to.

I just ordered a copy of “Hospicing Modernity” from my local bookstore. The term “hospice” caught my attention as the work we’re doing at the Vermont Prosperity Project, utilizes the two loops model of systems change, which includes a hospice period of time between old and new systems.

Over the past year I’ve read “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer and “Sand Talk” by Tyson Yunkaporta, which continued my learning of how our language and perceived separation from nature contribute to our existing challenges.

I’ve also shifted my perspective from the need for massive, coordinated, thought-altering, marketing campaigns to the need for local relationship building around regenerative and community supporting projects. Sure, it can be a “…both/and…”. The phrase “attraction not promotion” comes to mind as a contributor to movement-building.

I had the privilege of attending the Executive Champions Workshop with Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge, Melanie Goodchild, and Arawana Hayashi, over the summer of 2023. I marveled at the time invested to create a space to be vulnerable and connect deeply with participants. I imagined this kind of work among community members and various levels of corporate and political leadership, wondering what might come of it.

All this said, I’m struggling mightily with my own place in the existing system, with personal and family habits that are not aligned with the health of the Earth, and therefore ourselves, and what actions I take.

I appreciate this community and the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Comedy helps me move forward, perhaps some people will enjoy this classic Monty python scene.

[Kevin]

I like your take on " attraction vs promotion." And yes, definitely a both/and scenario. I overstated my position on messaging out of frustration. There is definitely a place for messaging strategies, I’m just aware that it can’t be THE point of leverage, or the primary strategy for systemic change. I think that its primary purpose, much like protests, is to help us find each other and build relationships among those folks already looking for a different path forward. To that end, the audience that one is messaging to is key.

In this case, I think “preaching to the choir” is actually the way to go. There is an emerging ecosystem of aligned organizations and people that would benefit from being networked together in a solidarity of pluralism. As the current modern paradigm crumbles, this ecosystem can become the “floating door” I was referencing earlier in my Titanic analogy.

One of themain reasons that I think composting our default modernity patterns is so important is exactly what you shared so generaously: they would have looking for purity in our cause where there is none. We are transitional. We can’t extricate ourselves from complicity in these systems of destruction, and it’s pointless to beat ourselves up about it. While we’r eworking toward a better world, we’re still going to have to pay the bills in the one in which we now live. Reconciling these two worlds will often mean dislodging our default that ar steeped in modernity: our perfectionism, our urgency, our need to be innocent and pure. Being an integral part of the world means accepting that we aren’t just becoming one with the butterflies and lillies, but also the decay and the poison. And that also implies not demonizing modernity, because that is a part of us too. There are generative elements that we will want to keep and maintain in healthier ways, as well as non-generative, destructive elements that we will want to shift away from. It will be messy and nuanced, not clear cut (we don’t want clear cuts!). We’ll need to be patient with ourselves as we heal while doing this work - and we will have to make space to heal, or we will sew our woundedness into our future.

[VladBunea]

FYI, a very interesting article that talks degrowth, wellbeing, donut economics, strategy: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14730952241258693
Achieving “satiation” is the key. In my opinion it applies to lifestyles, business, narratives.

[Toddsqui]

I’m loving all of the Degrowth references and recommendations. I’m also curious if anyone has been following anything relating to “alternative hedonism,” (phrase taken from Kate Soper’s book, Post-Growth Living). We need to de-grow, yes, and we also need to make it look good, even sexy.

Curious if anyone has encountered anything that fits the bill!

Hope this post doesn’t get flagged for unacceptable content! I’m just borrowing inspiration from great thinkers!

[Oliver]

I was given this link months ago and happened to revisit it the other day, and the list seems to be quite actively curated: Degrowth Database

[MichaelB]

@AndrewGaines I think your posts may have gotten a little lost due to the formatting of the replies on this site. I also ended up in the WeAll ecosystem after arriving at the same conclusion as you - that mindset change inevitably precedes and leads to systemic and practical change - and I came here looking for ways to become a consistent advocate to lead local conversations that will inspire that shift while hoping others are doing the same in their communities. In short, to “take action”.

So far I’ve been disappointed to learn that there are very few clear routes to take action, and even within this forum as evidenced by @Kevin and @JWGCox’s debate, there’s certainly no established outline for advocacy and it’s unclear if advocacy even works at all in countering the massive machine of entrenched growth culture.

It sure is frustrating for someone like me with a 15+ year business career to be lead here, after many years of introspection, after finally understanding the root of my dissatisfaction with it, and to be ready to reform my work into something more purpose-based, just to find dead-end or circular conversations.

I want to know: What is ACTION? It seems you suggest doing what I, and many of us, already do - talk to people. What can I do besides talk to my friends and family and shout into the void on social media and this forum? IMO that doesn’t get us anywhere - most people don’t want to fill their days with uncomfortable conversations, and even fewer will change their minds over a conversation. The WSJ recently published a really fascinating glimpse into just how rigid people’s convictions are in a study called “We Put 12 Strangers In a Group Chat About the Economy… It Got Personal.” Link is probably paywalled, sorry.

From looking at your site, it seems that your organization (and dozens or even hundreds of others directly or tangentially associated with WeAll) believes that you can turn around that taxi-driver pessimism you mentioned in your article on a global scale if We All just say the right things to everyone we know. But that will never happen in reality, and would take longer than we have time left on the planet.

Besides, those interested in being ambassadors of the Wellbeing Economy don’t need more convincing - they already found their way here, are already mobilized, and are ready to take some next steps (if only they were clear). I was saying elsewhere in this thread, the audience that needs to be reached is not the ones that come here on their own - it is the majority of the population that is currently unwilling to listen and not sufficiently motivated to impose responsible limits on ourselves.

That said, I used to be a staunch Randian capitalist. I believed my individuality was especially strong, that I could outwork everyone, become a titan of industry. But my belief in the system was shaken. I did everything “right” and never had enough. I’ve changed. People CAN change. I didn’t need a lifetime in NGO’s, think tanks, policy work, climate science, or philosophy, and yet I’ve still arrived here. Most people are like me, just trying to get by in a world that feels stacked against them. They can get here too, when they realize there is no “winning” this game by continuing to play it.

It won’t be a website that makes that click all at once, or articles, or documentaries, though there’s an important place for all of those. It will be curiosity in themselves, in their sadness and depression and struggles, their feelings of failure or inadequacy, their fears about money or environment, that sparks a fire to understand their role in the current system. EVERYONE feels these things - even the rich. We are unanimously united in a state of discontent. In other words, we feel “stuck”.

I don’t think we need more talk and talk and talk saying “psst the world is burning, pass it on.” We need to ask, not tell. We need to ask WHY? And instead of asking why the world is burning… ask “why are you STUCK?”

Ask WHY again and again, to every subsequent answer, over a long enough time, I’m 100% confident everyone that honestly tries to answer will end up here. (For clarity, when I say “here” I don’t mean WeAll, per se, I mean with a Wellbeing Economy mindset - call it what you will).

Personally, I do have an idea for action. It’s simple. It’s funny. It’s viral. It’s multi-modal and multi-lingual. It’s organic (literally). It’s emblematic of our biggest problems. If I share the idea it will be dissected and analyzed and quite possibly rejected simply because it can’t be fully explained with reason. But neither can our current system, and that’s kind of the point. At least if it takes off, everyone here will know what it is

[Michael]

Hi @MichaelB .

Thanks for your message. Do please share the idea for action. WEAll’s mantra is togetherness over agreement. We are not interested in the vanity of small differences, but, we know, even on this site (with hopefully like-minded folk), it can appear.

My point is that by sharing your proposed action, those that choose to see common cause can join you and thus we are moving beyond just words.

Thanks,

Michael

p.s. Do let me know if you are interested in the business space as I plan to push forward (with a group already forming) more action-orientated work in the business ownership/governance space during 2025. There’s actually a channel set up for that. I thought it might be of interest, given your background.

[nelacadi]

hi,

Hopefully this is the right section to post this.
I wanted to share a slide from my course, over a recent session named after “Political strategy and unilateral decolonisation” led by Jason Hickel

it was interesting to learn that in the UK, leading with the “wellbeing economy” narrative is better received, however he had a point that the term is apolitical and non-controversial. In some way, it feels like the term “wellbeing” resonates more with those in the Global North.

I am just curious to hear from people about this matter.

[JonBuckland]

Peronally I am intrigued to know what your idea for action is so that we can try it out!

[VladBunea]

@nelacadi This is interesting and not surprising. Rich humans in the Global North do not want to give up their privileges. “Wellbeing economics” suggests we can have a better economy and keep lifestyle privileges. But that’s a delusion.

Degrowth is honest about this. A reduction of the material footprint of lifestyles in the North is mandatory. So, if using the word “degrowth” causes delays, we can switch to “wellbeing” BUT demand the same thing: a reduction of the material footprint in the GN.

Can you give us more context? Who was surveyed in that LSE study?

[JWGCox]

@VladBunea Mandatory. Who will enforce it? Stalin 2.0?

You know my thoughts on Degrowth. A red rag to a bull with its negative connotations. @nelacadi I’m not surprised with the findings. I’m sure your fellow students aren’t all 'rich humans in the Global North.’

Unless we live in a dictatorship or absolute monarchy/emperor, our only hope is persuasion. Language matters in a democracy. Hearts as well as minds.

[Kevin]

I’m not sure if this commentof “vanity of small differences” was meant as a shot at me, but I’m pretty sure that kind of backhandedness isn’t indicative of “togetherness.” Of course I may be misreading this comment, but it certainly seems like there is an expectation of homogeneity within that comment and not a pluralisim of approaches representing the actual views of the wide variety of experiences and approaches that make up the true scene of wellbeingeconomics across the world.

I would have thought it valuable to point out when folks are offering stratgeies that have failed for 40 years straight. Wouldn’t that be how we learn from each other and advance the cause? Isn’t that supposed to be one of the benefitss of having a space like this for dialogue? Or are we expected to remain silent in these situations? I though the dialogue between myself and JWGCox was ultimately productive.

Fear of conflict, though understandable, is counter-productive. This is either an honest space of respectful dialogue or an oppressed space when innovation is impossible.