Denizen

In this episode we address a foundational topic: governance. Governance refers to how we make decisions and act in groups, whether that be within a nation-state, a corporation, a community group, or a household. Today's challenges require collective action at a global scale. What factors should we keep in mind as we architect governance processes in various contexts?Our guest for this episode is Forrest Landry, philosopher, writer, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. Forrest worked closely with Daniel Schmachtenberger and Jordan Hall in the Game B movement, where he focused on questions of governance. This is a core topic that informs many upcoming episodes, including social media governance, delegative democracy, corporate governance, and DAOs.In this conversation, Jenny and Forrest discuss:What is governance [4:39]Tribal size and Dunbar's number [7:50]Challenges with governance at scale [12:42]Group vs. individual intelligence [16:36]Embodied vs. abstract knowledge [18:05]Bias towards action [25:52]The epistemic process [31:41]Knowledge as process [33:24]Information, scale, and technology [36:45]Limitations of information [40:13]Multi-polar traps [42:39]Dynamics of capitalism [48:35]Arrow's theorem [57:58]Ephemeral group process [59:28]Phase parallax and the importance of diversity [1:03:48]Right size for group process [1:09:02]Governance and identity [1:17:22] To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

Who are the great thinkers of the past and what can we learn from them? In this episode we cover the life and work of Buckminster Fuller, who was an architect, inventor, futurist, and prolific writer. Our guest is Amanda Joy Ravehill, former Executive Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute.The conversation explores:Who was Buckminster Fuller? [2:38]Buckmister Fuller's archive, The Chronophile[4:26]Converting from a zero sum to a win for all game dynamic [6:16]Amanda's tattoo of Buckminster Fuller [7:48]"You never change things by fighting the existing reality" [9:43]Four characteristics of design science: comprehensive [11:18]Four characteristics of design science: anticipatory [15:10]Four characteristics of design science: design [16:30]Four characteristics of design science: science [17:33]Polymaths vs. specialists [18:33]Knowledge as wealth [20:08]Bucky and universal basic income [21:27]The need for the dissolution of nation states [24:08]Spaceship earth metaphor [24:58]Paradigm shifts and the role of art [27:12]The concept of the trim tab [31:10] Bucky works and ideas mentioned in the episode:Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and NeedsOperating Manual for Spaceship EarthSynergeticsGrunch of GiantsEducation AutomationDymaxion MapOther mentions:Moral Politics, George LakoffDon't Think of an Elephant, George LakoffDesign Science Primer, Medard Gabel and David HeeneyWendell Berry To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

In this episode we do a deep dive on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT stems from an alternative story of money which has significant implications for governments in countries that have sovereignty over the currency it issues. Under MMT, spending does not face financial constraints, taxes and bonds do not fund government budgets, federal deficits and debt are not problematic, and the lines between fiscal and monetary policy blur completely.We were fortunate to be joined by Andres Bernal, leading MMT proponent and former advisor to help us understand the essential topic. In this conversation Jenny and Andres cover:Two stories of the origin of money [3:04]Money as a social construct [9:58]MMT defined [12:46]Currency issuers vs. currency users [15:15]Spending and its relationship to taxes [16:00]Reconsidering federal deficits[16:44]Monetary sovereignty and MMT [17:21]Hyperinflation and productive capacity [20:15]MMT and the role of taxation [23:36]MMT and bonds [26:41]MMT and monetary policy [30:15]Rejecting the monetarist view of the inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation [33:43]MMT and inflation [35:55]Drivers of today's high inflation rates [41:55]MMT and a Job Guarantee [50:17]Job guarantee vs. guaranteed income [55:04]De-growth vs. post-growth [59:39]Current MMT landscape [1:01:53]Common misconceptions about MMT [1:03:14] ResourcesStephanie Kelton’s Ted TalkThe Deficit Myth, Stephanie KeltonL. Randall Wray - Modern Money Theory for Beginners L. Randall Wray lecture gets into the origin story of moneyL. Randall Wray’s introductory lecture from an economist’s perspective.“Seven Replies to the Critiques of Modern Monetary Theory” Eric Tymoigne, December 2021The Case for a Job Guarantee, video with Ravlina Tcherneva a main advocate for the policy which is a major component of MMT www.MoneyontheLeft.org is a useful resource for podcasts and essays  To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

In this episode, Jenny and Jordan Hall discuss their experiences and systemic perspectives as parents in modern society.This conversation covers:Unraveling the meaningfulness of becoming a parent [3:01]Exploring interrelationships between parents, kids, extended family, and community [7:15]"Stewarding the soul of another human being" [9:55]Some historical and cultural contexts of parenting today (Game A) [11:55]Riane Eisler's work on Partnerism [22:23]Elaborating the concept of Game A parenting [24:33]How preschools can help us be better parents [35:24]Exploring the ideals and constraints of Game B parenting [36:47]Finding the right relationship between parenting and professional identities [56:00]Prioritizing both parents in the next wave of feminism [58:37]Framing a design question for evolving the interconnected systems of parenting [1:04:24] To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

In this episode, Marta Ceroni joins us to discuss systems thinking. The focus of our conversation is the life and work of Donella Meadows, a distinguished systems and environmental thinker in the mid-late 20th century. Ceroni stewards Meadows' archives and furthers her work as co-director at the Academy for Systems Change. In our conversation, Marta and Jenny discuss Meadow's life, the key attributes of complex systems, and some of the leverage points to influence the outcomes of a system. They talk about the importance of information flows, being conscious of paradigms, and how we can move out of our heads and into our bodies to inform systems change."We can't control systems or figure them out, but we can dance with them" [3:30]Marta's background [5:35]Meadows' background, education, and travels abroad [9:22]Key attributes of a system [15:26]Leverage points to change a system [22:00]Importance and power dynamics of information flows [22:24]Meadows' highest-ranked leverage points [24:11]Realizing the paradigm that there are paradigms [30:21]Moving beyond the intellect to the embodied aspects of systems thinking [32:45]The impacts of trauma and trauma-healing in a system [37:52]Meadows' envisioning talk and guided practice [40:49]Meadows' ecovillage [43:26]About the Academy for Systems Change [49:41]Resources:The Donella Meadows Project at the Academy for Systems Change stewards an archive of her life and workCobb Hill the on-going ecovillage that was her work and visionDenizen's summary of Meadow's work, Lessons from Donella Meadows.Notable writings and talks from Donella Meadows:Thinking in Systems: A Primer this short and accessible book covers her essentials for systems thinkingDancing with Systems this essay outlines some of her most essential ideasLimits to Growth (1972) she was the lead author of this pioneering study about the sustainability of economic growthEnvisioning a Sustainable World a speech by Meadows that offers the experience of visioning the world we want to bring into beingVideo archives of her teaching To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

In this episode, we look at the role of art in activism and social change. Our guest, Aaron Huey, has created visuals for many of the most important movements of our time, from climate change to indigenous rights to economic justice.We talk about Huey's background as a National Geographic photojournalist, his 2010 TED Talk about indigenous rights, the role of visual art and activism, why street art is particularly impactful, space hacking, and how design thinking integrates into his work.This episode covers:Huey's background [2:12]His 2010 TED Talk about indigenous rights [3:25]His transition from photojournalism into activism [5:14]How street art effectively confronts people, and "space hacking" [12:21]Building on cultural lineages [14:59]His "We the People" campaign in 2017 [15:57]His follow-on "We the Future" campaign [18:45]Activism as a compass and an invitation [19:40]Designing for movement amplification [21:49]Finding the right relationship with complexity [23:28]Distributing into schools [27:10]Combining analog and digital mediums [31:04]Every dollar is a vote [34:26]How his work is supported [36:27]His cross-country walk in 2002 after 9/11 [39:04]ResourcesShepard Fairey influential artist & activist behind the Obama "Hope" posterAmerica's native prisoners of war Huey's 2010 TED TalkDenizen's Theory of Change essayAmplifier Art's campaignsWe the People & We the Future begun at the 2017 U.S. presidential inaugurationRESET Capitalism & Imperative 21 about reforming capitalismAmplifier's full campaign list To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

In this episode we explore and parse apart three distinct elements of atonement: telling the truth, acknowledging and apologizing for harms, and taking direct action to repair.  As this conversation underscores, atonement represents just one element of a more complex set of reforms necessary to address systemic oppression. Absent a broader effort, the very harms reparations seeks to address would perpetuate.Denise, Sam, and Zaheer's personal reflections make this conversation especially powerful. Denise expresses the labor involved in bringing this topic to light, Sam shares his experience atoning and paying restitution for the crime that had him spend 24 years in prison, and Zaheer highlights the ways in which our mindsets of individuality inhibit our ability to take responsibility for each other.Discussion summary:Framing the topic and this moment for social justice [1:00]The story of Bruce's Beach in Los Angeles; "what is an apology without an action behind it?" [4:36]Missing elements from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and recent activity in the U.S. Congress [7:47]Reparations as part of the broader racial problems and history of the U.S. [9:22]"Do we believe ourselves to be one body?" Addressing and repairing a wound in the body that we all share [11:48]Accounting for atrocities that happened generations ago [17:26]Moving beyond the narrative of the self-made person [22:32]"all men are created equal" and truthtelling [23:27]Cycles of poverty [24:41]Myth of the meritocracy [29:15]Justice and restitution in museum culture [30:33]Assessing the current moment [43:08]What is enough and what is sufficient? [46:39]ResourcesWhy We Need Reparations for Black Americans Brookings, April 2020Current eventsCalifornia Panel Sizes Up Reparations for Black Citizens New York Times, December 1, 2022H.Con.Res.19 - Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation proposed in February 2021; referred to subcommittee in April 2021H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act introduced January 2021Historic referencesThe Radical Republicans movement (1850s)Forty Acres and a Mule & General Sherman's Special Field Orders No. 15 from the Civil War.Bruce's Beach, a black-owned resort that was taken by eminent domain in 1924The Rosewood massacre (1923) and the pursuit of reparations in FloridaGermany's restitution to Holocaust victims (1945-2018)Civil Liberties Act of 1988 reparations to Japanese Americans for internment during WWIITruth and Reconciliation Commission 1996-2003 in South AfricaBooks citedCaste: the Origins of our Discontents by Isabel WilkersonWhen Affirmative Action Was White by Ira KatznelsonPost Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Joy DeGruyFrom Here to Equality, Second Edition: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century by William A. Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen‍‍ To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

Partnerism is both a social and economic system. Based on the principles of equitable partnership, it reaches across the spectrum of society — gender studies, family systems, organizations, cultures, and political systems — as a movement towards a more just and caring society. Overall, it shifts paradigms from hierarchies of domination to hierarchies of actualization.This has been the life's work of our guest for this episode, Riane Eisler. She is a social scientist, cultural historian, attorney, and Holocaust survivor whose transciplinary exploration is making a lasting impact in the social sciences and society-at-large.This episode also features the contributions of three Denizens who are building on Riane's work in distinct ways - movement-building, storytelling, and economic change.In this episode, our deep dive on partnerism includes: Introducing Riane and her story [2:39]Introducing partnerism [4:29]The domination-partnership scale [10:32]Four cornerstones of transitioning from domination to partnership cultures [16:55]Quantifying the economic value of care [22:51]Shifting narratives from domination to partnership [27:10, 39:28]Introducing The Chalice and the Blade [28:21]Nations modeling the shift to partnerism [29:31]Introducing Rosie von Lila [32:36]Introducing Catherine Connors [39:28]Introducing Donnie Maclurcan [49:25] To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

We all know about all the things that are wrong with social media as we know it. It's a model where everything is centralized and the market dynamics foster very few competitors who just get bigger and have more power. Who builds? Who governs? Who owns? Where are the servers? Where do the applications sit? Where does the data live? It's largely in just a few companies that in many cases have walled gardens of content. This dominant model yields a tremendous centralization of power for tech executives who are incentivized by market dynamics, to grow and to extract and to capture more and more of our attention. So, how do we get ourselves out of this mess?  Does the answer lie in decentralized social media?Our guest for this episode is Evan Henshaw-Plath, veteran Silicon Valley engineer and CEO of Planetary, a decentralized social network.In this episode we cover all things decentralized social media, including:The story of Twitter's "original sin" where it abandoned a federated model for a centralized one [4:14]A framework to think about decentralization across the Internet and social media [12:22]Distinctions between web3 and the dWeb (decentralized web) [15:18]What a protocol is, why it’s a core element of decentralized social media, and the current landscape of protocols [15:33, 23:37]Architecture and design considerations at protocol vs. app levels [28:39]Big debates in the decentralized social media space [31:31]Issues with blockchain based solutions [36:28]Evan’s vision for decent social media and what he’s up to with his startup, Planetary [38:56]Resources:Denizen's writeup on decentralized social mediaPlanetary's homepageEvan's homepageWhat obligation do social media platforms have to the greater good: A TED Talk by Eli Pariser‍My first impressions of web3: by Moxie Marlinspike, who founded SignalThe Battle for the Soul of the Web, The Atlantic Oct 2022dWeb principles‍‍Web3 is Self-Certifying: by Jay Graber, the CEO of Twitter's spinout Bluesky To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

Charles is the author of several books, including The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible and Sacred Economics. His work spans multiple pillars of the Denizen Inquiry, including economics, culture, and consciousness.In this episode, Charles and Jenny discuss gift economics, a very different model of exchange than capitalism. In a gift economy, goods and services are given away as gifts without an explicit agreement on giving anything in return. This does not mean there is no financial exchange -- in many cases, the consumer opts into paying an amount that is determined at their discretion after the good or service has been received.Gift economies are moderated by social norms and were the dominant form of exchange in many indigenous cultures.  Critically, gift economies are circular and relational as opposed to a transactional, and thus present a compelling example of a non-extractive economic model that is more aligned with natural law.This episode covers:Why gift models more aligned with human nature [4:40]How gift economies induce gratitude and reciprocity [7:21]The essential cultural component of gift economies [12:06]Why the gift is a natural model for digital goods[13:24]How gift economies engender circularity vs. hoarding [15:38]Intellectual property and the collective inheritance of humanity [22:00]Charles' experience stepping into a gift model in his own work [26:20]Implementing a gift model [29:53]The circular, relational vs. transactional nature of gift economies [32:00]How the circularity of gift economies mimic nature [32:47]Navigating boundaries between gift and market economies [34:18]Synchronicity and the gift [36:50]ResourcesThe More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, Charles EisensteinSacred Economics, Charles EisensteinThe Gift, Lewis Hyde To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com.  There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.