Oikos: Seed and Roots
Economics is ecology. 'Eco' comes from the Ancient Greek word oikos, meaning 'house, abode, dwelling'.
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The Times are Urgent, Let Us Slow Down
Oikonomia
Economy, from ancient Greek oikonomia ‘household management, thrift,’ and oikonomos ‘manager, steward’.
Oikonomia combines two words:
oikos: noun, masculine | ‘house, abode, dwelling, an inhabited house, any dwelling place, all persons forming one family, inheritance’
From Proto-Indo-European root weik, meaning
clan, social unit above the household
to bend, to wind
to fight, conquer
and
nemein: ‘manage, dispensation, frugality, judicious use of resources, to deal out,’ and nemesis ‘just indignation;’ Latin numerus ‘number,’ Lithuanian nuoma ‘rent, interest;’ Middle Irish nos ‘custom, usage;’ German nehmen ‘to take.’
From Proto-Indo-European root nem, meaning
to assign
to allot
to take.
Ecology, derives from oikos in combination with logía. Curiously, Ökologie emerged in German, in 1873, coined by zoologist Ernst Haeckel. Oecology, ‘branch of science dealing with the relationship of living things to their environments’.
logía: word-forming element meaning ‘a speaking, discourse, treatise, doctrine, theory, science’ .
From Proto-Indo-European root leg, meaning
to collect, gather
with derivatives meaning to speak
to gather words, to pick out words.
Here lies a cascading sequence of habitually ignored realities:
nemein, nem, (to manage) is contingent on logía (knowledge) of oikos (dwelling place, biogeophysical reality, our habitat, earth)
Action within the dwelling place, must be informed by knowing it deeply, for we dwell there also
Yet the words ecology and economy are complete quarantined from one another in our culture. It’s hardly surprising that industry destroys our source of life.
The world ecology was invented by a European scientist 150 years ago in order to describe the describing of the world outside of the laboratory, isolated elsewhere, independent of our business.
The word for land in many indigenous languages means ‘everlasting spirit’ or ‘source of life.’1 ‘In some Native languages the term for places translates to those who take care of us’ writes Robin Wall Kimmerer.2
Sharing wisdom and gratitude for ecological intelligence makes it sing and shine in our soul. It’s addictive, but it takes effort, as we need to attempt to deprogram our western cultural matrix, which is so heavily devoted to separating the world and consumption of material things.
I’d like to share some conversations and resources I’ve personally found inspiring and encoraging.
The blockchain is more than a store of value, or a history of transactions, it is the foundation for a beautiful future. The ledger not only records what we own, but also who we are and what we care about.
Problem: Errant human thinking and action leading to climate change, planetary-scale ecological collapse and catastrophic deterioration of quality of life on Earth.
Current economic thinking not only presupposes a detachment between personal self-interest and planetary health, it falsely positions them in a diametrically opposed, zero-sum, rivalrous end-game. This fatal flaw of modern economic theory now threatens to collapse the quality of all life on Earth. We seem to love our money more than life itself (but this is love nonetheless — so we can work with it).
Solution: This Oika project solves the detachment problem using the principles of decentralized, crypto-tech to recouple personal wealth to planetary health. This conceptual jujutsu maneuver is the core value proposition of Oika in the Blockchain. It's really a hack to convert money maximalism into a force for healing.
Crypto
The blockchain has emerged as humanity’s attempt to carve out a new economic universe. While the mechanics of the blockchain provide a decentralized, transparent and resilient record of transactions, its philosophy also suggests a new path for human and planetary prosperity.
The Logic of Oika:
The world arises from relationships
The science of relationships is ecology
Ecology reveals how everything is connected
Art creates culture
Today's culture disconnects humans from nature
Oika Art is a new kind of art that helps people feel connection to nature, and
Feeling connected to nature heals people and planet.
First Principles of Oika
1. Reality is continuous
The Enlightenment worldview now carefully accepts the more ancient and indigenous understandings of our place and purpose in the cosmos. We now agree scientifically that everything is interconnected and interdependent both objectively and subjectively. This ontological continuity of nature pre-configures justice as a universal impulse. What we do to the “other” we do to ourselves.
2. Earth unites us
Humanity is the only family of Earthlings to have lived in sustained and intimate relationship with every habitat on this planet. Our unique history with the Earth is a gift that empowers us more than any other species to know, enjoy and care for this rare world. There are no out-groups in the Earth-generative view. We are all indigenous and our human diversity perfectly reflects the Earth’s diversity. Embracing our endowment of unity binds us together and prepares us to accept and value all diversity.
3. Ecology is primary
All systems on Earth (economic, social, cultural, technological, etc) emerge from and depend on the ecological systems of nature. If the underlying natural systems fail, all systems follow. Our resilience and our fate is tied to the land. We are Earthbound. You can't just buy your way to the stars for the price of a planet. If we keep denying the simple pleasures of ecological happiness here on earth, we shouldn't expect the galaxy to welcome us with open arms.
4. All is relationship
Nature is source. All that springs from nature does so only through relationships. Everything, including us, are nothing but relationships. The qualities of emergent phenomena carry the qualities of their originating relationships. Ecology is the study of relationships. Oika holds ecological understanding universally to include the relationships of human, non-human, living, non-living, material, non-material, profane, sacred, ad-infinitum…
5. Life is fieldwork
To move through the world is to be entangled in a potent field of forces. This field manifests as our experiences of symmetry and surprise, habit and expectation, both fulfilled and broken. The field we inherit feels comfortable, cherished and constraining. The field we generate feels earned, empowering, and expansive. We make meaning of the field through bodily sensation, stories, imagination and paying attention. When life is fieldwork, work is play. This seems to be what life is for.
6. Healing is value
We’ve collectively suffered many generations of social trauma and economic injury. To transition to a beautiful future, we must elevate healing to the highest fulfillment of human purpose, and at industrial scale. We must recouple economic wealth to ecological health. Let ours be the first of many ‘Healing Generations'‘ to transition our inherited economies of extraction into a ‘Healing Economy’ where all work-life cultivates personal and planetary prosperity.
7. Our future is beautiful
Art and science have always been how humanity changes the world. Through science we know enough and through art we can feel enough to create a more prosperous and joyous future for all life on Earth. When art feels what science reveals the world heals. We should stop thinking of the future only in terms of imminent degradation. If there is to be a future, it must be beautiful. We know enough. Now we need only feel enough gratitude and conjure the imagination to make it so.
As described by Judy Atkinson in Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin also writes,
Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.