Reinventing “Money” to Serve the Public Good – How Small Communities Can Lead the Way

The remarkable story of a small independent state in the Channel Islands, Guernsey Island, demonstrates a topic I’ve been revisiting lately(1): how what we call “money” could actually be reinvented to serve the common good — that is, how our present-day money system could be transformed so that, instead of lining the pockets of a few fat cats, it might foster a more just and widely-distributed prosperity for all.

The Guernsey story is in addition a case study in how small, local, face-to-face communities — where innovative thinking, tight coordination, trust and commitment are uniquely possible — may be essential to the kind of social and economic innovation that the world is so much in need of. Guernsey is one more exemplar of why, as E.F. Schumacher stated in his famous book, “small is beautiful.”

A SMALL COMMUNITY REBUILDS ITS OWN ECONOMY WITHOUT OUTSIDE HELP

The story begins in the early 1800’s, when Guernsey, a community of 16,000 (2), was economically on the ropes -- as was much of Europe during the hard times caused by the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 to 1825.

The conventional wisdom presumed that every community had to suffer with the downturn in the wider financial system. With the larger economy in bad shape, what could little Guernsey do? It seemed a victim of circumstances beyond its control.

But, thrown to its own devices, this island community came together to defy the conventional wisdom. In a surprising tale of success, Guernsey invented a different kind of money that enabled the community to pull itself out of a woeful period of depression and unemployment, rebuild its severely deteriorated infrastructure, cancel its public debts, and become an exceptionally prosperous, fully employed and happy place.

This all started in the second decade of the 19th century, when Guernsey found itself in terrible shape. “[The] trade of Guernsey was practically extinguished and the people were in despair. Unemployment was rife, ... there were practically no roads.”(3) What roads they did have “were muddy and only 4 1/2 feet wide.”(4) The island’s “sea walls were crumbling,” “public buildings were in disrepair and, above all, a new market house, where the islanders could exchange their produce, was urgently needed.” Not surprisingly, people were leaving Guernsey and there was little employment.(5)

There seemed nothing the community could do. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Higher taxes were out of the question. “It was impossible for the Government to finance these necessary improvements out of revenue, as this only amounted to £3,000 yearly, and of this amount £2,400 had to be used to pay interest on its public debt of £19,000. Nor could the necessary finance be obtained by borrowing; the Government sought indeed to raise a loan, but such was the poor state of the island's assets that the only would-be lenders demanded the prohibitive rate of 17 per cent per annum.”

In short, “Orthodox finance could do nothing to get the people out of the depression caused by the Napoleonic wars.” (6)

In the middle of these financial straits, some people began to see an unnerving irony. Large numbers of unemployed people ready and able to work were everywhere on hand, as were the material resources needed to get the public work done. Activity was at a standstill only because there was no money available, except at prohibitive cost. Under this nonsensical situation, someone had an epiphany: “there was nothing to prevent the Government issuing its own money.” (7)

[T]he idea put forward that the State should issue its own money daily gained ground. It was argued that, as labour and materials were both available, it was absurd for improvements to be held up simply through lack of money, and as conditions became even worse, this plan served to provide the only solution. Finally, after various setbacks and considerable opposition, the adherents of State money carried the day and, in 1816, 4,000 notes of £1 each were printed by the Government and paid out for the most urgent repairs. (8)

The notes were issued to pay for the reconstruction of Guernsey’s sea walls, and once paid out, they began to circulate in the local economy, enabling people to begin freely exchanging goods and services once again. The locally-printed money worked like a magic dust to awaken the productive activity of the islanders.

By the success of this issue the principle was established, and during the next 20 years the Government authorised notes to the extent of £80,000, which were utilised in building the new Market House, schools in every parish, roads all over the island, St. Elizabeth's Cottage, etc. (9)

[T]he appearance of the island changed out of all recognition. From its backward and depressed state it became, within 20 years, renowned for its well-being. Moreover, by issuing State money, this transformation was carried out without increasing the island's national debt and without incurring interest charges. In fact if interest had been payable on the capital sums for these improvements, they could not possibly have been carried [out]. (10)

Since the astonishing success of its initial experiment, Guernsey continued a string of public issues of money well into the 20th century:

[In 1816, the initial] 4,000 pounds were used to start the repairs of the sea walls. In 1820, another 4,500 pounds was issued, again interest-free. In 1821, another 10,000; 1824, 5,000; 1826, 20,000. By 1837, 50,000 pounds had been issued interest free for the primary use of projects like sea walls, roads, the marketplace, churches and colleges. This sum more than doubled the island’s money supply during this thirteen year period, but there was no inflation. In the year 1914, as the British restricted the expansion of their money supply due to World War I, the people of Guernsey commenced to issue another 142,000 pounds over the next four years and never looked back. By 1958, over 542,000 pounds had been issued, all without inflation. (11)

Ellen Hodgson Brown summarizes: “When it wants to create some public work or service, [Guernsey] just issues the money it needs to pay for the work. The Guernsey government has been issuing its own money for nearly two centuries.” Brown adds that Guernsey has a simple, low and loophole-free 20% flat income tax. And no government debt. (12) Inflation has been kept at bay because increases in the amount of money in circulation were matched by the growing number of goods and services available for people to exchange with one another.

Unfortunately, according to historians, Guernsey’s exercise of self-reliant power today isn’t quite what it used to be, due to the intervention of private banks. Starting as early as 1827, banks began focused efforts to halt Guernsey’s control of its own local money supply; the banks questioned the legality of the issues, set up competitive and linked systems, and found various means to influence Guernsey public discourse and legislation. Through such means, the banks succeeded in severely blunting Guernsey’s independence. “Although since 1914 the Guernsey Government has again issued its own notes, these are now always covered by the Government deposits with the banks, and as today Guernsey currency is linked with Sterling, these notes are issued or withdrawn in conformity with orthodox principles.” (13)

The Guernsey story is by no means unique. Many other governments — including, famously, the American colonies (14) — have generated local prosperity through issuing their own money. But “Guernsey is one of the few to have stayed under the radar long enough to escape the covert attacks of an international banking cartel bent on monopolizing the money-making market.” (15)

DEVELOPING LOCAL SELF-EMPOWERMENT FOR GLOBAL BENEFIT

Guernsey’s success was in part due to its luck in staying “under the radar long enough” for local innovations to gather steam without outside interference. Such possibility of flying “under the radar” of larger governmental and private institutions – or, more to the point, of communities acting on their own initiative and sense of entitlement – is part of what gives us hope today. Guernsey tells us that there is room, here at the grassroots level, underneath the big institutional superstructures, for reinventing the world where we live, with our friends and neighbors, in our local communities.

We are not limited to fighting the existing behemoth institutions that dominate the system – big government and big business. Instead, local innovation in small communities can lead the way. The lesson we take from Guernsey is that small communities can begin to act on their own for change, in ways that can have consequences around the world. When communities lead, government and even business will often follow. We do not need to fight the problems when we can take initiative to create the solutions. (16)

If local communities can begin to realize and exert their own power, and eventually create a new layer of thoughtful cooperation and action at the grassroots level, our hope is that local communities can eventually coordinate on a wide scale to bring the world back into balance, locally and globally, infusing the ethics and qualities of healthy face-to-face, human-scale communities back into the larger system.

Today, there is more room than ever at the grassroots, because government and big business are more remote than ever. Even while we are more dependent on the control of distant forces than ever before, the conditions for self-organizing local action have also become more propitious.

Perhaps that’s why, today, little Guernseys are springing up everywhere, and in a variety of areas including economics, food production, land ownership, health, direct democracy, etc.

Our work at Institute of the Commons (http://www.iotc-hub.org) is dedicated to creating the small-community skills and infrastructure that can support such innovation and networked collaboration among small communities and neighborhoods.

ADDENDUM: THE GLOBAL LEARNING CURVE -- MONEY AND DEMOCRACY

The Guernsey story shows that, underlying the phenomenon of money even as it functions in the present system, are the keys to a broad public power with enormous potential that has not yet been fully realized. We have learned that money as a tool can unleash extraordinary productive activity in large populations.(17) What we haven’t fully learned is how this money power can be wrested from private control in order to serve the common good.

This is not the place to go into detail about the current money system of the United States, established with the institution of the Federal Reserve in 1913, and modeled on the British banking system. But a few outlines can be drawn to indicate the deeper relevance and import of what we are discussing.

Under the Federal Reserve system, the U.S. Government does not issue its own currency, but instead leaves the issuance of currency in control of the private banks that form the Federal Reserve System. The money supply is increased in the U.S. only when private U.S. banks make loans. Our Government, unlike that of Guernsey in the story, must borrow all the money that it spends by selling bonds that pay interest. Over time we have built up an enormous national debt that consumes an ever-larger percentage of annual revenues.

Moreover, because all money in the United States is created only through bank loans that require the payment of principal plus interest (with the interest owed typically much more than the principal), money is always artificially in short supply. By definition, more is always owed than has been borrowed, forcing competition among debtors such that bankruptcy for some is foreordained, and such that, regarding the system as a whole, the only way to pay off current debt is through additional borrowing, which only creates more debt, and so on ad infinitum.

The current money system thereby fuels ever-expanding, increasingly frantic production and consumption, while growing an increasingly burdensome debt closer and closer to a point of collapse. In a way of which few social and environmental activists are aware, the money system itself thus is a major contributor to the country's most pervasive social, political and environmental concerns. Not only does it favor the concentration of wealth that skews our political process, it also demands a hyper-production and consumption that extracts an unsustainable toll on people and the environment.

Yet our current banking system is only a recent historical development, resulting partly from accident and partly from the actions of the interested parties who developed modern banking and who were able to take private advantage of their insights into its internal mechanisms. Presently, individuals across our society are only beginning to discover and raise broader awareness of the alternative choices that lie before us concerning how money as a social tool is created, used and implemented. (For some emerging voices and insights, see some of the suggested resources listed below.)

Historical examples show that alternative money systems are not just theoretical. They have worked exceptionally well over long periods of time, with highly desirable results.

The choice is ultimately ours, whether the issuance of money will direct human activity towards the benefit of a few, or to the broader common good. We have the choice of producing a democratic currency, based on trust and collaboration, or a currency based on private control, doubt and competition for domination. But how to find our way, burrowing beneath present assumptions and daily practical realities, to discovering and implementing the choices that are actually there for us to take up, albeit only through concerted focus and collaboration? (18)

We believe that the place where full awareness of such choices can be best developed, along with the skills of implementing them, is in the laboratory of smaller communities.

We find hope, excitement and meaningful purpose in the recognition that western civilization hasn’t figured out everything yet, and that some of our most basic and unquestioned concepts and institutions — like money, community and democracy — are only in their infancy. The world is young on a steep learning curve, which means that the opportunity for individuals and small communities, including you and me and our neighbors, to advance the world’s learning is huge.

If people were to become more cognizant of the opportunities for learning and invention that lie near at hand for all of us, we might organize the world in a way that enabled us all to be a part of acting on those opportunities -- of learning and collaborating in the interest of all. That is only another way of defining meaningful, active, thrilling citizenship.

With such a way of thinking, we might begin to transfer our primary forums for learning from our present-day universities to the streets of our communities; we might start to join learning and thinking more directly to real innovation, action and citizenship. Only the domination and routine keep us somnambulating on the prescribed pathways of orthodoxy.

We’ve only barely started as a culture to understand the nature and potential of money. We’ve only barely started to understand the nature and potential of democracy. Small communities like Guernsey, and innovative neighborhoods anywhere can start to lead the way to new discoveries, new institutions, building on the ancient and recent past.

Once we have had the liberating realization that all of our existing institutions are only recently-fashioned stepping stones along a larger human path, roughly-designed and changeable artifices invented out of initial learnings; once we have the realization that each of these stepping stones has been created on the basis of human energies and conditions that we share with our ancient ancestors – joy, fear, desire and love; body, earth, and sky; life and death -- then we together, as individuals and as communities, can begin to feel rejoined to one another and to our ancestors in a great quest that unites us all: the quest to discover and shape the deeper essence and future of humanity itself.

What is it to be human? Who shall we be and what shall be the consequence of our having lived? Shall humans build a legacy of love and cooperation among people living in harmony with the earth? All of us are a part of fashioning the answer, whether we know it or not. To take up the answer consciously is to have a life of meaning.

We are all entitled to weigh the essence, history and future of humankind in our thoughts. We are all entitled to presume, on the basis of care for the common quest, that we have something to say in response to all those who have gone before and all those who are with us now. We would like to create communities designed to support every individual in assuming such eminence.



SUGGESTED RESOURCES

Ellen Hodgson Brown. The Web of Debt. 2007.
Henry George. Social Problems. 1883.
Thomas Greco, Jr. Money. 2001.
Paul Grignon. Money as Debt. (Video. 2008.)
Bernard Lietaer. The Future of Money. 2001.
---------. "Money, Community and Social Change" (Interview transcript. 2003.)
Stephen Zarlenga. The Lost Science of Money. 2002.


ENDNOTES

1. Cf. my earlier blogs: http://tognotti.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-understanding-what-is-money-could.html, and http://tognotti.blogspot.com/2009/04/policy-follows-practice-mammon-or-maman.html
2. For citation of 1816 population, see http://www.islandlife.org/history_gsy.htm. Guernsey’s present-day population (2008) is 68,000; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernsey
3. “History of Guernsey,” at http://www.islandlife.org/history_gsy.htm
4. Bob Blain, “The Other Way to Deal with the National Debt,” Progressive Review (June 1994). Blain is Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University. Quoted in Ellen Hodgson Brown, The Web of Debt, 2007, pp. 100-101.
5. D.M. Sherwood, “The Guernsey Market House Scheme,” The Fig Tree Quarterly (No. 10, September, 1938, pp. 190-3. Full article at http://www.alor.org/Library/The%20Guernsey%20Market%20House%20Scheme%20.htm
6. Sherwood, ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Blain, ibid.
12. Ellen Hodgson Brown, The Web of Debt, 2007, pp. 100-101.
13. Sherwood, ibid.
14. The American Colonies started issuing paper currencies in the 17th century. In 1690, Massachusetts printed the first colonial paper money not backed by any physical thing (backed only by the State’s agreement to receive them in taxes), and spent it into circulation on public projects. Seeing the paper scrip's power to develop local economic activity, other colonies soon followed. Pennsylvania developed another model, creating a State loan office and loaning money into circulation at low interest. According to Benjamin Franklin, it was above all the British Crown's clampdown on the colonial currencies that incited the Revolutionary War. The Revolution was itself funded through the printing of the Continentals, which, even though their value suffered greatly due to the huge British counterfeiting efforts, managed to pay for the war effort – a huge feat. The next great instance, it seems, was Lincoln’s issuance of Greenbacks to fund the Civil War, in defiance of bankers who sought to profit enormously off both sides. Some conjecture that Lincoln's assassination, like the assassinations of McKinley and other Greenback supporters who followed, was due to this threat posed to the financial industry control. The Greenbacks remained in circulation for decades, although banks sought to remove them from circulation in various ways (and ultimately succeeded). The great populist movements of the late 19th century, in which small farmers and urban labor joined forces together against the great industrial and financial monopolies, took the name of the Greenbacks for their party name. For a more detailed account, see Stephen Zarlenga, The Lost Science of Money, 2002, pp. 361ff.
15. Brown, ibid.
16. An aside on the possibility of dual money systems, local and translocal: One insight the Guernsey story teaches is how the money system, when organized and controlled by private entities, can keep communities oppressed (by direct means as well as on the basis of a community’s own ignorance concerning the mechanisms of money creation and control). This insight was understood by the ancient Romans, during the glory years of the Roman Republic before the rise of the Roman Dictators. Hence they created a dual monetary system on the basis of the distinction between local public control of the money supply, and control by private and/or foreign interests. In order to avert outside or private manipulation, Rome used one kind of money, based on gold and silver, for foreign trade, and another currency for domestic trade, based on publicly-issued currency -- fiat currency like the currency created by Guernsey. The dual system combined local control with the capacity to take advantage of international trade, without risking dependency on outside exploiters. In his book The Future of Money (2002) Robert Lieatauer advocates for such a system under his notion of “complementary currencies.”
17. As we have seen, the issuance of money gave rise to amazing productive activity in Guernsey. The same phenomenon on a larger scale can be seen when, with the discovery of the New World, a sudden infusion of gold and silver into Europe led to an astounding new levels of European economic activity. See my blog: http://tognotti.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-understanding-what-is-money-could.html
18. Is money inherently “filthy”? We speculate that what makes money “filthy lucre” isn’t inherent in the concept of money itself. Our belief instead is that our sense of money as a “tainted” object reflects the fact that currency as we know it is under private control, ultimately an instrument of domination, competition and climbing. The public essence of money, the value it gains from the aspirations, needs and desires of all human beings to engage in activity, has been usurped. It’s the manipulation by the usurping parties that causes the stink, not money itself. If the sources of air had been taken over by a very few, and all of us were forced to elbow each other aside in order to get the best air for ourselves, we might begin to look upon the very desire for air, and even air itself, with suspicion and revulsion, not to mention greedy air-grasping humanity itself. With Woody Guthrie, we might say, “Look what your greed for money has done." Yet perhaps the artificially scarce money supply, manipulated under private hands, fosters greed and not money itself.

Through the Mushroom Portal

Looking for mushrooms is a tradition in my italian family. My grandmother would talk about her long walks, with groups of her friends, into the hills of the Garfagnana to look for Porcini mushrooms in the fall of every year. The thought takes me back to Lammari, to the wonderful feeling of people living together, simply, with one another and with the land. The smell of the woods and grass infuses the misty air that we breathe as if it were an extension of the body and flesh, connecting us with the land. Not like here in the city, where we find ourselves in an outdoor artificial container breathing pulverized rubber and road soot, such that we must take refuge in hygienic insulated indoor artificial containers called homes and apartments, sheltered from the loud traffic.

Back in 1999 I decided I’d learn how to hunt mushrooms. I looked on the web and found a listing that said a group of shroomers was meeting in a parking lot near the Pulgas Water temple just south of Crystal Springs reservoir. I went. Three of the five or six people there were italian guys over 70 years old. Che meraviglia.

Looking for mushrooms is meaningful on many levels. Mushroom hunting takes you through a portal into another time, primordial, off the artificial grid. Every good mushrooming park worth its salt has the same sign on its bulletin board near the parking lot: a white skull and crossbones on black with the words “Warning!”, “Danger,” and “Death.” Mushrooms are dangerous. Picking them is verboten. Fines will be levied. The sign in Palo Alto’s Huddart Park says that simply touching a poisonous mushroom can be deadly (untrue). I suspect that the ubiquitous posting of these signs is a plot decreed at the highest levels by some secret Council of Mycological Illuminati as part of a brilliant campaign of deception. The danger of mushroom picking is one of those broadly-accepted cultural myths, repeated mouth to mouth, by which we hem ourselves into the neatly sequestered parking spaces of modern life, keeping between the white-painted lines. Yes, some mushrooms are deadly. The secret is that, with a little education, the danger is easily enough circumvented. The propogated fear protects the treasure from pilfering by the impure. Only those capable of transgression may pass through the portal towards real living.

Mushroom hunting takes a person off the beaten path. Literally. The first step of the mushroom hunter is sideways, off the trail. I follow not the worn way, but always only my own feel for beauty and adventure and instinct. I look all around me and listen. Which direction is calling me? The glade to the left, infused with light? The damp, dark, musty spot down the hill? Shall I climb on high? Whither am I called? There is no reason to go one direction or another but that I am more attracted this way than that. All life should be such a wandering towards beauty.

Mushrooming teaches us the magic of the second sight. How often I have had the experience of standing in a wooded grove, scouring the leafy ground with my eyes, and scouring again, and scouring yet again, seeing not one single mycological specimen, none, when, lo, suddenly, I spy a single specimen! I look close in and inspect. Then I widen my gaze when, magically, I see another mushroom just the same, and then another, and another — and I realize that I am surrounded by an army of mushrooms everywhere! Some say it is a matter of looking right. Your looking always looks from assumptions that you cannot see until some discordant surprise throws open the curtains to new contact with the outside. This may be the case. Or maybe the mushrooms themselves are sly creatures of intention who like to play peek-a-boo; they wait cunningly until you aren’t ready before they pop out into the open. I have in fact found it a helpful device to say aloud “There obviously aren’t any mushrooms around here!” The sentence works as a kind of mushroom call.

The variety and abundance of mushrooms is astounding. Everywhere the woods contain an abundance. And it is open to the taking. Mushrooms are one of the few wild foods left to us. They remain within a past time when nature was open, when nature was a part of us. You find a mushroom and you may take it home and eat it. You can go back for more. You do not have to pay cash money for them.

On the other side of the portal, the word "free" has no meaning, because the exaction of payment hasn't even been invented yet.

A Rant Against the "Theory of Everything"

I recently came upon a story in a mainstream newspaper entitled "Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything." The story titillated readers with the thought that a former graduate student now living as an "impoverished surfer" may turn out to be the world's next Einstein. The young man "has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists." Part of the excitement has to do with the simplicity of the new theory: "his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics. "

"Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year."

Intrigued by the story, I researched it a bit on the internet, and found more explanation, as well as a nifty spirograph-style image of "E8," what some call "the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics," which the new "theory of everything" proposes as the underlying pattern that might solve the biggest quandary in particle physics.

Here is where my gripe started to arise. The sad part for me is that this horribly-misnamed "theory of everything," if not viewed in a broader context, can support an extremely reductionist view of the universe that denudes it of all its experiential qualities and beauties and of all that we associate with living things and humanity.

They call it a theory of "everything" presumably because, assuming that "everything" in the universe is built upon a foundation of legos, this new theory potentially explains the composition of the lego in a more comprehensive and encompassing way than ever before.

But when we look at legos in isolation we by no means see "everything" that has or can be constructed on a foundation of legos: e.g. living creatures, human beings and all the achievements of human communities over the course of history are themselves invisible in the lego theory, even though lego theory says that looking into any of these things we will discover legos behind them. What I am suggesting is that something that inherently transcends legos in fact has more "being" than the legos viewed in themselves can ever have. Spoken from the point of view of lego theory, this "something" might be said to consist in different patterns of relations and processes between legos, and then between such stabilized patterns and processes themselves, which relational patterns themselves come to constitute levels of being that can never be reduced to or fully explained through the underlying legos themselves. The logic of life, for instance, is a logic over and above the logic of physics and not reducible to it, just as the logic of human conversation and friendship- and community-building cannot be reduced to or explained by biology.

Thus this so-called "theory of everything" might more appropriately be called a "theory of nothing," nothing being the defining complement to the concept of "everything." That's because, from an important perspective, this "going back" of mathematical physicists (going back conceptually and temporally) to the underlying primary foundations of everything is to go in the direction of nothing: it is to follow evolution backwards to its beginnings and to the discovery of the primordial constituent components of "everything."

(This process of lego-discovery requires going so far beyond the scope of ordinary experience that the findings must be called a "theory" only, must be described in terms that defy ordinary conceptualization, and can be "tested" only by constructing enormous technological experiments -- e.g. the so-called supercolliders -- in a quest to reproduce conditions never otherwise found or encountered within the scope of earthly nature.)

This tracing backwards accords with a dominant view that has been around for a few thousand years, what Nietzsche and subsequent existentialists called "metaphysics," which assumes that true Being and Power are at the Beginning, in the Past, in what "was," i.e. in what lies under or before (arrived at through conceptual and actual dissection and other means of decomposition, such as super-collision; as Bacon said, "science puts nature on the rack"), rather than, for example, in the Future or what "might be" (e.g. what might be built upon our endowments joined with our hopes and dreams). Hence, in our tradition God is conceived as a Past Creator "in the beginning," rather than as a Future Attractor.

Compare the artist who starts only with colored dirt and liquid (the artist's legos as it were), and over time and with ingenuity and vision creates a painting where before no painting was; compare the carpenter who with certain basic materials, e.g. stone and dead wood, mixed with desire and purpose, creates a house where before there was nothing; compare the process of evolution which, from out of the primary raw materials of matter and energy, led to the emergence of variegated life in systems interacting to produce the conditions for more and more vibrant life, eventually leading to the emergence of people like you and me and our gatherings of friends who are motivated by hopes and possibilities.

"Everything" is not to be found in the underlying subatomic legos, in the under-realms upon which our experienced world is built, but in the other direction, in the emergence of the world of our experience over eons of time and, finally, in the future where we might hope to build a more beautiful and harmonious world. The future is everything.

The primary components through which the future human world are to be built cannot be found by dissecting the things we experience into constituent components, but only by coordinating the elements of our experience to form new structures and relations that realize new harmonies and possibilities, i.e. through innovative new relatings and combinings that cannot be foreseen by recurring to the underlying atoms that are not even visible in ordinary experience. The birthplace of such innovation must be social and public conversation and mutual coordination. The everyday world and the everyday language in which we live the world is ultimately where science gets all of its direction and orientation, and is therefore the ultimate source of "everything," including "theories of everything." Scientists are kidding themselves if they think otherwise.

All this is important, I think, because as a culture we are given to this illusion that science sees "everything" when in fact science and its resultant technologies are based on a kind of tunnel vision that, without direction from loving human community, can lead down a dangerous road. We are given to overlooking the importance of relations -- ecological, systemic, communal -- and the importance of cultivating relations relative to a shared and commonly constructed vision of the human future -- because we are focused on objects that can be pointed to, dissected, and, theoretically, controlled. I bristle at the arrogance, naïvete, self-congratulation and thrill of power that I imagine to be present in the phrase "theory of everything."

The question might arise, but can't this knowledge of the underlying legos of creation be put to use in constructing that beautiful longed-for future?

Here I have my doubts. One reason is that I fear that the impetus to discover this kind of knowledge is often or even primarily rooted in a collective, fearful flight from the given finite conditions of humanity and a related desire to re-engineer nature because of a fear of accepting these limitations. What I am talking about is a reaction against all the "limitations" of our biology in every respect, including our natural consignment to a finite, localized world. Ultimately, this might be epitomized by the fear of accepting the human condition of mortality. Unable as communities to face up to nature and even death in a way that apprizes us of the beauty of what we have and who we are (on the ground of accepting what is given), we get caught up in a collective pursuit based on denial, as if we could change, or as if it would be desirable to change, the very grounds of our existence through technological and scientific intervention. Look at the world today. As evidenced by widespread psychological struggle, our very relationship to our "selves" is troubled by non-acceptance.

Individually and collectively, we instead turn to technology and consumerism that is aimed at overcoming nature. (Imagine, overcoming nature!) Technology, in general, has been all about transcending limits -- starting perhaps with the limits of time and space, and ending with the limits of the natural world to sustain technologically-enabled mass consumption.

Incapable of realizing the beauty and meaning available to us within the natural finite limits given to human beings, incapable of accepting (i.e. loving) our selves, and on that basis of acceptance, realizing everything that love makes possible, we are under the spell of a knowledge-model that believes it can get to the root of "everything," which belief has a lovely but illusive silver aura of total control. Human beings are attempting to live in the world as if they were not bound by earthly limitations, with the result that they fall out of balance with nature and themselves.

This "theory of everything" might look like a theory of everything from the point of view of the engineer/scientist who loves to satisfy curiosity and to contemplate the beauty of "objective knowledge," as in elegant diagrams, blueprints, descriptions and machines. This is an important knowledge and appreciation, but again I say that the danger is not to see it within a larger context that brings other perspectives into the mix. The engineer/scientist's knowledge is incomplete and in itself is never enough to lead to action, and is never enough to understand the motives behind the engineer/scientist's own action. Action requires motivation. Motivation comes from emotion: we move away from something due to fear, or towards something from love and attraction. The most powerful source of emotion is our relationship to other people, i.e. how we find ourselves nurtured and sustained in community.

It is in the interest of those who are in power and who act from fear to laud the engineer/scientist's way of knowing as the highest way of knowing as a cover for preserving their reign of fear. Fear can drive technological development under the cover of a drive towards objective knowledge.

Because objective knowledge itself is directionless, the choice of what to investigate and know is never itself rooted in objectivity. This is why the engineer's knowledge is always subservient to emotion. This is why a community must work to cultivate love and acceptance if it is to direct, not only the pursuit of knowledge but human action in general, in desirable and "sustainable" ways.

For people who want to learn how to recreate nature through artifice, this having a more advanced theory of the lego must be quite exciting. It might open a key to unlocking even more fundamental natural forces than humanity has hitherto been able to unlock. We might be able to tinker with nature and biology (e.g. in biotech and nanotech) in ways that have even more significant consequences than anything that has been done before. The trouble is, I am not confident that more significant means better. It is not my wish to provide more keys to power to those who are tempted to "improve upon" nature because they are turned against nature, or to those who confuse a theory of dark and distant underlying foundations with a theory of "everything." Unfortunately, every advance into the theory of the lego -- like the earlier advances in the theory of the atomic nucleus -- brings humanity that much closer to attaining the power to destroy everything in the universe. To toy with the forces that rule the underlying physical foundations on which all subsequent layers of life and world have been built, is to toy with the forces that can unravel them all.

Earlier steps into the atomic nucleus and its logic led humanity to discover how to unleash nuclear explosions that could destroy whole cities and cultures, undoing hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary achievement with the flick of a switch. With this new knowledge a step nearer to the theory of "everything," who knows but we might discover how to create a bomb that could explode the planet in a flash, or the sun or solar system. From the perspective of the "theory of everything," even if you blow it all up, "everything" would still be there. Presumably, it's a theory about the stuff you can't destroy. It's what you end up with when you smash "everything" to bits. (That's why they use super-colliders to test it.) Now there's a more appropriate name: "A theory of what can't be destroyed."

As kids, my brother and I had an enormous set of wooden building blocks. I can still remember the piney scent of the wood. The blocks filled a tub-sized wicker basket. We used to build tall and elegant towers, architectural masterpieces. We'd put the biggest, heaviest, most simply-shaped blocks, the ones with wide, flat tops, at the bottom. They were the foundation. Then we'd carefully set various forms atop these, in successive layers, some jutting out in intriguing cantilevers with curvaceous profiles. We took our time. We enjoyed the evolution of the structure. At the top, we put our most colorful, most whimsically-shaped blocks -- as a fancy crowning glory. We admired what we had built. We were concerned that someone unaware of what work had gone into the masterpiece, someone perhaps ignorant of its fragility and its laws of balance -- someone like my two-year-old little sister -- might inadvertently knock it down. We were acutely aware that moving the pieces on the very bottom was particularly dangerous to the whole.

I hope our world gets busy building community. I hope we focus more attention soon on cultivating love and collaboration between neighbors and neighborhoods, between towns, between nations. Conversation is where the world is really made, and it's on the quality and depth and breadth of our conversations that "everything" really depends. We've taught science and industry in our schools for a long time now. I think our technological power has well gotten ahead of our ability to achieve harmony among peoples and within ourselves. We've taught our young around the planet how to look through microscopes and telescopes. We've whipped up a frenzy of excitement over powerful technologies that enable us to manufacture, produce and consume vast quantities of goods, and to transport people, goods and communications over vast distances far in excess of what we are naturally capable. What we have been paying less attention to is how our excited pursuit of such technological powers have been having unintended consequences on our communities and on the planet that sustains us. How much of our drive to push forward with technology is rooted in problems that we can only solve at the level of community and human relations? How much does our overweening focus on technical development exacerbate the problems that technical development can't solve?