Sick and Healthy Economies

Healthy Economies

{note: what follows is a slightly modified copy of an article of mine that appeared in Communities Magazine in 2003. It is an extreemly edited and almost over simplified version of what I originally submitted, but still serves to gesture toward the different and more qualtitative and integrated way of thinking about economics that I would like to share with you , so I reproduce it here. The more complex and detailed and unedited version of the same essay is in the archives of my blog integralscience.motime.com (august 2004). Though my evaluation in this case is of the economy of a specific intentional community, i believe that the concepts and understanding involved are valid in general–I-P}

A Twin Oaker Considers Healthy and Unhealthy Economies


By I-P Odori


These excerpts are taken from an open letter to Twin Oaks community in April, 2003. 812 words


"Mal-employment, Malproduction, Malconsumption, and Maldistribution. These are the cardinal points of an unhealthy economy. Where any one of these can be found I contend that the others can be found also. Let's take the old plantation economy, for example. In order to supply an overseas population addicted to tobacco (Malconsumption), the institution of slavery and slave holding (Mal-employment), supported by unsustainable farming practices (Malproduction), maintained a regime of social and economic injustice (Maldistribution) inherited from Europe.

Of course this misery of slavery (and slave holding) required some sort of anesthesia to be tolerable and this, in various forms (whiskey, sugar, etc.) was usually malproduced by some other mal-employed and miserable people—or perhaps by the same ones. This enabled them to continue to malproduce their major cash crop of tobacco to be malconsumed as anesthesia for the miserable and mal-employed rich and poor overseas and so on.

I believe that it was possible at that time to end that vicious circle and lose-lose dynamic by sufficiently transforming even one of these four aspects.

For example, show me a sustainable and appropriately scaled agriculture that is really healing and restorative to the land (Good Production), and I'll show you a bunch of happy and diversely occupied growers who are themselves being restored by what they are doing and how they are doing it (Good Employment). And because the healing nature of their work (not only as "farmers" but as whole Individual-Persons) is a gift to themselves as well as to the land, these people will have less and less need for anesthesia of any kind (Good Consumption) and will have the time and energy and inclination to give both of and to themselves and of and to each other in other ways (Good Distribution).


What does his have to do with Twin Oaks? I think our labor system is, in many ways, among the most progressive of such systems of any community in the world. And yet the Mal-employment involved in making hammocks is obvious by the ubiquitous presence in the hammock shop and woodworking shop of malproduced and anesthetic "enticements" (coffee, sodas, "canned" entertainment) that seem to be necessary in order to get people to work sufficiently long labor shifts. And is it just a coincidence that the hammocks themselves are in many cases made of unsustainably produced, potentially toxic and non-biodegradable glues and polypropylene materials?

Another sign of Mal-employment here is the exclusive use of the hour quota system to monitor only "under work" and not overwork. I'm sure that most of us really do care, more than the average corporate employer, whether we work each other and ourselves to mental or physical sickness, but our formal work culture does not affirm or validate this. And we certainly seem to be willing to put ourselves and each other through much stress to maintain a standard of "living" that amounts to not much more than the availability of gadgets and substances which we would neither need nor want if we were better and more sustainably employed.

And in a real sense, even sustainable employment in a sustainable economy is not enough. Just as extreme soil erosion can only be successfully countered by actually creating soil (for example, by composting) rather than by just slowing down the erosion process, a degenerative economy can only be successfully countered by a regenerative one. The progressive erosion of our economy and culture is a reality which makes any work activities which aren't regenerative ultimately not even sustainable. And of course a cardinal aspect of a regenerative economy is regenerative or Good Employment.

What I believe we really do need for a regenerative economy at Twin Oaks, for Good Employment, is a system that rewards the good work of healing ourselves, each other, and the world around us.

Beginning this work of healing and mutuality would mean giving ourselves the gift of a labor credit system that validates and encourages us to realize our whole personhood as good community extended family members, good community neighbors, good citizens of our wider area, and good souls. Such a regenerative labor system would reflect the paradox that a healthy Twin Oaks can only be one that facilitates the integrity and wholeness of ourselves as individuals, as households, as a community, and as a network of communities (the Federation of Egalitarian Communities.) Such a gift of healing—to ourselves, each other, and the world—is already the Good Distribution which is consistent with Good Consumption, Good Production, and Good Employment, and consistent with an economy of mutuality rather than one of parasitism.


I-P Odori has lived at Twin Oaks community in Virginia since Feb. 2002,He is a visionary philosopher and autodidact. He comes to Twin Oaks after living for 2 years in a raw food permaculture homestead on the big island of Hawaii. His primary interests are Integral Science (a sustainable and healthy alternative to the dominant scientific and cultural paradigm) and the Life-Dance, which is its primary experiment. He facilitates a cultural pilot project called "the Life-Dance Party " at Twin Oaks once a week."

end of article.



Re: Healthy Economy
Bill said Jun 29, 10:36 AM:

Kind of a nice article. Altho I notice that you don't really propose how a healthier economy for a community like Twin Oaks or any other community would work.

Or more importantly, how the transformation to a less "monocultured" economy could be started and carried out.

It's kind of like a miniature of the larger economic problem that 'deep economy' describes.

Re: Healthy Economy
I-P said Jun 30, 2:41 AM:


"Survival makes a good servant but a very poor master".

"When anesthesia is the primary commodity, pain is the primary reality."

–some integral science proverbs

Hi Bill, your comment is certainly appropriate for this (as I say) heavily edited article. It is somewhat difficult to explain the details of my prescription without, on the one hand going more into the Theory of Healthy Culture (it would be helpful to read my profile for a brief overview of this), and on the other hand, into the details of how Twin Oaks works. There is a little more of both of these in the original version of this essay, which is on my Blog.

In terms of Twin Oaks organization; there is a Labor system and a Labor quota of 40 or so hours a weak. The work that is "Labor creditable" is pretty much exclusively what I would call "the work of surviving": of making money in one of the businesses or maintaining the Farm in various ways. From my point of view, there is also the work of Living, which is the work of "coming-together inwardly and outwardly as what I call an Individual-Person, that is; in terms of the relationships and responsibilities inherent in everyone existence as a family-member, neighbor, citizen-of-the-world, "soul", and Individual.

For example, the work of regularly coming-together as neighbors (in this case perhaps taking the community as a whole as the 'neighborhood") to check-in, discuss and work through disagreement so that real cooperation is possible), this should be understood as being part of the work of Living as it manifests from the point of view of ourselves as neighbors. As such it should be "Labor creditable" as well.

The same could be said with experiments in coming-together with others outwardly as Family-members, Citizens-of-the-world, "Souls" (and here i just mean in terms of "ultimate things"), and also, with experiments in coming-together inwardly as an Individual (which could involve anything from "Chi Gung", to Therapy, to a Vision Quest). I am saying tthat all of this isb part of the work of Living; the work that gives meaning and so joy, to existence, and I'm saying that, when this work is primary and the work of surviving is secondary, then that survival work will inevitably change both in quantity and quality in a direction that is more healthy, sustainable, and sane.

Within the system of twin oaks, making such work primary would involve us agreeing to a Quota of the "work of Living", in the same way (though to a greater degree) that we agree to a quota of the "work of surviving". Working out and consensing on the details of what this work of Living is to be for each of us would be something that would take place at the regular community meetings, attendance at which would be itself part of that work of Living Quota. (the details of how this could be done would require even more about twin oaks labor system to understand, so i will forbear). suffice to say that the idea is that the dynamic of such a system would be one of cultural and economic "composting" rather than the "erosion" that happens other wise.

As things stand however, with the work of survival being primary (which it is at twin oaks as everywhere else), what happens is that that which is intrinsically meaningful has to try to fit into the ever-decreasing spaces left by that which is essentially fear-based in its motivation and so relatively meaningless (the spaces are ever-decreasing because there is no end to space and time encroachments of "growth" and keeping up with the ever-advancing "competition") . People can't help but feel the pain of this meaningless stress, and so the need to consume "anesthesia" to numb and distract from this pain is what engenders the Malconsumption that distorts and bloats the economy. Maldistribution of both this anesthesia and of legitimate products comes in at the same time since the anesthesia of malconsumtion becomes addictive and its differential distribution becomes an essential "motivator" ("carrot") for production while the threat of its deprivation (as well as that of essentials) becomes an equally essential "stick", to the same end. The Production in question has of course at the same time become Malproduction since it is now being directed not by good will (either toward, the individuals, the land, the community, or the world beyond it) but by the imperatives of fear and Malconsumptive Addiction.


This vicious circle of malconsuptive, addictive "Demand" existing mostly to numb the very pains of mal-employment inherent in the mal-production and maldistribution of the "Supplies" demanded, is the essence of the lose-lose "economic erosion" that I believe the sort of thing I am proposing can not only halt but reverse in a process that would analogously be called "economic composting".

But it is a mistake for me to have limited this discussion to the subject of economics (a difficult one not to make since that is the focus of this group); Nether a full understanding of, nor a successful issue to, the experiment I am proposing can be had without the understanding that economics as just one aspect of Culture in general (and in the case of the dominant economy, as just one aspect of the culture of apartness, in particular) and that the changes from sick to healthy economy that I am advocating cannot be sustainably made accept as a part of the general shift from the Culture or Apartness to Healthy Culture.