Tag: regenerative economics

Teachable Moments: Crisis and what might be next at Schumacher College 

Jay Tompt4 Comments

I’ve always thought of them as those little (or big) situations in time when useful lessons about ‘being in the world’ suddenly reveal themselves ‘in the world’. Life imitating art imitating life imitating on and on – our mental models, if sufficiently malleable, working themselves out in constant flow – always wrong, of course, but sometimes useful – as we attempt to interpret the phenomena before our eyes (all imaginative senses, really), including what makes its way into our conscious experience. Teachable moments.

From Troy Vine’s workshop on Goethean colour theory.

Believe it or not, that kind of talk is more or less how we normally begin our graduate course in Regenerative Economics and is emblematic of an aspect of our inquiry here at Schumacher College. We describe our course as pluralistic and transdisciplinary. We begin with a deep dive into holistic science, deep observation and phenomenology, then move on to systems, complexity, ecology and deep ecology. We practice interrogating our presuppositions, reflections and observations.  A foundational element of our epistemology concerns making sense of our reality as human beings as it plays out in time and space, and in our case, paying special attention to the social, political, economic, cultural, ecological systems near and far, and from multiple perspectives. ‘There are many ways of knowing’, one would hear us say; ‘many paths to many mountaintops’, a favourite metaphor.

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Transforming the Devonian Economy

Jay Tompt1 Comment

I was very excited to see the telescope in the charity shop window. It was exactly what I’d been keeping my eye out for, ever since the comet became visible during one of our recent lockdown summers. I’m as eager to commune with the nature over our heads as with the nature that surrounds us.

I don’t consider myself a consumer. I might have simply borrowed one from The Share Shed, the mobile ‘library of things’ based in Totnes, but they don’t have one to lend. Buying used is the next best thing and something I’ve done for years to reduce my own ecological footprint. So I bought it and am now just waiting for the next clear night …

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The kind of economics we need right now

Jay TomptLeave a comment

Perhaps your head, dear reader, is already full of ideas. This is expected given our historical moment. There’s growing consensus that the myriad wicked crises bearing down on us, at all scales with existential threat and increasing dystopian probability, are a consequence of the current dominant political-economic paradigm and its realisation in the world. Neo-classical economics does not offer enough in the way of help to both fully understand these challenges nor the solutions.

Ancient woodland in Dartmoor

If we’re to avoid catastrophe, then this political-economic reality must change from being its cause to becoming its solution, both in the extremely short run and in the very long. This is the central challenge for all the generations of this century.

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This Pandemic Bears Gifts – new possibilities for economic transition

Jay Tompt1 Comment

It’s a precious gift to be alive as a sentient human being whatever the circumstances, my Buddhist friends remind me. Yes, of course, I say. And the global pandemic is awful, causing premature deaths, suffering and loss for survivors, financial disaster for households and business owners. My Buddhist friends also remind me that there has always been suffering. Perhaps, making clear these fundamental truths of the human condition are the first two gifts of this pandemic.

For the longer-term praxis of living together and all that entails – politics, economics, sociologics, ecologics – this pandemic brings additional practical blessings. First, let’s acknowledge the critiques of globalised ‘capitalism’ and political duplicity, the warnings of impending authoritarianism and austerity, and the near certainty of massively disruptive and sustained economic contraction. These are foreboding stories told by very serious people coming through louder and clearer than before in a now more amenable mediasphere. (If you haven’t yet seen them, then please search for them.) We must give them thoughtful attention and act accordingly. But they’re not the only possible stories about an as yet unconstructed future – in fact, they’re incomplete.

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