FROM META-CRISIS TO TRANSFORMATIVE POSSIBILITIES

T R A N S I T I O N

Alchemizing and Liberating Capital in Service to Life 

R E S O U R C E

FROM INDIVIDUAL ENTITLEMENT TO COLLECTIVE ENTANGLEMENT

C I R C L E

We have called this project the Transition Resource Circle because we are focused on the broader transition from our current meta-crisis to adjacent possible futures. We work with resources and resource holders to alchemize and liberate capital to be in service to Life. We work through circle ways (e.g. non-hierarchical, embodied cognition approaches, psycho-spiritual practices) to move from a culture of entitlement to ways which honor the multiple entanglements of historical precedents, our respective lineages & karmic storylines, and what future beings (including ourselves) require for reconciliation and healing.

About

We are in the midst of a meta-crisis. Ecological collapse, climate change, species extinction, increasing pandemics, spiking inequality, inhumane poverty, racialized hierarchies and spiritual ennui are the outcomes of systems of domination, exploitation and separation. This has culminated into our current operating system: neoliberal capitalism.

For every dollar of new economic growth, about 93 cents ends up in the hands of the top 1%. And only about 5 cents up in the hands of the world’s majority - 60% of humanity. Therefore, by definition, wealth creation actively creates inequality and poverty. Every dollar of wealth created also heats up our planet as we have an extractives-based, fossil fuel economy. Therefore, by definition, capitalism also creates climate change. Also, because capitalism started in Europe, descendents of Europeans had at least a two century head start on acquiring capital, largely through what historian and geographer David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession” - imperialism, slavery, genocide, land theft, etc. Therefore, white supremacy is embedded within the capitalist system. Within the context of the existing operating system, no amount of reform, whether it be green investment or otherwise, can change the structure and trajectory of this self-terminating, exponential function.

This meta-crisis is not something outside of us. We are all complicit, to various degrees, in perpetuating and benefitting from the dominant culture.

TRC focuses on philanthropy as it has the potential to play a critical role in rebalancing wealth, power and historical injustices. Yet all too often philanthropy perpetuates and exacerbates the current system through undemocratic and unaccountable systems, by increasing endowments through existing market mechanisms, and its lack of imagination to support a necessary paradigm shift.

Ways of Working

As we are all implicated and inextricably woven into the fabric of neoliberalism, late-stage capitalism, patriarchy and structural racism, we need approaches that support us to identify, untangle, and actively unlearn the deep logics we have internalized. We also need methods that support us to open up to the plurality of ways of seeing and knowing to cultivate imaginal realms; to conceive and create alternative possible future(s); and to take practical steps in achieving these realities.

Areas of inquiry

As economists, bankers and others warn us, we must grow the global economy at 3% a year to avoid stagnation and/or recession. This doesn’t sound like much, but it requires a doubling of the economy every twenty years. We have already crossed four of the nine planetary boundaries and are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction. We are at a crossroads and our choice is clear: growth or life?

We can continue to benefit from capital expansion based on an extractive system that requires the exploitation of living systems, human and more-than-human, or we can use existing capital to usher in a transition to build a post-capitalist world. 

First Principles

What are our first principles and carried-over assumptions to the global challenges in the Anthropocene?