We are concerned with the making of a living economy. This is no small concern. The hegemonic economy - globalised, capitalist, extractive, enclosed and absurdly powerful - is appallingly and recklessly harmful. Forces of colonisation, fundamentalist purity and supremacy generate violence of many kinds, and intentions of boundless accumulation result in recurrent crisis and grotesque accumulations of personal wealth and power.
## In clear and present danger Continued life of our own species and very many other species, with any kind of ease, is in clear and present danger. Thus, in activism, in the global mutual sector, we urgently direct our attention to the making of a Living economy: durable across the span of human lifetimes, sufficiently comfortable for very many living species, radically open to the vernacular contribution and enjoying and stewarding of ordinary people in their ordinary living and working, organised as a practice oriented to the ease of living of our grandchildren’s grandchildren.
Our responses as activists in the global mutual sector - what Paul [Hawken 2007](https://foprop.org/doc/hawken-2007-jqc0TfOSl5) celebrated as ‘**blessed unrest’** \- are, thankfully, diverse and plural. At the same time, this gives us problems, because as we get deeper engaged with the world (which is diverse too!) we tend to get into cultural and local and maybe political silos. To address the challenge of moving [beyond fragments](https://foprop.org/doc/beyond-fragments-LM1gDHegkW), we deploy a frame on [Seven Rs](https://foprop.org/doc/seven-rs-aSGkBK5ipE) **of mutual sector commitment**. ‘Clear and present danger’, as tagged above, is the keynote of one of these Rs, the most primitive: [Rescue](https://foprop.org/doc/rescue-f1t2J89kSf)
## Economy Intending this to be a practical engagement with all **necessary means of subsistence and wellbeing** for human beings, in living, we take ‘economy’ as our core focus, rather than rebellion for example, or climate catastrophe, or the reformed heart. These oreintations emerge of course, as we pursue living economy: [resistance](https://foprop.org/doc/resistance-wglkvQeijZ), [wild commons](https://foprop.org/doc/210-wild-commons-xxx-q0jh4uvzBi), [deepening capacities of the heart](https://foprop.org/doc/100-deepening-capacities-of-the-human-heart-care-work-3mHUeMSIHC).
We mean a **‘real economy’**, an economy of actual living, lived practices in history and in geographical space, of use values for actual persons living and yet-unborn, of wise provision for generations needy and dependent like ourselves; rather than a dead and deathly economy of money, exchange, accumulation, enclosure, private appropriation, oligarchy, supremacy, abuse and violence. [Living practices, not structures and functions](https://foprop.org/doc/foprop-narrative-frame-GjHJSb0RzN#h-living-practices-not-structures-and-functions)
We mean a practice of **justice** and radical inclusion - social, economic and environmental justice - and reparation to those living, for historical injustice and cultural extermination enacted upon their peoples. This is another of the [Seven Rs](https://foprop.org/doc/seven-rs-aSGkBK5ipE): [Reparation & reconciliation](https://foprop.org/doc/reparation-reconciliation-FrEd7wLLSY).
We also mean **ecology**: human and more-than-human entities (organic and inorganic, people and stuff, collectives and populations, animal, vegatable and mineral), in plural, intimate, mycelial webs of responsive, evolving, dynamic, living, mutualised relationship. We engage these, for example, through these frames: - [¿110 Living gracefully within the doughnut - Greater-than-human relations](https://foprop.org/doc/110-living-gracefully-within-the-doughnut-greater-than-human-relations-LpmPRhYQd3) - [¿180 Transverse practice, weaving pluriverse](https://foprop.org/doc/180-transverse-practice-weaving-pluriverse-wzrCFZAbOG) - [¿210 Wild commons - Life systems of a green-blue planet](https://foprop.org/doc/210-wild-commons-basic-life-systems-of-a-green-blue-planet-q0jh4uvzBi) - [¿2B0 Prosthesis & symbiosis - Healthy, unhealthy & inescapable dependence on stuff](https://foprop.org/doc/2b0-prosthesis-symbiosis-healthy-unhealthy-and-inescapable-dependence-on-things-CWUzzFXBBn) - [¿4B0 Deep time, life time, sufficiency](https://foprop.org/doc/4b0-deep-time-life-time-sufficiency-leqK6TXBm3)
## Material existence - Out-there and in-here We take ‘economy’ as our core focus because we are materialists, and understand material existence and interdependence - of ourselves, other species, human artefacts and non-human stuff of all kinds (including for example weather and geology, food and bioregions, engineering materials and *terroir*) \- to be the basis out of which arise all conscious or intuited relationship (including Selves, and sprituality), appreciations of quality, and intentional or unintentional actions. We make a practical study of conditions, relationships, perceptions and skills: - Material **forms** of subsistence and wellbeing - [Forms of stuff - The material landscape](https://foprop.org/doc/forms-of-stuff-the-material-landscape-1-qbdi0XCvSF) - Preconscious, evolved, in-the-body **forces** of desire and intuition, affiliation and aversion - [Preconscious forces - The aesthetic landscape](https://foprop.org/doc/preconscious-forces-the-aesthetic-landscape-3-WvQr4LhsUf) ; and - Overt, intentional, out-there cultural **formations** that enable us capably and in mutuality, to see and know, organise and sustain, share perception, set direction and systematically make provision and lay down infrastructure - [Formations of purposeful people - The cultural landscape](https://foprop.org/doc/formations-of-purposeful-people-the-cultural-landscape-2-ELuD3QHuXm)
### Structures of feeling - in-heres, out-there Our focus in making a living economy is not just ‘out-there’, on material means or planetary environment or overt organisations and groups. We take *material* to also significantly and inescapably include what goes on ‘in here’, as skilfully recognisable and cultivatable self and feeling, thought and sensation, affect and impulse, recognition and intuition. It also includes the capacity to be in aware and skilful relationship with all the ‘in-heres’, ‘out there’: in our pasts, present moments and unrolling futures, held in and generated in social and emotional relationship, in affiliation and in conflict, in attachment and in negotiation, in ease and in suffering. Thus, alongside the materiality of things, and reflection on skilful practice, we have a core focus in **‘**[structures of feeling](https://foprop.org/doc/structures-of-feeling-1n6Ky9KY2z)’: how these may be evolved and put under wise intention, in visioning, provisioning and sustaining a living economy.
## Zones of reach, landscapes of practice, a weave The intentional historical activist practice of making the living economy thus has a profoundly wide scope.
To handle this scope, and potential for impact, we adopt a framing of modes in which the evolving world in its complexity and unknowability may be brought ‘to hand’ for intentional attention and action: four [zones of reach](https://foprop.org/doc/zones-of-reach-TgXVrS6Z4T).
Also, to focus on the practical skill and capacity of individual human activist-actors, we make a study of each of the three **[landscapes of](https://foprop.org/doc/landscapes-of-and-in-practice-vRhYe54bou)** [(and in) practice](https://foprop.org/doc/landscapes-of-and-in-practice-vRhYe54bou) that we identified earlier: material *forms*, interior *forces*, cultural *formations*.
Using zones of reach and landscapes of practice we can make a 4x3 [weave architecture](https://foprop.org/doc/foprop-weave-architecture-koRKstuTje) that can serve as a sufficiently ’thinkable’ container for a rich repertoire of patterns of activist practice. Mobilising such patterns locally - ‘singing’ and ‘dancing’ them into life, on the ground - informs our practice of systematically, practically, intentionally [re-weaving](https://foprop.org/doc/re-weaving-APXDFeWzru) everyday life and work under altered social relations, in prefigurative response to known danger and risk: another of the [Seven Rs](https://foprop.org/doc/seven-rs-aSGkBK5ipE). ## The 4x3 foprop weave - Architecture of a pattern language, and a college ## Living practices, not structures and functions Just to be clear: we address an economy as a living constellation of **practices** (people and people and non-human stuff, interdependent, in mutual relations). Not a system of stuff - let alone, the *dead, merely exploitable, disposable* stuff of the hegemonic economy. Anyway, ‘stuff’ is highly active, including for example stuff that is alive and stuff (eg an ocean) that is enormously impactful. But also stuff like documents and machines and softwares which, as ‘actants’, bring complex order of one kind and another to practice - even if not necessarily the order that ‘we’ meant them to bring. The pattern language that we aim to evolve is not a system of abstract functions or structures, but a repertoire of prompts that can be ‘sung’ and ‘danced’ into everyday life and work, in the moment, persistently, as a collective practice of rescue, resistance, reporting, re-weaving, reparation, regenerative activism and regime change - the [Seven Rs](https://foprop.org/doc/seven-rs-aSGkBK5ipE). * * * OK, let’s get on with it. # Starts here … See: [foprop wiki conventions](https://foprop.org/doc/foprop-wiki-conventions-aRZnKsfZAe) The collective practice of making a living economy implies that we become very capable in working in four zones or extents of activist reach: First, making the living economy, in the face of iminent and emergent catastrophe and fear, calls for deep capability in the human heart. - Core pattern: [100 DEEPENING CAPACITIES OF THE HUMAN HEART](https://foprop.org/doc/100-deepening-capacities-of-the-human-heart-care-work-3mHUeMSIHC) - Narrative outline : [Care work](https://foprop.org/doc/foprop-narrative-frame-GjHJSb0RzN#h-care-work) Then, a living economy calls for an ecology of very many well founded and well judged practices of provisioning, stewarding and mobilising in the wild commons, domestic commons and commons of digital means, ‘in the doughnut’. This real, material, life-oriented economy - in contrast with the fantastical extraction economy of capital and the abstract economy of economists - is comprised of people, people and stuff, mutually engaged in subsistence work. - Core pattern: [200 ORGANISING A REAL ECONOMY](https://foprop.org/doc/200-organising-a-real-economy-subsistence-work-xxx-zz8uf2Qfyn) - Narrative outline: [Subsistence work](https://foprop.org/doc/foprop-narrative-frame-GjHJSb0RzN#h-subsistence-work) Underlying these, system change of the depth and scope we are contemplating requires great capability, fluency and scope in cultivating and mobilising the capability of activist formations. - Core pattern: [300 CULTIVATING CAPABILITY IN ACTIVIST FORMATIONS](https://foprop.org/doc/300-cultivating-capability-in-activist-formations-formacion-work-xxx-r1P65SD7vp) - Narrative outline: [Formación work](https://foprop.org/doc/foprop-narrative-frame-GjHJSb0RzN#h-formacion-work) And finally, face-to-face and peer-to-peer relations can only do so much. A living economy - sustained to support the lives of grandchildren’s grandchildren, and very many diverse other species - requires well-founded engagement with others ‘over the horizon’: in other regions, and in other times both earlier and later, in deep time. This is the basic challenge - perhaps the ultimate historical, human (meta-human?), humane challenge - of stewarding work and life in plural commons-of-commons. - Core pattern: [400 ENGAGING BEYOND KNOWABLE COMMUNITY](https://foprop.org/doc/400-engaging-beyond-knowable-community-stewarding-work-xxx-QcRKghHQ38) - Narrative outline: [Stewarding work](https://foprop.org/doc/foprop-narrative-frame-GjHJSb0RzN#h-stewarding-work) ## ¿1 Care work ## ¿2 Subsistence work ## ¿3 Formación work ## ¿4 Stewarding work The intention of engaging beyond knowable community, and the practice of stewarding contributions in commons-of-commons, calls for patterns and commitments of tighter scope. ### In the material landscape of stuff - [410 COLLEGE(ing)](https://foprop.org/doc/410-collegeing-6XD5I5l9Gy) \- Deep cross-generation befriending and provisioning - [420 CITY IN THE DOUGHNUT](https://foprop.org/doc/420-city-in-the-doughnut-loI2H1PTG0) \- Living economy where the majority of the Earth’s people live - [430 BIOREGION](https://foprop.org/doc/430-bioregion-VlaQkKiMKo) \- Small enough to know, big enough to speak: ‘local’ - [440 GRANDCHILDREN](https://foprop.org/doc/440-grandchildren-lULvXBo6oI) \- And the grandchildren’s grandchildren: what do we leave them that is persistent and truly helps? ### In the cultural landscape of knowing and organising - [450 COMMONS-OF-COMMONS](https://foprop.org/doc/450-commons-of-commons-WJKylKin77) \- Achieving scope in commoning, across regions and times - [460 PROTOCOL COMMONS](https://foprop.org/doc/460-protocol-commons-FViNfuWVip) \- commoning tech Infrastructure before it’s built - [470 FEDERATING](https://foprop.org/doc/470-federating-7slCB5afrp) \- the practical activity of ‘scale’ ### In the aesthetic landscape of in-here forces and emotional commons - [480 BLESSED UNREST](https://foprop.org/doc/480-blessed-unrest-TTaukSNlOJ) \- Making a ‘bodhisattva class’ - [490 UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT](https://foprop.org/doc/490-uneven-development-2oIXBlfq01) \- The dance of difference (pluriverse) in practice, across regions and across time - [4A0 DUAL POWER](https://foprop.org/doc/4a0-dual-power-WHLlGeRfue) \- Prefigurative practice, up against hegemonic forces, institutions, infrastructures - [4B0 DEEP TIME, LIFE TIME, SUFFICIENCY](https://foprop.org/doc/4b0-deep-time-life-time-sufficiency-leqK6TXBm3) \- Including grieving, hubris. Having enough, beaing at ease in the long run, in a life. - [4C0 NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE](https://foprop.org/doc/4c0-news-from-elsewhere-RprxM6b6le) \- Recognising and visioning contributions of others, in other times and other places. ## foprop pattern language - Architecture for a college of conviviality