Inhabiting Interdependence

Inhabiting Interdependence: Being in the Next Economy

In this insightful book, John Bloom, author of The Genius of Money, explores approaches toward transforming the conventional habits of mind and practice that have led to today’s imbalance in our economic life and in society as a whole.

Acknowledging that money has permeated almost every aspect of daily life—including our relationships to nature and to one another—Bloom asks:

How and why did we arrive at our current forms of social practice, including organizational life and governance? 

From this inquiry arises a major reconsideration of personal and cultural conditioning and our economic selves, as well as our systems of exchange, in order to understand how we can be in the next economy in a way that supports and celebrates our human capacities.

John Bloom offers an argument for returning natural resources, work, and forms of capital to their origins as gifts rather than as commodities. By adopting such a framework, we can find a deeper meaning and purpose for stewarding these economic gifts on behalf of a more livable and interdependent future.

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. Heart’s Guidance
2. From Co-creation to Association
3. Reflections on Inequality
4. Moving to Equilibrium
5. Faith, Hope, and Love
6. From Expectation to Affirmation
7. Intimations of a Next Economic Story
8. The Center is Uncertain

WORK

9. An Evocative Ethos
10. On Compensation, or What Am I Working For?

ORGANIZATIONS

11. Closing the Credibility Gap
12. New Benchmarks of Fiduciary Practice
13. Destinies and Destinations

MONEY AND SPIRIT

14. An Argument for Rediscovery
15. More on the Intersection of Money and Spirit
16. What Do We Do at the End of Free-Range Capital?
17. What Does Money Have to Do with Freedom?

ASSOCIATIVE ECONOMIC TRANSACTIONS

18. Toward an Economics of Place
19. Place, Price, and Associative Economic Practice
20. Getting the Price Right
21. From Self-reliance to Collaboration
22. Banking in Place
23. From Transaction to Transformation
24. From Prime Mover to Freedom
25. The Day of Giving and the Commonwealth

LAND AND MONEY

26. Between Land and Money
27. An End to the Age of Entitlement
28. A Poetic of Economics in Agriculture

Epilogue: A Call for Transformation

About the Author

JOHN BLOOM is Director of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance in San Francisco (rsfsocialfinance.org). As part of his work there, he has been developing the Transforming Money Network, as well as other educational programs that address the intersection of money and spirit in personal and social transformation.  Mr. Bloom founded two nonprofits and has served as a trustee on several, including Yggdrasil Land Foundation (yggdrasillandfoundation.org). He has worked with more than a hundred nonprofit organizations in capacity-building and cultural change. He leads workshops and lectures and has written extensively on education, the economics of a biodynamic CSA, and about money and philanthropy. He lives in San Francisco. As of October 2016, John Bloom is also General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America. He writes a blog at transformingmoney.blogspot.com).