Dear Reader,

Commons are shared resources on Earth (and in outer space) that no one ‘owns’. For most of our time as a species, these included land, water, forests and minerals. In recent centuries our commons have gradually been privatized, commoditized, and our access to them eroded. How the remaining commons are used and managed reflects their social significance. For example – a well-loved hiking trail through the mountains may be mapped, groomed and communicated about by hikers to preserve its value. Our global commons include the Earth’s atmosphere, areas of the oceans, the radio spectrum, the internet, genetic data, and more – at least for now.

But what about what Jeremy Lent calls Earth’s animate intelligence –  the patterns and processes of Life that contribute to flourishing and regeneration? What about shared wisdom and our capacity for insight and awareness, our ability to imagine and create? Are these also a kind of commons?

In the Fall edition of Kosmos, we examine and reimagine these less tangible resources as a spiritual commons and consider their implications for our time. What is something you hold in common with others and value deeply? This might include ancestral knowledge, traditions, a spiritual practice or community. Are our spiritual commons scarce or abundant?  

In Regaining Our Spiritual Commons, essayist Mark Vernon writes:

The appreciation of what’s good, beautiful and true should be added to the list, as well as the freedom to orientate one’s life around them. This also implies that love lives in this domain.

Share your ideas. We invite you to submit an essay up to 1000 words, a poem, or other artwork, in response to any of these prompts or what the theme means to you. We will choose several works to publish in our Quarterly and on our website.

Deadline: August 20, 2021

Please visit our Submissions Page for guidelines.

A Kosmos Classic, by David Bollier

The Insurgent Power of the Commons in the War Against the Imagination

Armed conflict is clearly a major problem in our time, but it is worth considering another serious war that may be provoking so many wars. I refer to the war against the imagination. This phrase comes from Beat poet Diane di Prima, who wrote:

From the Current Edition of Kosmos, by Kiley Arroyo 

How to Be a Soil Keeper | Regenerative Justice and Whole Systems Care

“The practice of soil keeping provides individuals committed to realizing a just society with a compelling basis for imagining their work and recognizing the interdependencies between people, place, and planet. More specifically, the principles used to restore fertility to soil can be extended to heal communities harmed by the same underlying forces — supporting reparative justice, personal development, and collective self-determination.

Nature provides elements and contours of the just society to which we aspire. No one waters a forest or fertilizes a meadow, and yet abundance is everywhere. Living systems use a set of time-tested principles to share power and collectively maintain fertile conditions in which life can flourish. Healthy ecosystems demonstrate the kind of actors, distinct roles, relationships, exchanges, structures, and behaviors that enable systems to transform to support the vitality of the whole.

I’ve been exploring how the characteristics of vibrant ecosystems align to the levers contained in western systems change frameworks to deepen my understanding of how we can foster emergence — for example, trees to enabling institutional structures, nutrient cycling to circular economies, fungi hyphae to mutual aid networks, compost to culture, perennial renewal to liberation, and so on. In doing so, I’ve come to believe that soil keeping provides a compelling metaphor and practical lessons in how we can nourish radical imagination and facilitate transformative change, within ourselves and in relationship with others.”

READ THE FULL ESSAY

From the Current Edition of Kosmos, a conversation between Jeremy Lent and Nicholas Joyce

The Web of Meaning

Jeremy Lent | One way of thinking about this is the overall ontological question: what is more powerful ultimately, these forces of destruction or forces of life? Of course we all know how true it is, how much easier it is to destroy than to build.

But we also see how life itself has this ability to regenerate and grow itself. In fact, one of the things I explore in the book is what I call the deep purpose of life. Because even though we’re told by mainstream society that life doesn’t have a purpose and that the universe itself is meaningless, actually, that’s wrong. Life, ever since it started on this Earth billions of years ago, has had the purpose to regenerate, to actually thrive and regenerate itself. And it’s done so successfully over billions of years.

So much so, that in fact really it’s more likely that the real issue is not what will survive, it’s much more a question of will human civilization survive this crisis? And how much damage will be done to life before it regenerates? Is it going to take tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years before it regenerates? Because it will regenerate. No matter how much damage we as a civilization do to it in this century.But we also see how life itself has this ability to regenerate and grow itself. In fact, one of the things I explore in the book is what I call the deep purpose of life. Because even though we’re told by mainstream society that life doesn’t have a purpose and that the universe itself is meaningless, actually, that’s wrong. Life, ever since it started on this Earth billions of years ago, has had the purpose to regenerate, to actually thrive and regenerate itself. And it’s done so successfully over billions of years.

But what I feel we need to do is also recognize that we, each of us, have life within us, and here is this potential to actually jettison this whole idea of being attached to a future, saying the future’s going to be like this or like that. But actually just put our lives in a shared commitment to life, to work towards that life-affirming future, a future of flourishing for humanity, a future of flourishing for life. And not be attached to the outcome – but be fully embedded in the process of what we’re doing. Recognizing we don’t know, none of us know how things are going to happen. But what we do know is, and what we discover in any analysis of complex systems is, there’s this nonlinearity to how things happen.

READ THE FULL CONVERSATION