The other day I, for a number of reasons, found myself talking to the person charged with installing fiber optic cables on my street. I could tell from his Southern accent and bewilderment at the cold that he wasn’t from around here, and I could tell he was at least ten years older than me. He had a sixteen year-old son and long, curly red hair pulled back in a ponytail, and gauges in his ears. We were talking about economics. We were talking about how things were, generally speaking, not working out for most people, including the way that food and everything else we needed to survive seemed to cost more and more for less and less, the perils of renting from perpetually lazy landlords, the bleakness of a changing climate. The fear we hold for future generations – to say nothing of our own. It’s a conversation I’ve had with more people than anticipated, a conversation that I haven’t always been the one to initiate.
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I never thought I would like economics. And I certainly never thought I’d design a whole course of the subject. I thought econ was for people in suits, people who cared about finance, people who saw the other-than-human world as nothing but a pool of resources to exploit. It turns out, however, that the version of economics usually studied in classrooms is not the only version out there.
So, here I am announcing to the world the release of EcoGather’s latest course – Wellbeing Economy – which we made (I made!) for people who are ready for a different kind of economics class. I made it for you – especially if you think you don’t care about economics or if the idea of trying to understand “the economy” stresses you out.
Here’s what you can expect if you decide to dive in: We’ll start by returning to the origins of the word “economy” and consider the ways in which economics is, at its core, the study of managing our home, making peace with limits, how we recognize and allocate abundance, and how we fundamentally relate to each other. In other words, we’ll consider how we humans find our place in the web of life. And we consider the fact that, in doing so, we don’t need to organize our economies around principles of exploitation and profit.
Imagine an economy organized in service of human and ecological wellbeing — a wellbeing economy that is collaborative, purposeful, and committed to shared prosperity among humans and vitality throughout the natural world. Such an economic philosophy stands in sharp contrast to the extraction and growth-oriented imperatives of today’s dominant forms of market capitalism, which deliver prosperity to the few at great costs to communities and through collateral damage to the environment. Our Wellbeing Economy course takes seriously the notion that an alternative economic organization is not only necessary but also possible – and it demonstrates how we can move toward the same.
The course was inspired and informed by EcoGather’s collaboration with the Gross National Happiness Centre in Bhutan — a pretty tremendous partner to have on this subject. It covers strategies for cultivating inner wellbeing; introductions to conventional economics and capitalism; reflections on work and purpose; investigations into currency systems, degrowth, and gift economies, among several other subjects. Throughout the course, learners have the opportunity to unpack ubiquitous cultural assumptions and compare current systems to more just alternatives. The course also feature voices from those immersed in the work of ushering in new economies, including leaders from the Gross National Happiness Centre in Bhutan and representatives from closer to home in Vermont at BALE and WEALL, among others. Finally, the lessons are designed to help participants put some of the heterodox economic strategies into practice in their own communities.
Simply put, this class is for anyone who believes in – or is at least curious about – the possibilities of cultivating economies around principles of solidarity and wellbeing for all. This is for anyone who wants to connect that funny feeling that things aren’t going well to a long and complex history of economic dogma, and then leverage that knowledge to create something better.
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And – because we’re friends – can we be honest for a minute? This class took a long, long time to create. It took an embarrassingly long time to create — mostly because we kept coming up with new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new practices. And we thought we couldn’t share the class without including all of them. But, for the moment, we’ve decided to resist the idea that something needs to be perfect in order to be good and worth sharing. Our hope is that the world of economics will change – a whole lot — and we hope you’ll be part of that change. That means we also hope the class will change. Instead of holding the class under our wing until we’d covered every.single.relevant topic imaginable, we’re leaning on our network of EcoGather courses (and our brilliant community) for support.
The other reason why this class took such an absurdly long time to finish is because I was scared. “What if,” I wondered, “people think I’m full of it? What if I publish this class and it’s wrong? What if everything I’ve said and written and incorporated is wrong? What if some expert is out there reading this and preparing to tell me just how wrong I am?”
Sure, there’s value in humility, in opening ourselves up to honest critique. But here’s the thing – so much of economic theory is built on faulty assumptions. I read a lot of that theory as I curated this class, and I hated a lot of what I encountered. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I have spent a good deal of time reading, writing, thinking, synthesizing, listening to what others have to say. I think the class has a lot to offer. I know it is valuable. I don’t think it’s perfect, and I don’t pretend to be an unparalleled expert. But I also don’t think we ought to require narrow expertise to lead inquiry into topics at the heart of how humans ought to make our home on this planet and share the things that make life possible. Indeed, the fact that we’ve left so much of this up to self-proclaimed experts might be a big part of how we wound up with a global economy that is so divorced from the truth of our lived experiences.
Words of wisdom from our friends at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
With this class, I’m offering to be your guide, not your lecturer. We’re exploring, not conquering. And this class is best when paired with others. It pairs especially well with our EcoGather course in in Geographies of Exclusion and Resistance, which provides much deeper context on colonialism, its history, and its impact across continents. It’s also a good friend to Culture, Coalition, and Movement Building, which goes into more specifics about how people build movements for change and absolutely applies to how we move toward economic transitions.
Either way, I think you’ll like it, and I would love it if you would join me in un-learning what you think you know — or don’t know — about economics.
The class is yours.
In Solidarity,
Mackenzie
P.S. This one was a group effort across EcoGather. I extend a deep and heartfelt thanks to everyone else on the team who participated testing the waters of heterodox economics.