A word for the commons, no. 4: the principle of equivalence. Jung's idea that psychic energy withdrawn from one place doesn't vanish; it reappears somewhere else, often in another form. The irritation swallowed at work becomes the short temper at dinner.

#Jung #Psychology #Wellbeing

Sugar, caffeine, scrolling, wealth, power. Some addictions we punish. Others we call normal, even admirable. This week's letter: an essay on "us" and "them," and a three-question tool for finding common ground. buttondown.com/commoning.co...

From the shelf, no. 4: Gaia by James Lovelock (1979). Living things and their surroundings as one self-regulating system. (His neighbor William Golding suggested the name.) The project's central analogy: a mind more like a planet than a private room.

#Gaia #SystemsThinking #Books

One idea, one picture: the mind we share. You, inside your communities, inside a shared inner world. Material flows in; care or cost flows back out. That's why personal growth has social consequences.

commoningconsciousness.org

A word for the commons, no. 3: the shared inner world. The images, stories, archetypes, and patterns of meaning that no one owns and everyone draws on. Each inner life draws on it, and each returns something to it.

#commons #commoning #consciousness #Jung #CarlJung

From the shelf, no. 3: Jung's Map of the Soul by Murray Stein (1998). The book I suggest to anyone asking where to start with Jung: a clear, compact tour of the psyche, from ego and complexes to shadow, persona, and Self.

#Jung #consciousness #commoning

The break-room poster says geese take turns at the lead and gain 71% more range in a V. The number is a 1970 calculation. Data from real birds tell different and instructing lessons for #commoning. buttondown.com/commoning.co...

#commons #conscoiusness

One idea, one picture: every complex is part mine, part ours. Your history gives a reaction its shape; an archetype, a pattern shared by millions, supplies what's underneath. Drawing on it doesn't use it up. How we live it out changes what others inherit.
#Jung #Commons

A word for the commons, no. 2: complex. A knot of feeling, memory, and reaction around one emotional theme.

Jung: "Everyone knows nowadays that people 'have complexes.' What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us."

#Commons #Consciousness #Jung

A decade ago, my students put flyers on windshields at two grocery stores. About half the drivers littered at the run-down one; fewer than a third did at the well-kept one.
This week's Sunday letter: what that says about the mind we all share. buttondown.com/commoning.co...

#consciousness #Jung

One idea, one picture: the fundamental problem, turned inward. A street wears down one reasonable choice at a time. So can a life: the late night that quiets your anxiety sends its costs to the people around you. Relief for the part, costs for the whole.

A word for the commons, no. 1: the fundamental problem of social life. What pays off for the part can wear down the whole.

"Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary." (Wilson & Wilson, 2007)

Our first Sunday letter is out. Read it here: buttondown.com/commoning.co...

From the shelf, no. 1: Free, Fair, and Alive by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich (2019). The source of this project's verb, commoning, and of a distinction I lean on: a possession is held through use; property can be sold.

Why "Commoning Consciousness" and not "Consciousness as a #Commons"? A commons lasts only as long as people keep caring for it. As historian Peter Linebaugh put it: "There is no commons without commoning." What we share inwardly stays healthy the same way. #Jung

commoningconsciousness.org

Starting something new: Commoning Consciousness, a podcast and a book about personal growth as a shared responsibility. Jung, Ostrom, and the evolution of cooperation, together. The podcast begins on the winter solstice, Dec 21. The Sunday letter starts Oct 4.

commoningconsciousness.org