Etymologically speaking, to invest means to clothe, as in to take naked money and put it into new vestments, something material, something real in the physical or social realm. Money is naked human potential -- creative energy that has not yet been "clothed" with material or social constructions. Right investment is to array money in sacred vestments. (more)

These personal accounts capture life at Zuccotti Park, as experienced by a young Civil Rights attorney and mother who arrived at the Occupy Wall Street protests a skeptic, but who was quickly pulled in by the excitement of witnessing a new movement being birthed. (more)

Accumulation adds some measure to our security, but not for long. The mentality of accumulation is coincident with the ascent of separation, and it is ending in tandem with the Age of Separation. Accumulation makes no sense for the expanded self of the gift economy. (more)

The transition to sacred economy is part of a larger shift in our ways of thinking, relating, and being. Economic logic alone is not enough to sustain it. As we heal the spirit-matter rupture, we discover that economics and spirituality are inseparable. On the personal level, economics is about how to give our gifts and meet our needs. (more)

To the powers that be: sorry to hear you are so full of fear, that with violent disregard for democracy you felt compelled to bulldoze the heart of the people’s park of parks into the ground. Don't fear us, join us. This movement is here to stay, here to grow, here to evolve. Love is the movement. (more)

The framework that might best serve the Occupy movement is one of strategic nonviolent direct action. Within that framework, Occupy groups would make clear agreements about which tactics to use for a given action. This frame seeks to create a dilemma for the opposition, and to dramatize the difference between our values and theirs. (more)

The transition I map out is evolutionary. It does not involve confiscation of property or the wholesale destruction of present institutions, but their transformation. As the following summaries describe, this transformation is under way already, or incipient in existing institutions. (more)

There is no shortage of people who want to do creative work and no shortage of creativity. What is scarce is the money to pay them. If the creative class were a marginal, fringe sector of our economy, this apparent lack of collective value might make some sense on a superficial level, but in fact research shows that the creative class is central to economic success. (more)

Call me an idealist, but I want the Occupy movement to be different from all previous movements that have pitted the righteous against the depraved. I long for a true revolution of the heart. (more)

The new exchange systems we are exploring blur the boundary between the monetary and nonmonetary realms and therefore the standard definition of the "economy." How would we measure it in the absence of a common unit of account? Ultimately, underneath money, is the totality of what human beings do for each other. (more)

Local currency is often proposed as a way to revitalize local economies, insulate them from global market forces, and re-create community. There are at present thousands of them around the world. So what's the catch? (more)

Sacred Economics envisions a world where people do things for love, not money. What would you do, freed from slavery to money? What does your own life, your true life, look like? Underneath the substitute lives we are paid to live, there is a real life, your life. (more)

Capitalism has always been driven by naked self-interest. Under neoliberalism, selfishness just has a lot more freedom to do its damage. Walter Benjamin's observation "perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake" has never been more apt. (more)

Saturday's global rally in over 600 towns and cities worldwide was a momentous event. A month ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement managed to pierce the veil of the matrix. The puncture has now become an unsealable rip in the fabric of Empire. Gas is escaping rapidly from the balloon. (more)

I have long been impatient with “sustainability,” as if that were an end in itself. Isn’t it more important to think about what we want to sustain, and therefore what we want to create? (more)