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“The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.”

— Audre Lorde

It was during the winter of 2017 when I first began conceptualizing my Theory of Indivisibility, an anti-oppression framework for social sustainability.

I had spent the previous 8 years voraciously consuming books, research, speeches, and case studies about systems thinking, authentic dialogue, biomimicry, and the evolution of human societies which culminated in a light bulb moment while driving on a cold winter day that December.

In my mind's eye, I began to see the interconnections and interdependencies between our most pressing societal issues, the solutions created to address them, and the evolution of social norms and beliefs that perpetuate oppression. I immediately pulled my car over, reached into my glove compartment for my notepad and pen, and began to draw out what I was visualizing.

I spent the next 3 months conducting research to confirm my assumptions before I began creating content to share my ideas and insights with the world. This research combined with my growing understanding of systems thinking helped me to understand that harsh realities like poverty, sexism, homelessness, etc. don’t persist simply because people are naturally hateful and selfish. They persist because of how the dominant social systems that drive societal norms and influence individual behavior have evolved over the course of thousands of years.

Around 10,000 years ago, during the Agricultural Revolution, human societies experienced a pivotal shift. Previously, most humans lived in egalitarian hunter-gatherer tribes, where power-with social norms prevailed, emphasizing collaboration, equity, and equality. However, the advent of agriculture introduced new survival strategies and a need for organized labor and resource management.

This transformation led to increased population growth and the establishment of permanent settlements. Consequently, based on the relatively limited communication and problem-solving capabilities that had evolved up to that point in human societies, hierarchical forms of governance and resource allocation gave rise to authoritarian (power-over) social systems.

These new authoritarian norms were aimed at managing larger, more complex societies, marking a significant departure from the previously egalitarian social structures. And since our current social systems evolved from power-over ideals and beliefs that are inherently oppressive to many people (i.e. patriarchy), so too are many of our present-day ideals and beliefs.

I realized that I too was an oppressor because I carried oppressive ideals and beliefs that I had adopted just by being raised and immersed within this society. Sexist, fatphobic, classist, adultist, patriarchal, homophobic, racist, and other oppressive beliefs and ideals are the water we swim in. They are embedded in our institutions, our music, and our ways of speaking.

I realized that if I was going to start creating content, speaking, and writing about anti-oppression I had to first admit to myself that I was an oppressor and begin to scrutinize and change my own ideals, beliefs, and behaviors.

Power-Over Tools of Oppression

In 2021 I created and released the Theory Of Indivisibility infographic which includes a list of words and phrases called “Power-Over Tools of Oppression” and a list called “Power-With Tools of Liberation.”

I’ve never written or spoken in detail about what each of these words and phrases means to me or why I included it…until now.

In a world rife with complex social dynamics, understanding the tools of oppression is crucial. These tools, deeply embedded in power-over systems, not only perpetuate societal divisions but also impact individuals on physical, emotional, and psychological levels. This article explores each tool of oppression, illustrating how they can be self-imposed or used against others, and their detrimental effects on the environment.

Fear: The Cornerstone of Control

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Fear is a primary tool in “power-over” systems, used to maintain control and compliance. It manifests in various forms, from fear of exclusion to fear of physical harm.

Self-Oppression: Individuals internalize fear, leading to self-censorship, lack of self-worth, and an inability to pursue personal goals.

Oppression of Others: Fear is employed to manipulate and control others, often justified as a means of maintaining social order or safety and security.

Environmental Oppression: Living in fear stifles the creativity and cooperation essential for solving environmental challenges.

Scarcity: Manufacturing a Sense of Lack

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Scarcity, the belief in limited resources, fuels competition and justifies inequality.

Self-Oppression: This belief leads individuals to undervalue their own abilities and skills, perpetuating a mindset of lack and limitation.

Oppression of Others: Scarcity is used to justify hoarding resources and economic inequalities, often at the expense of marginalized people and communities.

Environmental Oppression: The scarcity mindset drives overconsumption and environmental degradation, causing resources to be exploited without regard for future generations.

Dependency: Eroding Self-Sufficiency

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Dependency in “power-over” systems refers to the creation of a reliance on certain systems or authorities, limiting individual autonomy.

Self-Oppression: Individuals may become reliant on approval or support from these systems, eroding their sense of self-sufficiency and confidence.

Oppression of Others: By fostering dependency, people and systems who seek to control others can limit the potential of individuals, particularly those in marginalized groups.

Environmental Oppression: Dependency undermines the development of resilient, self-sustaining communities, crucial for long-term environmental stewardship.

Standardization: One Size Fits All…Never Does

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Standardization imposes uniform norms and standards, often disregarding individual and cultural differences.

Self-Oppression: It leads individuals to suppress their uniqueness and conform to societal expectations, diminishing self-expression.

Oppression of Others: Enforcing standardization marginalizes those who do not or cannot conform, leading to social exclusion.

Environmental Oppression: A standardized approach often overlooks sustainable, localized solutions in favor of one-size-fits-all methods.

Erasure: Silencing Diverse Voices

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Erasure involves the deliberate omission or denial of certain groups’ experiences and histories.

Self-Oppression: Individuals from these groups may internalize a sense of invisibility, negatively impacting their identity and self-worth.

Oppression of Others: Through erasure, dominant groups maintain power by invalidating the experiences and contributions of others.

Environmental Oppression: Erasure leads to a lack of diverse perspectives, crucial for innovative and inclusive environmental solutions.

Moral Judgment: Dividing Right from Wrong

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Moral judgment in “power-over” systems involves imposing rigid, binary, and unnuanced beliefs and values, often used to justify inequality and control.

Self-Oppression: Individuals internalize these judgments, leading to guilt, shame, and a distorted self-image.

Oppression of Others: It’s used to delegitimize and marginalize those who do not conform to these moral standards.

Environmental Oppression: Moral judgment often dismisses environmental concerns if they conflict with prevailing economic or social interests.

Competition: Fostering Division

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Competition, as a tool of oppression, promotes the idea of winners and losers, encouraging a mindset of scarcity and conflict.

Self-Oppression: It drives individuals to constantly compare themselves to others, leading to stress and a diminished sense of self-worth.

Oppression of Others: In societal contexts, it fosters inequality and social stratification, where the success of some is built on the suppression of others.

Environmental Oppression: Our dominant economic system, capitalism, relies on competition and prioritizes profit and expansion at the expense of ecological balance, leading to overconsumption, resource depletion, and environmental degradation.

Laws: Legalizing Oppression

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Laws, in oppressive systems, are often designed to maintain the status quo and protect the interests of dominant groups.

Self-Oppression: Individuals may limit their actions and beliefs to what is legally prescribed, often at the expense of their own values and ethics.

Oppression of Others: Laws can be used to legitimize discrimination and inequality, disproportionately impacting marginalized groups.

Environmental Oppression: Legal frameworks hinder environmental sustainability when they are more aligned with industrial or corporate interests than with sustainable practices.

Conditional Love: Affection with Strings Attached

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Conditional love is used in oppressive systems to control behavior by offering affection and approval only when certain conditions are met.

Self-Oppression: This leads individuals to constantly seek external validation, often sacrificing their own needs and identity.

Oppression of Others: It manipulates and controls others through emotional withholding, fostering relationships based on power dynamics rather than genuine connection.

Environmental Oppression: The pursuit of conditional approval that aligns with power-over socio-economic systems often overshadows concerns for collective well-being, including environmental stewardship.

Lying: Distorting Reality

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Lying, as a tool of oppression, involves the distortion or concealment of truth to maintain control and power.

Self-Oppression: Individuals may adopt dishonesty as a survival mechanism, eroding their integrity and trust in themselves.

Oppression of Others: Lies are used to manipulate and exploit others, undermining the foundation of trust necessary for healthy societal interactions.

Environmental Oppression: Misinformation and deceit impede efforts toward the transparency and accountability necessary for environmental sustainability.

Exclusiveness: Creating In-Groups and Out-Groups

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Exclusiveness in oppressive systems creates in-groups and out-groups, reinforcing social hierarchies and division.

Self-Oppression: It leads individuals to isolate themselves within their in-groups, limiting exposure to diverse perspectives and experiences.

Oppression of Others: Exclusiveness marginalizes and disenfranchises those outside the privileged groups, denying them equal opportunities and rights.

Environmental Oppression: Exclusive practices hinder inclusive and collaborative approaches essential for global environmental solutions.

Social Norms: Invisible Handcuffs

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Social norms are unwritten rules that dictate acceptable behavior within a society, often reinforcing traditional power structures.

Self-Oppression: Individuals may suppress their true selves to conform, leading to a loss of authenticity and self-expression.

Oppression of Others: Enforcement of these norms marginalizes those who do not conform, leading to social exclusion and discrimination.

Environmental Oppression: Rigid social norms can stifle innovation and diverse perspectives necessary for environmental problem-solving.

The Illusion of Freedom: Faux Autonomy

Definition and Power-Over Relation: The illusion of freedom is the false perception that individuals have complete autonomy and choice, masking underlying systemic constraints.

Self-Oppression: This illusion leads individuals to blame themselves for systemic failures, overlooking the structural changes needed.

Oppression of Others: It justifies inequalities by attributing them to personal choices rather than systemic issues.

Environmental Oppression: Believing in this illusion can divert attention from the need for systemic changes to address environmental crises.

Intolerance: Rejecting Difference

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Intolerance involves a lack of acceptance of differing views, identities, or beliefs, often leading to social division.

Self-Oppression: It can cause individuals to close themselves off from diverse experiences and viewpoints, limiting personal growth.

Oppression of Others: Intolerance leads to exclusion, discrimination, and often violence against those who are different.

Environmental Oppression: Intolerant attitudes can prevent collaborative efforts needed for addressing global environmental challenges.

Mistrust of Human Nature: Doubting Innate Goodness

Definition and Power-Over Relation: This tool involves a cynical view of human intentions, identities, and capabilities, often used to justify authoritarian control.

Self-Oppression: It can lead to self-doubt and a lack of confidence in one’s abilities, goodness, and in one's own identity.

Oppression of Others: Promoting mistrust justifies surveillance and control measures, infringing on personal freedoms and dignity.

Environmental Oppression: A general mistrust in humanity undermines the collective action and optimism required for environmental stewardship.

Internalized Oppression: The Oppressor Within

Definition and Power-Over Relation: Internalized oppression occurs when individuals from marginalized groups adopt the oppressive views and beliefs about their own group.

Self-Oppression: This leads to self-hatred, low self-esteem, and a sense of inferiority.

Oppression of Others: People who have internalized oppression may enforce these oppressive norms within their close relationships and in their communities.

Environmental Oppression: Internalized oppression divides people and communities, weakening the solidarity needed to enact sustainable practices.

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this article please share it with others. Please follow me on Medium or sign up for my email list to be notified about the release of the Power-With Tools of Liberation article to come.

For a deeper dive into The Theory Of Indivisibility check out these resources.

1. Infographic
2. Podcast
3. Visual album
4. Audio album

Love & Gratitude

Tools Of Oppression was originally published in Sustainable Solutions on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the previous transcript, The Evolution of Systemic Racism, I shared an essay that I wrote in 2016 titled, “Why Police Kill Black People…The Whole Story” that weaves in the evolutionary origins and current complexities of systemic racism. I concluded the show by sharing some proposed solutions that are aligned with my Theory of Indivisibility.

To cover the final two systems that we’re going to discuss in season 1, Systemic Racism and Education, I’ll share essays I’ve written that explore each one.

Today, I’ve included an essay I wrote in 2020 that covers my own personal coming of age story while navigating Systemic Racism: “Why I Walked Away From White People”.

In this Theory of Indivisibility series, we have been exploring the evolutionary origins, current complexities, and how my Theory of Indivisibility applies to the following social systems: Power-Over, Patriarchy, Religion, Ownership, Capitalism, Democracy, Systemic Racism, & Education. Be sure to go back to the first transcript of my podcast, Theory of Indivisibility, and catch up if it’s your first time here!

Why I Walked Away from White People

In 2007 I moved to the Metro Atlanta Ga. region from my home town Philadelphia, Pa. Shortly after that, I became an elementary school teacher at a school in East Point, Ga. where all of the students and over 95 percent of the staff were African American.

I’ll never forget a time when my colleagues and I were socializing and while I forget the exact context, at some point “white people” came up. One of my colleagues’ (who was born and raised in Mississippi) entire body language and attitude changed as she emotionally exclaimed her distrust and dislike for “white people”. Of course, I had heard many African American people in PA express a level of distrust or dislike for “white people” before…but this was different. She meant it with all of her soul and I believed that there was nothing that anyone could say that would ever change how she felt.

I could empathize with why she felt that way…

While growing up in Philadelphia, I attended a school in the heart of West Philly, Martha Washington (K-8), where the students and staff were about 99% African American. My neighborhood, Wynfield, which was on the edge of West Philly was also predominantly African American.

My first relationship in close proximity with a “white person” was with my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Crane. The next was with my 5th-grade teacher Mrs. Anderson. Other than meeting a few “white” kids at hotel pools while traveling south to spend the summer in Apalachicola Florida with my grandparents, I didn’t have any “white” friends during those formative years of my life.

During my 8th grade year at Martha Washington, my teacher Mrs. Williams brought in a movie titled Mississippi Burning for us to watch. I’ll never forget how devastated I was watching that movie. It was my first introduction to the violence and cruelties of race and whiteness (AKA white supremacy) in this country. The lasting thought on my 12-year-old mind after watching that movie was “I hate white people”.

High School

In 1993 I was accepted into Central High School, a four-year college preparatory magnet school that is also the second oldest public high school in the United States. While most public high schools in Philly were racially homogenous Central was uniquely diverse because it accepted teens from all over the city who met their rigorous admissions standards. So at the age of 13 and for the first time in my life I attended school with and began to regularly socialize with “white people”.

I met Sarah Stanley, a “white girl” from the Roxborough section of Philly, in homeroom during my freshman year. We connected and became friends instantly. Sarah was super cool. She spoke with a familiar cadence and used slang that we used in my West Philly neighborhood so it made it really easy for us to connect.

Throughout our time in high school, Sarah always had my back. During that first year at Central, we were in the same Spanish class and I fell behind in my grades. Failing that class would have led to me being kicked out of Central and being sent to my neighborhood high school. Sarah refused to let me fail so she helped me during and after class until I got back on track to pass.

During freshman year, I also met Evan Barneby, a “white dude” from the predominantly African American Germantown section of Philly. We met at a basketball court called the blacktop at our school where those of us into basketball would convene daily during our lunch break. Our bond was forged over basketball and cheesesteaks. On Fridays after school we would meet up at St. Joseph’s Univesity to work on our games and play pickup together at the auxiliary gym of the college campus which was near my house. Then afterward we would walk across the street to Larry’s Famous Cheesesteaks and share a large cheesesteak called The Belly Filler.

Throughout my high school years, my friendship with both Sarah and Evan continued to evolve. They were apart of the crew. I spent time at both of their homes and got to know their parents and siblings and they came to my home often and did the same. As I reflect back now I realize how the interactions that I had with Sarah, Evan, and their families, would become instrumental in my evolving perception of “white people”.

My first long term romantic relationship was with Megan Jackson and it started when we were seniors at Central. Megan’s mother was “white” and her father was African American. We spent a lot of time together during our three-year relationship including spending a lot of time at her home with her parents. Her mother and father were both really cool to be around and they treated me well. Her father even let me drive his car to our senior prom. That was a big deal and I was honored.

Megan identified as mixed/biracial and I don’t remember giving it much thought at the time. I grew up being told that if someone had “any black in them” then they were considered black. Later in life, I would begin to question that concept.

College Years

I attended undergrad at Kings College in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania. My primary motivators for choosing Kings were the opportunity to be a starter on the men’s basketball team right away and the opportunity to stay relatively close to Philadelphia where Megan would be attending Temple University.

Kings was a culture shock. The student body was 97% “white” and I could count on one hand how many African American students attended who weren’t football or basketball players. I had to navigate several race-related incidents during my time there. One, in particular, motivated me to create and wear a white t-shirt inscribed with the words “Don’t Smile In My Face And Call Me A Nigger Behind My Back” while standing near a busy part of campus all day.

I wanted to transfer from King’s College on several occasions. However, I had a “white” ally named Father Thomas O’Hara who was influential in my decision to stay. During my freshman year, Father O’Hara was my professor in a class that addressed elitism and social hierarchies in American society. That class would plant some of the earliest seeds of my evolution as an activist who routinely questions the status quo.

Every time that I wanted to leave my mother and Father O’Hara would listen to my gripes, ask what they could do to support me, and then encourage me to endure. Father O’Hara, who eventually became president of Kings College while I attended, would share with me the value he perceived that I added to the campus and ultimately I chose to stay to make whatever positive impact I could.

After my sophomore year, things began to improve significantly. I was much more comfortable on campus and some friendships began to really blossom. The men’s and women’s basketball teams traveled to away games together so we spent a lot of time together. Some of my closest friends were on the women’s team, which interestingly remained all “white” my entire time there.

During the summer after my junior year, a group of men’s and women’s team players agreed to live and work in Dewey Beach Delaware together. For some reason, all of the men’s team members backed out last minute but I chose to move forward because I thought it would be a cool experience. So I ended up living with six “white” women that summer and sharing a room with Denise. The next summer I moved off campus and became roommates with Denise’s cousin and women’s basketball player Maggie for my final semester of undergrad.

Denise and I are good friends to this day and we’ve consistently made time to speak and catch up over the years. I can say the same about several other friendships with “white people” that were cultivated during my time at Kings College and a few years after graduation while living and working in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Two of those friendships stand out in particular. One was with Dave Jannuzzi and the other was with Dave Favata.

Dave Jannuzzi was a standout All-American basketball player for our cross-town rival Wilkes University. During our four year careers opposing one another, he and I weren’t friends at all. We were rivals. Upon graduation, Dave and my friend and Kings College All-American teammate Corey Dickerson began working out together to prepare for playing professional basketball overseas. I began to get to know Dave better through he and Corey’s budding friendship.

During that same time period, Corey and I went into business together to open a hip-hop clothing store in downtown Wilkes-Barre. Dave came to us and asked if he could place his new basketball clothing line in our store and also asked if he could invest. We agreed and from that point forward Dave and I began to develop a friendship and a business partnership. We’d go on to partner on another business venture and I got to know his family really well and vice-versa. Dan Jannuzzi, Dave’s older brother, became an investor in my tech startup business in 2014 more than ten years after we all became friends.

Dave Favata owned a local pizza shop with his family. He worked closely with Dave Jannuzzi and me to launch another business venture in the area during that time. Dave Favata became a trusted friend through this process and he and Carey, his girlfriend at the time, even allowed me to live with them temporarily at one point while we were building the business.

What stands out to me the most about my friendship with both Dave’s was how much they and their families trusted and believed in me and followed my lead in our business endeavors. Two people and two families who grew up and lived in the predominantly “white” and conservative region of North-Eastern Pennsylvania.

Adulthood

In 2014 Michael Brown, an unarmed young African American man, was killed by a police officer in Ferguson Missouri. It was the latest of such incidents that those of us who grew up in African American neighborhoods were all too familiar with.

The incident became a very polarizing topic of debate in the news and on social media. Especially on Facebook where I had accumulated a pretty large and diverse “friends list” since joining. In 2014 my Facebook friends list consisted of family and friends that I grew up with, back home in Philly…friends and colleagues from my undergrad and post-graduate years in Wilkes-Barre…business associates from around the country from my time working in network marketing…and friends and former colleagues from my time teaching in Atlanta.

I instantly recognized a gap in perception about the incident between many of my family and friends of African descent and my friends and associates of European descent.

Author’s Note: Notice how I transitioned from referring to “white people” and “black people” to “people of European descent” and “people of African descent”. This transition happened as I moved into adulthood.

Due to my diverse experiences and relationships, I was able to listen to both sides with a level of empathy and understanding and tune out the polarization fed to us by the media.

A few years prior, through my doctoral studies, I was exposed to a communications framework for conflict resolution called Authentic Dialogue and a framework for understanding the root causes of societal problems called Systems Thinking. These tools significantly increased my consciousness and awareness and also provided me with the tools I needed to support my innate belief that yes, it is possible to reject and evolve past the oppression, polarization, and fear that keeps people divided due to social systems like race.

Empowered with these tools and driven by my innate desire to unify people, I started a Facebook group and eventually a podcast called Race Haven: Solutions-Focused Dialogue About Race Relations In America. My goal for Race Haven was to create a space where people from all cultures and ethnicities could come together and learn to listen in order to understand one another and find common ground, not to win an argument or debate.

It was a huge success. I received a lot of feedback from people about how their hearts and minds were being expanded. The authentic dialogue that occurred in the Facebook group and on the podcast sparked a lot of learning from one another and also from the myriad of articles and resources shared that provided present-day and historical context for race relations. I personally began to do a lot of research to answer the questions that were coming up for me during this time.

Questions like:

What is race anyway?

Why does racism exist?

What makes someone “white”?

What Makes Someone White?

Long before we were born there were several decisions that were already made for us by Oligarchs from the distant past. The social, economic, and political norms that European kings, queens, and Abrahamic religious leaders set into motion still dominate our way of life in America and other colonized territories around the world.

Like, for example, the gender binary and heterosexuality social constructs that say that you are a boy and should only be attracted to girls if you’re born with a penis and that you are a girl and should only be attracted to boys if you are born with a vagina. The problem with these types of standardized decisions is that, like everything in nature, humans are dynamic, complex, and always evolving…there is no standard.

As a result of these decisions, for thousands of years, homosexual and non-gender conforming people born into colonized societies have had to hide their true identity and play the predetermined socially acceptable role given to them or accept the consequences of being morally shamed, ridiculed, ostracized, punished, and/or even killed.

Predictably, most people chose and still choose to perform gender-conforming heterosexuality in order to reap the privileges and avoid the consequences. Consequences that many gender-conforming heterosexual people grow up unaware of.

Whiteness operates in the same way. People who identify as “white” didn’t choose to be “white” and no one has ever been born with truly white skin. Yet, most people of European descent continue to accept and perform whiteness, usually unknowingly, because of the inherent privileges and to avoid the consequences of not doing so. Consequences that many people of European descent grow up unaware of.

Erasure

One of the lasting legacies of colonization is erasure. When European Oligarchs initiated the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and theft of Indigenous peoples lands on Turtle Island (what many natives call North America) to increase their wealth and power they also set into motion systems for erasing the true identities and cultures of millions of people.

Later, the founders of this country would pick up that baton and continue executing from the playbook of superiority, power, and privilege by initiating the following forms of erasure.

Indigenous people on this continent were forced into government and religious run boarding schools where they were taught English and Christianity and forbidden from speaking their native languages and their native spirituality practices. Later they would be forced from their homelands into reservations where millions of them still reside and are basically forgotten. I rarely if ever see representation of Indigenous people in American popular culture and media. It’s like they were truly erased.

When enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas they were given new names, forced to learn English, forced to reject their native cultural and spiritual practices, and forced to adopt Christianity. As a result descendants of enslaved Africans like myself were robbed of our true identities. We don’t know what tribe, ethnic group, or territory we descend from on the vast continent of Africa. We don’t have any connection to our present-day family members who are still there. We don’t know our true culture and we don’t know our real names. Those things have all been erased.

The concept of mixed/bi-racial people is also born out of the systems of colonization, race, and the enslavement of African people. For centuries, this concept forced people who, for example, have a parent of African descent and a parent of European descent to identify as “black” and created social norms, stereotypes, and policies that identified them as “black” and oftentimes prevented them from truly connecting with their European families and cultural heritages. Essentially erasing the opportunity for them to embrace and connect to the fullness of their identities.

The social norm created by the system of race of a “black” “white” racial binary has created a “pick a side” dynamic that has caused a lot of people with parents from different ethnicities to experience feelings of isolation, confusion, and an inability to connect or fit in culturally. The shame in this is that the science of genetics proves that all humans descend from Africa and that genetically we are all “mixed up” and contain genetic elements from diverse regions around the world. Furthermore, the Humanae Project provides a wonderful visual collection of the multitude of shades and colors that make up the human species. None of them look “black”, “white”, or “mixed”…they simply look like individual people who represent the vast canvas of colors that comprise the human species.

For thousands of years and before people of European descent began to ride the wave of colonization and immigrate the Americas they were Spanish, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, and etc. people who had diverse cultures, languages, religions, and traditions. Colonization and the invention of race has served to distance many of them from the richness of their cultural heritage and connection to their native countries and traditions as well.

Over the course of several generations, many descendants of American immigrants of European descent were indoctrinated into nationalism, an element of whiteness that states with certainty that America is “the best country in the world”. I never quite understood this belief.

Like…how could someone say this with absolute certainty if they haven’t experienced living in every country around the world? This statement of belief is rooted in a sense of superiority and serves to devalue or erase the lived experiences and cultures of people from around the world who love their village, town, or country as well.

So, when and why did people of European descent become “white”?

Race — The Power Of An Illusion

In 2016 I watched part 3 of a documentary series titled Race — The Power of An Illusion. It was an extremely enlightening, thoroughly researched, and powerful account of the creation of “race” and “whiteness” as social constructs and how they became so deeply embedded into our society and individual consciousness.

“Race is one topic where we all think we’re experts. Yet ask 10 people to define race or name “the races,” and you’re likely to get 10 different answers. Few issues are characterized by more contradictory assumptions and myths, each voiced with absolute certainty.

In producing this series, we felt it was important to go back to first principles and ask, What is this thing called “race?” — a question so basic it is rarely raised. What we discovered is that most of our common assumptions about race — for instance, that the world’s people can be divided biologically along racial lines — are wrong. Yet the consequences of racism are very real”.

— Larry Adelman — Executive Producer — Race: The Power of An Illusion.

Ancient peoples stigmatized “others” based on language, customs, and religion but they did not sort people by “race”. It wasn’t until Europeans began to colonize the Americas and initiate the trans-Atlantic slave trade that the concept of “race” began to take form in an effort to distinguish Europeans from enslaved Africans and define who was privileged and who was property or second class.

In the 1600s European scientists began using pseudo-science to conclude that so-called “white people” were a superior “race” of people. Throughout the next 300 plus years, they used stereotypes that became widely believed social truths to support their theories. Theories that were later debunked by scientists in the early 1900’s. However, after 300 plus years it was too late…whiteness was thriving.

In the 1800s, when the enslavement of African people in the Americas began to be challenged on moral grounds, racial prejudices escalated into the violent and oppressive ideology of white supremacy. By the mid-1800s, race had become the “common sense” wisdom of white America, explaining everything from individual behavior to the fate of whole societies. Throughout this era laws, policies, and institutional practices were enacted that gave “white people” power and privilege over “non-white people” and gave rise to systemic racism.

So in conclusion…what I learned is that approximately 400 years ago powerful men of European descent created the ideologies of race and whiteness to protect and justify their wealth, power, and privilege…and it stuck. It stuck because the structure of the social, economic, and political systems created around race gave commoner people of European descent privileges for buying-in and accepting race and whiteness.

After learning this history back in 2016 I thought to myself…

Fuck them! Fuck the Oligarchs who created race and whiteness. Why should I continue to honor their decisions?

And that’s when I made the decision to reject the social constructs (systems) of race and whiteness…i.e walk away from “white people”.

Systems

Intuitively, we all understand systems and we know that something is wrong with our current social, economic, and political systems. However, the idea that “the system is broken” is misguided. In reality, our social systems are working exactly the way they were designed to work. Before elaborating, let’s get a better understanding of what a system is.

In the book “Thinking in Systems”, author Donella Meadows explains the following:

“A system is an interconnected set of elements — -people, cells, molecules, companies, beliefs, or anything — — organized to perform whatever functions are required to achieve something.

A system must consist of 3 kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a purpose. The human body is a great example of a complex system. The human body consists of integrated, interconnected, & self-sustaining systems that all work together cooperatively to maintain life. We have the respiratory system, nervous system, neurological system, skeletal system, digestive system, and many more.”

What’s Wrong With Our Systems?

In Thinking In Systems, Donella Meadows explains how she uses a Slinky when teaching about systems. She stands before her class with a Slinky perched on one upturned palm and with the fingers of the other hand she grasps the slinky from the top part-way down its coils. Then she pulls the bottom hand away.

The lower end of the Slinky drops, bounces back up again, and yo-yo’s up and down, suspended from her fingers above. “What made the Slinky bounce up and down like that?” she’d ask her students.

“Your hand. You took away your hand”, her students would say.

So then she’d pick up the box the Slinky came in, hold it the same way, and repeat the same actions. When she removes her bottom hand from the box nothing happens. The box just hangs there.

So what made the Slinky bounce up and down like that?

The answer lies within the Slinky itself. The hands that manipulate it either suppress or release some behavior that is latent within the structure of the Slinky.

Once we begin to see the relationship between structure (how a system is designed) and behavior (the results a system consistently produces based on its design) we can begin to understand how our social systems work, what makes them continually produce dysfunctional results, and how to shift them into healthier behavior patterns.

As the Slinky example illustrates, a system may be manipulated or triggered by outside forces, but the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of the system itself. The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior. An outside force or event may unleash that behavior, but the same outside event applied to a different system (i.e the Slinky box) is likely to produce a different result.

Think for a moment about the implications of that idea:

Do political leaders cause recessions or economic booms? Or are ups and downs inherent in the structure of a market economy?

Did President Trump and President Obama divide the country? Or is divisiveness inherent in the structure of a debate-based representative democracy where political leaders compete for votes by highlighting differences in ideals & beliefs?

Is poverty the failure of impoverished people as individuals? Or is economic stratification inherent within the structure of Capitalism?

And lastly…are people of European descent “white”, racist, and privileged because they choose to be…or are they born and indoctrinated into societal structures where superiority, privilege, and power are disguised as success and “the American dream” because of decisions made by Oligarchs from the distant past?

Systems vs. Individual Choices

Since learning about and developing a “Systems Thinking” lens I no longer see individual people’s attitudes and beliefs as the root cause of societal ills like systemic racism. Yes, many individuals have problematic attitudes and beliefs that have caused suffering and oppression…however their attitudes and beliefs as individuals are not the root cause.

I’ve learned, as illustrated in the slinky example above, that a systems structure/design is the root cause of the problematic attitudes and beliefs that lead to systemic racism (and all forms of oppression). It’s been the immense amount of privileges, indoctrinated fears, and stereotypes that created the feedback loops which subconsciously incentivize people of European descent to accept the superiority, power, and privilege embedded in our societal structures for them since this continent was colonized.

To solve the problem at its root, system structure must first be understood and then changed, so that new feedback loops can be designed which cause people to subconsciously develop attitudes and beliefs that foster social & economic equity and equality as a natural part of their everyday existence.

I often get pushback when I have a conversation with people about systems being more powerful than individual choices. I understand because I didn’t have this belief prior to learning systems thinking myself. However now, I can clearly see the patterns and root causes within oppressive systems and I teach others how to do the same through my podcast, Theory of Indivisibility.

For example, because of the fact that I was born with a penis, I grew up being indoctrinated into a variety of ideas about what I needed to think and do in order to be successful at being a “real man”. Later in my adulthood, I learned that many of those ideas were sexist, misogynist, and rooted in superiority, power, and privilege over women and LGBTQ+ people because of the social construct of patriarchy that, like racism, was created and embedded into human societies by Oligarchs from the even further distant past.

Once I understood the system’s structure of patriarchy I began to intentionally reject it by unlearning the indoctrinated attitudes and beliefs I was taught growing up. I learned to replace those old attitudes and beliefs with new ones by listening to women and LGBTQ+ people who communicate how they’ve been oppressed. I now move through the world conscious not to use my unearned male privilege in a way that is oppressive to women and LGBTQ+ people.

Rejecting Race & Whiteness

Race and whiteness have no scientific basis. I refuse to refer to human beings as “white people”. I refuse to honor the superiority, power, and privilege that instigated the creation of “white people” and the creation of race.

I am intentional about referring to people by their name and rejecting the norm of also adding a race. So instead of saying, “my white friend Evan” when speaking to people…I simply say, “my friend Evan”. If I need to generalize and only if it’s truly relevant for context, I’ll say “he’s a person of European descent”.

I usually don’t answer the “race” question on applications or surveys. I love, embody, and embrace Blackness as a culture…I reject it as a race. Blackness is rooted in empowerment and resilience and was born out of resistance to whiteness.

I don’t feel like people of European descent are superior to me, and I don’t assume that all people of European descent are bigoted or prejudiced against me. Whiteness and white supremacy thrive on division and fear.

I don’t perpetuate comparisons of people’s self-worth or success based on standards of whiteness (i.e. power, wealth, social status, academic degrees, materialism, etc.).

I changed my name from Scott Speed to Sundiata Soon-Jahta. My father named my older brother N’Namdi which is Nigerian but felt the need to give me a European name, Scott, six years later so that I could “fit in” better. My given last name, Speed, was forced onto my enslaved ancestor by an enslaver. I changed my name because I reject the idea that I need a “safe name” in order to “fit in” with whiteness and I changed my last name to reclaim agency over my identity, reject that enslaver’s decision, and reconnect to my African heritage in a way that is meaningful to me.

I don’t perpetuate the negative stereotypes of people of Indigenous, African, Asian, or Latinx descent that the creators of whiteness created to justify their superiority, power, and privilege.

Unfortunately, it is common for me to hear some African American family and peers make negative blanket generalizations about “what black people can’t get right”. That never sat well with me even before gaining a systems thinking lens. Now that I understand systems thinking I realize how much context and nuance that those blanket generalizations lack.

I’ll often speak up and say something like, “why are you so critical of African American people when the negative side effects of generations of poverty and disenfranchisement manifest instead of being critical of capitalism and systemic racism? For generations, the combination of capitalism and systemic racism created the conditions for and relied on enslaved and impoverished African American people to exploit for free and cheap labor in order to function and create wealth for the few.”

Solutions-Focused

I recently had a conversation with my friend Keisha, an African American woman who grew up in metro Atlanta communities and schools that were predominantly African American. She shared with me that she doesn’t feel comfortable around “white people”. She shared that she hadn’t been around them much in her life outside of her time in the military and that she never cultivated any meaningful friendships with anyone “white”.

As the conversation continued it broke my heart to hear her share that while she was traveling recently she realized that she even feels a sense of inferiority when she’s in the presence of “white people”. It was this conversation with Keisha that caused me to reflect on my life and write this essay.

I asked myself:

Why don’t I feel discomfort around people of European descent?

Why don’t I feel a sense of inferiority to people of European descent even though society was designed to embed those feelings in me?

Does this mean that I’ve healed from race and whiteness?

If yes, why have I healed?

I concluded that it was because of the friendships and relationships that I had forged with people of European descent throughout my life. However, based on our history of race-based oppression and violence and the polarization and fear that gets fed to us in the news media I can understand how many African American people who never form authentic relationships with people of European descent could feel how Keisha feels.

When I moved to Atlanta in 2007 it was the first time that I lived and socialized in predominantly African American spaces since my adolescence. When I would hear some African American people say critical things about “white people” in my mind I would always think about how I knew so many people of European descent who those critiques didn’t apply to.

My solutions-oriented mind wished that there was a way to distinguish between people of European descent who abused their unearned privilege and perpetuated whiteness and those who, like many of my friends, rejected whiteness through their beliefs and how they lived.

“White people think that they are better than us”

“Colin Kapernick isn’t in the NFL because white people don’t want him in the NFL”

“White people are the reason everything is fucked up”

“I don’t trust colinizers (presently used as a condencending substitute for “white people”)

Both in conversations and on social media I consistently hear people make statements like the ones above. Blanket generalizations about people of European descent.

As an anti-oppression activist, I am firm in my belief that words matter. I am firm in my belief that if we are going to create social systems with feedback loops that are solutions to the complex problems of our time then we must learn to speak with the complexity and nuance that we are truly trying to convey. We must be intentional with our words and we must name the system’s structures responsible for social issues like systemic racism.

I often think about how adult’s words land with children and how that impacts how they grow up understanding the issues in our society. When a child hears “black people always… (insert negative stereotype or generalization)” they are being groomed to accept stereotypes and generalizations as truths that represent an entire group of people. Stereotypes and generalizations also neglect the context necessary for understanding systems structures.

Rejecting stereotypes completely, naming systems, and adding a simple “some” or “many” before generalized statements would go a long way in grooming a young person’s mind for processing complexity and nuance. The “some” or “many” signals “not all”, the fact that no group of people are all the same, and creates space for further critical thinking. And by naming systems structures we empower young people to understand that they can reject oppressive systems and create or adopt something new.

Fortunately, many teens and young adults of this era already move through the world with a level of consciousness and awareness of systems structures that did not exist when I was a teen and young adult.

So instead of…

“White people think they are better than us”

“Colin Kapernick isn’t in the NFL because white people don’t want him in the NFL”

“White people are the reason everything is fucked up”

“I don’t trust colinizers”

More conscious, complex, and nuanced statements would be…

Many people of European descent think that they are better than us because of whiteness.

Colin Kapernick isn’t in the NFL because a lot of the fans of European descent who haven’t learned to reject whiteness believed that his peaceful protest was disrespectful to soldiers. And since they make up the majority of paying fans NFL owners are afraid of potentially losing money by hiring him.

European Oligarchs from the past and the social, economic, and political systems that they created are the reason that we are facing so many social and environmental issues.

I don’t trust people of European descent who haven’t rejected race and whiteness.

I unpack things for my children (ages 12 and 8) in this way. Yes, it requires a lot more thinking and using a lot more words however I am ok with doing it because I view it as my contribution to creating the solutions that we need to move beyond the oppression and divisiveness embedded in the systems of race and whiteness.

Closing

In closing, I’d like to share my hopes and welcome critiques.

Whenever I write an essay or release a podcast rooted in my Theory of Indivisibility I am simply sharing my best thinking towards ending divisiveness and oppression and creating sustainability, liberation, and unconditional love…for all. I welcome critiques aligned with those efforts.

I hope that my thoughts inspire or agitate you to want to learn more about how our social, economic, and political systems are designed, to question the why behind your thoughts and beliefs as I have, and inspire you to unlearn or reject indoctrinated attitudes and beliefs that perpetuate oppressive systems like race and whiteness.

I’ve heard the critique in the past that my systems thinking approach to solutions “lets white people off the hook”. With that in mind, I’ll leave you to ponder the thoughts on this sentiment from one of the most brilliant writers, intellectuals, and educators of our time, Bayo Akomolafe when he was confronted with similar sentiments during a lecture:

“What does it mean to let white people off the hook?

The question comes from shared and growing sensitivities to the dynamics of critique — a reckoning with the fact that in our attempts to dismantle whiteness we often reinforce it. It comes from an understanding that justice often gets in the way of transformation.” — Bayo Akomolafe

Thanks for reading…

Until next time,

I love y’all, Peace

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta

We are building community around this work here. This is a place where you can gain access to support for your work (liberation, anti-oppression, sustainability, & etc.) and discussion groups for ongoing reflections and authentic dialogue about creating solutions.

2023. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart

Theory of Indivisibility: Current Complexities of Systemic Racism was originally published in Theory of Indivisibility Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the previous transcript, we covered Democracy…its evolutionary origins, some of its current complexities, and how my Theory of Indivisibility applies to governance — a system for making decisions and resolving conflicts.

To help us dive into the evolutionary origins, current complexities, and how my Theory of Indivisibility applies to Systemic Racism, I’ll share an essay written in July 2016 called “Why Police Kill Black People…The Whole Story”. Afterwards, I will provide some brief commentary about what I believe are solutions to this issue.

Why Police Kill Black People…The Whole Story

I Was Challenged To “Tell The Whole Story”

In the aftermath of two horrific viral videos that showed two African American men, Alton Sterling & Philando Castille, die after being shot and killed by police officers this past week, I took to Facebook and Twitter with my disgust and outrage at a system that I believe hurts both people and police. In one of my posts I shared a picture of a statistic from a Washington Post article that said: “Although black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the unarmed men shot to death by police this year”.

A woman took to the comments:

“What you’re also not telling people is what percentage of blacks kill blacks what percentage of blacks use guns what percentage of blacks commit what percent of the crime which explains why there is such a high percentage of black men under 30 that are incarcerated you have to tell the whole story”

It is from that comment that I take on the challenge to “tell the whole story” about why such a high rate of African American men under 30 are incarcerated and killed by police in America.

But before I do I have a challenge for you.

I challenge you to read all of it with an objective mind. I challenge you to suspend your beliefs and assumptions. I challenge you to put aside any discomfort you may feel and read all of it and to explore the references that I share. I challenge you to suspend your desire to be right. I challenge you to think really deeply about why you did not learn these things in a “history” class. And finally, I challenge you to accept that I have no “agenda”.

I am an apolitical “systems thinker”. I believe in authentic dialogue and compromise during conflict resolution, not debates. My goal is not to win an argument, it is to put forth my best thinking with the hopes that others can build on it. I did my best to find credible sources that provide empirical research and data. If you find that a resource I shared is not credible please provide me with an alternative credible resource to support your point of view.

I took a doctorate level course a few years ago where I was introduced to the concept of “Systems Thinking”. There is a strong chance that what I am about to share will not make sense to you if you do not understand systems thinking. Here is a reference that summarizes the concept. Focus on the section that describes the difference between being a systems thinker vs. an events based thinker.

Also, note that I am a man who is passionate about seeing this country truly unite as One Nation…Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for ALL.

Now back to the challenge I was presented with…

First, we must all acknowledge that there are some things that we just don’t know or understand. There are 4 stages of learning:

1. Unconscious incompetence
2. Conscious incompetence
3. Conscious competence
4. Unconscious competence

For the majority of my life, the information that I am about to share fell into the unconscious incompetence category for me. Unconscious incompetence means: you don’t know what you don’t know or you don’t see the need to learn something because you do not consider it a need.

There are 2 things that I think ALL Americans would agree on: first, Racism is taught, and second, parental guidance has a huge impact on a child’s development. So let’s start with how Racism was taught…

The Creation of Race

In the 1600s, European scientists began using pseudo-science to conclude that “white people” were a superior “race” of people. They used stereotypes that became widely believed social truths to support their theories that were later debunked by scientists in the early 1900’s. However, by that time it was too late. The damage had already been done and the forces that would later lead to Systemic Racism, dehumanization, mistrust, and fear of people of African descent in America had been set into motion.

European & African Slaves

When slavery first started in America, both enslaved Europeans and Africans were indentured servants who served their term and were freed. Things soon changed for Africans, and a law was passed that forced them into slavery for life. Initially, poor Europeans, free Africans, and enslaved Africans worked alongside one another and were socially equal. They formed allegiances and supported one another. The elite class of slave owners, businessmen, and politicians didn’t like this, so they introduced Racism to divide them. It worked.

The Origins and Purpose of Policing

It wasn’t until well after the Revolutionary War, in the 1830s, that policing in America expanded from an informal community watch volunteer model to the form of policing we see today. This was done as a means to control and intimidate the poor as larger cities started to form and the economic class divide was becoming more evident. After the Civil War policing in the south was created to intimidate, control, and brutalize freed Africans. The slave catchers and overseers that maintained “order” (beatings, killings, lynchings, rape) during slavery became police officers that enacted the same type of “order” for the next 100 years during the Jim Crow era. With the police being an all Euro American organization fueled by classism and racism created to protect the interests of the elite class, most African Americans had two strikes against them from birth. They were both poor and African.

Slavery Ends

After slavery ended, Racism did not. At the end of the Civil War, the viscous forces of Racism and Poverty were set in motion that would stifle economic progress and the obtainment of Liberty and Happiness for millions of Americans of African descent who are descendants of enslaved Africans. Also, what often isn’t mentioned is the mental, emotional, and psychological trauma that enslaved African’s endured…a form of PTSD called post-traumatic slave syndrome that was passed down to future generations. When they were freed they never received any therapy or counseling. They were promised “40 acres and a mule” to help them get started financially and they never received it. Dr. Joy Degruys book and lectures on this topic helped me to understand why there is so much trauma-induced internalized and externalized anger and hatred within so many African American people.

Slavery By Another Name

A few years back I watched a documentary on PBS based on a book titled “Slavery By Another Name” that made me want to cry. It answered so many questions for me about why so many African American families have yet to break the cycle of poverty. After all their ancestors endured during slavery, the next generation had to endure this…

“In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon (Pulitzer Prize recipient) brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history — when a cynical new form of slavery was resurrected from the ashes of the Civil War and re-imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans until the dawn of World War II. Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations — including U.S. Steel Corp. — looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of “free” black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.”

— Slavery by Another Name

This went on until the 1940s. To provide historical context, my paternal grandparents were 20 years old in 1940.

What About Crime In African American Communities?

The second thing that I assumed ALL Americans could agree on is the importance that parental guidance plays in the lives of children. Studies show that 70 percent of the children of people who are imprisoned will end up in jail too.

“So what becomes of these children whose mother and/or fathers are locked up? Often, they are left to fend for themselves emotionally and the stress of child-rearing falls on a grandmother, usually, or another surrogate parent or the children may end up in protective services. These hardships manifest in the children in mental health issues like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and feelings of abandonment.”

— psychotherapist Dr. Janice Beal

The results of the heinous crimes of humanity outlined throughout this article have implications that are still hurting many African Americans today.

Hurt people, hurt people.

The mostly gang-related murders that we see in urban cities across America are a direct result of everything I’ve outlined thus far. It is mostly emotionally unstable and abandoned teenagers committing these murders. Even with that said please note that this study from the US Dept of Justice shows that poor African Americans and poor European Americans had almost equal violent crime rates with poor European Americans being slightly higher.

Personal Responsibility

Statistics show that the typical European American person has 13 times more wealth than the typical African American person. I’ve heard many people say that it’s because too many African American people lack the personal responsibility needed to make their situation better. I’ve heard that “after slavery ended everyone was free and had a fair chance to succeed”. Many Euro-American people will accurately tell you that their families didn’t own slaves or weren’t in this country during that time and that slavery had nothing to do with their families progressing.

What many of them may not know is that they may have benefited from and received advantages due to racist housing policies up until the end of the 1960s that aided millions of working-class Euro-Americans to ascend into the middle class and create a foundation of middle-class stability. And for some, wealth that their families leverage to create various opportunities for themselves and for generations to come.

Let’s look at two examples, the Homestead Act and the FHA.

“The Homestead Act was signed into law by Lincoln in May 1862 and it remained in place until 1934. By the end of the Act, more than 270 million acres of land had been transferred to individuals, almost all of whom were white for little more than a filing fee. Thus, by essentially giving away land to white individuals and white-owned businesses, the Homestead Acts were the most extensive, radical, redistributive governmental policy in American history. The number of original (1862) Homestead-recipient descendants living in the year 2000 was estimated to be around forty-six million people, about a quarter of the U.S. adult population.”

And it didn’t end there.

After 1934, many of the remaining poor Euro-Americans used Federal Housing Administration-insured loans to buy their way out of government housing projects to move to brand new middle-class suburban subdivisions. This subsidized home-buying boom led to one of the broadest expansions of the American middle class ever, almost exclusively to the benefit of Euro American families. The FHA’s explicitly racist underwriting standards, which rated African American and integrated neighborhoods as uninsurable, made federally insured home loans largely unavailable to African American home seekers. Ninety-eight percent of these loans made between 1934 and 1968 went to Euro-Americans.

Homeownership has long been the key to creating stability and wealth in America. Many Euro-Americans were given an unfair advantage during this era and today when African Americans demand reparations or equal opportunities at jobs in certain industries, many of us are told that we want handouts. I’ve never heard a Euro-American with this stance mention the handouts that their grandparents and parents may have received. Housing discrimination was legal until 1968.

To provide historical context, my parents were 18 years old and my paternal grandparents were 48 years old in 1968.

Post-Racial America

Many people rejoiced that we had arrived and finally got past Racism in 2008 when President Barack Obama was elected. Many believed that this proved that equality in America was finally achieved. They were wrong.

“As the United States celebrates its ‘triumph over race’ with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of black men in major urban areas are under correctional control or saddled with criminal records for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an extraordinary percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights — including the right to vote; the right to serve on juries; and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. Today, it is no longer socially permissible to use race explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet as civil-rights-lawyer-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander demonstrates, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways in which it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once labeled a felon, even for a minor drug crime, the old forms of discrimination are suddenly legal again. In her words, ‘we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.’ Written in 2010, The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to permanent second-class status — denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.”

It is impossible to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” if you are denied access to society because you have a criminal record because of a poor choice you made when you were an angry, unstable teenager acting out the Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome that you never received therapy for because you grew up in poverty with incarcerated parents. Parents who also grew up with PTSD in poverty with incarcerated parents because their fathers were never around because they were picked up in Alabama for a petty crime in 1925 and illegally forced back into slavery for a corporation that is thriving as a multinational billion-dollar corporation today. Please ponder this realistic hypothetical scenario long and hard.

So, if the police were created to police the poor…if racism is taught and creates implicit bias…and the overwhelming majority of African Americans are still fighting their way out of poverty while facing all of the generational roadblocks that I outlined above…could it quite possibly make sense to you that most African American people continue to fight an uphill battle in this country that leads to poor African Americans being disproportionately targeted by law enforcement?

In closing, I hope that I’ve done a good job of presenting you with evidence and facts that illustrate a story of how race, systemic racism, slavery, mental trauma, forced poverty, intentional discrimination & unfairness, and the dehumanization of African Americans in this country for the last 400 years can lead to a cycle of crime and imprisonment that still haunts far too many today.

The fact of the matter is this: the reason that African American men under the age of 30 make up the majority of the prison population and are disproportionately killed by police in America is because the systems of Racism, Poverty, and Policing were designed to produce that outcome.

I’ll conclude by saying this…

Throughout American history, many European Americans have been responsible for creating pain, death, and trauma for many African Americans. It’s a painful fact to process for some but it’s true.

Please know that I don’t want you to feel guilty. I don’t blame you for the past. I’m not angry at all European American people. I’m angry at the Euro-American leaders from the past who allowed this system of Racism and Poverty to exist for so long and to hurt so many people. Presently, I’m angry at any American from any ethnicity who rejects to support people who are asking for equality and justice — the very thing that this country was founded on.

I just want you to acknowledge that, yes, these things did take place and, yes, because of implicit bias and hidden history you may not have known that the terror that impacted previous generations very much so still impacts us overall as African Americans today.

I know that you and I can’t change the past, but for those of you who continue to deflect the pain of the African American people who attempt to articulate what we have experienced or imply that they are making it up or being manipulated by the left, the media, Democrats, Hollywood, etc., you are literally picking up the torch from those who committed the evils done in the past. Is that the side of history you want to be on? Stop trying to rationalize away our pain. Remember, there are some things that you just don’t know that you don’t know.

If you are pro-love and pro-solutions, simply ask, “how can I help fix it?”, while showing empathy and acknowledging that our pain is real.

the end.

Thoughts on defunding the police and police abolition

As I sit here on April 1, 2021, I want to add to the essay I wrote 5 years ago based on current events. Concepts like “defunding the police” and “prison abolition” have made it to the mainstream. These are concepts that activists have been discussing for over 50 years, that have just now come into mainstream consciousness. I support defunding the police and abolishing the prison system. Obviously the services that the current policing and prison systems provide would need to be replaced by other professionals who are better trained to de-escalate and resolve conflicts than police currently are. The policing and prison systems cannot be reformed, because these were designed to protect and serve the wealthy, the elite who wield power and control over the masses. We must make those systems of power-over and control obsolete by implementing collaborative systems. The reality is, if we shared resources and designed our social and political systems (which are all social systems) in ways that are aligned with the solidarity economy, then there wouldn’t be anything to protect, since a small percentage of the population wouldn’t be monopolizing resources.

Stay tuned for my next transcription, where I’ll be exploring the current complexities of systemic racism by sharing another essay that I have written.

Until next time,

I love y’all, Peace

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta

We are building community around this work here. This is a place where you can gain access to support for your work (liberation, anti-oppression, sustainability, & etc.) and discussion groups for ongoing reflections and authentic dialogue about creating solutions.

2023. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart

Theory of Indivisibility: The Evolution of Systemic Racism was originally published in Theory of Indivisibility Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the previous transcript, Transitioning Away from Capitalism, we explored future economic systems and some of the ways that people and companies are transitioning away from Capitalism.

Now it’s time to look at the evolutionary origins, current complexities, and how my theory of indivisibility applies to democracy. This time, I’ll cover all three elements in one transcription, similar to the one on patriarchy.

What is Democracy and where did it come from?

A democracy is a political system, or a system of decision-making within an institution, organization, or country, in which all members have an equal share of decision-making power.

How were decisions made before democracy?

For the first approximately 290,000 years of our (homo sapien) existence, our pre-historic ancestors lived in egalitarian hunter-gatherer nomadic bands. In these groups of generally 50–100 individuals, often tied closely by familial bonds, decisions were reached by consensus or majority and many times without the designation of any specific chief.

It’s important to note that this form of egalitarianism still exists in isolated indigenous groups around the world who managed to escape colonization.

Approximately 10,000 years ago during the agricultural revolution, a large majority of our homo sapien ancestors began farming and became sedentary for the first time, which led to the development of villages, cities, and then states as human populations began to spike exponentially. This growth in population led to the transition away from egalitarian decision-making and ushered in systems of power-over and control (authoritarianism) into human societies for the first time. This led to rulers (chiefs, kings, queens, oligarchs, and aristocrats) making decisions for masses of people under their control for thousands of years.

Until the system of Democracy was initiated in the Western world…

In the year 507 BC, an Athenian leader by the name of Cleisthenas introduced a system of political reforms that he called demokratia, or “rule by the people”. It was the first known democracy in the colonized world.

This system was comprised of three separate institutions: the ekklesia, a sovereign governing body that wrote laws and dictated foreign policy; the boule, a council of representatives from the ten Athenian tribes and the dikasteria, the popular courts in which citizens argued cases before a group of lottery-selected jurors.

Discontent from the Athenian middle and working-class people who made up the army and navy prompted Cleisthenas to create these political reforms. Prior to these reforms, the Athenian aristocrats held a long-standing monopoly on decision making.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote, “ In a democracy, there is first, that most splendid of virtues, equality before the law.” However, this “equality” was limited to a small segment of the population: Athenian men 18 and older, and excluded Athenian women, resident foreigners, and the group that made up the majority of the population: slaves.

Democracy in ancient Greece only lasted for 2 centuries, but it inspired future representative democracies around the world like the one that would later be created in what is now the United States of America over 2000 years later.

Like everything in nature and in human societies, Democracy as we know it today didn’t just happen at the snap of a finger or based on one decision by one person. It evolved over the course of thousands of years and was derived or inspired by procedures found in many cultures and governments.

Similar to the ancient Greeks, the founding fathers of American democracy never intended to grant “equality” before the law to all American citizens. Initially, only adult male European American landowners were granted the right to vote.

The ancient Greeks practiced direct democracy, however the American founders implemented a indirect or representative democracy. In this system, REPRESENTATIVES are chosen by the people to make decisions for them. The Founders preferred the term “REPUBLIC” to “democracy” because it described a system they generally preferred: the interests of the people were represented by more knowledgeable or wealthier citizens who were responsible to those that elected them. Today we tend to use the terms “republic” and “democracy” interchangeably. A widespread criticism of representative democracy is that the representatives become the “elites” that seldom consult ordinary citizens, so even though they are elected, a truly representative government doesn’t really exist.

Current Complexities of Democracy

Instead of listing and exploring the various issues with Democracy, this time I’ll share my position and beliefs on the topic for you to explore in the spirit of authentic dialogue.

People in the United States are well aware of the variety of issues that exist within this country’s governance model. However, most people continue to invest time and energy into it with the hopes that “it will be better this time” or “it will improve if my person wins”.

I’m not one of those people. I no longer vote because I believe that our current governance system is divisive, dysfunctional, and oppressive to people and the environment. Notice that I said the system and I didn’t blame politicians.

If you’ve been following this publication from the start, you have a systems-thinking understanding that the design of our social systems are responsible for producing the conditions that lead to the behaviors of the people within them.

This is why I believe that we need to create and transition to a new governance system and divest from the current one. At the heart of my stance is my belief in and understanding of the the design of natural systems which are collaborative. As we’ve discussed in previous transcripts, my belief is that human-made systems should mimic systems found in nature.

Our current governance systems are rooted in debate, coercion, power-over and control dynamics. I believe that we need to transition to governance systems rooted in authentic dialogue, consent, and power-with, and collaboration dynamics.

Whenever I share that I don’t vote, I usually get the same arguments and pleas from family members and peers:

• People died for my right to vote
• If I don’t vote I can’t complain
• If I don’t vote the “bad guys” will win

Instead of me giving an answer for each of those sentiments, I’m going to refer you to an article entitled “You’ve Got To Stop Voting” by Mark E Smith that addresses each of those sentiments as well as others.

In the article, Mark posits that boycotting elections is the only proven non-violent way to delegitimize a government. He uses South Africa as an example stating,

“South Africa endured many years of violence under the Apartheid regime. Many people and countries worldwide boycotted Apartheid, but the US government insisted on supporting the Apartheid regime, saying that while the US abhorred Apartheid, the regime was the legitimate government of South Africa. Then the Apartheid regime held another election. No more than 7% of South Africans voted. Suddenly everything changed. No longer could the US or anyone else say that the Apartheid regime had the consent of the governed. That was when the regime began to make concessions. Suddenly the ANC, formerly considered to be a terrorist group trying to overthrow a legitimate government, became freedom fighters against an illegitimate government. It made all the difference in the world, something that decades more of violence could never have done.”

Mark goes on to give a few other historical examples before listing out and offering a response to the common sentiments of those who believe that voting will lead to the transformation needed to become a socially and environmentally sustainable society.

He lists a total of 13 and I’ll share #1:

1. Not voting is doing nothing.

“If you’re doing something wrong, or something that is self-destructive or hurting others, stopping might be a good idea. If delegating your power to people you can’t hold accountable has resulted in the devastation of your economy, do you really want to keep doing it? If granting your authority to people you can’t hold accountable has resulted in wars based on lies that have killed over a million innocent people, do you really want to keep doing it? If granting your consent of the governed to people you can’t hold accountable has resulted in government operating on behalf of big corporations and the wealthy instead of on behalf of the people, do you really want to keep doing it?”

The future of governance: conflict resolution and egalitarian decision making

What are some of the ways that people are already transitioning towards governance systems rooted in authentic dialogue, consent, power-with & collaboration?

• Authentic Dialogue
• Prison abolition
• Sociocracy
• Cooperatives

Authentic Dialogue is the opposite of debate. Debate is rooted in competition, right vs. wrong, and conflict. Authentic dialogue is a communications framework that leverages conflict to bring humans together. By using authentic dialogue, participants acknowledge and welcome conflict as an opportunity to learn, grow, and expand their creative collaboration. To learn more about authentic dialogue visit: I Go to Grow.

Prison abolition is something that will require a restructuring of our entire society. All forms of social and environmental sustainability are interconnected with this push to abolish prisons and the criminal justice system as it exists today. In 2020 with the Black Lives Matter movement, after the killing of George Floyd, the Minneapolis Police Department chose to defund the police. People in this country have been working to abolish prisons and defund the police since the 1960s, and we are just now beginning to see the work of activists taking effect over 60 years later.

Sociocracy is a governance and decision-making process that ensures the voice of each person is heard, and that no one is oppressed by any decision made.

Cooperatives are usually community-run, grassroots organizations in which all stakeholders have decision-making power. Employee-owned cooperatives have been emerging for some time, and are aiding the transition away from hierarchical business models.

As society moves towards more sustainable, cooperative systems, the effects ripple throughout all areas of life. Many parents are now applying egalitarian decision-making processes through methods like conscious and respectful parenting. Learning institutions are following suit as more egalitarian schools emerge, such as Agile Learning Centers. At every level, from families to educational institutions to businesses and governments, there is evidence of society transitioning away from power-over and control systems towards more sustainable, collaborative systems.

Until next time,

I love y’all, Peace

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta

We are building community around this work here. This is a place where you can gain access to support for your work (liberation, anti-oppression, sustainability, & etc.) and discussion groups for ongoing reflections and authentic dialogue about creating solutions.

2023. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart

Articles:

Ancient Greek Democracy

History of Democracy

What Is A Democracy

You’ve Got To Stop Voting

What Do Prison Abolitionist Really Want

Theory of Indivisibility: Origins, Current Complexities, and Transitioning Away from Democracy was originally published in Theory of Indivisibility Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My Theory of Indivisibility has two elements: A Declaration and a Chart that compares elements found in social systems that produce division with elements found in social systems that produce indivisibility.

Theory of Indivisibility declaration:

“I truly believe that we as humans have the capacity to live in harmony with nature and one another. I truly believe that we have the capacity to live Indivisibly. It is my belief that the true leverage point for living Indivisibly is in the recognition that our current social, political, and economic systems are intrinsically designed to produce the perpetual dysfunction that we continue to experience because they are rooted in Power-Over ideals, beliefs, and norms.

It is also in the recognition that there is no one to blame. Power-Over systems were designed and integrated into society approx. 10 thousand years ago based on the communication, problem-solving, and governance tools that had evolved up to that point in time. Just like they had no way to drive cars back then because the skill & know-how had not evolved yet, they also had no better way to manage population growth and the perceived scarcity of resources because the skill and know-how had not evolved yet. That is no longer the case. We currently live during an era where many people possess the necessary skills to live Indivisibly and there is an abundance of resources available to help more people obtain them. However, by no fault of their own, most people are still mentally trapped within the indoctrination of Power-Over Systems Paradigms.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge states that ‘structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Once we can see them and name them, they no longer have the same hold on us.’

I created the Theory of Indivisibility podcast to help more people learn to see & name the inherent oppressions within social systems rooted in Power-Over and control and the ways that we all perpetuate them. I believe that as more people learn this, they will begin to intentionally make changes in their lives in an effort to organize and live in ways that inherently produce equity, sustainability, liberation & unconditional love for themselves, the environment, and other human beings.”

One of the things that I think makes my work unique is that it’s based on both theory and practice, because I am both an academic and a serial entrepreneur.

My entrepreneurial journey began in 2003, when I adopted the mindset of becoming a millionaire by 30, an attitude echoed in the song 50 Cent dropped that year “Get Rich or Die Trying”. I opened my first business at the age of 22. It was a clothing store called One Clothing One Culture. With the help of a local bank, family and friends, a business plan and a business partner, I experienced the successes and failures familiar to entrepreneurs. We encountered shady business practices when faced with high paywalls between us and decision-makers that would make or break our clothing store. When I sought help from similar businesses back in my home town of Philly, the business owners didn’t want to share their insights with me. Perhaps they saw me as competition.

During the time that I ran the clothing store, I also decided to go back to school to work on my master’s degree in social work. A few years later, I was introduced to network marketing or multi-level marketing (i.e. Amway, Mary Kay, etc.). I signed up for a company called ACN, which was a phone company. This was a time in the early 2000s, when people still used home phones to make long-distance calls. I thought this industry would help me reach my goal of becoming a millionaire faster. So I transitioned away from the clothing store and put all my time, effort, and energy into building this ACN network. It was a great experience to travel the country, meet people, and I learned so much during that time. Building this business led me to drop out of grad school.

As time went along, I began to realize that the other independent sales reps didn’t have the same drive, resources, or access that I had. I saw a lot of burnout, and after selling people on this idea that they would be able to make a lot of money, and watching them lose more time and money than they gained, I began to feel guilty for asking them to sign up on my team.

Although some might argue in the network marketing industry that there’s no need to feel guilty since “everyone has the same opportunity to succeed,” I saw what I thought were predatory behaviors, and it no longer felt good to me when people would sign up to be part of my multi-level marketing business because the odds were that they would fail. It didn’t feel good to me, so I walked away.

In the mid-2000s, I noticed the real estate market was rising. Flipping homes became popular. I saw friends selling mortgages and making tens of thousands of dollars every month. That’s when I thought, “That’s what I need to do to become a millionaire by 30!”

I initially experienced success in the real estate industry, but again, witnessed shady practices such as putting people into adjustable-rate mortgages, which spurred the foreclosure crisis and led to the housing crash in 2008. The way the industry works is, the riskier the loan, the more money there is to be made in sales commisions.

I personally was not willing to participate in the shady practices that predicated success in that market, and my conscience would not allow me to be involved in that, so once again, I walked away.

From there, I got into real estate investing, moved from Philly to Atlanta, and right before the housing market crashed, I purchased a home and a rental property as well as invested in a commercial property project. When the market crashed, I lost a lot of money.

Keep in mind, at the same time that I was working my way to becoming a millionaire, I was also engaging in community work like being a Big Brother mentor and volunteering for summer camps. I’ve always had a heart for children and youth in inner cities.

After the housing market crashed, I went into teaching elementary school and went back to school to earn my master's and doctorate. While teaching, I licked my wounds for a little bit before eventually getting back into the business world. While teaching I also started a non-profit after-school program outside Atlanta. During my 5 year stint as a teacher, once again, I began to recognize aspects of the education system that didn’t sit well with me because I felt like they hurt both students and teachers. So in 2012, I walked away from teaching intent on starting my own school rooted in unschooling principles.

In 2014, while working as a real estate agent, I had a light-bulb moment, an idea for a mobile app. I dove in with both feet, learned how to be a CEO of a tech startup, how to develop an app, and invested a lot of time and energy into getting this mobile app built. I dumped all my savings and retirement into this app idea, and again encountered multiple barriers to success.

Certain mobile app engineers that we hired drained money while building the app only to find out they couldn’t complete it. Eventually, the app was out on the market, but without capital, we couldn’t continue to iterate and improve it. I found out the hard way that hundreds of thousands of dollars are needed to get a tech startup off the ground and produce a viable app. Since I did not have that type of capital, and wasn’t able to raise it from family and friends, again, after lots of lessons learned, this idea became yet another step along my journey.

The final thing I ventured into that I want to share with you is forex — foreign exchange. Similar story…I got into it, and I know people who have experienced success with foreign exchange, but it just didn’t work for me. I trusted someone to do the investing for me, and ended up losing $5,000. I’ll spare you the details.

Ultimately, I tried many different industries and pursued success at many angles, each time finding that ambition was not an indicator of true, long-term success. There were always major risks, barriers, and shady business practices that I ran into.

What stands out to me the most from my entrepreneurial experience is the opportunity cost.

The tangible and intangible things that I lost pursuing my dream of becoming a millionaire.

I think about the time I lost that I could have spent cultivating deeper bonds with family and friends. I think about the money lost personally and by those who invested in my ventures, the time that I lost that I could have invested in my mental and physical wellbeing. And lastly, I think about the time lost that I could have used to cultivate my innate gifts to fulfill my purpose on this earth. Because, I guarantee that my purpose is more than just becoming a millionaire.

I began to shift away from the “Get Rich or Die Trying” mindset after I learned about Systems Thinking.

For the first time in my life, I began to connect the dots along patterns in society that served to create and maintain the Haves and Have-Nots, the “Us vs. Them” societal scripts that create divisiveness in our lives.

I also began to see that there were a whole lot of elements in the business industry where people profit from other people’s misfortunes.

In the past 5 years, I’ve transitioned my entrepreneurial spirit into what I’ll call “next systems work”. This work includes my anti-oppression activism (like my podcast, this publication, and social media presence), unschooling organizing, authentic dialogue training and consulting. At the beginning of 2020, I started working as a real estate agent again in an effort to increase my income. Prior to this year, I primarily drove for Uber for a few years to preserve my mental energy for my next-systems work. The beautiful thing about the time when I was driving for Uber was that it didn’t take any brain power, so I was able to invest a lot of time into anti-oppression work, doing research that would later become my Theory of Indivisibility podcast (and this publication!). It took several months to research the foundational science that supports my theory. My goal is for my next-systems work to sustain me.

At this stage in my journey, I’m focused on divesting from capitalism as much as possible. Based on my journey and the knowledge I’ve gained about the negative impacts of capitalism on both social and environmental sustainability I’ve come to see the entire system as inhumane.

So let’s discuss some alternatives that people have created… alternatives that are rooted in systems of power-with and collaboration instead of power-over and control.

Circular Economy:

Capitalism is a part of the Take -> Make -> Waste linear economy where we take resources from the ground to make products, we use them, and when we no longer want them, we throw them away.

A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. The circular economy is a new way to design, make, and use things within planetary boundaries.

Educator, Sociologist, and Sustainability provocateur, Leyla Acaraglu, states the following:

“The future is circular, not just in the wider economy, but also in our daily lives. We can no longer avoid the reality that our planet is in need of better care. The linear economy has helped us advance to this incredible point in time, but the advancement has come at major costs to the ecological systems that sustain life on Earth, which in turn affects our health and quality of life as we battle climate change, air pollution, global pandemics and loss of biodiversity. These issues are all interconnected, and until we change the way we do things, we will continue to be the victims of our own poor decisions.

The circular economy is seeking to remedy this through shifts in the way we arrange society, the way we produce goods and services, and the way we all consume, in order to ultimately design the kind of future we want to live in. One that is equitable, sustainable, and regenerative by design.”

In that same article Leyla, lists 9 circular economy business models that are underway and will become more prevalent in the near future. The fundamental shift is in how we design goods to flow through the economy and the responsibility that producers take of their goods, enabling customers to return, reuse, or repair to ensure that value is continually increased.

I discovered a circular economy company here in Atlanta called Lehigh Technologies in an article about 11 companies leading the way in the circular economy movement.

The Atlanta firm turns old tires and other rubber waste into something called micronized rubber powder, which can then be used in a wide variety of applications from tires to plastics, asphalt, and construction material. Five hundred million new tires have been made using its products, which has earned them recognition and awards.

I see so many possible benefits to this transition because many of the principles mirror what is needed to end the capitalistic pollution that is poverty, homelessness, and many other socio-economic ills.

The circular economy is picking up steam worldwide and I believe that it’s a necessary stepping stone as society transitions away from capitalism. However, I don’t see it as a full-on solution to all of the oppressions found within capitalism because it’s still invested in the creation of goods for profit instead of only producing goods based on need.

I believe that a needs-based economy without competition or profit would drastically decrease the consumption of natural resources as well as reduce the amount of time that people have to work…thus liberating us to invest more time into activities that improve our mental and physical wellbeing.

The economic system that has the DNA of Indivisibility and best aligns with my Theory of Indivisibility declaration is the Gift Economy.

A gift economy or gift culture is a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received.

In Charles Eisenstein’s book Sacred Economics, he traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. He suggests that a gift economy needs these 4 qualities:

1. Over time, giving and receiving must be in balance.
2. The source of a gift is to be acknowledged.
3. Gifts circulate rather than accumulate.
4. Gifts flow towards the greatest need.

In a gift economy culture, a sustainable sense of success is taking pride in the value of our contributions to others rather than taking pride in the value of our possessions.

In an article that I really really enjoyed titled How To Run A Business in The Gift Economy, Marie Goodwin adds the following:

“The essential idea is that when you have enough of a surplus of something, you give away what you can to friends and neighbors. With everyone practicing this type of exchange, a web of connection is forged. In this way, people get their needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, and luxuries met. The more generous you are, the more you are held in esteem by your community. Your community esteem matters because, in times of crisis, that web then supports you in turn. Your generosity is your wealth and your security. Receiving gifts from others acknowledges that you wish to be in relationship with them and that you will be there when they need you. It is a very beautiful way to live.”

Marie goes on to describe the gift economy in a business context as follows:

“When you work in the gift, what you are doing is asking the receiver to decide on their own level of gratitude rather than you, the seller/creator, dictating it for them by attaching a price to the transaction. You are also asking them to choose the timing of the return gift. The idea that gratitude is created in a business exchange is a novel way to view buying and selling but is the very crux of gift economics.”

So what are some examples of the gift economy?

Most of us have experienced potlucks, clothing exchanges, or doing favors for family, friends, and even strangers.

I offer a “pay what you can/want” in my authentic dialogue consulting and mediation work as well as my unschooling consulting and online trainings. Patreon is also an example of this…where you, the listeners, can determine if you’d like to gift me money for the value you get from listening to this podcast in exchange for the time I invest in researching, writing, and producing it.

The largest and most ambitious example of a gift economy that I’m aware of is a city in India called Auroville that has thrived for over 50 years without religion, government, or money.

Auroville is an international city in southern India founded in 1968. Currently, it has 2,800 citizens from 54 countries, with the capacity to grow to 50,000 citizens. Auroville is a “collective experiment in human unity” based on the worldview of Indian yogi Sri Aurobindo. The idea is if people from all cultures and castes can learn love each other in Auroville, maybe the rest of the world can follow suit. The township was created with support from the Indian government, UNESCO and well-wishers around the world, but is becoming more and more self-sufficient over time.

Think about how much food, clothing, and other things that we throw away and waste that we could possibly gift to others if we were more interconnected within our neighborhoods. Of course, these aren’t new concepts…our grandparents and previous generations grew up this way.

These are ideas that the forces of capitalism have destroyed over time, which I’m happy to say more and more people are actively working to restore.

Until next time,

I love y’all, Peace

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta

2023. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart

______________________________________________________________

SOURCES

Articles:

What is The Circular Economy

11 Companies Leading The Way To A Circular Economy

Quick Guide To Circular Economy Business Strategies

Gift Economy Wikipedia Article

The Gift Economy & Community Exchanges

How To Run A Business In The Gift Economy

Worlds First Money-Less City Thrives On A Gift Economy

Freecylce.org

Video:

Sacred Economics

Charts:

The DNA of Divisiveness

• Tools: Power Over Systems use these tools to maintain power-over and control of people.
• Fear, Scarcity, Dependency, Standardization, Moral Judgement, Competition, Laws, Conditional Love, Lying, Exclusiveness, Social Norms, The Illusion of Freedom, Intolerance, Mistrust of Human Nature, Self-Oppression (born sinners).
• Language: The communication framework of Power-Over systems is Debate.
• Characteristics of Debate: Only one side wins, insults, us vs them language, blame, & shame.

Outcomes: Incremental hard-fought and slow progress towards healthy functional social norms amidst perpetual divisiveness (Classism, racism, xenophobia, party politics, etc) war, crime, violence, poverty, pollution, homelessness, hunger, mental illness, and dysfunctional relationships.

The DNA of Indivisibility

• Tools: Agency, Affirmation, Sharing, Consent, Collaboration, Liberation, Transparency, Unconditional Love of Self and Others, Personal Boundaries, Pluralism, Authenticity, Trust, Mediation, Tolerance, Empathy, Inclusion.
• Language: Authentic Dialogue
• Authentic Dialogue is a communication framework that involves listening and speaking in an effort to find common ground, broaden perspectives, create mutual understanding, and work together to create solutions that all parties involved can feel good about.
• Outcomes: Authentic Happiness, Peace, Healthy Relationships, Thriving Communities, Self-Actualized People, Healthy Ecosystems, Sustainability.

Theory of Indivisibility: Transitioning Away from Capitalism was originally published in Theory of Indivisibility Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Definition

Libbei (lib-ee) is derived from the word liberation and it signifies a non-monogamous or polyamorous romantic relationship devoid of conventional relationship assumptions, norms, and expectations. Libbeis cultivate relationships from scratch based on agreements that they both or all consent to. A person can have one or more libbeis.

Uses

Libbei love

Libbei life partner

“Ada is my libbei”

“Soon is my libbei love”

“Monai is my libbei life partner”

Back Story

I’m a non-monogamous and polyamorous person who engages in romantic relationships through a relationship anarchy lens. Relationship anarchy (RA) is a way of approaching relationships that rejects any rules and expectations other than the ones the involved people agree on.

Over time I’ve evolved to reject labels for romantic relationships like boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, and partner because of the assumptions, norms, and expectations that come with those labels. I would say to romantic interests that “I want to cultivate a loving connection from scratch, over time, as we get to know one another”.

In 2022 someone came into my life who shared similar relationship anarchy values and beliefs and over time we started spending more and more time together. It was through the evolution of this highly resonant and values aligned romantic connection that I realized that I desired to have a word to describe our relationship. I realized that I didn’t have an issue with labels…I just had an issue with the labels that already existed.

It was from this desire that I began to use libbei. I hope that others who practice consensual non-monogamy find it useful as well.

Libbei Defined was originally published in Sustainable Solutions on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I can truly see why so many people love capitalism and the opportunities that it provides. In my lifetime alone I’ve seen my generation grow up to live more affluently than our parent’s generation. I often marvel at how economically privileged my children and my peer’s children are in comparison to what we had access to growing up, low-income and working-class, in inner-city Philadelphia.

In an article titled “Capitalism is Good For The Poor” by Ball State University Professor Steven Horwitz, the benefits of capitalism are highlighted in great detail. Horwitz makes some great points as follows:

“Nothing has done more to lift humanity out of poverty than the market economy. The number of people worldwide living on less than about two dollars per day today is less than half of what it was in 1990.

For most of human history, we lived in a world of a few haves and lots of have-nots. That slowly began to change with the advent of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. As economic growth took off and spread throughout the population, it created our own world in the West in which there are a whole bunch of haves and a few have-more-and-betters.

For example, the percentage of American households below the poverty line who have basic appliances has grown steadily over the last few decades, with poor families in 2005 being more likely to own things like a clothes dryer, dishwasher, refrigerator, or air conditioner than the average household was in 1971. And consumer items that didn’t even exist back then, such as cell phones, were owned by half of poor households in 2005 and are owned by a substantial majority of them today.

Capitalism has also made poor people’s lives far better by reducing infant and child mortality rates, not to mention maternal death rates during childbirth, and by extending life expectancies by decades.

The competitive market process has also made education, art, and culture available to more and more people. Even the poorest of Americans, not to mention many of the global poor, have access through the Internet and TV to concerts, books, and works of art that were exclusively the province of the wealthy for centuries.

Think of it this way: the fabulously wealthy kings of old had servants attending to their every need, but an impacted tooth would likely kill them. The poor in largely capitalist countries have access to a quality of medical care and a variety and quality of food that the ancient kings could only dream of.

The reality is that the rich have always lived well historically, as for centuries they could commandeer human labor to attend to their every need. In a precapitalist world, the poor had no hope of upward mobility or of relief from the endless physical drudgery that barely kept them alive.

Today, the poor in capitalist countries live like kings, thanks mostly to the freeing of labor and the ability to accumulate capital that makes that labor more productive and enriches even the poorest.

These changes are not, as some would say, about technology. After all, the Soviets had great scientists but could not channel that knowledge into material comfort for their poor. And it’s not about natural resources, which is obvious today as resource-poor Hong Kong is among the richest countries in the world thanks to capitalism, while Venezuelan socialism has destroyed that resource-rich country.

Inventions only become innovations when the right institutions exist to make them improve the lives of the masses. That is what capitalism did and continues to do every single day. And that’s why capitalism has been so good for the poor.”

All of that sounds wonderful. It really does. I can see why so many people sing the praises of capitalism. And I’m sure as you were reading that, you may have thought, “Wow, yeah, capitalism really has helped humanity make some great strides.”

Before I learned Systems Thinking I was right there with Horwitz. But now as a Systems Thinker, I can see all of the ways that this article is incomplete.

Notice that I didn’t say “wrong”…

It’s not wrong because it is correct from a “linear thinking” perspective…which is the way we’ve all been socialized to think and understand problems.

In an article titled “Problem Solving Desparately Needs Systems Thinking” Sociologist, Sustainability Activist, and Educator, Leyla Acaraglu, provides the following insights…

“Through socialization (including our education system), we learn to break the world down into manageable chunks and see issues in isolation of their systemic roots. We’ve learned that the most effective way to solve a problem is to treat the symptoms, not the causes. That’s Linear thinking — the ‘A leads to B, and results in C’ perspective.

Yet, when we look at the world through a systems thinking lens, we see that everything is interconnected. Problems are connected to many other elements within dynamic systems. If we just treat one symptom, the flow of effects leads to burden-shifting and often to unintended consequences.

Here’s a simpler way to say it: problems never exist in isolation, they are always surrounded by other problems.”

So what burdens are shifted and what are the unintended consequences of capitalism that this article didn’t address?

To answer this question, I’m going to introduce a set of tools that Systems Thinkers use called Systems Archetypes.

As Leyla Acaraglu explains…

“Archetypes are recurring patterns of behavior that give insights into the structures that drive systems. They offer a way of deciphering systems dynamics across a diversity of disciplines, scenarios, or contexts. Think of these archetypes as the storylines of systems in the world. Just as you can identify the same formula for a romantic comedy or a thriller in a Hollywood film, these archetypes help systems thinkers see behaviors and flows in more concrete terms.”

Archetype 1: Limits to growth

An example of this archetype is market saturation and housing bubbles. Equally, this is about the limitations to success that we have. Nothing can grow forever; at some point, the system will fight back and intervene to regulate exponential growth. That’s when the bubble bursts.

Another example of this archetype can be seen in sports. When a team wins a championship, it is usually hard to maintain that level of success because the key players and coaches become more valuable and demand higher paying contracts. Often what happens is that it becomes impossible for teams to continue paying players at that higher rate, but other teams are able to pay that high amount, so both coaches and players end up leaving to get their big pay day.

Archetype 12: Growth Paradox

This is where growth in one location leads to a decline somewhere else. It’s a basic law of physics that every action has an equal or opposing reaction. We know we live on a planet with finite resources, and we see how the increase in wealth in one location will always come at the cost of wealth somewhere else.

This can be shifted by the more equitable distribution of assets. But in most socially constructed systems (what I call human-made systems), equity plays a smaller role to individual opportunity. So when we see this archetype playing out, we see that for anything to grow, something else must be taken away.

What comes to mind for you when you think about this Archetype?

I think about how Europeans and later Americans gained massive wealth by extracting wealth from Africa in the form of people during the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and in the form of natural resources like rubber, timber, diamonds, and gold during colonization.

I also think about deforestation and the way that in order to satisfy constant growth like the building of new houses, and fuel consumerism (the need to have a constant flow of new clothes, new cars, new jewelry, new toys, and new gadgets) the continual destruction of natural habitats for wild animals and indigenous people across the globe is required. I also think about how constant growth and consumption is accelerating the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species.

Archetype 10: Shifting the burden

This common archetype shows up when good intentions lead to worse outcomes unless the system is understood and those outcomes are circumvented. If everything is interconnected and we live on a closed ecosystem, then when you make one decision (for example, creating a fast food industry and allow for aggressive advertising about the joys of eating Hamburgers, the burden of delivering that resource is shifted to another part of the system (in this case to the amazon rainforests who where a 5th of its forests have been cut down in the last 3 decades primarily to clear land for raising of cattle to meet the growing demand for beef). This is also defined as the law of unintended consequences of our actions — the accidental outcomes that occur in dynamic systems.

After looking at those three archetypes, we can see some of the negative consequences of linear thinking and of capitalism that weren’t addressed in the article by Horwitz. What I love about the 12 archetypes shared in Layla Acaraglu’s work is that they help me to see the patterns that continue to show up across different contexts within our social systems. Because of systems thinking, I can see the lack of holistic planning, lack of getting to the root cause of issues in band-aid solutions that don’t take the whole system into account. My hope is that through this work, more people will become aware of systems thinking and that will lead to a paradigm shift.

My biggest issue with the Steven Horwitz article is that it lacks chronological relativity and context. Horwitz compares present-day poverty with centuries-old wealth without addressing the key driver of oppression and that’s inequality. Yes, inequality looked different back then than it does now and the barriers to living well have changed…but the fact that inequality and barriers exist at all is the problem.

For some present-day context let’s take a look at a Pew Research Center report titled “Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality” released January 9, 2020…

“The period from 1983 to 2001 was relatively prosperous for families in all income tiers, but one of rising inequality. The median wealth of middle-income families increased from $102,000 in 1983 to $144,600 in 2001, a gain of 42%. The net worth of lower-income families increased from $12,300 in 1983 to $20,600 in 2001, up 67%. Even so, the gains for both lower- and middle-income families were outdistanced by upper-income families, whose median wealth increased by 85% over the same period, from $344,100 in 1983 to $636,000 in 2001.

The wealth gap between upper-income and lower- and middle-income families has grown wider this century. Upper-income families were the only income tier able to build on their wealth from 2001 to 2016, adding 33% at the median. On the other hand, middle-income families saw their median net worth shrink by 20% and lower-income families experienced a loss of 45%. As of 2016, upper-income families had 7.4 times as much wealth as middle-income families and 75 times as much wealth as lower-income families. These ratios are up from 3.4 and 28 in 1983, respectively.”

What stands out to me the most from reading those numbers is this: during the time of kings and queens, absolute monarchies, the inequality of that era resulted in the oppression of common people (peasants). Comparing what poverty is today and what it was back then isn’t fair. We need to look at it in the context of what’s happening today. What we see based on the data from the Pew Research article is not only does inequality still exist between the poor and the wealthy, but it is still growing at a faster pace. It is difficult for me to understand how people who praise capitalism can’t see the ways that capitalism continues to widen the wealth gap, and widen the gap of oppression and inequality. Just because poor people live “better” now than poor people in the past, that statement has to be looked at in the context of the present-day realities around us.

This reminds me of another Systems Archetype called “seeking the wrong goal” (Archetype 6).

This occurs when a goal is set that we know is a band-aid solution to the bigger issue at hand. The wrong goal makes us feel like we are achieving something when really, this behavior is masking something else. This reinforces superficial actions in the system that can, in some cases, perpetuate the problem that the goals are trying to resolve (i.e trying to eliminate inequality and oppression within the system of capitalism, which succeeds at consistently raising the bottom level of poverty, while also perpetuating inequality and oppression).

So while, yes, in my lifetime alone I have seen visual examples of upward mobility and access to relative wealth and success for the people around me and the communities I’ve lived in. I’ve also seen signs of poverty and despair increase as well. For example, all throughout the metro Atlanta region, you’ll find armed security guards or police on duty at schools, restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores. I’ve seen an increase in homelessness and panhandling as well. All things I didn’t see when I was a child to the degree that I see them now.

In episode 12 of my podcast, I further defined my Theory of Indivisibility by introducing what I call a “Framework For Social Innovation”. This included two charts: The DNA of Divisiveness and The DNA of Indivisibility.

I posit that if any social system has elements from the DNA of Divisiveness chart, then that system will inevitably produce the inequality and oppression, which leads to all of the societal dysfunction that we currently accept as normal.

Let’s take a closer look at the DNA of Divisiveness chart. It includes the tools, communication framework, & outcomes of divisive social systems. Take a moment to think about or write down the connections between capitalism and the DNA of divisiveness that come up in your own mind.

The DNA of Divisiveness

Tools

Power-Over systems use the following tools to maintain power-over and control of people:

Fear, Scarcity, Dependency, Standardization, Moral Judgement, Competition, Laws, Conditional Love, Lying, Exclusiveness, Social Norms, The Illusion of Freedom, Intolerance, Mistrust of Human Nature, Self-Oppression (i.e. “born sinners”)

Communication Framework

The communication framework of Power-Over systems is debate. Characteristics of debate include:

Only one side wins, insults, us versus them language, blame, shame, winning is more important than learning.

Outcomes

Persistent use of the tools of divisiveness leads to:

Incremental, hard-fought, and slow progress towards healthy functional social norms amidst perpetual divisiveness war, crime, violence, poverty, pollution, homelessness, hunger, mental illness, and dysfunctional relationships.

As I think about the connections I can make between capitalism and the tools of divisiveness, immediately what comes to mind is fear, scarcity, and competition. When I think about the outcomes of divisiveness in terms of capitalism, I think about crime, violence, poverty, pollution, homelessness, hunger, mental illness, and dysfunctional relationships.

Capitalism and the divisiveness it leads to is a result of centuries of linear thinking. The good news is that there are people who have been brainstorming and experimenting with solutions rooted in Systems Thinking for several decades now. We’ll learn about some of those solutions in my next post.

Until next time,

I love y’all, Peace

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta

2023. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart

_________________________________________________________________

Resources

Articles:

Capitalism Is Good For The Poor

Problem Solving Desperately Needs Systems Thinking

Tools for Systems Thinkers: The 12 Recurring Systems Archetypes

Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace

Beef Production Is Killing The Amazon Rainforest

Trends In Income & Wealth Inequality

Charts:

The DNA of Divisiveness

Tools: Power Over Systems use these tools to maintain power-over and control of people.

Fear, Scarcity, Dependency, Standardization, Moral Judgement, Competition, Laws, Conditional Love, Lying, Exclusiveness, Social Norms, The Illusion of Freedom, Intolerance, Mistrust of Human Nature, Self-Oppression (born sinners).

Language: The communication framework of Power-Over systems is Debate.

Characteristics of Debate: Only one side wins, insults, us vs them language, blame, & shame.

Outcomes: Incremental hard-fought and slow progress towards healthy functional social norms amidst perpetual divisiveness (Classism,racism,xenophobia,party politics,etc) war, crime, violence, poverty, pollution, homelessness, hunger, mental illness, and dysfunctional relationships.

Theory of Indivisibility: Current Complexities of Capitalism was originally published in Theory of Indivisibility Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Each and every social system that we’ve explored in my Theory of Indivisibility publication is dynamic and complex. Capitalism is at the forefront of our awareness because people living in capitalist systems are beginning to become aware of its shortcomings as they experience and witness the realities of living in a capitalistic society.

Before we dive in, let’s review complexity. You may recall that detail complexity involves dealing with many items or variables. Crunching numbers on an excel spreadsheet or organizing a large event are examples of detail complexity.

Dynamic complexity relates to when there is a delay between cause and effect, when attempted common sense solutions do not produce expected results, when the same action has a different outcome for different people, or when the same action has dramatically different outcomes immediately than it does at a later date. Sometimes with dynamic complexity, the same action will have one set of consequences in one setting and a completely different set of consequences in a different setting.

Human societies (social systems) are full of dynamic complexities and up to this point in history, most of the solutions humans came up with relied on linear and fragmented thinking, which led to quick-fix bandaid solutions that only address symptoms of the problem. Failing to identify and address root causes only makes things worse in the long term. The current climate crisis is a result of linear, fragmented thinking. For far too long, corporations and world leaders have blindly pursued economic growth and the power that comes from it while ignoring the pleas of indigenous people, climate activists, and environmental scientists to make decisions that are aligned with preserving environmental sustainability.

Enacting solutions to dynamically complex problems requires solutions rooted in systems thinking — solutions that reach the fundamental root cause of the issue and provide insights on how to design new systems that make current ones obsolete.

From the moment we were born, our parents made decisions for our lives that were motivated by their desire to help us navigate capitalism as easily and successfully as possible. That charge follows us through every phase of life and impacts everything that we do on a daily basis.

If you’ve been following my work for a while, I’m sure you’ve already begun to understand how capitalism could evolve from the systems and ideas of power-over, patriarchy, religion, and ownership. There are so many interconnections and interdependencies to explore…

Let’s start with how capitalism evolved.

An Economic system is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area. The first economic system to evolve was nature…the earth’s ecosystem. Think about the ways that plants, animals, fish, bodies of water, and all the things that make up the natural world interact, coexist, allocate resources, etc. Humans were and still are a part of that natural system, and humans have created their own systems in addition to the natural system of the earth.

Prior to the agricultural revolution about 12,000 years ago, for about 290,000 years, homo sapiens lived in egalitarian nomadic bands consisting of dozens of people. Up to that point in our evolution, we relied on what nature provided to meet our basic needs (water, oxygen, food, shelter). We shared the production roles of hunter and gatherer, distributing what was collected from those efforts equitably. That was our natural economy.

The agricultural revolution resulted in food surplus and storage, which allowed humans to become sedentary and stationary for the first time. Farming led to the accumulation of resources for the first time in the form of crops. This sparked major population growth. As populations grew, human societies grew from nomadic bands of dozens of people to mostly sedentary tribes with hundreds of people.

The accumulation of resources along with population growth eventually gave rise to more complex economic systems, which included food production and division of labor. It also created the need for protection from other tribes as territories began to shrink. These changes also led to the evolution of power-over systems and the abandonment of egalitarianism. As we discussed in Theory of Indivisibility: How Did We Get Here? (Part 2), the system of power-over is the foundation of the dominant social, economic, and political systems in the United States.

To understand the evolution of capitalism, let’s take a look at the following Types of Societies Charts from “Guns, Germs, & Steel” by Jared Diamond:

As you can see from this chart, the smallest groups of people were bands, which used egalitarian decision-making. As populations grew due to the agricultural revolution, the number of bands became fewer as tribes, chiefdoms, and states emerged. When there were bands and tribes, there was no monopoly of force and conflicts were resolved between people informally. There was no bureaucracy in bands and small villages, and people mostly related to one another as kin. The more populations grew, the more centralized power became, until a small group of decision-makers, such as a council or a monarch, held most of the power over resources and laws.

Next we will look at how religion evolved to justify kleptocracy. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explains in detail how initially chiefdoms used religion to justify kleptocracy, and some states did as well, while others did not. As you can see on the table below, in bands and tribes food production and division of labor did not exist, and exchanges and control of the land, were all reciprocal. Everything was shared equally and there was no class division or slavery prior to the development of chiefdoms, which would later develop into states.

You’ll notice at the top of the second chart the mention of kleptocracy. Kleptocracy is a government with corrupt leaders who use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their territory in order to expand personal wealth and political powers.

It’s important to note when looking at the charts above from Guns, Germs, and Steel that people in various places around the world developed and grew at different rates from bands to villages, to chiefdoms, and ultimately into states. In remote places today there are still egalitarian people who live in small hunter-gatherer bands and tribes. In Africa for example, many tribes did not take on more advanced economic systems until European colonization. Every continent and every culture has its own unique timeline. Dynamic complexity exists within all of this.

Our current social systems evolved from European culture. The world we live in now is a direct result of European colonization. In Europe, as populations continued to grow, monarchy reigned and feudalism evovled. Feudalism was a combination of legal, economic and military customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

Adam Smith, the 18th-century Scottish economist and philosopher known as the Father of Capitalism, used the term “feudal system” to describe a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such a system wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labor services owed by peasants and indentured servants to land-owning nobles.

Karl Marx, the famed German philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, and socialist revolutionary also used the term in the 19th century in his analysis of society’s economic and political development, describing feudalism (or more usually feudal society or the feudal mode of production) as the order coming before capitalism. For Marx, what defined feudalism was the power of the ruling class (the aristocracy) in their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom and principally by means of labour, produce and rent.

This brings us to capitalism…

What Is Capitalism?

Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own capital goods. The production of goods and services is based on supply and demand in the general market rather than through central planning.

The purest form of capitalism is free market or laissez-faire capitalism. Here, private individuals are unrestrained. They may determine where to invest, what to produce or sell, and at which prices to exchange goods and services. The laissez-faire marketplace operates without checks or balances.

Today, most countries practice a mixed capitalist system that includes some degree of government regulation of business and ownership of select industries.

There have been many stages and forms of capitalism. Agrarian capitalism, sometimes known as market feudalism…was a transitional form between feudalism and capitalism, whereby market relations replaced some but not all feudal relations in a society.

The processes by which capitalism emerged, evolved, and spread are the subject of extensive research and debate among historians. Debates sometimes circle around how to bring substantive historical data to bear on key questions. Key parameters of this debate include:

• how far capitalism is a natural human behavior and how far it arises from specific historical circumstances
• whether its origins lie in towns and trade or in rural property relations
• the role of class conflict
• the role of the state
• the extent to which capitalism is a distinctively European innovation
• the relationship between European imperialism and capitalism
• whether technological change is a driver or merely an epiphenomenon of capitalism
• whether or not capitalism is the most beneficial way to organize human societies.

The origins of capitalism have been much debated (and the results of such debates depend partly on how capitalism is defined). The traditional account, originating in classical eighteenth-century liberal economic thought and still often articulated, is the “commercialization model”. This model proposes that capitalism finds its origins in trade. Since evidence for trade is found even in palaeolithic culture, capitalism is then understood as natural to human societies. This account sees current-day capitalism as a continuation of trade, arising when natural entrepreneurialism was freed from the constraints of feudalism. The commercialization model traces modern-day capitalism back to early forms of merchant capitalism practiced in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.

By the beginning of the 21st century, capitalism had become the pervasive economic system worldwide. There are many people who champion capitalism as the best economic system for growth and freedom, while others argue that the growth that capitalism creates is responsible for perpetuating social and economic inequality as well as the destruction of the environment.

We’ll explore these perspectives and more in my next post, Theory of Indivisibility: Current Complexities of Capitalism…

I love y’all.

Peace,

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta

2022. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart

_____________________________________________________________

References and Resources

Websites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capitalism.asp

Charts:

From “Guns, Germs, & Steel” by Jared Diamond

Theory of Indivisibility: Evolutionary Origins of Capitalism was originally published in Theory of Indivisibility Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the previous transcript, we explored the current complexities of the concept of ownership in human societies. Now we are going to shift our focus towards the ways people are rethinking, challenging, and rejecting the ownership scripts that we’ve inherited, which are rooted in power-over and control and cause environmental and human suffering. We’ll explore how folks are choosing to live in ways that are liberating and sustainable for all people and the environment.

Before we dive in to the topic of transitioning away from ownership, let’s review my Theory of Indivisibility:

I truly believe that we as humans have the capacity to live in harmony with nature and one another. I truly believe that we have the capacity to live Indivisibly. The true leverage point for living indivisibly is in the recognition that our current social, political, and economic systems are intrinsically designed to produce the perpetual dysfunction that we continue to experience because they are rooted in power-over ideals, beliefs, and norms. It is also in the recognition that there is no one to blame.

Power-over systems have been designed and integrated into society over the last ten thousand years based on the communication methods, problem-solving skills, and governance tools humans developed as they evolved. Just like they had no way to drive cars back then because the skill & know-how had not evolved yet, they also had no better way to manage population growth and perceived resource scarcity because the skill and know-how had not evolved yet. That is no longer the case. We currently live in an era where many people possess the necessary skills to live indivisibly and there is an abundance of resources available to help more people obtain them. However, by no fault of their own, most people are still mentally trapped within the indoctrination of power-over systems paradigms.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge states that,

‘Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Once we can see them and name them, they no longer have the same hold on us.’ (Senge)

I created this publication to help more people learn to see and name the inherent oppressions within social systems rooted in power-over and control as well as recognize and deconstruct the ways that we all perpetuate them. I believe that as more people learn these things, they will begin to intentionally make changes in their lives in an effort to organize and live in ways that inherently produce equity, sustainability, liberation & unconditional love for themselves, the environment, and other human beings.”

— Theory of Indivisibility, Dr. Sundiata-Soonjhata

Let’s start by discussing the concept of owning land, how we can evolve towards a more just relationship with it, and how indigenous people have always been on the frontlines of advocating for this.

The following insights are from from an article entitled “The Western Idea of Ownership is Flawed. Indigenous People Have it Right”, by Julian Brave Noisecat:

“We live in a world dominated by the principle of private property. Once indigenous people were dispossessed of their lands, the land was surveyed, subdivided and sold to the highest bidder. Our capitalist property regime and economic system have succeeded at producing remarkable surplus. But the benefits of this system too often flow to a small fraction of the population, while land, water, air and people pay the long-term price.

While property has transformed the world, its flaws have never been more apparent. Homeownership no longer provides the economic security it once did, and appears out of reach for younger generations. The richest 1% holds more wealth than the rest of the world combined. At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change proceed at a terrifying pace.

Prior generations responded to similar crises by turning to communism. Another, more cutting-edge possibility is to heed the diverse indigenous voices displaced and drowned out by imperialism. Their approach entails returning lands and resources to indigenous control and rethinking our relationship to the environment by recognizing and protecting indigenous values and the rights of nature through the law.

For indigenous people, land and water are regarded as sacred, living relatives, ancestors, places of origin or any combination of the above. One promising precedent on this path to a post-imperial future has emerged in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where the Whanganui Maori iwi just won a 140-year legal battle to recognize that their ancestral Whanganui river has legal rights equal to a human being. Less than a week after the legislation went into effect, India’s Uttarakhand high court cited the Whanganui decision when it ruled that the Ganges and Yamuna rivers have the legal status of a person.

While the implications and effects of these legal experiments are yet to be seen, these are potentially revolutionary precedents that offer a path forward to redefine relationships between governments, indigenous peoples and the land in the 21st century.

At their core, these decisions recognize what indigenous people have believed all along: that land and water are sacred, living relatives and ancestors whose well-being humanity depends upon for our continued health and existence upon this earth.” (Noisecat)

So, what are alternatives to the idea of owning private and public property?

One idea is to shift from ownership of land to stewardship of land.

The Land Stewardship Centre defines stewardships as follows:

In its broadest sense, stewardship is the recognition of our collective responsibility to retain the quality and abundance of our land, air, water and biodiversity, and to manage this natural capital in a way that conserves all of its values, be they environmental, economic, social or cultural.

The LSC goes on to state that they understand stewardship is a journey, and the commitment that comes with being good stewards takes time and effort. Their center and website provides resources to help people on that journey.

Being or becoming a good steward means:

- Understanding the value of ecological goods and services

- Recognizing important stewardship priorities

- Applying key stewardship principles in all our land and resource use decisions

- Learning from those who provide good stewardship examples.

Another way to reject the idea of land ownership is to live in an intentional community.

“Intentional Community” is an inclusive term for eco-villages, co-housing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives and other related projects.

An example of an intentional community is the Amata Community right here in Atlanta, GA where I live. Founded in 1988, their mission is: “to provide an educational model for holistic living in an urban environment.” It’s an eco-village organized around ecology, sustainability, and co-housing, which provides individual homes within a group property.

There are additional elements connected to land ownership that will also need to be deconstructed, which I described in the last transcript, “Current Complexities of Ownership”. These include patriarchy, marriage, and gentrification. Let’s take a look at these again and explore some of the ways that people are creating new systems and new paradigms.

Patriarchy: Only recently (in the 20th century) did women gain the right to own land. We live in a time when women can own property, but that was not always the case. You can read more about patriarchy in this transcript.

Marriage was a form of legal ownership: before 1870, any money made by a woman either through a wage, from investment, by gift, or through inheritance automatically became the property of her husband once she was married. The concept of the husband as the head of household was not just a religious concept, it was the law of the land. Many married couples today live as partners, and do not want to call each other “husband” or “wife” as a way of rejecting the oppressive history of ownership by marriage.

Gentrification: The displacement of underprivileged, poor, or low-income people from a residential area that is affordable to them by wealthier people moving into the neighborhood and raising the property values so that over time, the homes are no longer affordable to the original inhabitants.

One solution to the problem of gentrification is community land trusts…

“Community land trusts are nonprofit, community-based organizations designed to ensure community stewardship of land. Community land trusts are primarily used to ensure long-term housing affordability. To do so, the trust acquires land and maintains ownership of it permanently. With prospective homeowners, it enters into a long-term, renewable lease instead of a traditional sale. When the homeowner sells, the family earns only a portion of the increased property value. The remainder is kept by the trust, preserving the affordability for future low- to moderate-income families.

The length of the lease (most frequently, 99 years) and the percentage earned by the homeowner vary. Ultimately, by separating the ownership of land and housing, this innovative approach prevents market factors from causing prices to rise significantly, and hence guarantees that housing will remain affordable for future generations. Today, there are over 225 community land trusts across the United States.” (Excerpt from Community-wealth.org)

We live during a really unique era…we all know the saying that hindsight is 20/20…well, we live in an era where both hindsight and foresight are clearer than ever before. Technology and science have evolved to a point where we can look back at history and prehistory with extreme clarity while also having enough data combined with the tech and science to allows us to see and predict future patterns based on what we have learned from the past.

With that said, we now know that the social construct of ownership that evolved into human societies over the past ten thousand years is not sustainable. While it has provided abundance for many people it has hurt even more people by increasing individualism and further distancing the majority of us from our indigenous roots and values of collectivism, stewardship, and egalitarianism. Ownership has also contributed greatly to the overconsumption of our natural resources, which has led to global warming and climate change.

It is difficult to understand and discuss ownership without also talking about capitalism, which will be the topic of my next post.

Until next time,

I love yall, Peace!

Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta

2022. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart

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Websites:

Land Stewardship Centre

Amata Community

Foundation For Intentional Community

Community Land Trusts

Articles:

The Western Idea of Private Property is Flawed. Indigenous People Have it Right.

Theory of Indivisibility: Transitioning Away from Ownership was originally published in Theory of Indivisibility Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.