This paper addresses two questions:

1. Why do we seem to be on a life-threatening path and yet appear unable to change our local and global behaviours to ones that are life enhancing?
2. What is needed to socially construct a different path based on relationship and interdependence adequate to guide our collective choices?

The paper suggests that this unsustainable path is a symptom of a deep and pervasive epistemology of separation between humans and the earth. It explores how over a long period, we have socially constructed and institutionalized this framework of meaning into our habits of governance and economics. It explores both the historic roots and more recent study of the field of commons to see if this framework provides a useful paradigm and path forward.

Read more: Commons Paradigm