Friday next week? We can then talk about NGI initiatives, maybe NGI Atlantic. It is just a suggestion, but let’s just get together on a call with Jurgen.
Sure can do.
Hello Community!
Robert Hall from ECOLISE suggested I join this group. I will be living and working in Brussels from January to the end of June/early July, supporting ECOLISE during the Portuguese Presidency of the EU and also being a Guest Research Fellow at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve. I am a sociologist, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal, passionate about the promotion of social justice and democratic inclusion in sustainability transitions. I’ve had previous experiences in community living and social movement activism in different countries of Europe, North and South America and South-east Asia.
During my time in Brussels, I will be able to join my passion for sustainability transition and community living with that for European Politics. I will also participate in a collective art project, organised by the SEADS collective, that will be exhibited at Poortersloge in Bruges.
During this time, I dream of joining a community of like-minded and open-hearted people, passionate about social transformation, deep debates, co-creation and sharing the best things in life.
Therefore, I’d like to know if there would be a room available at The Reef or another affiliated/like-minded housing unit that could include me during that period. I will be very happy and honoured to help Edgeryders expand its activities and network not only during that period, but also in the future.
Warm regards,
Ana Margarida
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Hi Alberto, I wonder if we could have a face to face meeting in Brussels? My boss, Jurgen, prefers to meet you (maybe @noemi @nadia too?..) in person at least for the first time. He says to be an old-fashion person (he is not! 
), and I am also an old-fashion one When possible I enjoy having face to face gatherings.
I wonder if you are still in Belgium on the 28th or 31st of August?
28/08 from 11:00 to 13:00
31/08 from 13:00 to 15:00
Looking forward to your answer.
Warm regards,
Liliana.
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Ciao, I’m afraid I’m out of town on those days 
Welcome @amesteves!
Yes, we might have a room for you, depending on circumstances – and of course we will help Robert and ECOLISE if we can.
The Reef in its present incarnation is only a prototype, but it does have an important perk: with its courtyard, in-house office and private hallway it makes for a good life even in times of pandemic. Let me contact you in private for details.
Sure, why not. I am available. Lunch on Monday 31st seems like a great idea. Depending on the weather, we can sit in one of the brasseries in Parvis St-Gilles, which all have dehors and are therefore safest. It is, however, Monday, so choice may be more limited than otherwise. We could meet at Barvis, and take it from there. Works?
Perfect Alberto. Could you send me a calendar invite with the details please?
[email address redacted ]
It is a pity that you are not in town on the 31st when we go to Brussels.
You are invited to visit ILVO in Merelbeke too when it fits you.
Specifically for NGI Atlantic call for proposals (deadline 30 sept), we will improve our already submitted proposal that needs to be improved for this second round. It is a good proposal but we did not have any NGI-experienced partner by then.
Could we check on a video call if Edgeryders would be interested in being that needed and essential partner. What do you think? @alberto @noemi @nadia
Next Monday? Tuesday?
im on the road till 31/8 but after we can do it for sure!
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Done. Liliana, I would recommend not to write private email addresses on this forum…
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I will be leaving soon to Brussels. Where do we meet? I am coming by car. Easy place for parking?
Waiting for you. I went to Barvis and then moved to Hector Chicken, I was hungry.
Hi, I have just discovered this group. I am a writer of fantasy, compiling a series of books about the creation of the Fair Land. The novels tell some of the stories of the characters who created the Fair Land, over a span of about 2000 years. They are informed by my take on history, specifically European and British history, and are more about the people who lived the history than the people who aspired to make it. The first trilogy was set at a time roughly equivalent to the Roman occupation of Britain. I have just completed the second, two-volume story, set a lot later in the fictional history, at a time vaguely equivalent to the 20th century. It is as much political fantasy as it is ‘science fantasy’ and explores many ideas and preconceptions that created the culture and economy we currently live in. It’s just a story, and I’m neither a qualified historian nor an economist, but writing it certainly gave me some insights into how we got to where we are and what the story of the Fair Land could be. I don’t know if this is of any interest to anyone in this forum. The two new works are at the publishers and should be available in the next month or so.
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Hi @SueRule, welcome and congratulations. My name is Alberto, I am one of the people who started the Lab.
People here will have diverse and wide-ranging interests, but what the forum itself is about is the economic thinking of speculative fiction. It the Fair Land series gave you views or ideas about that that you want to share, this is the right place. Would you care to make a post about that? If you do, you can put it anywhere, for example as a reply to this topic, and then I can help find a good placement for it so that other people can engage with your thinking. How does that sound?
That’s quite an ask – but I will give it a go. The books are my own personal journey of learning and discovery, so I don’t claim any of what I have to say is new. But this is it.
The core insight I discovered is that the only reality is life and death and the natural cycles and systems that arise from mortality. Everything else – the concept of a ‘Fair Land’, or any other vision of how human beings interact with each other and the rest of life on Earth, arises from human imagination. It’s a story. It’s only reality derives from the fact that a sufficient number of people believe the same story that it has agency in human society. It is “true” because we behave as if it is “true”.
So “capitalism” is a story, and “communism” is a story. The whole body of economic theory is a collection of stories.
If economics were a science, the stories would be continually challenged by rival theories. We would be looking at what happens when those stories are enacted, and how closely aligned the lived experience is to the theory. We would be continually adjusting the theory in the light of new information. But once we drew battle lines between the rival camps of “left-wing politics” and “right-wing politics” that was never going to happen. Each side claimed ownership of the ‘truth’ and saw theories which disproved their own tenets as enemies to be shot down, suppressed or denied.
That’s not science. That’s religion. The ‘continual growth’ theory of capitalist economics and the rampant, nihilistic consumerism it drives has the same hold on human imagination as any other heirarchical religion which sets up groups of humans as interpreters of God’s will. It cannot be challenged. Criticism is blasphemy. Dissent is a punishable crime. If the lived experience does not fit the theory, those in power (which, in a democracy, can simply be the majority of ordinary people) would rather deny the lived experience than adjust the theory.
The first thing we need to do therefore is to make economics a science, rooted in reality. We need to define its aim – which I suggest is to create a system that enables human beings to survive, and live peaceably alongside each other (since we have the capability to destroy ourselves and the planet if we don’t live peaceably alongside each other.) The economic system we create to achieve that needs to continually be taking soundings against reality to adjust the theory so that it functions as a chaotically adaptive system able to work within the constraints of the chaotic adaptive system we call “life”. Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut Model” captures this far more learnedly than I can.
However, to lose the stranglehold of consumer capitalism and make the human behaviour change necessary for the survival of life on Earth, we need to be telling ourselves different stories. We need to go back to the root of reality, and re-discover our spiritual connection to warp and weft of life and death.
The story I subscribe to is that every human being is a sovereign individual. But we can only realise our potential as sovereign individuals by acknowledging that we are part of the chaotic adaptive system of life on Earth. That is what should govern our actions. When our actions negatively impact others and the natural world around us, they negatively impact on us too. We feel it in our bodies. It creates anguish in our large brains, to which different personality types respond in various ways – arrogant and aggressive denial, helpless despair and cynicism, or a courageous resolve to remain true to reality and re-write the stories we’re telling ourselves.
Humans are social animals - we cannot function as individuals without connecting to each other and to the culture shaped by our ancestors. But sovereignty cannot belong both to an individual and a nation. Thinking of ourselves as British or American, French or Russian, black or white, male or female, is helpful for building a sense of community, for understanding our past and how we belong together, but it is not helpful when it becomes exclusive and arrogant, when it starts telling a story that my group is superior to your group, or, worse, that my group has a right to steal the future from every other group. Culture and community should be about celebrating our humanity, not about oppression and dominion.
That’s about as good a summary as I can come up with.
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Thanks for this!
In fairness, that sort of happened up to about 1985. Caveat: economics can at best be a social science. Its theories are true in the sense in which, I don’t know, Plato’s Cave myth is true.
Hi everyone,
I’m Michela De Domenico, I’m an architect and a comics artist and, together with Marco Lo Curzio, we’ll take care of the graphic communication by Sci-fi Economics residence in Messina, by making the graphic communication of this experience.
I’m interested in different fields of research and I’ve deepened my studies in the relation among architecture and comics. I’ve also made comics for several Italian editors, storyboards for movies and street art works. I supports my research in the field of architectural design, teaching at the Messina School of arts “Basile”.
Our idea for the Sci-fi Economics of Messina is to made a storytelling divided in three part: telling about our territory, describe your experience, describe the ideas that will arise from, in a sort of graphic novel.
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Hi All, I was thrilled to discover this group — and I assigned @alberto’s discussion of the economics of Walkaway to my students this week. I am teaching a course in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign that aims to help students practice imagining different politics, economics, and society (a course I call Future Politics syllabus linked here). I’m hoping that I will be allowed to teach this course again in the future, so I’d love any and all comments (perhaps on another thread about such courses or such pedagogy?). No pressure of course. I figure it is just worthwhile letting you all know that I am interested in what you all are doing and will be lurking around here a bit — in between grading student assignments. Best to you all! Jake
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Hello @jake, welcome!
Some lucky students, eh? Your course seems like great fun, good on you (and them)! Looking through your syllabus, I am honored by the inclusion of my post, and intrigued by your “the material world” heading. Can you explain the logic for bundling a discussion on (artificial) scarcity with one on feminism? And what is the role of Parable of the Sower?
Also: for the social credit-oriented part of the course, I would recommend considering Numbercaste by @yudhanjaya. It is well researched and well written. What matters most for you, it draws a credible trajectory from the existing financial credit scores and the companies that maintain them, all the way to a much more comprehensive, disturbing future system (the trajectory goes through Startupland, with its usual array of Valley VC types and tech reporters, and, less intuitively, the United Nations). Bonus points: the characters who are building the system believe they are “the good guys”, and make pretty good arguments that the system they are trying to replace is dysfunctional anyway.
Also: I did not know that Krugman had crossed blades with Stross! Do you have a reference? Also, do you have a reference for the K.S. Robinson manuscript commenting The dispossessed? They would make a fine addition to the wiki.
Something that might interest you or your students is that in the next month we will be starting work on the Worldbuilding Academy. This is a participatory effort to create an open source Worldbuilding Bible (aka Worldbuilding Canon); a description of an imaginary world that authors could set novels (or films, or games…) in, and that contains one or more economic systems different from our own. We are scheduling a webinar on what the core team is doing.
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