Concepts & Principles
Ideas that recur across the work. Not definitions — more like species you’ll encounter repeatedly on different trails.
Foundational
- Carrier Bag Theory — Narrative as container, not weapon. Gathering instead of conquering.
- Appropriate Technology — Tools chosen for context, not prestige. Human-scale, locally maintainable.
- Selective Technology — Not rejection, not embrace — relationship. Using sparingly, for specific things.
Organizational
- Mutual Aid — Cooperation as fundamental as competition. The barn-raising model.
- Human Scale — What one person can maintain. What a community can govern.
- Replication, Not Scaling — Spreading through relationship, not franchise.
Epistemological
- Seeds, Not Solutions — Planting for futures you won’t see. Materials, not blueprints.
- Holding Contradictions — Refusing to resolve. Both/and rather than either/or.
- Embodied Knowledge — What hands know that minds forget.
From the Flourishing Frameworks
Concepts surfaced by examining traditions beyond the Western canon — what the project was missing.
- conviviality — Illich’s specific term. Tools that maximize autonomous and creative intercourse.
- Shadow Work — Illich. The unpaid labor that serves the commodity economy.
- wu-wei — Non-action. Effortless action. Attunement over force.
- wabi-sabi — Beauty in imperfection, impermanence, incompleteness.
- sufficiency — Knowing when enough. Living well, not living better.
- Daily Rhythm — The Benedictine Horarium. Fixed points. Alternation between modes.
- Seventh Generation — Haudenosaunee principle. 175-year decision horizon.
- Dignity of Labor — Shaker equal craftsmanship. Tolstoy’s bread labor. Confucian li.
- hospitality — Benedictine reception of guests. Ubuntu. Feeding people.
- Reciprocity with Land — Sumak kawsay. Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address.
These concepts connect to each other. Follow the links. Notice the clusters.