Very much appreciating this effort. We're all coming from different places inside the crumbling structure that we call modernity, and having some clarity around finding helpful orientation is a gift. Thanks for this!
There’s data as information and there’s data as inspiration, and you're one of the masters of the latter. Case in point:
"To learn the older grammar of place without sentimentalizing it. To imagine the newer grammar of finance without sanctifying it. To recognize that bioregions are neither museums of the past nor laboratories of the future, but living fields in which past and future are continuously braiding themselves into the present, and to begin the slow work of becoming, again, participants in that braiding."
Hopefully your wrap-up will deal with how to loosen the grip of the system we have so we can deal with developing one that we need.
Another excellent post Ernesto. I was thinking as you talk about capital it has much of the same resonance we have when discussing money. Particularly the argument that money is neutral or NOT as I and most other community economists maintain. To hear the same about capital and finance is refreshing. So now we must ask about the weave between different capitals and the flows they make in concert. What kind of flows do we want and how do we co-create, co-finance and co-implement them?
Thank you Ernesto. I keep thinking about the idea that places are not interchangeable. That culture, memory, ecology, economy, and community emerge together over time through relationship with a particular landscape, watershed, climate, and way of living.
It also made me reflect on how much modern life has conditioned us toward abstraction and disconnection. We often talk about resilience, sustainability, or regeneration at global scales while remaining deeply detached from the actual places that sustain us.
The sections on commons and living capital especially stayed with me. Not because they offer easy answers, but because they point toward a different way of relating to land, community, value, and participation.
When I say that bioregional regeneration is "the patient un-enclosing of the world," I am not suggesting the removal of all boundaries. Quite the opposite. Living systems require boundaries. A cell has a membrane. A forest has an edge. A watershed has a ridgeline. Without boundaries, there is no identity, coherence, or self-organization.
The distinction I am making is between living boundaries and enclosures.
Historically, the enclosure movement transformed commons into property. It replaced relationships with ownership and stewardship with exclusion. Land that had once been held within a web of reciprocal obligations became an asset defined primarily by control and extraction.
A bioregion certainly has boundaries, but they are not arbitrary administrative lines. They emerge from the landscape itself—from watersheds, ecological processes, climate, soils, species migrations, and cultural relationships. They define a living whole.
In that sense, bioregional regeneration is not about eliminating boundaries. It is about moving from enclosed fragments back toward a larger commons. It is an attempt to re-align governance, economy, and stewardship with the natural boundaries through which life already organizes itself.
So perhaps a more precise way to say it would be:
The work of bioregional regeneration is not the removal of boundaries. It is the gradual transformation of enclosures into commons.
Very much appreciating this effort. We're all coming from different places inside the crumbling structure that we call modernity, and having some clarity around finding helpful orientation is a gift. Thanks for this!
There’s data as information and there’s data as inspiration, and you're one of the masters of the latter. Case in point:
"To learn the older grammar of place without sentimentalizing it. To imagine the newer grammar of finance without sanctifying it. To recognize that bioregions are neither museums of the past nor laboratories of the future, but living fields in which past and future are continuously braiding themselves into the present, and to begin the slow work of becoming, again, participants in that braiding."
Hopefully your wrap-up will deal with how to loosen the grip of the system we have so we can deal with developing one that we need.
Another excellent post Ernesto. I was thinking as you talk about capital it has much of the same resonance we have when discussing money. Particularly the argument that money is neutral or NOT as I and most other community economists maintain. To hear the same about capital and finance is refreshing. So now we must ask about the weave between different capitals and the flows they make in concert. What kind of flows do we want and how do we co-create, co-finance and co-implement them?
Thank you Ernesto. I keep thinking about the idea that places are not interchangeable. That culture, memory, ecology, economy, and community emerge together over time through relationship with a particular landscape, watershed, climate, and way of living.
It also made me reflect on how much modern life has conditioned us toward abstraction and disconnection. We often talk about resilience, sustainability, or regeneration at global scales while remaining deeply detached from the actual places that sustain us.
The sections on commons and living capital especially stayed with me. Not because they offer easy answers, but because they point toward a different way of relating to land, community, value, and participation.
A lot here that feels important.
Can you please explain this to me?
You said: "The work of bioregional regeneration is, at one level, the patient un-enclosing of the world."
But, as far as I understand it, a bioregion is an enclosure, a watershed with boundaries consisting of water. Am I wrong?
Likewise with boundaries: I am open-minded, but not so much that my brains fall out.
IMO, we need defined boundaries.
Don,
When I say that bioregional regeneration is "the patient un-enclosing of the world," I am not suggesting the removal of all boundaries. Quite the opposite. Living systems require boundaries. A cell has a membrane. A forest has an edge. A watershed has a ridgeline. Without boundaries, there is no identity, coherence, or self-organization.
The distinction I am making is between living boundaries and enclosures.
Historically, the enclosure movement transformed commons into property. It replaced relationships with ownership and stewardship with exclusion. Land that had once been held within a web of reciprocal obligations became an asset defined primarily by control and extraction.
A bioregion certainly has boundaries, but they are not arbitrary administrative lines. They emerge from the landscape itself—from watersheds, ecological processes, climate, soils, species migrations, and cultural relationships. They define a living whole.
In that sense, bioregional regeneration is not about eliminating boundaries. It is about moving from enclosed fragments back toward a larger commons. It is an attempt to re-align governance, economy, and stewardship with the natural boundaries through which life already organizes itself.
So perhaps a more precise way to say it would be:
The work of bioregional regeneration is not the removal of boundaries. It is the gradual transformation of enclosures into commons.
You continue to rock it Ernesto!
I'd quibble that bioregionalism is H2+ *and* H3 (but I doubt you'd argue strongly with that).
I also believe we should actually move beyond "civilization" as our framing device, given the inherent "violence & unsustainability" (in Vanessa Andreotti's formulation) of civilization -- as I explain in Seeds v2: https://billbaue182950.substack.com/p/r30-seed-volume-2-chapter-1-introduction