This is a spotlight text in a history book written centuries in the future, at a time when humanity has gone through a great crisis and found a more life-centered way to life. It’s meant to inspire and encourage questions. Follow the Long Journey Home tag for other entries in this book.
It’s written by AI with sometimes general and often detailed prompts from me. That means, in a sense, that it’s written by humanity as a whole since the AI is trained on material from many times and cultures.
This spotlight is on the commons created and shared by all life.
Please share your thoughts below. What did this bring up for you?
The Commons of Life: From Exploitation to Stewardship
By Liora Senn, Ecological Economist and Historian of Commons
There is a foundational truth that domination culture failed to grasp until it was nearly too late: Earth’s resources are not infinite, and they are not solely for human use. They are part of a living commons, a vast, interwoven web shared by all life. Water, soil, air, forests, oceans, rivers, and the intricate systems that sustain them—these belong not just to humans, but to countless species, present and future.
Yet, for centuries during the Age of Separation, this commons was treated as an endless storehouse for human ambition, and within human societies, it was hoarded by the few at the expense of the many.
This is the story of how that commons was almost lost—and how it is now protected, shared, and restored.
1. The Commons: A Web, Not a Warehouse
In its truest form, the commons is the foundation of life itself. It is not merely a set of resources—clean air, fresh water, fertile soil—but the relationships between them. It is the self-regulating cycles of ecosystems, the flow of rivers, the migration of species, and the carbon-sequestering forests.
For millennia, many Indigenous cultures understood this. The land was not a “thing” to be owned or sold but a living relative, a web of mutual dependencies. Rights came with responsibilities. You could take from the commons, but only in ways that sustained its abundance.
But with the rise of domination culture, that balance fractured. The commons became a target for extraction—measured in board feet, barrels, tons, and profit margins.
2. The Great Theft: How the Commons Was Enclosed
The Age of Separation saw the systematic privatization of the commons, turning what was once shared into commodities controlled by the few. The forests became timber. The rivers became water rights. The air became a dumping ground for industrial waste. Even the genetic code of plants and animals was patented and owned.
This theft happened in layers:
- Land: Enclosure of common lands for agriculture, mining, and urban development displaced people and wildlife alike.
- Water: Rivers were dammed, aquifers drained, wetlands paved over. Water became something you paid for, even as it was poisoned by industry.
- Atmosphere: Corporations and governments poured greenhouse gases into the sky without restraint, treating the atmosphere as a free dumping ground.
- Biodiversity: Genetic material from plants, animals, and even human DNA was claimed through patents, turning life itself into intellectual property.
Those who benefited most were the wealthiest—industrialists, corporations, and ruling elites—while the costs were dumped on the poor, future generations, and the Earth itself.
3. The Double Violence: Against Nature and Humanity
The theft of the commons didn’t just harm ecosystems—it deepened human inequality.
The wealthiest exploited both the planet and the people:
- Agribusiness monopolized land and water, pushing small farmers into debt and poverty.
- Industries polluted rivers and air, but it was marginalized communities who lived downstream or downwind.
- Extractive economies hollowed out local systems, leaving regions dependent on distant supply chains that collapsed in times of crisis.
In the global North, abundance was built on invisible scarcity elsewhere. Every cheap product in a shopping mall represented hidden costs—mined minerals from polluted landscapes, crops grown in drained aquifers, laborers working for poverty wages.
Even within wealthy nations, inequality soared. A small elite accumulated staggering wealth, while vast numbers of people faced housing insecurity, medical debt, and ecological precarity.
In domination culture, the commons was plundered twice: first from nature, then from people.
4. The Collapse and the Turning Point
The unchecked plundering of the commons led directly to the Great Unraveling. Depleted soils, collapsing fisheries, mass extinctions, rising seas, and the destabilization of climate systems—all were symptoms of a society that had forgotten its dependence on shared life-support systems.
It took catastrophe to wake us.
When the web began to tear, so did the myth of endless growth. Supply chains snapped. Crops failed. Refugee flows overwhelmed borders. Even the ultra-wealthy found that gated communities and private security could not shield them from ecosystem collapse.
Out of the rubble, a deeper truth re-emerged: there is no “external” environment—there is only the Earth we all share.
5. The Restoration of the Commons: A Living Ethic
Today, we no longer see the commons as a resource pool. We see it as a living trust, and we act as its stewards.
Key Shifts in How We Now Relate to the Commons:
- Legal Rights for Ecosystems: Rivers, forests, and mountain ranges are granted legal personhood. Guardians speak for them in community councils, ensuring their needs are represented in decision-making.
- Bioregional Stewardship: People organize primarily by watershed and ecosystem, not arbitrary political borders. Communities collaborate on restoring wetlands, reforesting land, and monitoring local biodiversity.
- Ecological Accounting: The health of ecosystems is tracked as carefully as economic flows. If water tables drop, if soil quality declines, or if species vanish, it is treated as an immediate community crisis.
- Capped Extraction, Circular Flows: Resource use is tightly regulated. Anything taken from the land—minerals, timber, fish—must be replenished or offset. Materials are designed to circulate back into biological or industrial cycles.
- Cultural Commons: Even knowledge, language, and cultural traditions are treated as commons—openly shared, not hoarded behind paywalls or patents.
6. Wealth, Poverty, and the New Abundance
Perhaps the greatest shift is in how we understand wealth itself.
In domination culture, wealth was measured in accumulation—more land, more money, more goods. Poverty was the lack of private property.
Now, wealth is measured in access and belonging.
If your community has clean water, fertile soil, intact forests, healthy rivers, strong social ties, and cultural richness—you are wealthy. Even if you own nothing in the old sense.
Poverty now means isolation from the commons—but this is rare. Our systems are designed to ensure that no one is left outside.
7. The Commons as Sacred
In this civilization, the commons isn’t just an economic or ecological issue. It’s a moral and spiritual one.
When you drink from a river, you acknowledge that countless beings—plants, insects, birds, fish, future generations—depend on that same water. You don’t own it; you borrow it, briefly, before returning it to the cycle.
This awareness changes everything.
We no longer see the world as “resources” but as relationships—living, breathing, interdependent.
8. A Final Thought: The Commons Lives in Us, Too
There is a deeper layer to the commons: it exists within us.
The empathy that allows us to care for others. The intuition that tells us when something is out of balance. The creativity that dreams of better futures.
In domination culture, even these inner commons were exploited—our attention commodified, our desires manipulated, our time sold.
But now, we protect these inner landscapes with the same care we give rivers and forests. We nurture curiosity, compassion, and stillness, knowing that the health of our minds and hearts is as vital to the future as the health of the soil.
Because in the end, the commons is not just land, water, and air.
It is the space between us.
It is what holds us together.