It is hard to separate seeker and believer. After all, the intention=belief that propelled an architecture like Islam which seemed to have timely success,I do not believe that it's possible for the seeker to not also be the believer. And it is entirely possible that the separation of one from the other would make it impossible to carry on. The reasons for controlling ones instincts and not be controlled by them requires us to remain a seeker of something invisible and a belief that it will become visible= realized. Uplifting a group or small society will require prayer= seeker, whether inward or outward with a group. Belief is the anchor, but it dies without a seeker in the play. Just more ideas
AH HA you met my brother Sandy by birth. A strong academic with a weakness sometimes in unfounded fear. He believes that you're a radical islamist and I said yes the koran in its depth can provide true guidance as will the deepest corners in many early religious texts but a system of economics, equity and regeneration is one worth striving for. And as we have shared you and I this may only be possible in smaller communities one at a time and maybe slowly interconnect over years, decades with the other communities with the same intentions. I do not see you as a radical you're looking back to a time when Islam had an opportunity to shine with a system that at the time seemed to meet humanistic needs. Ecological, and environmental too?
Cliff, thank you for stepping in with care and clarity. Your words brought a welcome steadiness to a thread that was beginning to fray, and I appreciate the depth and presence with which you engaged.
When I mentioned that religion has often been used as a tool for suppression, I was not speaking in generalities. The Church, across centuries, weaponized theology to justify extraction, conquest, and hierarchy. In contemporary times, many governments that carry the name “Islamic” have done the same. Not by reviving the Islamic tradition of governance, but by merging capitalist architecture with religious branding.
Let me be precise. Most of what are called Islamic states today are only Islamic by demographic composition, not by institutional structure. Their economies run on fiat currencies. Usury is institutionalized. Futures trading, speculation, and monopolies are common. Markets are regulated from above, not from within. Commons like pasture, water, and energy are no longer protected. Institutions like hima and hisbah have either been abandoned or stripped of function. So no, these are not the systems I was referring to. The critique I am offering is not about symbolic names or nostalgia. It is about architecture. About what worked.
As for Sandy, I understand his skepticism. We are all shaped by our intellectual environments, and many people today have encountered religion only as a mask for control. But if we are serious about studying alternatives to the dominant system, we must be willing to look beyond our comfort zones. If a system functioned across continents, over centuries, and under plural conditions, it deserves closer study not because of who followed it, but because of what it achieved.
Islamic governance, when it was at its height, was not just a set of doctrines. It was a system of checks and balances grounded in deep restraint. It managed trade without printing debt. It ran finance without compound interest. It created a culture of open-source knowledge by refusing to allow patents and copyrights. It locked public assets into community service through waqf. It banned futures trading, not to block markets, but to preserve stability. Most importantly, it embedded accountability not just in courts or policy, but in conscience, in the belief that even private actions have consequences beyond the material realm.
That is not a theological pitch. It is a model of how systems can be designed to circulate surplus, constrain accumulation, and protect the weak from the powerful.
Of course, no civilization was free from contradiction. But the structure held, and it held long enough to warrant our attention. Even if we do not share the metaphysical beliefs that underpinned it, we can learn from the mechanisms that made it work.
I also agree with you. The line between seeker and believer is blurry. Sometimes belief precedes understanding. Sometimes it follows. Either way, the search matters. And perhaps what keeps the architecture alive is not belief alone, but the ongoing effort to listen, to refine, to seek without the arrogance of certainty.
This is not about pushing Islam as the one answer. It is about recovering what was forgotten. If the architecture is sound, it should be studied. If it lasted thirteen centuries and served millions, it should be examined not for ideology, but for function.
If these ideas were released today by a secular futurist institute or a systems design lab at MIT, they would be seen as visionary. But because they are rooted in a tradition that many have already judged, they are dismissed before being understood.
To ignore this architecture simply because it comes from Islam is not reasoned skepticism. It is fear of what it might prove true.
So no, this is not a work of apology. It is a study of design. Of restraint. Of systems that held moral weight without central control. I am a Muslim, yes. But I am also an engineer. And I care about what works.
Invite your brother to study it properly. Not through the lens of ideology, but with the curiosity of someone who truly wants to understand how systems succeed and fail. Because if we are serious about repair, we cannot afford to ignore what already worked. Not because it was perfect. But because it was functional. And that, in our current moment, is rare enough to be sacred.
As for Sandy maybe he' d do some investigation, after all, he has a phd in religion, studied ancient language development. but he's an atheist. our paths,he and I were similar for a while then he worked corporate America for 20 years and things changed.
He's more of a sceptic on many things these days but he still knows how to dabble and research and I believe that he owes this conversation some more time, maybe a little research. he jumped into and should make an effort. If only to get out of a rut.
Your background and clean visionary personal energy is propelling you in ways that more people need to go. We share many of the same belief the foundations of how we got here may have varied some. I know! your motives are pure of heart.
We're on a variety of journeys together my friend. Spreading important information about not just the survival but the prospering of people and animals on this planet, re-inventing regenerative architecture to support a living planet that wants to support its animals(humans too) but we need to be an active partner for this to evolve.
So there's a lot of education and information that has to end up in the correct hands and minds to move this ship. And this may only happen when the time is correct. When is the time correct? Maybe all we'll ever have is now? Little pieces reaching opened minds a little at a time
Also want to say, I recognize the shallowness of my response. I am sorry for that. I don’t mean to extract the wisdom to solve white western problems.
As if Western Capitalism is the only type thats failing and in need of something new - I know it’s not. I’m just keenly aware of the plague that is western imperialism, capitalism, etc. etc.
I want to be a part of stopping that more than benefiting from a better system
I really welcome this type of in-depth proven equitable system. I also don’t understand all of it, but what I do seems to make a ton of sense. Could there be language around it that preserves the architecture and relationships without being explicitly culturally Muslim?
I hope that’s not offensive. I, personally, find much of what I learn about Islam (i know very little about any religion) to be beautiful and intriguing (and i have a deep personal relationship with god/life (i have no fitting word) which Islam really captures and has space for in ways Christianity doesn’t) but I know for a system to be approachable in the West, it would need to be… i don’t even know the word… sterile? Scientific? Psychological? Christian? Mystical?…
The language would need to resonate in a way that uplifts from the hyper-individualism but also feels personally reachable
Thank you, truly, for such an open and generous reflection.
There is nothing offensive in what you said. In fact, your question touches the heart of something I have been circling for a long time.
Yes, I believe this architecture, with its feedback loops, expiration thresholds, and moral constraints, can absolutely be expressed in a way that resonates beyond its religious origin. Not by sterilizing it, but by translating it with care. I am not here to proselytize or preserve terminology for its own sake. I am here to understand what worked: a governance design that aligned power with limits, markets with morality, and surplus with circulation.
Islam encoded that architecture with remarkable precision. But the wisdom is not fragile. It can travel. These patterns can be rendered through systems theory, moral psychology, or even cybernetics. I intend to do exactly that.
In r3genesis, my other blog, I am exploring these questions through a series called Ledger to Loom, which looks at how systems consolidate power and engineer obedience. That journey is focused on critique. This essay is its counterpoint: construction. I will eventually link them and release a version of this essay that removes the Arabic terms and reframes the system in purely structural language.
Because you are right. The language must lift us beyond hyper-individualism, but still feel personal and reachable. It should speak to the heart, but also make sense in policy and design.
And perhaps that is the real gift here. That a system rooted in revelation can still offer something useful to others walking a different path. This is not about allegiance. It is about design that serves life.
You may wonder why I shared this on Eḥādnāmeh instead of r3genesis. The reason is simple. Eḥādnāmeh is a personal space for me. It is where I write from belief, not just analysis. Where I speak to my children, not just the world. That is why I let the Islamic language remain here. Not to exclude, but because I did not want to translate myself.
But in time, the two arcs will connect. When the critique strand in r3genesis matures, I will bring this system design into it and offer a version that can travel further and reach more people.
Your comment reminded me why that work matters. It showed me again that a design can be faithful to its roots even as the language shifts.
So thank you again. For receiving the work with care. For asking a question that does not close the door, but quietly opens one.
I think your ability to understand and respect where your words come from is truly beautiful and profound. The way it creates patience for natural emergence is very wise and powerful.
I also think this system can be expressed beyond its religious origins. I do think it needs to arise with the type humility brought about in connection the greatness of life and humanity. So that the form is connected to experience and the experience exists within universal structure.
This is a problem in the west. There is often a severing of connection to the great and even an identification with the great that causes people to lose place.
To connect with and understand the architecture requires a humbling and transcendence of self. Otherwise the gaze is “how does this structure impact “me”? How can i change it to make things better for “me”?
Then, the whole thing is warped and lost.
I think it might be important for it to find its non-religious form but respect, with open awareness, its origins at least with a nod. That in itself, would bathe the whole unfolding in respect
Yes, I do agree that for a research to be approachable to the West, it needs to be "sterile, or something of the sort". I wonder why it should be devoid of the original source because in a way it is divine, and if the true text is not to be acknowledged then more precise and advanced reading cannot be done. But, to me, making it more secular or palatable, will or may bring it into the fold of intellectual dishonesty. Original sources, must be outlined, and if possible tolerated. My submission please.
I think Amy was pointing to something subtle — that non-Arabic terms might make the architecture more approachable for broader resonance, not to erase the origin, but to ease the listening.
That said, you’ve raised something essential: it would indeed be a form of intellectual dishonesty or worse, cruelty - to strip a living system, tested across 1,300 years, of its lineage and reduce it to an abstract possibility. The integrity of the source matters. And if we’re serious about systems design, that integrity is not ornamental - it’s structural, proven across centuries -- and perhaps that is why the Islamic system did not produce generational financial elites - the kind of dynastic consolidation we later saw in European banking families like the Medicis, Rothschilds, and Warburgs. The difference wasn’t cultural, but architectural built into the inheritance law, zakat mechanisms, and endowment structures.
The challenge, perhaps, is not to secularize the origin, but to translate the function. To let people see what worked, even if they stand outside the belief that birthed it.
Thanks for your comment, Shahid. I don’t want to evoke intellectual dishonesty or dishonesty of any type. The original source may very well be the best means of sharing.
I was more thinking of shifting it back to its protoplasm or embryonic form which holds the relationships but has more space to resonant with other lands and histories so as to have the deeper embodied connection that helps to anchor the wisdom with lived experience and history, instead of being applied as ideology.
It is obviously more than a set of intelligent equitable ideas. People have had those forever. My interest isn’t really in distilling it. My word choice was incorrect. But to connect to the non-verbal depth for it to arise again with the type of experiential meaning that allows for the system to really emerge and stabilize. The divinity, I think, is preverbal and can be accessed this way.
But I don’t think this means severing it from its origins. It just means that the sharing of it is coming not just from the top down or outside in, like a transplant. But from the inside of the living network.
Interesting and systematic. But I would carefully suggest that that State distribution of assets or resources has also proved inadequate and even demonic in most historical instantiations. It could be fairly argued that capitalism stimulates invention growth and prosperity. And I am not sure Islam has a viable alternative to growth. Indeed early Islamic progress in science etc was grounded in the Greek achievements in many respects.
Thank you, Sandy, for offering that thought. You're right to raise the issue of state distribution. Many 20th-century experiments in centralized asset allocation failed, some catastrophically. Soviet bureaucracy, Maoist collectivization, or even colonial resource redistribution often turned justice into justification for control. That critique matters.
But the Islamic system being explored here does not mirror those models. It wasn’t the modern state. It was an ecosystem. Governance was distributed. Power was constrained by design. Legal authority rested with jurists outside the political apparatus. Economic redistribution (like zakat) was enacted through local self-assessment, not central tax codes. Social services were run through waqf — independent, perpetual endowments outside state or market. It is not comparable to statist socialism or colonial extractivism. It was neither a command economy nor a technocratic project. It was a decentralized architecture with built-in ethical scaffolding.
Now, to your second implication, the oft-repeated claim that Islamic science was merely a relay station for Greek thought. That argument has been dismantled by countless serious historians of science. Yes, Islamic scholars translated and preserved classical works but,then they corrected, critiqued, expanded, and surpassed them.
Calculus? Ibn al-Haytham and other Muslim polymaths were laying the foundations of integration theory long before Newton and Leibniz. Newton’s “discoveries” only look sudden if we erase the centuries of Arabic mathematical texts that preceded him.
Missile technology? In the 13th century, Hasan al-Rammah documented the design of rocket-propelled weapons, including what we would now call torpedoes — centuries before such concepts reached Europe. Military engineering was a respected science, and Islamic archers were trained using precise manuals that employed geometry and physics to optimize aim and trajectory.
Evolution? Muslim scholar al-Jahiz proposed early theories of adaptation and natural selection in the 9th century. Later, thinkers like Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ibn Khaldun elaborated ideas on environmental determinism, heredity, and gradual transformation of species long before Darwin entered the scene.
And knowledge-sharing? Muslims deliberately rejected copyright. Knowledge was not commodified. Books were copied by hand, passed on, debated. No patents, no royalties. The rule was: if it’s good, it spreads. If you want to stay ahead, improve it. Not gatekeep it. This created a scientific commons - open-source before the term existed.
So when Western science surged forward post-Renaissance, it was not ex nihilo. It was heavily seeded by Andalusian texts, Levantine translations, and Cairo libraries looted or imported into Europe after the fall of Islamic Spain. The West didn’t invent the Enlightenment in isolation. It remembered what had already been written then repackaged it in its own language.
In raising this point that Islamic innovation was merely derivative, you also erase the foundations of the very science modernity claims as its own. And more importantly, you miss a key opportunity: to learn from a model that combined scientific innovation with moral constraint, open diffusion, and systemic humility.
Because we need that now. Not just knowledge, but wisdom in how we structure it. And there is no shame in learning from a civilization that built rockets and water clocks but, also reminded every engineer that their first responsibility was justice.
PS: If you're interested, I can also do a deep dive into how capitalism, despite its rhetoric of innovation, has actually hindered the free flow of information. It created deliberate barriers to entry. Copyrights and patents became tools to monopolize discovery. Entire industries were built around treatment, not cure. Medical solutions were shelved because curing diseases would end billion-dollar revenue streams. Many degenerative conditions including some cancers remain “uncurable” not because a cure is impossible, but because the system can’t afford the loss of dependency. In agriculture, monoculture driven by patents and seed control destroyed biodiversity, eroded soil intelligence, and set the stage for the planetary crisis we now face.
This has been such an incredible essay to read. I have been circling my own version of this from a systems perspective, thinking I was imagining something new & yet here you lay it all out, complex, crafted, with its own memory! It really is astonishing & makes me feel very small. My own version - which I still plan to write about - is to see an economy as a forest (clearly echoed in your writing about an ecosystem) not a port. Capitalism is about trade not ecosystems. It creates flows, not stocks. We confuse these flows with stocks because capitalism still produces 'stuff'. But it is not the production that matters. It is the flow. Because of this, it incentivises over-production and over-consumption (to feed the flows) & of course derivation & increasing detachment from genuine stores of value as there is too little production to satisfy the need for ever-increasing flows. These derivations are imaginary goods being shipped until there is a collective realisation that the whole thing is a lie. Then collapse.
My own design (which I am still writing in my head) nods to so many of the things you identify here. I am fascinated with the concept of ergodicity & wrote an essay about how medieval (European) markets must have been broadly ergodic - i.e. there were no consolidations or funnels. Growth would have been adaptive not discontinuous. I also characterise these systems as 'edge of chaos'. This would accord with Taleb's idea of antifragile or more simply, resilient. But like Taleb, I think the word 'resilient' is too effete. The point of an ecosystem is that it is constantly responding to stresses and adapting at multiple scales whereas resilience suggests something that is in repose. Again, so many of your ideas here map to an 'edge of chaos' / antifragile system that keeps learning & growing in complexity without the need for huge, risky, discontinuous leaps. Anyway, this was a brilliant read and has taken up most of my morning as I think about it! I hope you will be expressing these ideas in a book?
This response absolutely made my day - thank you for taking the time to engage so deeply with this. Your forest/ecosystem framing is not just elegant, it's revelatory. The stocks vs flows distinction cuts right to the heart of what I've been trying to articulate.
Claire, You've identified something crucial: capitalism optimizes for flow velocity (faster transactions, higher turnover, accelerated circulation) while systematically depleting stocks (stored value, accumulated wisdom, natural capital, social trust). Islamic governance did the opposite - it designed for stock preservation through controlled circulation.
The ergodicity insight is particularly brilliant. Medieval markets were indeed broadly ergodic because no single player could permanently capture the system's rules. Islamic governance institutionalized this through inheritance fragmentation, legal pluralism, anti-monopoly mechanisms - preventing what you might call "ergodicity breaking."
I'm particularly fascinated by how your forest metaphor maps onto the modules I described:
- Root systems = inheritance law (nutrients distributed, not hoarded)
- Mycorrhizal networks = zakat circulation (sharing resources across the whole system)
- Edge disturbance = market regulation (preventing any species from dominating)
In my climate work (Regenesis) , I distinguish between flow variables (energy, water, nutrients moving through systems) and stock variables (biomass, soil carbon, biodiversity stored in systems). Your stocks/flows framework might be even more elegant because it's immediately intuitive.
What you're describing as "edge of chaos" - that sweet spot where systems are complex enough to adapt but not so chaotic they collapse - is exactly what these governance modules achieved. Not brittle stability, but adaptive capacity. Your approach feels like it could be incredibly complementary to what I'm developing. I'd be absolutely thrilled to explore any collaboration if that appeals to you - whether it's cross-pollinating ideas, co-writing, or just ongoing dialogue about where these frameworks intersect.
I'd love to read your essay on medieval market ergodicity when you publish it. And yes, this is becoming a book - your forest economy approach could be a powerful complement to the historical governance analysis.
"Question: How do you see the transition from ergodic medieval markets to non-ergodic modern finance? I'm particularly curious about capitalism's capture of language, legal frameworks, and commons - the deeper architectures of control I explore in my "Ledger to Loom" series. What broke the forest logic at those foundational levels?"
Well it definitely sounds like we have reached similar conclusions! This is my essay about power laws where I first realised the importance of ergodicity. https://clairejhartnell.substack.com/p/the-unkillable-bird. It talks about (hypothetical) medieval markets in the latter part. I have found that metaphors are the only way I can get my head around the complexity - and hopefully explain it for other people. I have been planning to write about the 'forest & the port' to build upon a recent post but tbh, I feel a bit overwhelmed by the task - which is why your post floored me. So many things that I've been thinking about - ergodicity, bounded systems, recursiveness, polycentric governance, commons etc; were described in it. I have also been hugely influenced by Polanyi & Keynes. I have this idea about how to firewall societies from speculation but it is still building in my head. I am flattered that you would wish to collaborate. Rodrik put out a call for new thinking a few years ago and I still haven't seen a clear articulation of an adaptive systems approach to post-capitalism. William White (formerly BIS) has written lots of interesting stuff. And people like Ian Scoones are reframing developmental economics from a complexity perspective. But there isn't a single framework that has captured the public imagination other than Taleb. And Taleb's writing is so opaque that I'm not certain economists have put together what he's saying. So yes, I'm happy to compare ideas and possibly collaborate. But you might want to read my stuff before you commit!
Oh, The Unkillable Bird certainly deserves a deep read, and I’ll be giving it one. Even from your reflection, I can already sense we’ve been walking similar ground, though we may have traced the contours using different tools. Where I tend to work with scaffolds, system terms, and rough sketches of flow, your writing brings a clarity and elegance I often aim for but rarely reach. Your metaphors don’t just ease the complexity. They make it livable.
The idea of the forest and the port especially stood out. It feels like a diagram of thresholds and exchanges, something I’ve been trying to map in more mechanical terms. Maybe that is the work of good metaphor. It speaks in the language of ecology, where meaning settles in layers rather than lines.
You were right to mention Rodrik’s call for new paradigms. It still echoes in the silence. Taleb pointed to some of the right questions, but his writing often reveals more rupture than structure. It stirs thought, but rarely invites collective design. The way you named things - boundedness, ergodicity, commons, recursiveness - felt like more than description. These were pieces of a framework. I have been circling that same structure, but your language gave it a new texture. I paused there not because the terrain was unfamiliar, but because your phrasing gave it form. I would be glad to compare notes or questions, and maybe even work toward design. But first, I’ll spend time with more of your writing. Not just to read it, but to listen.
Also, if it interests you, I’m weaving a parallel thread over at r3genesis in a series called Ledger to Loom. It is an inquiry into the architecture of control. The first piece in that arc is called The Language Scroll. It’s short, and I think you might find it resonates.
I am not sure I would hold many contemporary Islamic States up as shining examples of tolerance or free inquiry. Yet, in today’s cultural settings we all struggle with intolerance.
Thank you for raising this, and you're absolutely right to flag the issue of intolerance. That said, it's important to clarify: there is no Islamic state in existence today that operates according to the architecture we’ve been discussing. Most so-called Islamic states are, in reality, mutations of colonial frameworks — patched together with borrowed legal codes, central banking systems, and top-down authoritarian control. They are neither structurally faithful to the caliphate model, nor aligned with the ethical design that once defined Islamic governance.
Capitalism stimulates invention for the intent of control of distribution for the sake of personal profit and the control of way of life. This is not an ethical direction and I think is why the inventions under Capitalism have led the West further and further away from ourselves causing greater sickness.
The human condition, in all its pain, is not something to invent out of. Growth is a natural quality of life, not something needing to be orchestrated.
I don’t know enough about the Islamic Economic system to comment. But I find the lack of curiosity in your words to suggest that you don’t either.
I recognize that I am being somewhat combative. To be honest, I find your comment about the Greeks to be very disrespectful to the space created above. I’m not sure how to interpret it in a way that isn’t western supremacy.
You’ve made an opaque and culturally forgotten system clear and digestible with this writing. I’ll have to read it again and again and pull on all the threads in it, many of which are swiftly moving into mainstream debate under different names and contexts. It’s powerful to see how it has all connected in the past. I can’t help but wonder which of today’s cities and states get closest to replicating this system, which is painted here as something extinct.
each module described in this needs to be expanded further and then connected via a systems architecture to show the stocks and flows, which is something I have to do next.
I spent days writing a comment on this, but it eventually became too long and needed a post of it's own. I love this article so much. Thank you for putting in this amazing effort.
So what you're implying is that while our current institutions are in place (and they're at the DNA and cellular level, not even/only at the macro architecture of the system), new initiatives or experiments carried out at grassroots level are going to be captured by the system logic.
Exactly. You've identified the core challenge perfectly - capitalism's logic operates at the "DNA and cellular level" as you put it. It's not just the macro architecture but the fundamental organizing principles that capture and metabolize even well-intentioned alternatives.
This is why so many grassroots initiatives end up serving the system they meant to challenge. Community gardens get financialized into "green real estate." Cooperatives get absorbed into ESG portfolios. Even mutual aid gets reframed as "social impact investing." The system doesn't need to crush alternatives - it just needs to process them through its existing logic of extraction, measurement, and monetization.
What the mechanisms I explored demonstrated was an entirely different cellular structure - different rules for how value flows, how power accumulates, how wealth expires. It wasn't just different policies within the same system; it was different systemic DNA.
This is why reform often fails. You can't debug capitalism by adding ethical patches. The code itself - the fundamental instructions about what counts as value, how ownership works, what money is - needs to be different from the ground up.
The question becomes: How do you create islands of different systemic logic that can't be captured because they literally operate on incompatible principles? That's what those governance modules were designed to do - create immune responses to extraction at the architectural level.
Once again I appreciate your determination for clarity, for a design to support human existence in a fair unbiased way. But you have begun to ask deeper questions. The instinct for self preservation to remain alive.
What is it To let fear have its way? Is it to be selfish? gifts are not for the taking but are given , humility can accept gifts. But without humility what is there? Doesn't Intention drives action and reaction? And does this open a door to humility or can it can intention open the opposite door? More to think about my friend. I will read ledger and loom, speak tomorrow
Someone recently said "We were made to be lovers of the unseen", maybe also of dreams unrealized. Is this humans fate again before and after Capitalism? We can only imagine, only dream as larger social systems, but as smaller bands, tribes, maybe it is possible to come closest to the unseen
Selfless action on larger scales, with 100's or thousands, require something miraculous, something so significant that a larger population shares a singularity so transforming it awakens, and motivates all to bond on deeper levels and understand that anything accomplished by one or by all is not an achievement for any but was a gift offered by a caring ,loving often unseen energy, Allah, God, Great spirit
Cliff, as usual your comments are on point. However, in this exploration the intent was to design with precision and not let abstraction take away whatever is left of freedoms. I choose Islam because I found it to be the only precise system, which actually preempted the creation of tools of control even before they were born.
I need to make this clearer ... it doesn't matter if you believe Islam is right or wrong but on a system level, this part of Islam is beyond amazing.
I'm in your court, tools of control grabbed onto for what reason? Why do they exist?
Freedom from control? One grabs for these for fear of what? What in the human make-up is lured into blindness to take up tools of control, arms against fellow humans?
I'm asking you to go deeper in your desire for a systems design. Maybe as you say might be an abstraction this could or should be more concrete and simple
You asked something important—something that sits at the very root of Ledger to Loom, the piece I shared. Why do people reach for the tools of control? Often, it begins with fear. In the face of uncertainty, we grasp for order—not always to dominate, but to feel anchored. The original ledger, after all, wasn’t a weapon. It was a memory—a way to hold kinship, land, and trust in place. But over time, the hand that wrote began to tighten. What was once a loom—something that wove people and land together—became a lever. And once you can lift with it, some will lift too much.
Because man isn’t just afraid—he’s also hungry. That instinct for self-preservation, meant to keep us alive, can quickly become something more: a hunger for control, for possession, for permanence. And that is precisely why we’ve always needed spirit. Not superstition, but conscience. A higher voice to temper the lower one. To remind us we’re not here to rule each other, but to restrain what would otherwise exceed all bounds.
And we see what happens when that restraint vanishes.
Who benefits from the modern ledger? Double-entry bookkeeping wasn't just an innovation—it was a quiet shift of power. It allowed wealth to be split into what is shown and what is hidden. Fiat currency—once backed by something real—is now issued at will, inflating assets for the few while devaluing the labor of the many. Derivatives trade in volatility, extracting profit from uncertainty itself, while the farmer and worker below are left with risk, not reward.
Legal fictions—like corporations treated as persons—shield the powerful while exposing the rest. You pay your taxes. They move profits offshore. You follow law. They are the law—or at least, they fund the ones who write it.
How is this possible? Because systems were designed not to reflect fairness, but to extract with elegance. Control doesn’t need to be loud when it’s written into contracts. Domination doesn’t need armies when it lives inside code and compliance.
But that doesn’t mean we abandon systems entirely. The answer is not to flee back into abstraction or nostalgia. We don’t need to live without design. We need to redeem design.
What Ledger to Loom ultimately points to is this: a return to systems that protect without overreaching. Structures that guard the vulnerable without enabling predation. A design language that serves life, not leverage.
That’s why precision matters.
A just system doesn’t mean no boundaries—it means the right ones. Systems must be exacting, but not invasive. They must cradle without clutching. A good structure knows how to hold, and just as importantly, when to let go. It steps back when life is stable. It intervenes only when needed. It doesn’t try to be everywhere.
So what Ledger to Loom asks is simple: can we return to systems that still remember the loom? That know the difference between weaving and fencing? That draw from memory, not mechanism? That scale thoughtfully, without forgetting the soul?
Because the task now is not to live without structure—but to live with one that remembers how to breathe. And more importantly—how not to steal the breath of others.
By clearer I meant... I'll try and discuss each module in more detail and proceed as a seeker instead of a believer
It is hard to separate seeker and believer. After all, the intention=belief that propelled an architecture like Islam which seemed to have timely success,I do not believe that it's possible for the seeker to not also be the believer. And it is entirely possible that the separation of one from the other would make it impossible to carry on. The reasons for controlling ones instincts and not be controlled by them requires us to remain a seeker of something invisible and a belief that it will become visible= realized. Uplifting a group or small society will require prayer= seeker, whether inward or outward with a group. Belief is the anchor, but it dies without a seeker in the play. Just more ideas
AH HA you met my brother Sandy by birth. A strong academic with a weakness sometimes in unfounded fear. He believes that you're a radical islamist and I said yes the koran in its depth can provide true guidance as will the deepest corners in many early religious texts but a system of economics, equity and regeneration is one worth striving for. And as we have shared you and I this may only be possible in smaller communities one at a time and maybe slowly interconnect over years, decades with the other communities with the same intentions. I do not see you as a radical you're looking back to a time when Islam had an opportunity to shine with a system that at the time seemed to meet humanistic needs. Ecological, and environmental too?
Cliff, thank you for stepping in with care and clarity. Your words brought a welcome steadiness to a thread that was beginning to fray, and I appreciate the depth and presence with which you engaged.
When I mentioned that religion has often been used as a tool for suppression, I was not speaking in generalities. The Church, across centuries, weaponized theology to justify extraction, conquest, and hierarchy. In contemporary times, many governments that carry the name “Islamic” have done the same. Not by reviving the Islamic tradition of governance, but by merging capitalist architecture with religious branding.
Let me be precise. Most of what are called Islamic states today are only Islamic by demographic composition, not by institutional structure. Their economies run on fiat currencies. Usury is institutionalized. Futures trading, speculation, and monopolies are common. Markets are regulated from above, not from within. Commons like pasture, water, and energy are no longer protected. Institutions like hima and hisbah have either been abandoned or stripped of function. So no, these are not the systems I was referring to. The critique I am offering is not about symbolic names or nostalgia. It is about architecture. About what worked.
As for Sandy, I understand his skepticism. We are all shaped by our intellectual environments, and many people today have encountered religion only as a mask for control. But if we are serious about studying alternatives to the dominant system, we must be willing to look beyond our comfort zones. If a system functioned across continents, over centuries, and under plural conditions, it deserves closer study not because of who followed it, but because of what it achieved.
Islamic governance, when it was at its height, was not just a set of doctrines. It was a system of checks and balances grounded in deep restraint. It managed trade without printing debt. It ran finance without compound interest. It created a culture of open-source knowledge by refusing to allow patents and copyrights. It locked public assets into community service through waqf. It banned futures trading, not to block markets, but to preserve stability. Most importantly, it embedded accountability not just in courts or policy, but in conscience, in the belief that even private actions have consequences beyond the material realm.
That is not a theological pitch. It is a model of how systems can be designed to circulate surplus, constrain accumulation, and protect the weak from the powerful.
Of course, no civilization was free from contradiction. But the structure held, and it held long enough to warrant our attention. Even if we do not share the metaphysical beliefs that underpinned it, we can learn from the mechanisms that made it work.
I also agree with you. The line between seeker and believer is blurry. Sometimes belief precedes understanding. Sometimes it follows. Either way, the search matters. And perhaps what keeps the architecture alive is not belief alone, but the ongoing effort to listen, to refine, to seek without the arrogance of certainty.
This is not about pushing Islam as the one answer. It is about recovering what was forgotten. If the architecture is sound, it should be studied. If it lasted thirteen centuries and served millions, it should be examined not for ideology, but for function.
If these ideas were released today by a secular futurist institute or a systems design lab at MIT, they would be seen as visionary. But because they are rooted in a tradition that many have already judged, they are dismissed before being understood.
To ignore this architecture simply because it comes from Islam is not reasoned skepticism. It is fear of what it might prove true.
So no, this is not a work of apology. It is a study of design. Of restraint. Of systems that held moral weight without central control. I am a Muslim, yes. But I am also an engineer. And I care about what works.
Invite your brother to study it properly. Not through the lens of ideology, but with the curiosity of someone who truly wants to understand how systems succeed and fail. Because if we are serious about repair, we cannot afford to ignore what already worked. Not because it was perfect. But because it was functional. And that, in our current moment, is rare enough to be sacred.
As for Sandy maybe he' d do some investigation, after all, he has a phd in religion, studied ancient language development. but he's an atheist. our paths,he and I were similar for a while then he worked corporate America for 20 years and things changed.
He's more of a sceptic on many things these days but he still knows how to dabble and research and I believe that he owes this conversation some more time, maybe a little research. he jumped into and should make an effort. If only to get out of a rut.
Your background and clean visionary personal energy is propelling you in ways that more people need to go. We share many of the same belief the foundations of how we got here may have varied some. I know! your motives are pure of heart.
We're on a variety of journeys together my friend. Spreading important information about not just the survival but the prospering of people and animals on this planet, re-inventing regenerative architecture to support a living planet that wants to support its animals(humans too) but we need to be an active partner for this to evolve.
So there's a lot of education and information that has to end up in the correct hands and minds to move this ship. And this may only happen when the time is correct. When is the time correct? Maybe all we'll ever have is now? Little pieces reaching opened minds a little at a time
I b
Also want to say, I recognize the shallowness of my response. I am sorry for that. I don’t mean to extract the wisdom to solve white western problems.
As if Western Capitalism is the only type thats failing and in need of something new - I know it’s not. I’m just keenly aware of the plague that is western imperialism, capitalism, etc. etc.
I want to be a part of stopping that more than benefiting from a better system
I really welcome this type of in-depth proven equitable system. I also don’t understand all of it, but what I do seems to make a ton of sense. Could there be language around it that preserves the architecture and relationships without being explicitly culturally Muslim?
I hope that’s not offensive. I, personally, find much of what I learn about Islam (i know very little about any religion) to be beautiful and intriguing (and i have a deep personal relationship with god/life (i have no fitting word) which Islam really captures and has space for in ways Christianity doesn’t) but I know for a system to be approachable in the West, it would need to be… i don’t even know the word… sterile? Scientific? Psychological? Christian? Mystical?…
The language would need to resonate in a way that uplifts from the hyper-individualism but also feels personally reachable
Thank you, truly, for such an open and generous reflection.
There is nothing offensive in what you said. In fact, your question touches the heart of something I have been circling for a long time.
Yes, I believe this architecture, with its feedback loops, expiration thresholds, and moral constraints, can absolutely be expressed in a way that resonates beyond its religious origin. Not by sterilizing it, but by translating it with care. I am not here to proselytize or preserve terminology for its own sake. I am here to understand what worked: a governance design that aligned power with limits, markets with morality, and surplus with circulation.
Islam encoded that architecture with remarkable precision. But the wisdom is not fragile. It can travel. These patterns can be rendered through systems theory, moral psychology, or even cybernetics. I intend to do exactly that.
In r3genesis, my other blog, I am exploring these questions through a series called Ledger to Loom, which looks at how systems consolidate power and engineer obedience. That journey is focused on critique. This essay is its counterpoint: construction. I will eventually link them and release a version of this essay that removes the Arabic terms and reframes the system in purely structural language.
Because you are right. The language must lift us beyond hyper-individualism, but still feel personal and reachable. It should speak to the heart, but also make sense in policy and design.
And perhaps that is the real gift here. That a system rooted in revelation can still offer something useful to others walking a different path. This is not about allegiance. It is about design that serves life.
You may wonder why I shared this on Eḥādnāmeh instead of r3genesis. The reason is simple. Eḥādnāmeh is a personal space for me. It is where I write from belief, not just analysis. Where I speak to my children, not just the world. That is why I let the Islamic language remain here. Not to exclude, but because I did not want to translate myself.
But in time, the two arcs will connect. When the critique strand in r3genesis matures, I will bring this system design into it and offer a version that can travel further and reach more people.
Your comment reminded me why that work matters. It showed me again that a design can be faithful to its roots even as the language shifts.
So thank you again. For receiving the work with care. For asking a question that does not close the door, but quietly opens one.
I think your ability to understand and respect where your words come from is truly beautiful and profound. The way it creates patience for natural emergence is very wise and powerful.
I also think this system can be expressed beyond its religious origins. I do think it needs to arise with the type humility brought about in connection the greatness of life and humanity. So that the form is connected to experience and the experience exists within universal structure.
This is a problem in the west. There is often a severing of connection to the great and even an identification with the great that causes people to lose place.
To connect with and understand the architecture requires a humbling and transcendence of self. Otherwise the gaze is “how does this structure impact “me”? How can i change it to make things better for “me”?
Then, the whole thing is warped and lost.
I think it might be important for it to find its non-religious form but respect, with open awareness, its origins at least with a nod. That in itself, would bathe the whole unfolding in respect
Yes, I do agree that for a research to be approachable to the West, it needs to be "sterile, or something of the sort". I wonder why it should be devoid of the original source because in a way it is divine, and if the true text is not to be acknowledged then more precise and advanced reading cannot be done. But, to me, making it more secular or palatable, will or may bring it into the fold of intellectual dishonesty. Original sources, must be outlined, and if possible tolerated. My submission please.
I think Amy was pointing to something subtle — that non-Arabic terms might make the architecture more approachable for broader resonance, not to erase the origin, but to ease the listening.
That said, you’ve raised something essential: it would indeed be a form of intellectual dishonesty or worse, cruelty - to strip a living system, tested across 1,300 years, of its lineage and reduce it to an abstract possibility. The integrity of the source matters. And if we’re serious about systems design, that integrity is not ornamental - it’s structural, proven across centuries -- and perhaps that is why the Islamic system did not produce generational financial elites - the kind of dynastic consolidation we later saw in European banking families like the Medicis, Rothschilds, and Warburgs. The difference wasn’t cultural, but architectural built into the inheritance law, zakat mechanisms, and endowment structures.
The challenge, perhaps, is not to secularize the origin, but to translate the function. To let people see what worked, even if they stand outside the belief that birthed it.
Yes, I think you understand where I’m coming from. I responded to Shahid to elaborate as well.
Thanks for your comment, Shahid. I don’t want to evoke intellectual dishonesty or dishonesty of any type. The original source may very well be the best means of sharing.
I was more thinking of shifting it back to its protoplasm or embryonic form which holds the relationships but has more space to resonant with other lands and histories so as to have the deeper embodied connection that helps to anchor the wisdom with lived experience and history, instead of being applied as ideology.
It is obviously more than a set of intelligent equitable ideas. People have had those forever. My interest isn’t really in distilling it. My word choice was incorrect. But to connect to the non-verbal depth for it to arise again with the type of experiential meaning that allows for the system to really emerge and stabilize. The divinity, I think, is preverbal and can be accessed this way.
But I don’t think this means severing it from its origins. It just means that the sharing of it is coming not just from the top down or outside in, like a transplant. But from the inside of the living network.
Grateful Amy, its on dot.
Interesting and systematic. But I would carefully suggest that that State distribution of assets or resources has also proved inadequate and even demonic in most historical instantiations. It could be fairly argued that capitalism stimulates invention growth and prosperity. And I am not sure Islam has a viable alternative to growth. Indeed early Islamic progress in science etc was grounded in the Greek achievements in many respects.
Thank you, Sandy, for offering that thought. You're right to raise the issue of state distribution. Many 20th-century experiments in centralized asset allocation failed, some catastrophically. Soviet bureaucracy, Maoist collectivization, or even colonial resource redistribution often turned justice into justification for control. That critique matters.
But the Islamic system being explored here does not mirror those models. It wasn’t the modern state. It was an ecosystem. Governance was distributed. Power was constrained by design. Legal authority rested with jurists outside the political apparatus. Economic redistribution (like zakat) was enacted through local self-assessment, not central tax codes. Social services were run through waqf — independent, perpetual endowments outside state or market. It is not comparable to statist socialism or colonial extractivism. It was neither a command economy nor a technocratic project. It was a decentralized architecture with built-in ethical scaffolding.
Now, to your second implication, the oft-repeated claim that Islamic science was merely a relay station for Greek thought. That argument has been dismantled by countless serious historians of science. Yes, Islamic scholars translated and preserved classical works but,then they corrected, critiqued, expanded, and surpassed them.
Calculus? Ibn al-Haytham and other Muslim polymaths were laying the foundations of integration theory long before Newton and Leibniz. Newton’s “discoveries” only look sudden if we erase the centuries of Arabic mathematical texts that preceded him.
Missile technology? In the 13th century, Hasan al-Rammah documented the design of rocket-propelled weapons, including what we would now call torpedoes — centuries before such concepts reached Europe. Military engineering was a respected science, and Islamic archers were trained using precise manuals that employed geometry and physics to optimize aim and trajectory.
Evolution? Muslim scholar al-Jahiz proposed early theories of adaptation and natural selection in the 9th century. Later, thinkers like Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ibn Khaldun elaborated ideas on environmental determinism, heredity, and gradual transformation of species long before Darwin entered the scene.
And knowledge-sharing? Muslims deliberately rejected copyright. Knowledge was not commodified. Books were copied by hand, passed on, debated. No patents, no royalties. The rule was: if it’s good, it spreads. If you want to stay ahead, improve it. Not gatekeep it. This created a scientific commons - open-source before the term existed.
So when Western science surged forward post-Renaissance, it was not ex nihilo. It was heavily seeded by Andalusian texts, Levantine translations, and Cairo libraries looted or imported into Europe after the fall of Islamic Spain. The West didn’t invent the Enlightenment in isolation. It remembered what had already been written then repackaged it in its own language.
In raising this point that Islamic innovation was merely derivative, you also erase the foundations of the very science modernity claims as its own. And more importantly, you miss a key opportunity: to learn from a model that combined scientific innovation with moral constraint, open diffusion, and systemic humility.
Because we need that now. Not just knowledge, but wisdom in how we structure it. And there is no shame in learning from a civilization that built rockets and water clocks but, also reminded every engineer that their first responsibility was justice.
PS: If you're interested, I can also do a deep dive into how capitalism, despite its rhetoric of innovation, has actually hindered the free flow of information. It created deliberate barriers to entry. Copyrights and patents became tools to monopolize discovery. Entire industries were built around treatment, not cure. Medical solutions were shelved because curing diseases would end billion-dollar revenue streams. Many degenerative conditions including some cancers remain “uncurable” not because a cure is impossible, but because the system can’t afford the loss of dependency. In agriculture, monoculture driven by patents and seed control destroyed biodiversity, eroded soil intelligence, and set the stage for the planetary crisis we now face.
This has been such an incredible essay to read. I have been circling my own version of this from a systems perspective, thinking I was imagining something new & yet here you lay it all out, complex, crafted, with its own memory! It really is astonishing & makes me feel very small. My own version - which I still plan to write about - is to see an economy as a forest (clearly echoed in your writing about an ecosystem) not a port. Capitalism is about trade not ecosystems. It creates flows, not stocks. We confuse these flows with stocks because capitalism still produces 'stuff'. But it is not the production that matters. It is the flow. Because of this, it incentivises over-production and over-consumption (to feed the flows) & of course derivation & increasing detachment from genuine stores of value as there is too little production to satisfy the need for ever-increasing flows. These derivations are imaginary goods being shipped until there is a collective realisation that the whole thing is a lie. Then collapse.
My own design (which I am still writing in my head) nods to so many of the things you identify here. I am fascinated with the concept of ergodicity & wrote an essay about how medieval (European) markets must have been broadly ergodic - i.e. there were no consolidations or funnels. Growth would have been adaptive not discontinuous. I also characterise these systems as 'edge of chaos'. This would accord with Taleb's idea of antifragile or more simply, resilient. But like Taleb, I think the word 'resilient' is too effete. The point of an ecosystem is that it is constantly responding to stresses and adapting at multiple scales whereas resilience suggests something that is in repose. Again, so many of your ideas here map to an 'edge of chaos' / antifragile system that keeps learning & growing in complexity without the need for huge, risky, discontinuous leaps. Anyway, this was a brilliant read and has taken up most of my morning as I think about it! I hope you will be expressing these ideas in a book?
This response absolutely made my day - thank you for taking the time to engage so deeply with this. Your forest/ecosystem framing is not just elegant, it's revelatory. The stocks vs flows distinction cuts right to the heart of what I've been trying to articulate.
Claire, You've identified something crucial: capitalism optimizes for flow velocity (faster transactions, higher turnover, accelerated circulation) while systematically depleting stocks (stored value, accumulated wisdom, natural capital, social trust). Islamic governance did the opposite - it designed for stock preservation through controlled circulation.
The ergodicity insight is particularly brilliant. Medieval markets were indeed broadly ergodic because no single player could permanently capture the system's rules. Islamic governance institutionalized this through inheritance fragmentation, legal pluralism, anti-monopoly mechanisms - preventing what you might call "ergodicity breaking."
I'm particularly fascinated by how your forest metaphor maps onto the modules I described:
- Root systems = inheritance law (nutrients distributed, not hoarded)
- Mycorrhizal networks = zakat circulation (sharing resources across the whole system)
- Succession patterns = waqf endowments (long-term stock building)
- Edge disturbance = market regulation (preventing any species from dominating)
In my climate work (Regenesis) , I distinguish between flow variables (energy, water, nutrients moving through systems) and stock variables (biomass, soil carbon, biodiversity stored in systems). Your stocks/flows framework might be even more elegant because it's immediately intuitive.
What you're describing as "edge of chaos" - that sweet spot where systems are complex enough to adapt but not so chaotic they collapse - is exactly what these governance modules achieved. Not brittle stability, but adaptive capacity. Your approach feels like it could be incredibly complementary to what I'm developing. I'd be absolutely thrilled to explore any collaboration if that appeals to you - whether it's cross-pollinating ideas, co-writing, or just ongoing dialogue about where these frameworks intersect.
I'd love to read your essay on medieval market ergodicity when you publish it. And yes, this is becoming a book - your forest economy approach could be a powerful complement to the historical governance analysis.
"Question: How do you see the transition from ergodic medieval markets to non-ergodic modern finance? I'm particularly curious about capitalism's capture of language, legal frameworks, and commons - the deeper architectures of control I explore in my "Ledger to Loom" series. What broke the forest logic at those foundational levels?"
Well it definitely sounds like we have reached similar conclusions! This is my essay about power laws where I first realised the importance of ergodicity. https://clairejhartnell.substack.com/p/the-unkillable-bird. It talks about (hypothetical) medieval markets in the latter part. I have found that metaphors are the only way I can get my head around the complexity - and hopefully explain it for other people. I have been planning to write about the 'forest & the port' to build upon a recent post but tbh, I feel a bit overwhelmed by the task - which is why your post floored me. So many things that I've been thinking about - ergodicity, bounded systems, recursiveness, polycentric governance, commons etc; were described in it. I have also been hugely influenced by Polanyi & Keynes. I have this idea about how to firewall societies from speculation but it is still building in my head. I am flattered that you would wish to collaborate. Rodrik put out a call for new thinking a few years ago and I still haven't seen a clear articulation of an adaptive systems approach to post-capitalism. William White (formerly BIS) has written lots of interesting stuff. And people like Ian Scoones are reframing developmental economics from a complexity perspective. But there isn't a single framework that has captured the public imagination other than Taleb. And Taleb's writing is so opaque that I'm not certain economists have put together what he's saying. So yes, I'm happy to compare ideas and possibly collaborate. But you might want to read my stuff before you commit!
Oh, The Unkillable Bird certainly deserves a deep read, and I’ll be giving it one. Even from your reflection, I can already sense we’ve been walking similar ground, though we may have traced the contours using different tools. Where I tend to work with scaffolds, system terms, and rough sketches of flow, your writing brings a clarity and elegance I often aim for but rarely reach. Your metaphors don’t just ease the complexity. They make it livable.
The idea of the forest and the port especially stood out. It feels like a diagram of thresholds and exchanges, something I’ve been trying to map in more mechanical terms. Maybe that is the work of good metaphor. It speaks in the language of ecology, where meaning settles in layers rather than lines.
You were right to mention Rodrik’s call for new paradigms. It still echoes in the silence. Taleb pointed to some of the right questions, but his writing often reveals more rupture than structure. It stirs thought, but rarely invites collective design. The way you named things - boundedness, ergodicity, commons, recursiveness - felt like more than description. These were pieces of a framework. I have been circling that same structure, but your language gave it a new texture. I paused there not because the terrain was unfamiliar, but because your phrasing gave it form. I would be glad to compare notes or questions, and maybe even work toward design. But first, I’ll spend time with more of your writing. Not just to read it, but to listen.
Also, if it interests you, I’m weaving a parallel thread over at r3genesis in a series called Ledger to Loom. It is an inquiry into the architecture of control. The first piece in that arc is called The Language Scroll. It’s short, and I think you might find it resonates.
Here’s the link: https://open.substack.com/pub/r3genesis/p/171-the-language-scrolls-five-scenes?r=1ivlwg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Looking forward.
I am not sure I would hold many contemporary Islamic States up as shining examples of tolerance or free inquiry. Yet, in today’s cultural settings we all struggle with intolerance.
Thank you for raising this, and you're absolutely right to flag the issue of intolerance. That said, it's important to clarify: there is no Islamic state in existence today that operates according to the architecture we’ve been discussing. Most so-called Islamic states are, in reality, mutations of colonial frameworks — patched together with borrowed legal codes, central banking systems, and top-down authoritarian control. They are neither structurally faithful to the caliphate model, nor aligned with the ethical design that once defined Islamic governance.
I've not studied Islam thoroughly enough to comment. But it seems to me that the West and their religions are growing intolerant as well
Capitalism stimulates invention for the intent of control of distribution for the sake of personal profit and the control of way of life. This is not an ethical direction and I think is why the inventions under Capitalism have led the West further and further away from ourselves causing greater sickness.
The human condition, in all its pain, is not something to invent out of. Growth is a natural quality of life, not something needing to be orchestrated.
I don’t know enough about the Islamic Economic system to comment. But I find the lack of curiosity in your words to suggest that you don’t either.
I recognize that I am being somewhat combative. To be honest, I find your comment about the Greeks to be very disrespectful to the space created above. I’m not sure how to interpret it in a way that isn’t western supremacy.
If I am wrong, I am sorry.
You’ve made an opaque and culturally forgotten system clear and digestible with this writing. I’ll have to read it again and again and pull on all the threads in it, many of which are swiftly moving into mainstream debate under different names and contexts. It’s powerful to see how it has all connected in the past. I can’t help but wonder which of today’s cities and states get closest to replicating this system, which is painted here as something extinct.
It is extinct and no where it is implemented,
each module described in this needs to be expanded further and then connected via a systems architecture to show the stocks and flows, which is something I have to do next.
I spent days writing a comment on this, but it eventually became too long and needed a post of it's own. I love this article so much. Thank you for putting in this amazing effort.
So what you're implying is that while our current institutions are in place (and they're at the DNA and cellular level, not even/only at the macro architecture of the system), new initiatives or experiments carried out at grassroots level are going to be captured by the system logic.
Exactly. You've identified the core challenge perfectly - capitalism's logic operates at the "DNA and cellular level" as you put it. It's not just the macro architecture but the fundamental organizing principles that capture and metabolize even well-intentioned alternatives.
This is why so many grassroots initiatives end up serving the system they meant to challenge. Community gardens get financialized into "green real estate." Cooperatives get absorbed into ESG portfolios. Even mutual aid gets reframed as "social impact investing." The system doesn't need to crush alternatives - it just needs to process them through its existing logic of extraction, measurement, and monetization.
What the mechanisms I explored demonstrated was an entirely different cellular structure - different rules for how value flows, how power accumulates, how wealth expires. It wasn't just different policies within the same system; it was different systemic DNA.
This is why reform often fails. You can't debug capitalism by adding ethical patches. The code itself - the fundamental instructions about what counts as value, how ownership works, what money is - needs to be different from the ground up.
The question becomes: How do you create islands of different systemic logic that can't be captured because they literally operate on incompatible principles? That's what those governance modules were designed to do - create immune responses to extraction at the architectural level.
Ali, a very comprehensive and exhaustive research on economic systems. It lays threadbare the pros and cons of it. Well done.
Once again I appreciate your determination for clarity, for a design to support human existence in a fair unbiased way. But you have begun to ask deeper questions. The instinct for self preservation to remain alive.
What is it To let fear have its way? Is it to be selfish? gifts are not for the taking but are given , humility can accept gifts. But without humility what is there? Doesn't Intention drives action and reaction? And does this open a door to humility or can it can intention open the opposite door? More to think about my friend. I will read ledger and loom, speak tomorrow
Someone recently said "We were made to be lovers of the unseen", maybe also of dreams unrealized. Is this humans fate again before and after Capitalism? We can only imagine, only dream as larger social systems, but as smaller bands, tribes, maybe it is possible to come closest to the unseen
Selfless action on larger scales, with 100's or thousands, require something miraculous, something so significant that a larger population shares a singularity so transforming it awakens, and motivates all to bond on deeper levels and understand that anything accomplished by one or by all is not an achievement for any but was a gift offered by a caring ,loving often unseen energy, Allah, God, Great spirit
Cliff, as usual your comments are on point. However, in this exploration the intent was to design with precision and not let abstraction take away whatever is left of freedoms. I choose Islam because I found it to be the only precise system, which actually preempted the creation of tools of control even before they were born.
I need to make this clearer ... it doesn't matter if you believe Islam is right or wrong but on a system level, this part of Islam is beyond amazing.
I'm in your court, tools of control grabbed onto for what reason? Why do they exist?
Freedom from control? One grabs for these for fear of what? What in the human make-up is lured into blindness to take up tools of control, arms against fellow humans?
I'm asking you to go deeper in your desire for a systems design. Maybe as you say might be an abstraction this could or should be more concrete and simple
You asked something important—something that sits at the very root of Ledger to Loom, the piece I shared. Why do people reach for the tools of control? Often, it begins with fear. In the face of uncertainty, we grasp for order—not always to dominate, but to feel anchored. The original ledger, after all, wasn’t a weapon. It was a memory—a way to hold kinship, land, and trust in place. But over time, the hand that wrote began to tighten. What was once a loom—something that wove people and land together—became a lever. And once you can lift with it, some will lift too much.
Because man isn’t just afraid—he’s also hungry. That instinct for self-preservation, meant to keep us alive, can quickly become something more: a hunger for control, for possession, for permanence. And that is precisely why we’ve always needed spirit. Not superstition, but conscience. A higher voice to temper the lower one. To remind us we’re not here to rule each other, but to restrain what would otherwise exceed all bounds.
And we see what happens when that restraint vanishes.
Who benefits from the modern ledger? Double-entry bookkeeping wasn't just an innovation—it was a quiet shift of power. It allowed wealth to be split into what is shown and what is hidden. Fiat currency—once backed by something real—is now issued at will, inflating assets for the few while devaluing the labor of the many. Derivatives trade in volatility, extracting profit from uncertainty itself, while the farmer and worker below are left with risk, not reward.
Legal fictions—like corporations treated as persons—shield the powerful while exposing the rest. You pay your taxes. They move profits offshore. You follow law. They are the law—or at least, they fund the ones who write it.
How is this possible? Because systems were designed not to reflect fairness, but to extract with elegance. Control doesn’t need to be loud when it’s written into contracts. Domination doesn’t need armies when it lives inside code and compliance.
But that doesn’t mean we abandon systems entirely. The answer is not to flee back into abstraction or nostalgia. We don’t need to live without design. We need to redeem design.
What Ledger to Loom ultimately points to is this: a return to systems that protect without overreaching. Structures that guard the vulnerable without enabling predation. A design language that serves life, not leverage.
That’s why precision matters.
A just system doesn’t mean no boundaries—it means the right ones. Systems must be exacting, but not invasive. They must cradle without clutching. A good structure knows how to hold, and just as importantly, when to let go. It steps back when life is stable. It intervenes only when needed. It doesn’t try to be everywhere.
So what Ledger to Loom asks is simple: can we return to systems that still remember the loom? That know the difference between weaving and fencing? That draw from memory, not mechanism? That scale thoughtfully, without forgetting the soul?
Because the task now is not to live without structure—but to live with one that remembers how to breathe. And more importantly—how not to steal the breath of others.