Capitalism Can Be Composted
Capitalism can feel so big and powerful at times, but what if it was actually inherently unstable, rotten to its core? What if the Earth could just eat it up, and what if our own bodies know how to compost its harms? In this episode, we explore what capitalism really is and the exciting idea that it can be composted.
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Resources mentioned:
*Composting Capitalism (the class): https://awildnewwork.com/composting-capitalism
*One on one vocational guidance: https://awildnewwork.com/guidance
*Order a Living the Seasons Autumn journal: https://books.by/megan-leatherman
*All my classes, events, and writing can be found at: awildnewwork.com
*Become a monthly supporter in Eagle Creek: awildnewwork.com/eagle-creek
Welcome to a Wild New Work, a podcast about how to compost capitalism and the norms of dominant culture and answer in the soulful callings of these times we live in, which includes the call to deepen our relationship with the earth. I am Megan Leatherman, a mother, writer, teacher and guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest and I'm your host today.
Hi, friend and welcome. It is a dark rainy morning here and we're in the early fall period. It's an excellent day to talk about composting capitalism. And the autumn, of course, is a time of great feasting for the Earth. The earth, the soil itself will be feasting on all that dies and is dying, including capitalism.
So composting capitalism is the name of a class I teach, but it's also a much bigger idea and there's so much to say on this topic. It's such a rich source of. Redefinitions and new possibilities and orienting, and I hope today's episode is a starting point that will feel really supportive to you whether you have taken composting capitalism in the past, or you're signed up for this next round, or will in the future, or even if you never take the class.
I hope that this is just really good learning for our whole community. So I think that's all I wanna say at the outset. Uh, a couple of quick announcements. The first and most relevant one is that the class composting capitalism starts tomorrow, October 1st. If you're listening to this after the first, but it's still within the first week of the class, like by October 8th, you are welcome to join up to a week late and you can catch the recording.
But this is an eight week class on the origins of capitalism in Western Europe. In the 15 hundreds to 18 hundreds or so, we move through Sylvia Federici's amazing book, Caliban and the Witch, and we also look at three major antidotes to capitalism, three areas of life that had to be destroyed in order for capitalism to take root folk magic, land connection, and generous exchange.
It's a really amazing class. Not necessarily because of me, but just the kinds of people who are drawn to this work and Federici's material. Again, just like I hope this episode is, it's just so, so rich and you're welcome to join us. We will be meeting on Wednesdays and there are lots of financial accessibility options, including the choice to take it for free if you need to, and you can learn more about that at a wild new work.com/composting-capitalism.
I also wanna say that I've still got some space for one-on-one clients. If you are in the midst of composting a big working life or a part of your working life or. If you're composting ideas about where you thought you'd be in your work by now and you need to reimagine something new, I'm happy to hold space for you and you can learn more about that at a wild new work.com/guidance.
If you are listening and you just know you wanna go a little bit deeper this autumn into the aspects of the season and the learning. This season makes available to us. I have a journal for the Autumn season and also teach monthly seasonal classes. You can learn more about all of that at a wild new work.com.
Thank you to the members of Eagle Creek who are pitching in every month to make this work sustainable and available to all. I send Eagle Creek members a monthly behind the scenes email. They come to our monthly classes for free, and there are some other benefits as well. Essentially, Eagle Creek helps me to make this podcast and the newsletter, so if you're listening and you have listened for a while and you really appreciate the show.
That's one way that you could contribute and be in a different kind of reciprocity with me. So with that, why don't we shift into our opening invocation? So wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I encourage you to just do something sweet for your body right now. Either a deep breath or letting out a sigh, or a stretch, or a jump.
Just whatever would help you feel nice and shift into this container with me. May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook and Clackamas tribes among many others who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on. May this episode be one small stitch and the great reweaving of right relationship that so many indigenous teachers are calling us into. And so it is.
Okay, well I wanna start with some definitions. You might remember that autumn is the season of the mineral element.
When the force of mineral is at the fore, we can see it very clearly. We feel its influence. Mineral is the force of decomposition and decay. It is the dying leaves, the dying plants, the dying animals. It is the decaying stone. It is the bones. It is. The force of essentially enabling new life to occur, and it's the step that has to occur before anything new can be born again.
So this season, this autumn is a chance for all of us to be in alignment with that dance of redefining, of looking at the definitions we've been carrying and deciding does this still feel true? Does this definition work? Does it help me understand what's really valuable and what I can measure? Not everything can be defined or measured.
Of course, there's a lot of great mystery to this life that can't be pinned down, but a lot can be, and it can be very helpful to understand what we are and aren't working with. But it requires regular updating, not enough people. Are updating their definitions every autumn season and looking and saying, oh, you know, this is the definition I have been holding about who I am or the work I do in the world, or how I'm of service, or, this is my definition of success or wealth or generosity, or, this is my definition of a good marriage or a good partnership.
Really looking at it and saying. Does this definition still hold? Does this work for me? Where does it need to be composted, and where does it need to be updated? Everything is up for grabs this fall. You can redefine who you are. The service you bring to the world, the gifts you bring, how you earn a living, what it mean, what living means to you, redefining your relationships, how the world works.
Major paradigm shifts can occur in this time. Big ideas that you had about how the world works, how you work, how things should be, can fall away, and it can be graceful, it can be quiet. It can be soothing. It doesn't have to mean that all your leaves are torn from you before they're ready to fall. These things can just fall away.
The wind can carry them. They can land softly on the grass. The rain will come and help them to decompose into the soil so that when winter and spring come, something new can take root. Some new definition of who you are that is empowering and big and spacious enough new definitions about what it means to earn a living.
What it means to really live what it means to be loved or in love, what it means to be a good friend, or what it means for the world to feel like a safe place. Imagine how much energy you could gain and cultivate if new definitions began to grow in the winter and spring. That felt really alive and affirming to you and life giving.
So we wanna be clear about what we're talking about because when we're not, it's. The medicine can't get in as precisely, so I wanna start by defining capitalism, and even if you have studied capitalism or you believe you know how it works, I encourage you to just keep an open mind in this episode so that perhaps something new can come in and something else could be redefined or dropped away in order to support you continuing to navigate this in a good.
Sturdy way. So capitalism is at base, an economic system in which a few people own capital, like a factory or a machine, or a farm, or the money invested in a startup. And that capital is used to make a profit. A few people own the capital and then the rest of us come and we trade our labor, our time, and our knowledge, our energy for a wage.
So you go to the place where the capital is, the startup, the factory, the farm. You give away your life force and they give you money in exchange, and that money is used to buy what you need in order to survive. Food, shelter, clothing, et cetera. So I'll give you an example in case that's helpful. Let's say that there's a really wealthy person who has extra money and they invested in a bakery.
They buy the bakery, they buy the building that it's in. They don't work there. They just own the capital. They own the baking equipment. They. Owned the flour, the ingredients, they own the building itself, and they pay money to workers who will come and use that capital to make bread. Those workers come and trade their time and labor for a wage.
Usually the lowest wage that will suffice because the owner must make a profit. That's the purpose of capitalism. There's no like sweet version of capitalism where no one cares about making a profit, and it's just like everyone getting their needs met. That's not capitalism. So these workers come and they bake the bread, and then the person who owns the bakery pays them money to bake that bread.
And rather than just eating the bread that they made. Since we live in capitalism, they need to work on making the bread and be paid for it, and then they use that money to buy back the bread that they just made. So capitalists are people who own capital and will do whatever it takes to make the most profit possible if you don't own capital that other people sell their labor to work with.
And you're not willing to do whatever it takes to those people or the earth for profit, then you're not a capitalist. You don't need to worry about that. Even if you're a business owner and maybe you do own capital, like you own something that people come to work on, as long as you are not made manic for profit and willing to sacrifice.
Anything in order to get there. I think you can still be in some kind of healthy arrangement. I don't think it's ideal, but nothing is ideal in, in this system. We're all having to make a lot of compromises, so all of you listening can let go of the idea that you might be bad or that you might be a capitalist or that you are in any way responsible for this.
System existing and being the way that it is. Maybe not in any way responsible because we all carry some kind of responsibility, but I'm gonna talk a little bit later about healthier ways to relate to this system because capitalism is much bigger than any one person or group of people. In my experience studying capitalism for the last.
Six years or so. To me, it feels like an infection. It feels like a virus. It feels like something that has a life of its own that no one person started or can start or can stop. And in the class I teach composting capitalism, we talk about how. Capitalism is really, really harmful, and we talk about why and how and all of that, but it's not the original wound that has led to things being the way they are on this planet.
I believe that empire is the original wound, the point at which humans began. Shifting away from a relationship with the Earth that was animate and sacred and reciprocal and intimate into a relationship that was about dominating the earth and then dominating others and dominating themselves and dominating all beings on this earth in order to gain power and wealth.
So there was empire long before there was capitalism. Capitalism emerged long after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and there is still empire today and capitalism and empire work together. So Empire is like this original wound, we got stabbed or there was some separation, some tear. And then in the 15th century after the collapse of feudalism, capitalism comes in like a staph infection.
So there was already this wound, it wasn't healed, it wasn't being tended to. There was an opening there where something really nasty could get in and you know, there's that saying that like the staph infection is what's actually gonna kill you, not the original wound. So empire and capitalism both need healing, even if we.
Hit rewind and went back to the days before capitalism existed. I don't think many of us would wanna live in the Roman Empire. It didn't sound like a very friendly, welcoming place. I don't wanna be enslaved or colonized. Many of us have ancestors that were harmed through the expansion of empire like Rome and other empires.
So we don't necessarily just wanna hit rewind. Capitalism is a huge source of depletion and harm that needs to be healed so that we can also get back into that original wound and heal that as well. So capitalism, like I said, emerged in the 15th century after the collapse of feudalism, and it started as a counter-revolution, a response by those.
Power landowners and nobility and the church as a response to increased power that was building among workers and peasants. Okay, so there was this opening where working people, poor people, peasants, people who had worked as surfs on the land, actually had a lot of power. They could demand a high price for their labor.
They were no longer indentured or, or, um, tied to the land or the Lord's. There were these openings of freedom and real power where people could begin to imagine a more communal way of living. And then capitalism comes in as a response to that to try and clamped down on that increase of power. Its origins were violent.
And it required the destruction of entire communities and lifeways, both in Europe and in the Americas, and now all over the world. It required that in order to get a foothold and begin and gain power, so misogyny, colonization, racism, ableism, all of these are used by capitalism. To force more people into wage labor and increase profits for those holding capital.
And I know that might sound like. Such an exaggeration or like, geez, you know, calm down. But it's really not. It's actually like very clear when you look at the history and the propaganda of this time. Capitalism was much bloodier than any of us were ever taught in school or ever maybe aware of in our adulthood.
So that's a little bit of defining. Capitalism. Another definition that I wanna start out with is composting. Like we see in this autumn time when the element of mineral is so strong, there is a natural process whereby something that was once alive dies and is broken down into parts that can be digested by the earth.
We see this all year long, and especially in the autumn. You throw an apple into the meadow and the earth's helpers, the bugs, the scavengers come along and they turn it into food for themselves and for the soil. You eat a meal and your body digests the food and turns it into your poop. Digestion and elimination.
Decomposition is a natural process. It's absolutely essential and core to life on this planet Composting is working with and kind of speeding up that natural process. Composting is when you create an ideal environment in which fungi and bacteria can thrive and break down the organic matter that is there.
So it's intentionally supporting a natural. Process. It doesn't mean that you're in there trying to decompose the natural matter. You don't wanna be eating rotten banana peels or nasty moldy bread. That's not good for you. There are other beings whose job it is, whose role, whose gifts to this earth are to break that down, and our role is to create the space where they can do that, where they can do their good work.
There are so many other terms and ideas and definitions that get really weird in capitalism that need to be redefined, and we don't really have time to do that today. But a couple of the big ones are what it means to be a worker. I think a big block for some people is this like white ascension class myth.
Where like I was not taught to identify with the working class. I was taught to identify with the capitalist class. And the truth is almost all of us, maybe 99% of us are workers. We trade our labor, our life force, our energy, our time. In order to receive money. And if we don't do it ourselves, then we're dependent on someone else's wage, A, a spouse, a partner, a friend, or we might be dependent on the state to give us, not a wage, but an income if we're not able to trade our labor ourselves.
So all of us are workers, and I encourage you to see how it feels to try on that identity worker. What does that mean? What does that. Do for you? Or where do you kind of bristle and not like that? Labor is another definition that could really use a big update. You know, capitalism requires that a lot of labor be unseen and hidden.
That's a big part of Caliban and the Witch is how much of women's work, quote had to be made invisible in order for capitalism to succeed. So some labor gets deemed valuable and is. You know, you can be compensated for in this system, but a lot of labor is made invisible and is not deemed worthy enough for a wage.
I believe all labor is sacred, even if it's not paid, even if no one is paying you for it. The labor of. Texting your neighbor to see if they're okay. Feeding yourself, watering the plants, the labor of caring about our world, the labor of healing, your own wounds, healing and giving your body what it needs.
All of that is labor and it's sacred. And just because you don't get paid for it does not mean that it's not incredibly valuable. Capital is another. Thing that needs to be way redefined. Everything in our world has been. Capitalism has attempted to commodify, so the resources of the earth, human beings and what humans can or can't do, animals that are used for labor or whose bodies are eaten and turned into meat, so much gets commodified in this system.
Nothing is sacred in capitalism. Everything has a price tag. And is evaluated as either valuable or not based on whether it could be sold or traded for on the open market. So changing our relationship to ourselves to see ourselves as whole. Huge, beautiful sacred beings, and not just commodities whose labor is meant to be sold for a price is a big part of this work.
So some of you might be listening and feeling like, well, you know. Why do we have to compost capitalism? Isn't this the best we can do? It's not really that bad. I would rather live in this than as a surf on a landowner's estate in Europe, you know, cold or uncomfortable or working in this backbreaking way.
And those are all. Totally valid feelings and thoughts and part of the great myth of capitalism, this myth that capitalism was some big step in the direction of progress. That our world would be full of suffering in a very dark place without capitalism. Those are all part of the myth that has to be composted and falling away here.
I think it's totally valid to, you know, appreciate how much some of us have in this system. You know, I'm like comfortable in a house. I have heat, I have windows and a roof. I have the internet. Capitalism can look very luxurious and comfortable for many of us. And if you're in that position and wondering like, well, do I really want it to change?
Like what if does that mean I have to? You know, take a vow of poverty or live without shelter, or not have my needs met. That's not what I'm saying here, but I do encourage you to be honest with yourself and sit for a moment and think about how capitalism. Feels to you at the end of the day, you are forced to make a living or depend on someone else's wage or depend on the state in order to survive.
Everyone at varying levels is vulnerable in this system and by design, there are not many meaningful safety nets because. Capitalism requires that many, many people are working a lot in order to generate a lot of profit for a few people. So if there were ways to not work, like if it was easy to not have a job or support yourself in a way that didn't require you to work.
Full-time or part-time or depend on someone else's labor, then it would be harder to force you into a job, into a wage. So this is a very vulnerable system where we are very vulnerable inside of it and it can look fancy or comfortable or nice. But if you just pull back a couple of layers or consider what would happen if you could no longer earn a wage, I think you'll see.
The real viciousness of this way of living. There are other ways that humans can live and support themselves, and this was possible for many hundreds of thousands of years before capitalism and even before empire. Even now, we don't have to rewind necessarily. There are other possibilities that may not seem very likely right now, but can absolutely grow the more.
Composting we create, the more good fertile compost we make, the more seeds can grow in the spring and springs beyond. So capitalism isn't just an economic system now. There is a whole worldview and mythos built up around it that makes it hard for us to see, or even imagine how anything else could be possible.
But it is, you know, the bakers could just own the bakery themselves. We could go back to not using money and just bake our own bread because we have the time and support to do so, because we're not selling our labor for eight hours a day. We can make our own sustenance at home. Or maybe you trade a loaf with your friend who has lots of zucchini to give away, and we can be in relationship that way.
So when capitalism was. Invented or introduced, you can see in the way that people reacted that it was an appalling, shocking idea. Why would I leave my home, my little homestead, the place where I sustained myself and go work in a mill or on an estate to earn coins and paper that have no inherent value just to be able to buy the thing?
I can grow myself right here. So nowadays we just think it's like normal and this is just what we do and this is what works best for humans right now. But you can see if you look at the history, that it was an appalling, shocking, ludicrous idea that people did not gleefully sign up for. They had to be.
Killed, hung, made into slaves. They had to be decimated through disease. They had to be absolutely violently subjugated in order to get into those jobs that now we expect just to be normal, like well. To be a good person, it just means that you will go get a job. That's, you need to just do that and it's good and it's the way things should be.
And if you don't succeed in the traditional employment system, something is wrong with you. But it doesn't have to be this way. It was not this way for a long time. And just because we can't see a big new path yet out of this, doesn't mean that this way of being isn't ready to die. We know that capitalism is already decaying and dead and rotten because it stinks.
We can look at the history and we can see that this was never a life giving system. And nowadays, 500 years later, after its emergence, it might have a pretty painted face. It might have a nice tie on, but they've got one eyeball hanging out and they can't stand straight and they stink. So do not be fooled.
There is not. Life here. Capitalism feeds on death and decay. That's all it offers. So it can actually, it's already on its way to becoming composted, and we don't have to know what's gonna grow in its place in order to aid in that ending. This autumn is a good time to remember that there are seasons when things come to an end.
And the ending is the only part of the story that we can see. We don't know what's gonna bloom in the spring. We don't know what's gonna grow where these mushrooms are right now. We may have some ideas based on what grew last spring, but part of living in a soulful way is. Trusting that there are times in our lives and in our collective experiences where something is just meant to die and fall away, and we can be a part of that.
We can aid in that. We don't have to know what the new thing is that's going to emerge, but something will. And our job is to let go of what's dead and trust that it can be transformed into something else. That it will be transformed at the right time, and we don't have to know exactly how to do that. Or how it's going to happen or when, or what it will become.
When we talk about what it means to compost capitalism, I wanna say. At the outset and make a big headline that there is not much that we have to do. So many of us are used to like, okay, I'm gonna, I have to come in and make a plan. I have to work this thing. Like I'm gonna come and I'm gonna compost capitalism and it's gonna be a lot of doing and it's something I have to will into being again, capitalism is already rotten.
It is already full of decay. It's this nasty infection, this gaping wound. We don't have to kill it. There's already death here and you can see that by how much energy has to go into, into convincing people that it's not already dead. There is a whole apparatus, a whole collection of apparatus, so, or apparat, that work to convince us that capitalism is not a nasty, rotten system.
I think about my own time working in the field of human resources and how much. Energy went into convincing people to like work. That they should be grateful for this job, that you should give as much of your life force and energy to this job as possible because that's what it means to be successful.
That's how you can feed yourself and have a nice life. And if you don't like this job, if you don't like this place, something is wrong with you. And I see this all the time still in this field of people operations or talent development or whatever new lingo is circulating. It's the same shit. And I don't, if you're in this field, I'm not disparaging you at all, but we absolutely have to be honest about what it is.
Human resources is there in large part, to convince people to try to hide the dying nasty thing and say like, look how much fun this is. And it's so bright and colorful and welcoming and diverse, and you should come in and oh, you're not being forced. To be here. This is a choice. You know, this is an at will workplace or whatever the term is.
We have to be honest about the fact that this is absolutely forced. We may have some choice about like which organization we go to, or we could negotiate something about our wage or compensation package, but at the end of the day, you are a worker. Who's being forced to sell your labor at as high a price as you can, or as low a price as you're willing to accept.
And that organization, even if it's a wonderful nonprofit or whoever it is at some level, that group of people, those capitalists at the top, are trying to get as much from you as they can for as little as they can. So again, this doesn't mean that any one person is evil. That if you work in HR, you're bad, but we have to start being a lot more honest about what this is and see that this is a dying, decaying gross thing that we don't have to keep giving our life force to.
There are ways that we can begin divesting from it and allowing the natural process of decomposition to occur. There's another thread I wanna talk about for a second, which is this idea of like composting capitalism versus resisting capitalism, and both approaches are really valuable. I'm not trying to set up a binary here, but what fits for me with the idea of composting capitalism is that it fits in with my belief that.
Our role as humans are to be humble participants in this earth's rhythms and processes and composting is a natural process that I don't know how to do myself. Again, I'm not a fungi or a bacteria that knows how to turn a rotten apple into soil. But there are beings who know how to do that. The earth knows how to do that.
So composting just feels like a much easier, approachable, not easier, but like a much more true way to relate to this work. Then resisting does. Resisting feels like a lot of pushing. It feels hard. I feel depleted when I think about doing that. So if you feel called to the idea of resistance and that feels like a definition that's really valuable to you.
I honor that completely. But if you have felt. Worn out by that, or if it doesn't necessarily land for you in the ways that it once did or never did. I encourage you to try on the idea of composting capitalism, allowing the earth to compost capitalism, and I'm gonna talk about what that looks like in a minute.
Composting is an elegant, simple process. It is complex, but it is elegant and all of nature and her processes are elegant. We have this assumption as humans, we're so used to like turning everything into some cumbersome thing. We have to have this whole like big chart of how it works and look how complicated it is, and it's really overwhelming when it's actually, it can be a very simple easeful process.
There are beings again in. The natural world whose job it is to decompose dead matter who can eat dead and decaying things with ease, who like to eat it, who are good at it and turn it into a source of nutrition for the new life that's to come. So we don't have to do this alone. We can help set up composting sites for sure, like our own body can be a site where.
Capitalism can be composted. We can create group spaces or rituals or a place on the land that is dedicated to composting capitalism, and I'm kind of talking in metaphor and also literally, and I hope. We can just kind of oscillate and be in the in between there because nothing that we're doing in the material world is separate from what's happening on a spiritual level.
So both are true at the same time, I believe your body can literally compost capitalism by digesting old beliefs and stories and the effects and harms of capitalism. I also believe the earth can literally. Digest capitalism. If you think about what would happen if a factory or an industrial farm was just left alone without any human intervention and abandoned the land, would take it back.
The land will eat that bastion of capitalism and turn it into nutritious soil and shelter home again for the beings on the land. So one of the big questions here is if capitalism is an infection. If there's decay here, do we trust the earth's body to know how to heal itself? Do we trust our own bodies to heal and eliminate what needs to be taken away?
The mineral element corresponds to our lungs and to our colons, so in the body, the mineral element helps us with the process of elimination. It's the exhale, it's the poop. And we know that when a body feels safe and nourished and when someone has what they need, which can look many different ways based on what their body is like and the environment and the season and what's.
Been going on in their history when there's safety and nourishment and the body is given what it needs most of the time, it can facilitate the process of elimination with ease without us commanding it to, you don't have to know how things work in your stomach in order to be able to poop. You don't have to understand what your lungs do with the oxygen you breathe in and the carbon dioxide you breathe out in order to exhale.
You can just poop and exhale when you need to. Again, as long as your body is has what it needs. Your role is to allow the intelligence of your body to serve you, to do what it wants to do, what it knows how to do. Again, assuming there aren't other major obstacles to this, your role is to eat decent food that can be digested by your body.
To get enough sleep, to move, to take deep breaths and get the oxygen you need to give yourself what is necessary in order that your body can go about. Its innate functions, and it's the same with the earth. The land knows how to heal and it really doesn't take much in order for that to happen. There are still many beings on this planet who are ready and.
Able to decompose what it is that has to be decomposed. So composting capitalism is about giving capitalism back to the earth, getting out of the way of the dying, not trying to prop up the system anymore. Humbly, allowing the death that is underway to occur, tending to the infection that is here and giving the body of the earth what it needs in order to heal itself.
And that doesn't mean that we just allow everyone in the world to be harmed in the midst of the collapse of capitalism, because as capitalism is collapsing, it gets even more. Well, actually, that's not true. It has always been a viciously, greedy and violent system, and we just see the ongoing waves of that capitalism has to find new sources of wealth and land and human labor and consume it in order to survive.
So when we see. Empire reaching out and colonizing places, or when we see the takeover of lands or genocide or new minds and public lands that are GE getting turned into quote unquote natural resources. Those are all just. Modern ways that capitalism is attempting to survive and keep growing. So we don't wanna just throw our hands up and say, oh, well, you know, the Earth's gonna take care of it.
We don't need to do anything. We're just gonna sit back and watch this all die away. I'm not saying that. I think one of the major ways that we can help to compost capitalism. And keep ourselves safe is by at least naming what is happening. So even if you have to be in a job that you hate and you're selling your labor, at least be honest with yourself about what that is.
Oh, I am. I have to sell my labor in order to survive in this system. It is okay if I don't wanna work. It is okay if I hate this, if I think the CEO is really nasty and greedy. If I think what's happening in order to make a profit is wrong, at least be honest with yourself. And then we need to be honest with each other.
You know, if you're in the role of human resources or something like that, maybe whispering to others that you understand that they're forced to be here. You understand that if they had a choice, they probably wouldn't be in this job. Imagine what would happen if more and more people in HR were saying that.
So we wanna tell the truth about what this is, how this system works, the fact that it is violent and unforgiving, accepting that there's no like great normal that we wanna get back to. It's not like capitalism was all fine and sweet and nice and working before COVID or before Trump got elected or before Elon Musk.
Those are just natural outgrowths of the system and the wound that has been in place for a long time. So a big part of composting capitalism together is accepting this great dying that is underway, accepting that we might not have the cushy, comfortable, safe future that we envisioned. Accepting that capitalism is gonna keep trying to survive, keep trying to consume the labor, the land.
The wellbeing of others in order to keep itself going. And I know that's really big and I hope you'll hold your heart and this autumn that you will allow minerals, wisdom around grief to come into your being. I hope you will feel that grief. Feel the fear that can come up in the midst of this death, and that you'll let it move through you and give it to the earth.
Remember that the Earth knows what to do with this. The earth will literally feast on the decay of capitalism, the waste that it creates, the abandoned buildings, the grief that we feel as people cut up in this system. She knows what to do with that. We don't have to hold it. We. Do not want to hold it in our systems ourselves.
And being honest about what this is and telling the truth about how it feels to us creates a lot of space. It's like giving your system enough of a relief that you can actually exhale or go poop and feel better. So I wanna bring this down into the day to day-to-day a little bit more, so that it feels personal and accessible to you.
So a big part of composting capitalism, just like in our own. Day-to-day, not as individuals per se, but just as like discreet parts of the web of life. And so that means that whatever you do in your being to digest and compost capitalism creates a lift, a lightness to the whole web around you. Even if you never say this is what you're doing, other people, other beings around you will feel the heaviness that's been lifted from you and given back to the earth.
So a big part of this is just you holding an awareness in your being that capitalism is rotten, that this way of living is unnatural, and you don't have to keep pretending that you like it. You don't have to keep pretending that you really wanna get a great new job. You don't have to keep pretending that you like going to work if you don't all the time.
Give yourself that honesty and awareness. There's also a commitment that's needed to stop. As much as we can stop relating to ourselves and to others as commodities, not everything has to be transactional. We've gotten really used to things being convenient and quick, and I just pay you for this and you give me that, and that's all it is, and sometimes that's fine.
Could you relate to yourself not as a commodity that needs to be mined and extracted from, and others aren't that way too, including the more than human beings around you. Could you relate to yourself as so much more than that and bring in less transactionality and maybe slower modes of connection or, um, increased vulnerability instead.
And then I think what's needed is also a loosening of control and a humility again that I cannot end capitalism. I cannot change everything that's happening overnight. My role again is to become a little composting site where every autumn, especially, and all throughout the year, but in autumn especially, I am giving myself what I need for my body to compost capitalism, and I am doing whatever I can to support the earth.
As she compost this nasty system that can look like just adding less and less to the structure of capitalism, adding less of your time, your energy, your attention, your belief, your support, your money. Maybe you can't stop working or can't quit this job, but could you give it a little less of your heart space?
Could you give it a little less of your belief? Could you stop adding to the. Insanity that occurs in the workplace where people are trying to convince each other that this is all fun and great, and we're all here by choice. It doesn't have to be an outward letting go of capitalism if you aren't able to get out of a certain job or situation, but could it be an internal sanctity that you reclaim so that capitalism takes less and less from you over time, and as you add less?
To it, the system can weaken even more and become more vulnerable to healing, the healing that's available. So some of it is adding less and less and just giving yourself permission to not continue propping up this system in whatever way that works, that looks like for you. And then it can also be just a move toward what you love.
Just a move toward the song that you want to be a part of, living seasonally, doing what you enjoy, being out with the land, growing what you like. In the class that I teach, we look at these three primary areas that were damaged in the advent of capitalism and how we can reclaim them. We look at folk magic, land connection, and generous exchange.
Those are all areas. That just feel really good to engage in. And it turns out they are very powerful antidotes to capitalism. So any movement toward what you love and what is nourishing to you is like taking in good food and water that will allow your body to eliminate what it knows. Is no longer needed.
So again, your role is not to literally compost capitalism. Your role is to create the bin that can hold the composting process. Your role is to give the compost pile dead matter old ideas and beliefs, your tears, your grief, so that natural processes can be underway. So. What this might look like in one particular day is, you know, waking up and deciding that your health, your wellbeing is the most important thing.
Finding ways to connect to the earth's bounty and beauty. So appreciating the good coffee or tea that you have eating. Food that is as healthy as you can access, tending to what is alive to the plants, not treating yourself or others as a commodity. So maybe you do have to work today, but could you light a candle before you start or give yourself some sweetness or hold your heart in the car before you go in and tell yourself the truth about what this is, and apologize to your body for the stress.
That you're about to ingest and do something after work to complete that stress cycle and eliminate some of that, that you may have picked up. Perhaps you're going about your day and you're purchasing something from someone across the counter and you decide that you're not gonna treat this as just a regular transaction between two robots, but that you'll risk vulnerability and maybe make conversation with them or make eye contact with them.
Perhaps you set an intention to enjoy your life in some way, and over time you can begin to cultivate a new guidance system, a new set of values where perhaps what you used to deem as success or power. You are starting to see differently now that what would feel really good to you in this system would be new definitions of success or power or wealth or reciprocity or whatever it is that you want to redefine.
And I bet you're doing a lot of this already, and this fall is just a chance for you to put down even more. To divest from capitalism in other ways to do more of what you enjoy and give less of your energy to this exchange, this capitalist exchange to witness the earth's composting process and learn from it.
So as you move toward what it is that you love toward your own vitality. It's like the earth gets another bite to chew on. You can get out of the way and you can just drop it down. Allow what is ready to come out of you, what ready to come out of this system to come to the earth and just begin its decomposition process.
And some ways that you know, you're on track with composting capitalism are that capitalism begins to make less and less sense. You're like, holy shit, why do we sell our labor for a wage? Why do we have wages? Why can't I just grow what I need and my neighbor grows and we can come into some other kind of way of sustaining ourselves?
Why do some people have way, way more than anyone else? I mean, there's so much that can just fall away. The veil can just fall away and you know you're doing the work when what used to be seen as normal just begins to make less and less sense. I think you also know you're on track when you begin to make choices in your life based on what is deeply meaningful to you, where you're not trying to win at capitalism anymore.
You just wanna live as well as you can inside of this context and capitalism's grip on you will become less and less fierce, less internalized, even as you have to survive inside of it. So you may still have to have a job or run a business. You may still need to earn an income. You may stay in a marriage because that person provides income for you.
We all have to make really hard choices inside of this, but maybe it's not. The choice plus the self-judgment and belief in capitalism that stays. Maybe we make the choice, but we can still be honest about the fact that we have to make that choice, or we can begin to see that we're not bad if we're making those choices.
Or we're not bad if we don't want to work. If we want more, if we believe we're meant for more than this. So that's what I have for you, my friends. This is one of those episodes where I feel like, did I say anything coherent? Did any of that make sense? Was it two all over the place? Sometimes I really feel that way about certain episodes, and this is one, but I hope that it has landed for you in some helpful way.
I hope that it helps you to redefine yourself, your labor, your place in the world. And helps you to get out of the way of the composting process that is already happening and to give what you can to it through your grief and your divestment this fall, whatever that looks like for you, and just trust that your body knows how to do this and the earth knows how to do this.
In two weeks, I'll be back with a new episode, a conversation with Elsbeth hay, author of Feed Us With Trees, nuts, and the Future of Food. I think you're gonna really like that one Again, if you would like to go deeper, the class Composting capitalism begins tomorrow, Wednesday, October 1st. There is a Autumn journal for you about surviving capitalism and working with the medicine of this season, and I am available as a one-on-one guide if you know that you're doing some big composting in your working life this fall.
Links for everything are in the show notes, and you can also find it all at a wild new work.com. Of course. Thank you again to Eagle Creek members who are showing up and pitching in monthly to help make this podcast. Possible. I really appreciate your contributions. I hope all of you take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.