Sitting in the Right Pew, but the Wrong Church | A Life-Value Monologue for Mother Earth | ChatGPT-5.5 Thinking and Pictory

This spoken monologue is adapted from my 2017 article, Sitting in the Right Pew but Wrong Church, written shortly after encountering the work of philosopher John McMurtry and his life-value onto-axiology.

The central message is simple but urgent: humanity’s mistake was not that we valued growth, but that we confused the growth of money with the growth of life. True economy means the wise stewardship of the household — our bodies, communities, ecosystems, and Mother Earth. A civilization becomes life-coherent only when its religions, politics, economics, sciences, laws, and technologies are answerable to the conditions that make life possible.

This video is a call to move from money-value accumulation to life-capital regeneration; from scarcity and violence to care, provision, and right relationship; from “Take care” to “Give care.”

Dedicated in gratitude to Professor John McMurtry, whose work on life-value, universal human life necessities, and the civil commons offers an anchor, compass, and steer for a more life-coherent world.

An Economy Answerable to Life: Beyond GDP, Unequal Exchange, and the Life-Coherent Reordering of Progress | ChatGPT-5.5 Thinking and NoteboolLM

The contemporary Beyond GDP agenda marks a significant opening in global development thought. It recognizes that gross domestic product cannot adequately measure well-being, equity, ecological sustainability, social resilience, or future viability. The 2026 United Nations report Counting What Counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet proposes a globally applicable dashboard of 31 indicators designed to complement GDP by tracking well-being outcomes, equity and inclusion, environmental sustainability, and the forms of capital that support future well-being. It also emphasizes that indicators should inform planning, budgeting, and policy rather than merely describe outcomes (United Nations, 2026).

Yet better measurement alone cannot explain why the world economy continues to generate ecological overshoot alongside widespread deprivation. Jason Hickel’s 2026 IDS Annual Lecture, “Capitalism, Imperialism and Ecology,” provides the missing political-economic layer. Hickel argues that the central contradiction of the present world system is not scarcity in the aggregate, but misallocation: vast productive capacities are organized around capital accumulation rather than human needs, ecological repair, and democratic provisioning. He frames the global crisis as a double failure: planetary boundaries are being exceeded while billions remain deprived of decent living standards (Hickel, 2026).

This white paper develops a life-coherent synthesis of the Beyond GDP agenda and Hickel’s political economy. It argues that progress must be redefined not as output expansion, but as the democratic organization of production, distribution, finance, trade, technology, and governance around life-capacity, ecological integrity, structural repair, and future viability. Hickel’s analysis is interpreted alongside McMurtry’s life-value onto-axiology, Galtung’s theory of structural violence, and Maturana and Varela’s account of autopoiesis and world-bringing. The resulting framework reframes development as life-coherent provisioning: the creation of social, ecological, institutional, and economic conditions through which all people can live dignified lives within planetary boundaries, without externalizing harm onto other peoples, species, ecosystems, or generations.

Capitalism, Ecology and Class Struggle in the 21st Century | Jason Hickel | NotebookLM-Augmented

In this lecture, Professor Jason Hickel examines the global ecological crisis and mass human deprivation as systemic consequences of capitalist and imperialist production. He argues that the world’s resources are currently misallocated to maximize private accumulation rather than meeting universal human needs through a democratic law of value. By utilizing data on unequal exchange, Hickel demonstrates how wealth and energy in the Global North rely on the net appropriation of labor and materials from the Global South. He suggests that achieving sustainability requires the imperial core to scale down unnecessary industries while the South reclaims economic sovereignty through de-linking from capitalist exploitation. Ultimately, the talk advocates for an ecosocialist transformation that prioritizes decent living standards for all within planetary boundaries.