Patrick Andrews

Barefoot lawyer. Helping align ownership, governance and leadership of organisations, for health and well-being of people and planet.

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@happyhenry Am more drawn to the middle one

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@ntnsndr The key to your enquiry I suppose is the words "conducive to". That could mean different things. One key factor is the ability to buy shareholders out at a price that is not exorbitant. I did a term sheet (and by-laws) for (UK-based) Library of Things. Can share by email?!

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@ntnsndr First set of by-laws that comes to mind is those of Sharetribe (they had redeemable shares at a fixed price, that therefore enabled shareholders to be bought out at a reasonable price. I managed to download them from somewhere a couple of years ago but can't remember where from..

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@Feargal_Sharkey @DefraGovUK @Ofwat @EnvAgency When do they make this man a peer?

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@paulpowlesland @LawForNature Might it be useful to name and include our "inner" nature - making it explicit that we are "nature" too? Otherwise there is the temptation to fall into the old habit of thinking nature is "out there".

[Library of Things @libraryofthings]

🌍 We’re pioneering a new way to do business that’s fairer for people and planet. Get involved!

📣 We’re recruiting 'Mission Guardians' to speak for our borrowers, partners, investors & planet, & hold us accountable to our mission long-term.

⏩ https://t.co/rkmYwkaQtM

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

Today, hundreds of people across the country showed solidarity with Trudi Warner.

RT if you agree stand with them.

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

This is brilliant ... and hilarious.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

You dive down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, searching for the man behind the curtain. You’ve seen enough to be convinced that everything you’ve been taught about the world is false, and now it’s just a matter of finding out who’s really responsible for making such a mess of things.

And for a while, your search seems fruitful. You discover that you don’t really live in a democracy like you were taught where the public influences government behavior using their votes, or even in a separate sovereign nation like you learned in school. You discover that your country is part of a globe-spanning power structure which effectively functions as an empire — the most powerful empire ever to exist. And you discover that this empire has drivers who aren’t beholden to the electorate in any meaningful way, acting not to advance the interests of the public but to advance the agenda of planetary domination.

So who are the drivers of the empire? You dive down more rabbit holes. You discover secretive government agencies with longtime operatives who don’t leave with the outgoing official elected government, but stay on, helping to keep the gears of the empire turning regardless of who voters elect to be the face on the operation. You discover a revolving-door system in which the same empire managers are rotated in and out of positions in the official elected government, working in think tanks and military industrial complex advisory boards and mass media punditry when their party is out of office and rotating back in when their turn comes back around. You discover plutocrats who use their vast wealth to influence government policy via campaign donations, influential think tanks, mass media control and corporate lobbying, who often operate with — and profit from — a tremendous amount of overlap with government agencies. You discover organizations and institutions in which the wealthy and powerful congregate and coordinate to advance their agendas, often with a very high degree of secrecy.

But in all this rabbit holing and discovering, you still don’t find any man behind the curtain. You come to see that any of the people you’ve been looking at could die tomorrow and the imperial machine would trudge on uninterrupted. There could be a giant violent revolution and these people could be guillotined by the thousands, and unless drastic changes were made to the systems which gave rise to them, someone else would just step in to fill their shoes.

So you start researching the systems. You start researching economic systems, financial systems, how resources are distributed, how money is allocated, how labor is exploited, how wealth is extracted. You come to see how our civilization has been turned into a giant wealth-generating machine for a class of wealthy exploiters using propaganda, property laws, artificial scarcity, enclosure of the commons and theft from indigenous populations, all wound around this made-up concept of money which translates directly into political power under our current systems. Because the people who are most adept at obtaining massive amounts of wealth/power are those who are sufficiently lacking in empathy to do whatever it takes to obtain it, we naturally find ourselves ruled by sociopaths. And we always will, until those systems change.

You dig even deeper. You discover that you haven’t just been fed false information about how governments and nations work, you’ve been fed false information about even your most basic assumptions about reality. You discover in your own experience that there is no such thing as a separate self; that what we refer to linguistically as “I” and “me” are psychological delusions which underpin most of the suffering and dysfunctionality of the human species. In reality humans are inseparable from the biosphere from whence they emerged, which is in turn inseparable from the universe from whence it emerged, which is in turn inseparable from the Big-Bang-Or-Whatever-It-Was from whence it emerged. Everything is one, and the self is a lie.

And you realize that this is true of all the oligarchs and empire managers you’ve been staring at as well. They’re not separate entities acting with agency in the world, they’re clusters of conditioning and trauma which they inherited from their ancestors, which was passed down through their evolutionary heritage from the chaos and confusion inherent in existence as small prey animals who walked the earth millions of years ago. They’re just swirling eddies in a sea of ineffable energy like anyone else, sleepwalking through life being whipped around by unconscious forces within themselves that they do not understand.

And you realize then that there is no man behind the curtain, and there never was. You ripped aside curtain after curtain hoping to find the man, and all you found was a man-shaped hole in the universe.

And you’re not even mad. In fact, you find it hilarious. You laugh and you laugh at the silliness of it all. You laugh at how seriously we’re all taking this game of separateness and enmity, and how seriously you’d been taking it just moments before. You laugh at how ultimately innocent we all are in all this, even the worst among us. You laugh at our cuteness. You laugh at this play of forms. And the universe laughs back. A laughing buddha, laughing at a universe made of laughing buddhas.

And you see, as you wipe the tears from your face, that everything is unfolding as it must. The universe is becoming more and more capable of perceiving itself — first with life, then with humans, then with the steady advancements in science and technology and psychology and awakening — and there’s no reason to assume that this ongoing explosion of perception will stop. We’re going to figure things out eventually. Consciousness keeps expanding. The light keeps getting brighter. The truth can only hide for so long.

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

I am off to the woods in October in southern England to ponder what inspiration we might find in nature to re-think and re-design our organisational structures. Care to join me? https://t.co/gftRGT4Q6G

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

I like this thread and agree with a lot of it. But it claims that there is an identifiable group of "powerful and wealthy" and that they "control our societies". I prefer the perspective that our societies are complex systems with emergent properties - no one is in control.

[Stephen Barlow @SteB777]

My take on the current bizarre climate crisis denial, and the general political situation, in both the UK and around the world - is that the powerful and wealthy who control our societies - have totally lost their vision, their raison d'etre.
1/🧵

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@alastairmci @JeremyLeggett @highlandsrewild @tayvinitiative @CommunityLandSc yes, definitely not straightforward to promote community ownership in southern England. It seems the more money people have, the more comfort they have, the less likely they are to appreciate the value of community. Still, a worthwhile challenge!

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@alastairmci @JeremyLeggett @highlandsrewild @tayvinitiative @CommunityLandSc Yes, Hardwick is a nice example. I think they are aiming for "gold" (I am seeing Miriam this Thursday).

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

love bees

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@indy_johar I couldn't agree more. I am reminded of the joke about a meeting where the average IQ was 150 but the collective IQ was 60. I find many board meetings are like that.

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@paulpowlesland @Ls4Ca Nice work here. There's an old idea that lawyers can serve as healers of the community. Somehow many lawyers and firms lost that notion somewhere along the way.

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

love this. beautifully put, Alys Fowler https://t.co/2WGnAwKpHJ

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

@Synchronicity34 @paddyleflufy @PioneersPost Riversimple has taken a radical stance for social and environmental well-being, that stands in contrast to the prevailing extractive mindset that informs most investment thinking. No wonder it has taken time to raise capital and reach production. But softly softly, catchee monkey

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

For those interested in organisational and investment models that prioritise health of all rather than mere short term economic growth...

[Paddy Le Flufy @paddyleflufy]

I’ve had an article published! It’s about a strategy for transforming the business sector by fostering more widespread take-up of the Future Guardian model. It’s adapted from excerpts from the book and has been published by @PioneersPost. (1/7) https://t.co/pbQK5dSNhW

[Patrick Andrews @patrickandr]

musings on a more intuitive and creative approach to sales https://t.co/GXzwhnNnK9