Simple codes that protect the well-being of people, cultures, and life on earth, might look something like these proposed folklaws.
In 2010, while biking, I suffered a traumatic brain injury that permanently altered my inner landscape. My vision blurred for months; many mornings I woke dizzy. Sleep became a delicate experiment—upright in a recliner, tilted just so. Oddly, following the lines on a page quieted the spinning. My doctor was surprised. I was, too. Reading became my rehabilitation. Day after day, I reached for books: Lewis Mumford, Aldous Huxley, Terence McKenna, Theodore Roszak, Stanley Diamond, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, E.F. Schumacher, Erich Fromm, Richard Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, Huston Smith, and Christopher Alexander. The authors’ worldviews did not entirely overlap, but their critiques of modernity were similar, and resonated with me.
Campbell once told of his odyssey of self-education after leaving his PhD program—two years of living simply, reading deeply, and following the thought trails left in bibliographies. This inspired my extended convalescence. A Pattern Language by Alexander and his Berkeley colleagues struck me especially. In grounded prose and an elegant format, it revealed building patterns linking culture, technology, nature, and psychology. Some patterns recalled ancient village wisdom long abandoned. Others sought to heal the damage left by our mistakes. They all searched for the timeless order at the heart of things. I began to imagine carrying that method into law—designing living laws for a society in harmony with itself and the land. Such laws, if rooted deeply enough, could endure for millennia.
My recovery included alternative modalities like acupuncture and homeopathy. At a Native American Church ceremony I met guides who offered group ayahuasca and mushroom journeys. Trained in Peru and Brazil, they knew how to hold a sacred space in which language and culture fall away. The plant teachers spoke in ways that bypassed words: revealing nature’s sentience, the interconnection of all things. I participated in many ceremonies. These rearranged the subtle energies of my body, which was therapeutic for my injury.
By 2012, I wanted to share what I had learned, and created a talk show called Sane Society at Berkeley Community Media. My guests were authors, activists, and educators such as U.C. faculty John Searle, Terrence Deacon, and Mark D’Esposito. These talks can be viewed on YouTube. * I also spoke with Larry Norris on ayahuasca visions. Dr. Norris was then completing his PhD at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He would go on to co-found Decriminalize Nature, a grassroots movement that has decriminalized entheogenic plants and fungi in 25 U.S. municipalities. Their approach—engaging Indigenous voices, empowering residents, and presenting vetted resolutions with personal testimony to city councils in a good way, as allies—inspired the concept of Local Groups.
The missing through-line for Folklaw was found in the work of physicist Fritjof Capra. He takes the unsettling revelations of modern physics—that matter is not inert, but a ceaseless dance of relationships—and shows how they echo wisdom traditions, especially the Dao. He braids together Gregory Bateson’s systems vision, Hazel Henderson’s humane economics, and Manuel Castells’ social insights into one truth: our crises are not separate; they arise from a single rift between our thinking and the living world. Capra’s genius is synthesis—uniting quantum theory, systems analysis, philosophy, and tradition until they speak with one voice: survival depends on remembering that the world is alive, and we belong to it. Local Groups are designed for what Bateson warned we are starving for: meta-discussion—the ability to step outside daily disputes and examine the architecture that shapes them all. Our culture finds such conversations too abstract, too risky, too slow.
History shows this can be done. Post-war Germany was in ruins. It had no constitution or working institutions. Out of that blank page came the Grundgesetz—the Basic Law—built on simple, democratic, adaptable, pacifist principles. Intended as a temporary measure until reunification, it proved so sound it remains in force today, a source of national pride. Their meta-discussion worked. Folklaw seeks to spark that level of dialogue.
In mythology, the cosmic egg symbolizes primordial wholeness—a contained world that, when cracked, initiates the birth of something new, often in an unpredictable or painful way. Today, I still get vertigo and headaches easily. Some cognitive avenues have broadened, others are narrowed. Connecting these concepts came easily and urgently, translating them to essay form did not. Jim Carrey relates a story of an Irish teacher who told his childhood class that when she prays for what she wants, she often gets it. Jim went home and prayed for a bicycle, and two weeks later found one sitting in his living room. A friend had entered his name in a raffle. “It’s about telling the Universe what you want, and letting go of how it comes to pass. When a door opens up, I walk through it.”
So I prayed on it, which led me to cautiously and humbly approach Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT-4.5). I fed it my notes and drafts. From detailed prompts came new angles, concise language, verified facts, and action plans in a familiar voice. After multiple revisions, the AI’s talent for pattern recognition gave what was needed. Together, we traced threads connecting law, ecology, culture, and mind. This book is the result: part blueprint, part invitation. Proposing laws to guide humanity into the deep future is engrossing. It should be required of politicians. While the essays focus on the contemporary United States, the primary and therefore statements, in bold type, are worded to be valid anywhere, at any time.
The Rowan tree, sacred in Celtic tradition, was said to guard against misfortune and guide travelers through wild terrain. In Norse myth, it saved the god Thor from a raging river. Its bright red berries were a sign of protection and resilience; its wood, strong yet light, was carried as a charm against deception and harm. The Rowan was chosen to symbolize Folklaw because it stands for what we hope to restore—rooted wisdom, protection of the vulnerable, and the courage to navigate a treacherous age. Like the Rowan, Folklaw offers shelter, direction, and a way through. In a world stripped bare by greed and distraction, it is a reminder that strength can be quiet, and protection can grow from the earth itself.
“Flowers on the steel ; Pattern Language” by GSARAM | AHN UKHWAN is licensed under CC BY 2.0.