My work is driven by a core set of ideas about what we call “the market.” These ideas represent a set of tools for understanding the nature of modern society, the world we live in today.

The primary idea is that the suffering in the modern world stems from a single source: the rising power of “the market” has slowly spread confusion about the nature of reality. We have lost sight of the timeless divide between the external/material and internal/spiritual sides of life and how they should relate to one another. This is the deepest of all problems, which makes it extremely difficult to solve. The issues rapidly get complex, they inspire the strongest passions and prejudices, and there is great confusion in definitions, creating a tower of Babel. The collapse of reality to the purely material even debases the very terms we need to save ourselves. Many people think of materialism as “shopping too much,” for example, when it is actually a philosophy based on the idea that the soul does not exist.

Given the magnitude of these obstacles, there is no alternative but to start from scratch. We need to explain the nature of modern society in a new way, one that is simple, consistent with everyday experience, and free from the associations of the past. This explanation should:

• Explain what the material world is, and how it pertains to the rest of reality
• Explain the nature of the market and its relationship to the material world
• Identify the root cause of dysfunction in modern society, and how to solve it

While these issues appear to be extraordinarily complex, there is a kernel of simplicity at their core that I will attempt to explain here as succinctly as possible. This explanation may certainly reflect some preexisting, even ancient ideas, but it is by necessity divorced from allegiance to any camp, tradition, or doctrine of any kind. The reader should resist the application of any label to it, and simply view it with an open mind.

Next: What is the Material World?