Welcome To Re-Rooting Finance

Rerooting Finance

A forum for examining the deeper foundations of the financial system

Rerooting Finance is a forum for financial specialists who recognise that many of today’s financial challenges cannot be understood or addressed at the level of tools, products, or regulation alone.

Despite its technical sophistication, the financial system remains persistently fragile. Recurrent crises suggest that its vulnerabilities arise from deeper foundations, including the assumptions embedded in the system about human behaviour, value, risk, responsibility, and rationality. These assumptions are rarely examined, yet they shape incentives, institutions, and outcomes in fundamental ways.

Rerooting Finance exists to create a serious space for examining these foundations.

Why this forum exists

Modern financial systems do not operate independently of human consciousness. They both reflect and condition how individuals perceive incentives, make decisions, relate to uncertainty, and understand responsibility.

In practice, many financial systems are designed as if individuals and institutions operate as largely separate and self contained actors, connected primarily through prices, contracts, and incentives. This framing embeds a particular cultural assumption of separation. While it has enabled powerful forms of coordination and efficiency, once institutionalised it also shapes behaviour and perception in return, often reinforcing fragmentation even where intentions are cooperative or aligned.

This assumption rests on a specific, and largely unexamined, view of human consciousness, namely that it is personal, bounded, and fundamentally separate. It remains an open question whether this view adequately reflects how consciousness actually operates in social, institutional, and systemic contexts.

Rerooting Finance asks whether this underlying view of human consciousness is correct, and if it is not, what the implications may be for financial system design, governance, and policy.

Much contemporary reform focuses on surface level adjustments to rules, tools, or incentives. This forum is concerned with examining the deeper premises on which those reforms are built.

This is not a space for advocacy or ready made solutions. It is a space for inquiry.

The questions we explore

Rather than beginning with proposals, the forum engages with foundational questions such as:

• What kinds of human behaviour do our financial systems reward or suppress?

• What understanding of human consciousness is implicitly assumed by prevailing financial models, institutions, and policy frameworks?

• Is the assumption of separation an adequate description of human consciousness in practice?

• If it is not, what are the implications for financial policy, system design, and governance?

These questions are explored rigorously and openly, without ideological positioning and without pressure to converge on agreement.

How the forum works

Rerooting Finance meets monthly in a small group online format designed to support depth, care, and quality of conversation.

• Monthly 90 minute online meetings via Zoom

• Each session centres on a study paper circulated in advance as the basis for discussion

• Moderated open dialogue combined with breakout groups of approximately ten participants

• Sessions are recorded and shared with participants afterwards

• A suggested contribution of €10 supports moderation, curation, and continuity

Participation is by invitation, in order to maintain a focused and thoughtful environment.

Who this forum is for

The forum is designed for financial specialists who:

• Have experience with the limits of purely technical or regulatory approaches

• Are interested in systemic, behavioural, and institutional dynamics

• Are willing to question foundational assumptions rather than only outcomes

• Are comfortable engaging with uncertainty and first principles inquiry

• Value intellectual honesty, careful thinking, and constructive disagreement

It is particularly relevant for practitioners, regulators, researchers, and advisors with responsibility for long term system integrity.

The intention

The intention of Rerooting Finance is to create a high quality space for serious inquiry into the deeper roots of the financial system. The emphasis is on how participants think together, rather than on promoting particular viewpoints or solutions.

Over time, insights from the forum may inform wider conversations about finance, risk, and policy. However, the primary focus remains on depth, rigour, and shared exploration.

Getting involved

Participation is currently by invitation. If the focus and approach resonate with your work or interests, you are welcome to get in touch to express interest or to ask questions.

Participation norms

Rerooting Finance is designed to support depth of inquiry rather than persuasion or performance. To protect the quality of the conversation, all participants are asked to observe the following norms.

1. Speak from inquiry, not authority

Participants are invited to contribute questions, observations, and uncertainties rather than conclusions or positions. Expertise is welcomed, but it does not confer priority or authority within the discussion.

Contributions are most valuable when they advance collective understanding rather than establish correctness.

2. Share the space deliberately

No one voice should dominate the conversation. Participants are encouraged to notice how often they speak relative to others, and to step back if they find themselves speaking frequently.

Making space for quieter contributions is a shared responsibility, not solely a moderator task.

3. Build on what has been said

Whenever possible, contributions should connect explicitly to what others have already offered. This supports coherence and discourages parallel monologues.

Listening carefully is treated as an active form of participation.

4. Suspend advocacy

This forum is not a space for promoting solutions, frameworks, or reform agendas. Participants may describe ideas or proposals as objects of inquiry, but not argue for their adoption.

The aim is to examine assumptions and implications, not to persuade.

5. Stay with questions longer than feels comfortable

Participants are encouraged to resist moving too quickly to answers, recommendations, or fixes. Periods of uncertainty are considered productive rather than problematic.

The forum values clarity about what is not yet understood.

6. Allow disagreement without resolution

Disagreement is welcome and expected. Participants are not required to converge, resolve differences, or reach consensus.

Changing one’s mind, or leaving a question open, is treated as a sign of seriousness rather than weakness.

7. Respect the container

Contributions should be made with awareness of the purpose of the forum and the time of others. Extended exposition, repetition, or rhetorical framing should be avoided.

Moderators may intervene to protect balance, focus, or flow. Such interventions are procedural, not evaluative.

Your Hosts

Freyja Theaker

Clare Chapman