The rules

In 2012, The Rules (TR) started out asking why mass poverty still exists on a world of such plenty. In looking for the answers, we have grown into a global collective of activists, writers, artists, researchers, coders and others who work to expose the root causes of our current crisis.

We start from two core insights:

All power rests on the ability to harness and control language; and humans make sense of their world through stories.

The stories - or narratives - we believe explain how power has come to rest in the hands of the few rather than the many. They reveal how our struggles - from land to labour rights, the fight for biodiversity and even for control of our very bodies - are part of the same global struggle against a system that prioritises the production of capital and economic growth over all other things.

We tell stories about alternative systems that exist and that are emerging. We also connect movements working in diverse and creative ways to resist and reimagine the world.