Whill

What is fear?

Fear can be a modeling mechanism of our psyche.  The fear algorithm takes our stories and predicts likely future outcomes of a negative variety [wish could be considered the inverse - positive futures].  Modeling operates based on assumptions, creating expectations.

As any investor will tell you, “past performance doesn’t indicate future returns.”  So although fear can be powerful, it’s often a poor decision-making framework.  It’s limiting.

Unattachment is the ultimate freedom.  It’s freedom from fear.  It’s comfort in not knowing.

But if we have fear, how can we use it in a positive way?  I’m particularly interested by this question in the context of leadership - as leaders have much more responsibility and bearing on the futures than other individuals.

We can transform the energy of fear into the passion to create resilient frameworks.  We can use fear to remind us that we always have choice.  Fear is a constriction of possibility, but if we’re conscious of this, we can utilize the power that fear gives us to open our minds.

A conventional transaction includes two material flows:

1. Good or service
2. Money

These flows move in opposite directions.

What other capital flows are involved?  Well, let’s look at just the good/service outside of payment.  An exchange of goods/services is a complete transaction by itself.  Let’s call this a gift.

One example of this is in performance art.  The giver is offering their expression.  The receiver is offering their audience. This is a complete exchange on it’s own, as both parties need each other for the exchange to take place.  This exchange builds the relationship of those involved.  We could call this relationship a debt, but it’s a positive debt, something we feel good about.

Adding in the financial dimension actually causes a neutralization of all capital flows.  It creates annonimity.  There’s no debt anymore, no functional basis for the relationship to continue.

We could approximate the money exchanged for the gift as equal in “value.”  Yet the flows are in opposite direction, so neutralization occurs.

We’re not good at receiving gifts any more.  We’re afraid of relationships.

Gifts are a “coaction.”  They create.

What does a community look like from the perspective the community rather than the individual?  And why might this matter?

We’re always talking about growth.  It’s a fundamental of our economy, and our happiness [a derivative of the economy right now].  This morning I was talking with friends [with whom I’m collaborating on some new economy projects] about exchange.  How do we create relationships that yield a net gain to the community rather than a neutralization during the exchange [as in the conventional transaction]?  In other words, the conventional transaction results in the growth of money and the liquidation of community.  What is growing community, and how can it happen in [financial and material] non-growth environments [such as with cycling resource use]?

Now that’s we’ve established some context, let’s talk about the definition of community.

Communities can be defined by the relationships between individuals.  The threshold between one community and the next is defined by when the number of relationships between individuals drop below a certain number.

For example, everyone in a community garden project might have relationships with at least three others.

There’s something else too though - some kind of common purpose - a “relationship” with the vision of community [kind of like the integral of the relationships between individuals].

So what’s the “growth” of a community?  And from the above definitions, it’s clear that it doesn’t require an increase in the size of a community.

Growth of a community is maturation.  It’s an increase in the number of relationships.  The individuals are the substrate and the relationships are the connective tissue.  Communities concentrate energy and optimize flows [shortened the distance between individuals]. 

Fiduciary Duty.  It’s both the bane of progressive economic thought and the seed for a new world.  Fiduciary duty is about relationships and trust.  Right now, it’s also living exclusively in the financial realm.  But an 8Cap fiduciary model would usher in gift economics.

What is fiduciary duty right now?  It’s when someone entrusts you with their “property” and you need to prioritize what you approximate to be their interests/values over your own.  It’s “objectivity.”  It’s why directors and trustees put their shareholders [who are assumed to be interested in financial profit] ahead of all else, often including the long-term interests of the organization, and almost always compromising social and environmental values.

But at it’s core, fiduciary duty recognizes the principle of interdependence.  The emphasis is on the relationship rather than the individuals [albeit in a biased way].  It’s encouraging that there’s an entire legal framework based on the word trust.

What if fiduciary duty covered all forms of capital?  A gift economy builds community by creating a positive form of debt.  Gifts flow through party after party rather than oscillating [like in the conventional transaction].  What’s lost in financial profit can be paid back tenfold in living and cultural capital.

Not only that, but most money exists in potential.  It’s only really there during the instance of transaction.  After that, it fades back into potential energy.  In some ways [such as our personal lives] there’s no difference between an increasing money supply with stagnant growth in transaction frequency and a steady money supply with an increased rate of exchange.  Losses in financial profit don’t need to be a negative even for the finances of a local economy if the volume of flow increases [this tends to be tied to less disparity in wealth].

What if people were as meticulous in their care and attention for social and living capital as they are for financial capital?  If we change the nature of our money system towards something more community-oriented, we could expand the ethics of fiduciary duty to all forms of capital.  Fiduciary duty brings in the behavior of stewardship.  I find beauty in the stewardship of all forms of capital.

I’ve recently been reading three books which are all conscious of our culture of separation and control and actively strive for visions of something more whole:

• Sacred Economics - gift economics [applied theory]
• Accelerando - venture altruism [science fiction]
• Sex at Dawn - the myth of monogamy [applied anthropology]

Although the three books talk about different examples, they’re all covering the same material.  They all ask how to have fun and find truth in an financialized world.

What is health and presence?

How would things look if we weren’t motivated by greed and jealousy [fear]?  These motivations permeate all aspects of our lives; they inhabit our professional work and our most intimate relationships equally.

Realizing that this isn’t the only reality reminds me that some of us have the privilege of conscious choice.  In the hierarchical world that many of us find ourselves in today, I’m one of the few with the privilege to choose a different reality than the convention.  I see it as my responsibility to make this decision away from the norm towards my own truth of integration.

You’re welcome to join me.

Excerpted from The Ethical Slut:

1. Long-term monogamous relationships are the only real relationships
2. Romantic love is the only real love
3. Sexual desire is a destructive force
4. Loving someone makes it okay to control his or her behavior
5. Jealousy is inevitable and impossible to overcome
6. Outside involvements reduce intimacy in the primary relationship
7. Love conquers all

*A reminder: these are the MYTHS of monogamy.  I just started reading this book by roundabout recommendation from a friend. 

I attended a Seder on Friday night with my two second families - the Richardsons and the Davises.  On Saturday night I attended Easter Vigil at my monastery, St. Mary’s.

The two ceremonies bear much similarity:

1] The Last Supper was a Seder.

2] Both events are about faith - thoughts, not actions:

With the Ten Plagues, Pharaoh wants to release the Israelites, but God doesn’t allow him to - He “hardens” Pharaoh’s heart.  God could have just let Pharaoh release them.  So apparently this ordeal wasn’t about the freedom of the Israelites from the Egyptians.

Jesus [God] was “betrayed” by Judas, but only under his request…

3] Jesus’ death and resurrection represent “the absolution of all sins.”  Very much like the Israelites learning freedom.  Both events represent a fresh start, a clearing of all debts.  During Easter we’re actually baptized again, and the priest explained how during the cycles of the Christian calendar are not about remembrance - we’re actually experiencing these events again.  The calendar is cyclical, not linear, so this “new start” of sorts is eternal.

-

Other side notes:

1] One of the stories during Seder relates how Jacob was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac to God in a “holocaust.”  It’s interesting that the Holocaust bears the same name, as the word means “intentional sacrifice.”  In a way, we could think of the Holocaust as an event very much like the life and death of Moses and Jesus.

2] In Seder we sing a song called Dayenu.  Roughly translated, this means “it would have been enough,” and it’s used in the context of God’s gifts to humanity.  I really appreciate the gratitude expressed in this song.  In my view, it’s about gift culture.

3] During the tenth plague, the Israelites paint their door frames with the blood of a lamb [when the term “passover” was coined].  The Angel of Death can’t tell them apart from the Egyptians.  In other words, the Egyptians and the Israelites are the same people…

*A response to this piece on stopping humanity’s destructive relationship with nature right now.

Currently my metaphor for humanity and it’s relationship with the planet is the addict.  When someone has an addiction, we can’t change them.  We can express to them how much we care about them.  We can ask them to change their ways out of respect for themselves or us.  We can support them and give them our attention.  We can even forcibly separate them from the substance they’re using.  But rarely do any of these approaches have beneficial outcomes.

Addicts need to hit rock bottom.  They need to learn for themselves their own truths.  Just by stopping the actions of an addict, doesn’t mean we’re stopping they’re mindset.  Which means, once we’re gone, they’ll be back to their old ways.  Our truths can’t help them.  For practical purposes, our realities are separate.

But once an addict finds some of their own truths, there’s no going back.  There’s a shift in their reality, and a new kind of energy comes into their struggles with addiction.  And finally the negative habit passes.  Friends can absolutely be of service by encouraging the efforts of the addict during their struggles.  And we can set things up for them so that they have a community to come home to once they’ve made it out.  But, at the end of the day, the ability to choose life after struggle is their own.  The potential to be free of an addiction lives in the addict, yet the struggles of an addict suck up the community surrounding them.

It can be difficult to see this potential that’s out of reach sometimes because the actions of an addict affect those around them [both human and environmental].  Sometimes we’re frustrated - “don’t they understand how much damage they’re causing to themselves and their communities?”  We have trouble empathizing.  Maybe we even think that we would behave differently if we were in their shoes.  It can be so difficult that we often distance ourselves from addicts.  ”Their problem is not my own.”  Or we fall back on the patterns above, of trying to control the addict.  ”Maybe I can change their ways.”

Addiction is a cycle.  We can place that cycle on pause, but it will eventually overcome us.  We can’t start heading back up until we’ve gone all the way to the bottom.  Pausing most of the way down or maybe even bumping us back a little only prolongs our [the planets] suffering.  Learning comes from experiences, not from anticipation.

To come into my own opinion, I think that if we prevent humanity from reaching the extremes of separation from nature and the suffering that comes with it, we’re just procrastinating.  If we bring the human race to it’s knees right now, we’re just afraid of the responsibility of being a true keystone species.  I can’t see how this decision could be made out of compassion.  I see the sacrifice of the human race to save the environment as a byproduct of the aforementioned program of separation.  I feel that it comes from a place of fear.  Because we are nature.  An individual can be a martyr, but not an entire species.  We’re just shifting the responsibilities of true maturity [a conscious planet], of actually making a decision rather than just pushing it off, to a human-like species in the distant future.

I’m curious to see what an Age of Reunion might look like.  Not an age of progress, but of process.  I feel that we need to live through the traps that we’ve laid of for ourselves rather than running away and stopping everything right now.

Things could get pretty rough.  They already are.  But if you need consolation, remember: there are limits out there somewhere.  Us environmentalists just wish we’d stop now, just because we understand that theoretically we’ll run into them someday and it might hurt.  But us conservatives like to feel those limits.   Knowing they’re out there isn’t good enough for us.  We need the experience.  You could call it living on the edge.  And they’re called limits for a reason; they can’t be transcended.  So don’t worry -when we’ve run out of drive to exhaust our environment and our spirits, we’ll stop.  Then we’ll have made our decision to start acting with more presence and the beauty will begin.

I’m less about revolutions and more about transformations.  A revolution is a circle - we end up where we started.  A transformation is a spiral - by the time we get back to the same place, it’s different.

I am at a convergence in my life [they seem to happen weekly].  I just watched a TED Talk by Brené Brown: Listening to shame.

You know, I don’t feel like shame’s really that big of a motivator in my life.  I can’t recall an experience where I felt shame.

I also don’t think I’ve really experienced jealously [example #2].

Thinking back to my development thus far, I’ve been systematically supported.  There are many people that I’m close to and many people that I respect, and none of them have ever told me I can’t do/be something.

Sure, things haven’t worked out.  I’m not afraid of failure.  But my communities are always with me.  And “failure” doesn’t actually occur in my personal experience.  Or at least, I’m not looking for specific results or outcomes.  I’m just looking to live my life in alignment with my values.  Failure can only occur over a period of time.  If I’m living in the moment, I can’t experience failure, because I can’t reference assumptions about the past or project expectations about the future.

Come to think of it, in regard to the norm, the sheer quality and magnitude of support I’ve experienced are a little eerie…

Underlying all this, spirituality has been a strong component of my upbringing [also very rare - those few that do find spirituality in median US America often don’t bump into it until their adult years].  So I don’t derive my sense of self-worth from my external environment.  I don’t believe in “earning” things, or in status.  Certainly, I see the artifacts of their myths surrounding me, the power they hold on other people, but they haven’t seemed to be able to affect my inner landscape.

I care most right now about empathy.  I want to be able to relate with others.  Feel what they’re feeling.  Not so that I can control things.  But so that I can help them express themselves [possibly to other parties that assume they’re in disagreement].  I prefer to experience myself as my community, rather than a discrete individual, and empathy is a tool that assists me in realizing this experience.

I like to get to know people at their worst.  Because people at their “best” [at the coffee shop, at a party, anything outside their day-to-day] aren’t themselves - they’re their image, their ego.

Sometimes I get frustrated when someone I care about can’t open up around me, or can’t let me into their real life.  Then I’m disposable.  Fungible.  You can chit-chat with anyone [another weekly occurrence lately - on the plane].  Without mutual-indebtedness, our relationship holds no function, has no wealth.

I also don’t believe in objectivity.  In standardization.  In my reality, emphasis is placed on the flows, on the relationships.  Every node is unique.

So, as you can see, being “vulnerable” isn’t difficult for me at all.  It’s not even a liability for me. I feel repressed and restricted when I’m not being “vulnerable.”  Maybe I could use the term truthful, expressive, or open in it’s place.

I love living in the radical, the root, the core.  These things can’t be found without “vulnerability.”

Some people that seem to know what they’re talking about call the experience I’m describing privilege.  And they’re probable using that term appropriately.  But I’m not sure where to go from there, if there might be any implications…

Please don’t take this post as imposing.  I believe that everyone lives in their own reality.  And divergent realities can coexist in my reality.  I’m not saying that any of the above does or should apply to anyone else.  But thank you for listening.

In conclusion, I seem to have some special powers [or maturity?].  I wonder how I might utilize them.

Good food is awesome!

Okay people, I have absolutely no money, but still committed to giving $12/month in perpetuity to these folks [DO IT NOW].  Why?  Because CoFED’s the coolest crew ever, doin’ amazing work.

More specifically, they support college students in building/maintaining student-run food cooperatives.  As a university-food-system-awesomizing veteran myself, it’d be unpatriotic for me not to do whatever I can to help out their world-class efforts/impact [and they are world-class].

Do you really need that $12/month?  Just like drive 50 miles less and ride your bike.  Or eat out one fewer times and throw a pot luck.  Or move out of your apartment and build a timber frame cabin by hand in your great uncle’s woods Down East Maine.  Or borrow your bud’s Netflix login.  Or get gVoice and go off your texting plan.  Or work-trade for a CSA share.  And your life will be better.  And CoFED will be able to better serve their mission.  And, you’ll be friends.

By the way, they’re looking for 212 monthly donors by April 16th or something, so got on it this minute, and spread the word.

PS - if you start realizing you love giving people money, CrewFund’s also really dope - my only other monthly donation - and this one’s just $11.  And you’ll be an early adopter.  It’s the wave of the future.