For those who occasionally visit my journal here, to see what I’m up to from time to time, you’ll probably notice that I haven’t been posting here very much lately. The reason for this is that I’ve been experimenting and exploring elsewhere, primarily on Google+.
Google+ has been very good to me. It has connected me to people and allowed me to participate within deep and meaningful conversations that I probably wouldn’t have found anywhere else. In effect, it has shown me that there are many people out there just as passionate as myself in wanting to bring about social change.
But that said though, the more I immersed myself within its conversations, the more I felt like I was losing myself, my focus. Don’t get me wrong though. This had nothing to do with the people within these conversations. It had to do with me and what I was specifically searching for and what my intuition was trying to tell me I wasn’t finding there (yet).
Economic vs Social
What made me finally realize what was wrong was reading a new book by Marina Gorbis entitled The Nature of the Future. Within the book, a chapter on money discusses the differences between economic power and social power. It even emphasizes that our primary focus on money is causing our loss of social. And more importantly, there are things that can’t be achieved by economic power alone but require social power.
When I reread some of these points the other morning, everything seemed to click and make sense, not only with regards to the Google+ conversations but with regards to the conversations with myself over the past ten years or more. The crux of the problem was this all consuming focus on money.
It All Comes Down to Money, or Does It?
But what’s wrong with that you might ask? We need money to survive, don’t we? Well that’s just what The Nature of the Future is trying to tell us. Not only is the way we work changing but the way we are rewarded for our work is changing as well. Social power or capital will let you achieve and acquire things that wouldn’t be possible with just economic power or capital alone. It is the Social Era remember.
But again this is why the conversations on Google+ felt wrong to me. People obviously wanted social change but it seemed like the heart of every conversation eventually led to figuring out a way to make money from this social change. But again I was no better than others, as this was always my focus over the years as well, primarily due to internal and external pressures. Therefore if I wasn’t figuring out a way to make money, I felt like I was societally irresponsible and unreliable.
Missing the Deeper Connection
I think this is why for the most part I couldn’t really connect with people on a deeper level because money was a blockade to creating that deeper connection. For example, I’ve repeatedly told some people that I know that I’d like to create a social group, like a guild, that connects, empowers, and inspires us all with a specific intent. For most people though, they don’t see the economic value in it, as it just seems like a waste of time since “time is money”. Even for myself, this has been a big piece of the puzzle that I couldn’t figure out and articulate to people, that is until now.
I now realize that this social company of people isn’t primarily about making money. It is the deeper social value and support that it brings to all of our lives and what we so desperately need right now to overcome these hard economic times, just as the family of Marina Gorbis had to endure while living in the harsh economy of Russia when she was younger. Even more so, it is this social aspect of our lives which gives us meaning in a seemingly meaningless and chaotic time, as we transition and try to make sense of our way from the old world to the new one.
Moving Beyond Money
What I find remarkable about this is that years ago, when I put my resume online upon Craigslist and indicated I was an online community developer seeking a caring company to help, I actually got a wave of very positive responses. Two of those responses in particular were from small companies, one a non-profit, that I connected with on an extremely deep level but they didn’t have the funds to pay me initially. At the time, I chatted with them a bit but eventually parted ways saying I need money to pay the bills. Now I realize, in looking back, I actually gave up the chance to do something socially meaningful in my life, regardless of the economic value of it.
Going forward now, I’m much more aware of this and will not determine my work on money alone. Like Marina Gorbis indicates in The Nature of the Future, there are other ways of trading and barter services that can just be as beneficial. Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m not going to work for money at all. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. For those organizations who can pay, I will be charging a substantial fee because I believe that I’m worth it. More on that in my next post and what value I believe I can bring to my future clients.