The next social and industrial order has more to do with abundance and trust than with scarcity and stickiness. The key assets are trusted relationships.
Here we'll build key elements of the Relationship Economy, playing out what it means for business, culture, society, governance, education and more, because its effects will be far-reaching.
If you want to dig deeper, I run a private workgroup that is exploring this future. For more info, see "About REX" in the menus above.
One of the two REX Fellows, Marti Spiegelman, is gifted in connecting executives to greater consciousness. Marti and I collaborate often, including a workshop we’re developing that melds the ideas of the Relationship Economy with indigenous technologies of consciousness. It’s a fun journey.
In this sequence of three short video conversations (go to the post’s page for all three), we take on the topic of ownership, as we tend to see and use it in Western society, and contrast it with the ancient notion of membership, as it has been passed to us through time from more ancient peoples.
We start with Marti introducing the idea of relational consciousness, which I then compare to the notion of the Ownership Society, a popular policy meme.
Spend a few minutes with Jordan Grader or Leah Perlman and you’ll discover why The Happiness Institute is bound to be a special place.
They’ve just opened the doors to HI and are still discovering who shows up and how they’ll use their space, which used to be a TV studio. It’s in its chrysalis phase, on the way to being a happiness-centered open university. Or something like that.
On Saturday, January 7, I’ll be exploring the Relationship Economy at HI from 10am to 4pm. In the spirit of happiness, you won’t be staring at my talking head the whole time. We’ll gnaw on some thorny questions together, hear from others with groovy, resonant ideas and mix it up, all with the goal of expanding our collective understanding of this Relationship Economy critter. We’ll also be recording a bunch, to create some media artifacts for use later.
Attendance maxes out at 70; the cost is a lunch fee. The Facebook invite page is here.
About a year ago, I watched two videos within days of each other. Their cumulative effect gave me an important aha! moment.
The first was recommended by Arthur Brock during a really interesting conversation. He warned me that the video quality was poor, and boy, is it ever: picture bad VHS with weak sound, and the content is a bearded fellow who is waxing philosophically about nature. I almost tuned out, till I tuned in. Then I started hearing how Paul Krafel went around the Northern California hills near his home with a trowel and some awesome groundrules, which helped him heal the landscapes with simple, steady effort. Here’s that video.
The second video I happened across a few days later. It was a ten-minute segment of an hour-long documentary about the Loess Plateau, a part of inland China the size of Belgium and composed primarily of a fertile but very erosive soil called Loess.
The documentarian, John Liu, visited this area over a ten-year period. At the start, the area is dusty and brown; its residents are poor and leaving. Then, at a scale completely different from Paul Krafel, the local government uses principles similar to Krafel’s to heal the countryside. Here’s the whole documentary, so you can see for yourself how that story ends.
Seeing the second film got me to understand the first. Both together got me thinking two big things:
What are the groundrules they were using, and can they be generalized?
What would it be like to work in the world that way all the time? To create upward spirals wherever you go?
That’s the inspiration for this notion of Upward Spiral, which we’ll be revisiting here often.
Then I started noticing more initiatives like those that had inspired me.
John Holt‘s book Instead of Education is a 50:50 proposition. Half of it is hopelessly outdated. The Internet has made possible (and insanely cheap and easy) so many of the things that Holt describes as flimsy shoots of possibility in 1976. Educational materials are now abundant; getting together to do stuff, virtually or in person, just keeps getting easier. I wish Holt had lived to see what we have at hand now.
The other half of Holt’s book has great insights, starting with the difference between what he calls S-chools and s-chools, as well as T-eachers and t-eachers. The capitalized versions are compulsory. They are coercive. They tell, they require, they compel. And in doing so, they begin to stamp out the freedom and curiosity that are natural in kids.
The point I had missed that Holt makes elegantly is that small-S schools can be highly structured and demanding. You just have to opt into them of your own free will. Think of a martial-arts dojo. The work is likely to be grueling, but you’re there because you want mastery in that art. Lower-case schools and teachers are essential parts of the educational landscape.
It’s coercion that breaks the system’s natural beneficial powers.
We tend to assume the school system as it is and proceed to try to fix it.
I went through it, half public, half private. I survived, and I’m pretty curious. Surely this is the only way to organize education.
But it isn’t. Once you start to look at the system we’ve built and the assumptions it contains, it’s a bit of a mind-blower how off it might be. The particular angle I take on it in this video is about scarcity and abundance.
I’m not surprised kids cause trouble in school and grades aren’t rising. The system is broken.
For a video from a teacher who is working wonders inside the system, watch this.
Remember the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Wikipedia is a bit like that. Seemingly overnight, this gleaming monolithic being has sprouted in our midst.
It’s the seventh most viewed site? It has over 3.6 million pages in English? All done without venture capital? Crazy!
Wikipedia tells us a few things about where we are as a society. Here’s my take; I’d love to hear yours.
The genesis of my Relationship Economy thesis was a realization, back around 1994 when I was writing Esther Dyson’s monthly tech newsletter Release 1.0, that the word “consumer” made me really uncomfortable.
I followed that energy, and it proved invaluable. Ideas kept unfolding from that initial premise. I began to notice the consumerization of so many spheres of human activity, from how we educate our children to how we elect our governments and how we pray to our Gods. I paid attention to the language of marketing to consumers, to the metaphors and business models that had spun out as a result.
Last night I arrived in Curitiba, where I have two goals: attending the conference on innovative cities and scouting for venues, resources and people to involve for a couple events I’ll run here this October.
Brazil’s motto, which you can read on their flag, is Order and Progress, and Curitiba is one of the big examples of recent progress. Over the last 30 years, this city has reinvented itself on many levels.
Curitiba’s famous ex-mayor Jaime Lerner keynotes the conference, which looks like it’ll cover a wide range of issues that cities face, with emphasis on how they’re solving problems creatively. There’s sub-conference on social networks, at which I’ll do a 15-minute TED-style talk on Friday morning.
As to the events I’m running, I’m looking for:
Activitsts, entrepreneurs, innovators, connectors, artists and others from this area
Interesting venues for our meetings (two groups: one 15 people, the other 45)
One person, likely younger, who can coordinate activities on the ground here
A local artist to design a couple of logos for the events
A local source of gifts for my attendees
A local T-shirt printer who can silkscreen those logos on nice tees
If you’d like to hear about this REXpedition from me live, I’m doing two talks this week. One you can listen to; the other you can attend, if you’re in the Bay Area.
The first is a Zipcast tomorrow at 1pm Pacific.
What’s a Zipcast? It’s SlideShare’s answer to webinars. To participate in this one tomorrow, click on this link a few minutes before it starts. By the way, I’ll be in terrific company: the three Zipcasts before me are with Andrew McAfee, Jake Wengroff and BJ Fogg.
The second talk this week is a live one, in the old face-to-face mode, on Thursday evening at a nifty venue in the East Bay. Here’s the invite text:
Thursday, February 24th 7:00pm – 10:00pm
The NeXus and COREcommons present…
Relationship Economics Navigating Massive Change Together Jerry Michalski Founder, The REXpedition
Presentation/Dialog/Networking
The NeXus
1414 Harbour Way South, #1010
Ford Point at Marina District
Richmond, CA 94804 Directions
Free Tea and Secure Parking
The next social and industrial order has more to do with abundance and trust than with scarcity and stickiness. The key assets are trusted relationships.
In such a world, whom you trust and who trusts you are primary assets. You’ll choose the product (or vote for the candidate) that people you trust recommend, from among the abundant choices.
Here we’ll build key elements of the Relationship Economy, playing out what it means for business, culture, society, governance, education and more, because its effects will be widespread and durable.
This is the Relationship Economy, and we’ll be exploring it together.
