image courtesy of slash___

Saturday I attended a workshop led by Pamela Slim (author of Escape from Cubicle Nation) and Jonathan Fields (author of Career Renegade) designed to help budding entrepreneurs step through the process of turning our passions into viable business models.

As Pam and Jonathan shared their hard-won expertise and helped us evaluate our ideas, I started think how new this was. Ten years ago, or even five, how many big selling authors would take an entire day to educate fledgling entrepreneurs and possible competitors? It’s not like they did this for free, of course—each of us paid a fee to be there—but still, the monetary rewards seemed modest for a whole day out of both of their lives.

Moreover, these two writers have a wide overlap in the audiences they serve. They are each others’ competition. And yet they chose to work together.

From a traditional business standpoint, this looks kind of crazy. But from the strange brew of internet accessibility, the critical-condition economy, and the gnawing questions many of us have about the value of a life dedicated to corporate service, a new way of doing business is emerging.

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image courtesy of ZeHawk

Several months ago, I bought a new brassiere. This is no ordinary bra—it is Italian, hand-made, and beautifully engineered. It cost about 5 times what I normally spend on bras. I call it The Magic Bra.

At the time, I felt very decadent dropping 3 figures on a single undergarment. The first few times I wore it, I showed the hot pink and gold lace appliqued straps to my friends and said, “Can you believe I spent so much money on this?” I had never bought such a fine item of lingerie before, and I felt pampered and gorgeous every time I put it on.

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Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a huge, controversial book which tells the story of a group of creative people who go on strike to protest their treatment by the rest of society. Widely regarded as a right-wing screed, it’s spawned millions of college libertarians and inspired countless debates about the proper relationship between individuals, business, and government.

Those on the political left generally disdain it for the harsh attitude it takes toward the poor—that they are mostly lazy, easily manipulated, and not all that bright—and toward the intellectual elite, who Rand characterizes as bitterly hell-bent on bringing down any great achievements. And it’s true that Rand’s philosophy goes a bit far in many ways, especially in her descriptions of “the masses” and her idolization of industry. But there’s a great deal of truth and beauty in this book as well, and that’s what I’d like to explore.

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Last fall, I wrote a piece about money’s place in our world, and how we must transform it to get to the elegant future we want. I sent this piece to my friend, the great economic thinker and writer Richard Kotlarz, and he wrote back to me a while later. Here’s a brief excerpt of our correspondence:

Me: In school we all learned that economies started with bartering—I’ll trade you my red stones for your black ones. But past a certain level of complexity, simple trading didn’t work well enough. So we invented placeholders—money—to make it a little easier to get what we needed.

RK: To call money a “placeholder” can be thought of itself as an empty linguistic placeholder that overlooks the fact that money is pregnant with life.  Witness how it has worked its way into every material and spiritual niche of existence in this world. There is no single definition of money.  In the earthly realm, asking “what is money?” is like asking “what is life,” “what is God” or “what is spirit”? There are no placeholders for those terms. It behooves us to impart of money living images that bespeak something of the burgeoning power it wields in life.

I read his response at the time, but it actually didn’t sink in until the other night. I was in bed, drifting off, when suddenly I sat up with a sentence in my head: “Money is a creative force!” And I realized that this placeholder stuff is not only inaccurate, but harmful! Let me explain ...

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image by David Paul Ohmer

Last Friday, Sarah, Rich, and I went to hear a talk by Kona Goulet, Director of Development for EnlightenNext, entitled “Keeping the Faith: Holding to our highest ideals in challenging times.” The talk was held at the beautiful and noisy Rubin Museum of Art, and Kona started by quoting Gloria Steinem: “We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.”

She then said that she sees our current economic crisis as primarily a crisis of ethics, and I couldn’t agree more. Many people end up in dire financial straits because they don’t have any choice—American health care system, I’m lookin’ at you!—but this crisis isn’t about them. From the individuals blithely living far beyond their means to the credit-lending agencies that egged them on to the banks that leveraged each dollar far beyond reason, this crisis is all about ethics. Our economic problems are systemic, and they also reflect the morality of all of us who participate in them. How often do we put our money where our mouths are?

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We had another house meeting here in Stockbridge, MA last week. This one was organized by Obama’s administration to help people familiarize themselves with the economic stimulus package. Twenty people came. We watched a brief video by Governor Tim Kaine answering some questions submitted by e-mails about the plan and then went through a brief overview of the main parts/ largest items on it, which was a lot more informative.

I have to say, I was a bit cynical at first about what the purpose of this meeting could be and what difference it would make. But the experience taught me a lot about the power of community organizing. There was a strong sense of empowerment as people who otherwise do not know much about each other took the responsibility to inform themselves, to decipher what this Economic Recovery plan means, and how we can educate and stimulate ourselves to participate in a new order of community and business development.

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This week we focused on how we can move from where we are to where we want to be, an integral worldview that allows us to harvest the wisdom of culture and history.

• Monday we talked about what that integral worldview is about, and how we can embrace it.
• Tuesday we celebrated our new President’s inauguration and launched 11 Questions, a new feature in which you, gentle reader, tell us about the worldchanging projects you’re working on, and we share your story on the site.
• Wednesday we looked at Microserfs, and how, out of the detrius of pop culture, its characters managed to construct family and purpose.
• Thursday we dove into some good news on the environmental and activism fronts.

Today I’d like to share this video on Kiva, the microlending network which allows folks like you and me to lend money to entrepreneurs in developing countries. This video follows one $25 loan from where it’s lent in London to where it is used and repaid in Cambodia. Kiva’s huge success comes from empowering lenders to help in small chunks that add up to big change in the lendees’ lives.

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

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image by AlbySpace

What began as a simple question—Hmm…I wonder if Greendisk would recycle my spent lithium ion laptop battery?—led to a nearly two-hour phone conversation with Greendisk’s enthusiastic and visionary CEO, David Beschen. I found out much more than I had anticipated. Greendisk is organized in a way that cooperates with existing businesses and non-profits to make electronic waste recycling a seamless last step in the life cycle of techno trash—computers, VCR’s, laptops, cell phones, CD’s, peripherals, VHS tapes, batteries, etc.

Besides answering my question, David explained to me how Greendisk puts the spotlight on the first “R” of the Waste Hierarchy (Reduce), and has created a structure to handle discarded electronic waste while not creating anything material. Greendisk accepts a large variety of techno trash, the most extensive list of any e-waste recycler in the US.  They are skilled at directing this trash from individual and commercial sources to be sorted and consolidated into component parts.

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image by Noël Zia Lee

Started earlier this year in San Francisco, Carrotmob is a community event that brings consumers and stores together to help businesses go greener. The event operates as a reverse boycott, where shoppers spend money at a specific business which has committed to spend a percentage of the day’s proceeds on improving its energy efficiency in lighting, heating, cooling, refrigeration, etc.

What really drew me to the Carrotmob model is the way that it brings members of a community together to effect real, grass-roots-level change. Of course individual lifestyle choices are important—we all need to be more mindful and less wasteful—but changing our lifestyles can only get us so far. Deeper changes are required, and we must come together to make them. Carrotmob seems to me like a really fun and positive way to do this.

For the last few months our small, volunteer team has been working to bring Carrotmob to NYC and I’m very happy to announce that the first New York Carrotmob event will be taking place on Sunday, December 14th, from 12-3 pm at Tarzian Hardware in Park Slope, Brooklyn (193 7th Avenue, between 2nd and 3rd Street). Tarzian has committed to spending 22% of the day’s revenues on eco-improvements!

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As I watched the Presidential debates the other night, my head spun. Seemed like every other thing out of the candidates’ mouths was a either very high number I couldn’t relate to, or some variation on, “That’s just not true, Senator!” And I’m sure there will be statements that inspire more head-scratching at tonight’s Vice Presidential debate.

In my attempts to make sense of it all, I started looking around online for answers, and I found a few great sites that help cut right through the rhetoric and spin.

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You might be wondering why we are featuring a book called The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle on a website about addressing environmental problems and creating a magnificent future. But if you have ever cracked open this thick, big-hearted book, then surely you know that it is about much more than frugality—it’s about living intentionally and creatively.

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My dear friend and former housemate Tim Murphy is in the midst of making Money: The Movie, a documentary about where money came from, what it means, and where we must take it next.

From what I’ve seen so far, I believe this incredible film can and will cause a massive shift in how we see money and our relationship to it. Watch the trailer and let us know what you think.

image by brendan.wood

I have to go to work.

Why?

Because I need more money.

Why?

So I can afford to buy what want.

Why?

So I can be happy.

One of my favorite ways to get to the bottom of an idea is to wield the word “WHY?” like a 2-year-old. Why? Because it gets me straight down to the heart of the matter. And the heart of our belief about money is this: most of us think that money leads to happiness like A leads to B.

But is this true? And if it is true, how true is it? Does more money always mean more happiness than less money? Or is the relationship more complicated?

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image by greefus groinks

Yesterday we discussed how many of humans’ economic activities tie profit to suffering, and how the difference between economic or dollar value and real value makes that possible. But what if we could change the economic rules to encourage good design, zero waste, and human health and happiness? If helpful activities result in profit and harmful activities result in loss, then making the leap we need to make will become a no-brainer. Ordinary human greed becomes a force for creation instead of destruction.

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image by greefus groinks

Several weeks ago on Worldchanging I read about a project called Hero Reports, which captures data about people performing acts of heroism—whether it’s an everyday favor like giving a subway seat to an elderly woman, or something more dramatic like helping someone in medical trouble. Captured stories are plotted on neighborhood maps with the help of Google.

I had the pleasure of meeting the creator of Hero Reports, Alyssa Wright, not too long after reading about her project, and we hit it off immediately. In our conversation she told me about the goals of her project: to counterbalance the culture of fear we live in, to foster a sense of neighborliness, and even to possibly create economic value for acts of kindness.

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