Selling Out

I’m sick of promotion, and I am giving up. Whether of the self, business, a state bird or mushroom, I am weary of promotion driven industry. Sure, we all have our opinions and share stuff that brings us joy, makes us angry, saddens our hearts, or makes us feel anything at all, justified or not. And what brings you joy and makes you angry is likely not the same as others. They will be crossover, sure, but it’s not all the same. So why do we spend so much time promoting those feelings?
 
It is a sense of mattering, belonging, being heard, and what that gets us. “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
 
There must be some form of currency that is obtained from all the promotion. We gain social currency when we are found to be “right” - whatever the hell that is – usually some form of hubris promoted without a shred of evidence. Maybe our social currency is to be labelled “smart”, an intellectual. I’m guilty of pining after that one.
 
Being “funny” is my favorite label because in the end, I can get behind it and live inside of its cozy salve forever, take my shoes off, stop taking the end of the world so seriously. Maybe humor is where love comes most alive for me?
 
We all need incentive to operate. The most valuable and simple of incentives seems to be that of physical resource exchange in the form of nation state governed currency. This money can be used to barter in future exchanges and invested to expand itself so that bartering can be done more easily. We then engage in further exchange or consumption for both survival and pleasure. Cash is the primary consumer good in this system, and many will say that money is the problem, though I don’t think this is the case.
 
It seems that belief that the cash itself provides control over the very resources that it represents without tangibly possessing any of those physical goods is the issue. It is the illusion that one who possesses the money also possesses the resources even if they have not actually bartered for them with the money. Cash is merely a place holder for a future possibility when given a chance to cash in. It is projection. What does it matter if you have six million seeds and never plant them?
 
There are people who don’t need to consider money due to inherited wealth, those who could care less about it, and those who have found a way out of its control. But for most of us, it is a major consideration in our lives. This can be sad, lonely even. It is isolating to work to obtain a piece of paper that is merely a placeholder for a potential reality.
 
In the Tao Te Ching, the idea of a creation’s purpose is viewed as building structures around nothingness. All things are inherent nothingness, and it is up to the individual to build a structure around that nothing to give it any meaning. Therefore, we give the money the meaning, and it is inherently meaningless until we come along with our hammers and nails and build it a bank. And isn’t it wild to feel that this meaning feels more vapid that the nothingness felt before the structure was built.
 
As a business owner, I obviously need money to operate, and I started this business to make money on my own terms and with my own agency, to hopefully be able to create more potential opportunity for a projected reality gained through cash exchange. And you have supported me in some way throughout that process, and I am very grateful that. Thanks for being here.
 
Now, for the giving up. The selling out.
 
I will cease to use this newsletter as an advertisement or ask for money and will no longer promote making money in the form of this or that is for sale, etc. I realize this was never an overly promotional newsletter to begin with but receiving newsletters from companies that I like with “gimme gimme” promotions is tiresome. And I won’t contribute to that noise or exhaustion for you or for me. Sure, you will hear from me, the business owner, and on some level that is promotion – this is the self-promotion we all do. A “remember me? I am here. I exist. You exist. Let’s chat. Hi, mom.” Anytime we discuss our craft, we promote or denigrate ourselves to some degree, and additionally, we remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder regardless of intention or self-promotion.
 
This digital communication will become a space for you to (hopefully), learn, read, communicate, laugh, be inspired, cry, and so on. There will not be news about products or sales, just a simple reminder that a website exists if you choose to purchase something or attend a class. I will still include dates for upcoming classes for those of you who want to continue the education process, but I will not be flashy or promotional about this.
 
You may wonder, “why the change? And why make a big existential deal out of it?”
 
That is a fair question because it is rather ridiculous to make a deal out of it. What I experience from a business operations standpoint is that I am having to unwind the programming of what it means to run a successful busines to begin to better connect, create community, and create more than simply a combine for money.
 
So what is the incentive here?
 
Kindness.
 
I am going to experiment with you, my clients, customers, supporters, friends, family, etc. on how to run a business from a place of promoting kindness. I invite you to join in the experiment with whatever engagement level you wish. I do not know what all of this means, and I fully believe I will muck about from time to time. I also know that this will be a much lovelier existence. And what is existence if not a curiosity to play with experience the parts you want to experience.
 
In the digital space, we are constantly being inundated with promotions, and those promotions most often ask you to give something away to the promoter. I realize that I am essentially my business and that on some level this type of promotion is inevitable, and that is fine. However, to operate from a promotional position of merely driving sales is not a reflection of kindness. It reflects scarcity mindset, and scarcity does not exist with kindness.
 
Scarcity mindsets are what economies are built on. We hoard, stash, take more because of famine, war, etc, but that’s all fake. Societal disaster is created by an oligarchy run society that has inherent class structures.
 
Kindness is all that our communities need to operate efficiently, ethically, with joy, equity, and equality. Sure, we need the skills that go along with completing tasks as well, which are all the easier to learn and share when operating from this abundance mindset that is created in kindness. Kindness can combat the class structures designed by nation states to oppress and control the masses. It is a tall ask, I understand, because how can it even work?
 
I’m not writing to act as though I understand the “destroy, build new” process that would have to occur to create a society of kindness. I am merely suggesting in this tiny little digital space that I will offer kindness. I will promote kindness when I write to you from here forward. And will my lack of promotion of goods and class signups be good or bad for business? Who knows!
 
What I do know is that kindness is an infinite resource with a reciprocal growth mechanism. The more kindness you supply, the more it supplies you. What I don’t mean is that you are kind, then someone else is kind to you, and ultimately, you were just doing it to get it returned. What I do mean is that when you express kindness, you feel that kindness also. You get to experience your own kindness to others, and that in turn, fills your kindness stores often to a higher level than before.
 
I know this can be a very intangible resource to think about. We don’t necessarily see the kindness, though it may be given through a tangible form. It certainly doesn’t look tangible when we think of it filling our stores, but I do believe this could potentially be proven empirically. This may have to do with studying the ways in which we produce different chemicals. If meditation increase our empathy center, the 5-HT2A, which in turn causes us to be less angry, I will bet that with some neuroscience research, we could show a literal increase in kindness through its expression to others.
 
Kindness is the best thing we can give, in whatever way seems most kind given any situation. Since the giving of it is reciprocal, we should never view giving it as reciprocal. Don’t view it as “instead of” but as “first”. First, become kind.
 
Purely transactional will remain and that is fine. We have businesses to run in this post-modern capitalist wasteland! And what if, we all belonged to each other in the process? Isn’t it the mycelial way anyhow? Maybe it is the human way as well?
 
I hope you will join me in conducting research on kindness because if you do, you will also receive that same kindness. Then we won’t just be researching kindness, we will be living in it.

~Sam