One of my personal occupations now is figuring out how to make a living doing what I believe is most important to do and to find joy in that process. Right now I am giving most of my time to worker-bee matters at a local university where I spend my day searching for funding for faculty research. I am wasting my creative energy, my intent in living, at something that brings me a paycheck, a medical plan, and a retirement account. So, I am trying to reinvent myself to continue “working” at home so that as I age, my mind and spirit can continue to contribute to the culture that I believe we are capable of creating together—a culture that values the ground under our feet, and that while we are in our virtual lives together, we thoughtfully breathe the sweet air, notice the plants and animals that enrich our lives, and sink our feet deeper into the Earth, and DEFEND IT. What are we creating with the fantastic tools that the Internet and hand-held devices now make possible? Everywhere I see the creative energy that EVERYONE of us has inside of us wasted on low-level and spurious sound bytes on social marketing sites where very few people are sharing their best ideas and heart-felt thoughts. Here is a very thoughtful interview with Seth Godin who has devoted his life to exploring these ideas and has contributed to society by creating tools like Kickstarter, a crowd-sourcing site for artists to raise funds for their creative ideas. His point is that we are reaching too low when the tools everyone has access to (we are our own publisher, marketer, etc.) make the potential to draw people to an idea or take action, or use something we create that promotes the social good, a reality. Godin points out that we still think in hierarchical patterns, the industrial pecking order, rather than the reality that the net has created – anyone can create now, not just the people on the New York Times best seller list, or the Fortune 500 companies, etc. Yet, most of us have not noticed. In regards to creating a nation that leads on climate change and retools its very foundation to utilize non-carbon based energy sources, this realization is critical. Our leaders and citizens are locked into the belief that this is not feasible. The reason for our lack of vision is that our system is fundamentally set up to bring huge profits to a few individuals for something that is a part of the human commons – access to energy. So its up to us to create the new economy and new sources of energy and free ourselves from the system that is an energytocracy. Many people have been working on this for a long time but they have drawn few people to their ideas. How can we each help market these ideas so they become more widely embraced?
Susan Feathers 