True North Tribe
An Experiment in Gift Economics
We live in unconventional times, which call for unconventional thinking. As I wrote in my last post, Why I Am Launching a Startup in 2020, this year seems like the time to shed the dead weight of old narratives and shift paradigms across the planet. We are experiencing a barrage of crises worldwide, and it seems our time of procrastinating change is coming to an end. The Earth is burning, a water crisis is impending, political polarization is rampant, the opioid crisis rages, our health deteriorates, and our connection to the sacred is all but lost. Cheery news, right?
So why am I the Debbie-fucking-downer that is bringing all of this up? Well, I think these crises all share an underlying connection. That connection is money. The global economy is the primary engine driving our machine-civilization. Our story of money (specifically Capitalism) is the fuel for that machine and the main driving force for change on the planet. I hypothesize that if we shift our story around money, we could create a paradigm shift that we could all be on board with — a shift towards unity, abundance, and wholeness.
The Slavery of Capitalism
It’s no secret that our colonial country and capitalist economy stands on a foundation of slavery. We are a nation that is still trying to shake off the nightmare-past of inequality, war, and genocide. My question to you is, did slavery ever end? I am not referring to racism specifically (even though it’s obviously still an issue), but rather the enslavement of humanity as a whole. Consider this quote:
“When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basic of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave — one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.”
-Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics
The rat-race economy we all exist in today breeds the scarcity of which Eisenstein speaks. There is never enough money, as the bills roll in, the debt accumulates, and the lifestyle scales with the income. When was the last time you spent a day completely disconnected from all of it? No money, no email, no notifications, no news feed, no appointments to hurry off to, no to-do lists. When was the last time you honestly had free time? Not time to squeeze in your party on the weekend or your two-week vacation once per year, but actual FREE time — time that doesn’t cost you anything. Time spent merely existing, merely being. Time used to be our most abundant resource, not our most scarce. As our attention spans atrophy and our relationships dwindle, we lose our days to busyness and our years to careers.
We aren’t free. True freedom expresses itself as time abundance and the liberty to fill that time with a unique calling or vocation. Our story of money creates the opposite environment: dog eats dog, supply and demand, scarcity by design. As a species, we seem to have the technology, innovation, and capacities to solve all of the issues before us. Still, our money’s artificial scarcity is like quicksand, keeping us stuck in place. The below aphorism expresses my sentiments perfectly:
“We have bigger houses but smaller families;
More conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees but less sense;
More knowledge, but less judgement;
More experts, but more problems;
More medicines, but less healthiness;
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
But have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We’ve built more computers to hold more
Information to produce more copies than ever;
But have less communication;
We have become long on quantity,
But short on quality.
These times are times of fast foods,
But slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It’s a time when there is much in the window,
But nothing in the room.”
-author unknown
Gift Economics
As primitive homo-sapiens, our first economy was one of gifting. A tribesman hunts a deer and gives the excess meet to his community, his tribe. After all, the meat will only spoil otherwise since he cannot eat it all himself or store it for future meals. The best storage for the excess meat is in the belly of his neighbor. It is an unconditional gift, one that builds trust and tribal bonds. When his friend, the gatherer, returns with excess berries and edible plants, she remembers the hunter’s gift, and she gives her surplus without hesitation or question. This is how any egalitarian society functions, everyone shares, everyone gives. There is no place for greed or selfishness if the tribe is to survive together.
I know we don’t live in tribes anymore, and I’m not suggesting that we try and fall back to the hunter-gatherer life — it’s no longer an option on the table for 99% of us. However, the gift economy of our tribal past still resonates with each of us today. What feels better than giving or receiving an authentic gift? Despite being hijacked by corporations and consumerism, isn’t Christmas a favorite time of year because of the giving? I think our intuitions about giving are telling us something: gratitude is the ultimate currency.
What was money originally? Nothing more than a token of gratitude. If our tribesman returns victorious from his hunt and shares his venison, he might receive some furs, berries, or other gifts as a token of gratitude. The real currency here is gratitude. But what if there is no other gift to give in return as a token of that gratitude felt? Well, that is where money comes in. Money (seashells, metal coins, pretty objects) is just a placeholder. It says, “I have received gratitude from someone else, and they expressed it by giving me this token. Now I feel gratitude for the gift I have just received, so I am passing this token on to you.” The nature of this tribal transaction is one of unconditional giving and gratitude. When the giving begins, the gratitude/money flows.
I don’t think the world is so simple that we can stop all economic functions and simply give our wealth away (even though that’s what dudes like Jesus Christ demanded of their followers). Still, I do think that by reconnecting to the gift and feeling gratitude again, we can begin to find our way through this darkness of scarcity and slavery that we are all steeped in today. It’s time to rewrite the American Dream and start exploring other possibilities, questioning the status quo, and orienting ourselves towards true freedom.
True North Tribe
This week, I will open my first ever business, True North Float — a sanctuary from the world’s chaos, a place to experience true being and time abundance once again. Floatation Therapy or Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST), as it’s known in the scientific world, allows us to turn the outer world off almost entirely. The benefits of floating are numerous, and the precise reason I am opening True North Float, but that’s a post for another day. Today is about questioning our story of money, the fuel source of our machine economy and civilization. I’m incredibly excited to share Floatation Therapy with my family, friends, and community, and equally stoked to prove that we can flourish and thrive with a different narrative around money. The story of the gift.
True North Tribe is the name of our membership at True North Float. I want to re-invent the “membership business model” and create community, gratitude, and abundance. I’m experimenting to see if an alternative path to profitability exists, one where the game isn’t “zero sum,” and everyone walks away happy and better for it. I want to give away what we have created at True North Float as a gift. Our experiment is straightforward. We will allow 100 people to enjoy True North Float as a gift. There is no set price, suggested donation, or tipping pressure. We simply share the float tank’s healing power with 100 people free of charge as a gift. Once the gift has been received, and the gratitude felt (if any), then our “customers” can choose to give in return or not. We will accept any gift in return, whether it be money, trade services, heartfelt words, or any other symbol of gratitude. The key here is that the decision to give has to come from a place of gratitude, not from pressure, sympathy, or anything else.
We will also still have generic membership pricing for everyone else who isn’t part of our experimental 100. We acknowledge that everyone who chooses to come to True North Float is part of our tribe. If you want the “standard pricing,” we have that for you. If you want a good deal and a membership, we have that for you. If you wish to participate in our little gift economics experiment, we have that for you. We are limiting the trial to 100 people to track the experiment’s success or failure as simply as possible and prove it as a viable economic model vs. the traditional model. After a few months of data, we will know if it was a success or not. We will then either end the experiment or make our gift available to anyone who walks through our doors.
I hope that the powerful benefits of Floatation Therapy can be accessible to everyone, no matter of economic class or status. I hope never to turn someone away because they “can’t afford it.” I hope that the power of the gift will reinvigorate us, bringing us closer together and opening the floodgates of gratitude. If you haven’t noticed by now, Charles Eisenstein is someone I look to as a mentor and voice of reason in this turbulent time. If you are intrigued by this idea of the gift, I strongly recommend reading his book, Sacred Economics.
“We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to Earth, a new experience of being human.”
-Charles Eisenstein
I will be following up this post with an update on our True North Tribe experiment’s progress when I have some data and experience. If you want to follow along and join the True North Tribe, you can subscribe here.
