❦ BENEFICENCE Core Principles ❦
“For most of us, the idea that the creator encourages creativity is a radical thought.”
Core Principles
Love is lifeforce: creative energy. Another word for this is divine.
Our purpose is from where we source love.
Our intrigues, both creative and destructive, are our developmental paths.
It’s wise to evolve our dreams as our context changes and as we change.
We can notice energy beyond money: We can notice more forms of love.
We can collectively manage pools of love as common resources.
Love is intrinsically lifegiving, energizing and rewarding.
We can create technology that reflects, amplifies and liberates more love.
We can liberate each other to explore our intrigues and develop our strengths.
We are ready to reintegrate into symbiosis with nature and each other.
Each of us could be fully supported to explore our intrigues. Do you find this a radical proposal? Even in this so-called individualistic society, we tend to think we need to earn the time and space to pursue our passions, in sneaky hours at the edges of our capitalist work. Our passions are things we left behind in childhood when we had to grow up—although the science of adult developmental psychology tells us most of us haven’t really grown up; and they don’t make money—although the study of sustainable development tells us there are many more types of capital beyond money, and many of them much more real and valuable.
And yet... innovation already sometimes comes from venture capitalists fully supporting people to explore their intrigues. Could we do the same for more and more people, and find ways to weave what emerges together?
From organizational science, we know that systems change can be achieved by poking at a few inflection points, with support from a few people who are charming and highly networked within the system. From software refactoring, we know that it’s best to leave a current system running smoothly while we methodically evolve components and relationships between components, and gradually the new system makes the old system less and less relevant.
We propose in ❦ BENEFICENCE ❦ a careful set of intrigues that can be explored within and between capitalist organizations and among delightful, passion-full people to cultivate a new system that deepens, transcends and includes capitalism and makes it a very small, less and less consequential part of our ecosystem. This is a process of keeping capitalism running while gradually introducing its delicious, regenerative and abundant replacement.
We believe that through exploring our natural intrigues we can then begin to notice more and more types of contribution; and notice how we weave these contributions together into real world value creation; and therefore notice more and more the intrinsic rewards of cultivating our dreams and realities together, rather than the extrinsic reward of money. In this process we can also grow up and grow into our own flourishing; therefore navigating complex environments with more and more agency, efficacy, ease and even bliss.
We believe in organic networks of unfurling human souls as cultivators of our Mother Earth.
These principles summarize our work so far. You do not need to agree with them. While you work with BENEFICENCE or read our writing, we recommend reading through these principles once a day, at a time that feels right to you. Notice any shifts in resonance or dissonance with them.