Challenging the Monetary Monolith 🏦: A New Way to Value Life’s Moments 🌟💭
When I was introduced to the work of Buckminster Fuller in my mid-twenties, I did not know the trajectory my life would take because of this.
I was ambitious. I wanted the traditional trappings of success—financial wealth. Status. Travel.
Something about Bucky’s work, expressed by example throughout his life, stirred something profound inside.
I have always been a force for justice, the child who threw herself between the bully and the bully’s victim. I did this instinctively, never contemplating that my physical smallness might endanger me.
I was a loner. Times spent as a child in forests and fields, flooded with romantic images of flowing dresses and beauty, always in awe of the trees and plants. Bare feet my preference. A book or pen close by.
The edges of everything drew me forward. Those unexplored places. Both physically and in my imagination. I believe I flew in my sleep high over the roofs of the houses. This view from above was so real to me.
Into this fertile ground of social justice warrior, nature child, and visionary pioneer landed the work of Bucky Fuller.
The perfect combination of nerdishness – geometry and maths, physics and architecture – I landed with glee, entranced by learning what Bucky called Nature’s coordinate system. My sharp mind was captivated.
Life did not turn out as I expected. Does it ever? My ambition was tempered severely, to the point of depression, as I cried to the void for decades – what was wrong with me?
Of course, nothing was wrong with me. I was going through all of the slings and arrows of life, the whole crucible experience, where everything that was not needed for my work was obliterated. For some time, I did not trust the ground beneath my feet. All – all – of my beliefs were challenged. Most of them I let go. I look back now and wonder how I ever held those beliefs.
There is a perfection to this story that I shudder to acknowledge, as the journey to here was incredibly painful for many years.
Yet to finally, after five decades, reach a place absent apology for the stand I hold is, in a sense, a reclamation of the young child who threw herself between the bully and the victim without a second thought.
I have been going through a similar but far less violent experience these last few months. I do so admire how life takes us and shakes us down. A plan far more significant than my brain can conjure.
Two values have defined me from the beginning. The quest for truth and the stand for integrity. Neither of these is an easy path, as truth is contextual, partial, and emergent, and integrity asks from us things, at times, that can threaten our existence and identity.
My love of knowledge, curiosity and keen mind have been my strongest tools. For years, I was told my mind was too strong and needed to be tempered instead to allow for feelings. And while learning to feel fully and silence the mind is a great practice, disqualifying my mind – my gift – is to disqualify what makes me me.
My mind and intellect are my strengths. My love of edges and pioneering takes me to places few go. My social justice impulse has me fight. And Buck’s work insists that I understand the whole – always.
Over these last few months, I have felt that my work in Syntropic World might still inhabit the space of polishing the guard rails on the Titanic, hoping the boat will not sink.
Am I a strong enough stand for a world with a future? And if not, what must I do towards the change I seek to support?
The answer has been no. I need to be a stronger stand. And yes, it is time to up-level my work.
But how? And what?
These questions have been circulating in my being for many months.
Simultaneously, I have been working on the Synergistic Accounting tool – creating it into an application that allows a beautiful user experience. For those unfamiliar with Synergistic Accounting – it is based on Bucky’s 12 Degrees of Freedom, and its purpose is to change humanity’s relationship to value – what we value, how we value, what we measure and how we exchange.
As one Synergistic Accounting student said – to remember the divine value of everything. (Thank you, Eimer.)
The team working with me on this asked me to consider the question.
What is the currency of value?
For the last 15 years, I have read wide and far on money, economy, global finance, debt, capitalism, and currency – inspired by my broken relationship with money, wealth and value. Those books and articles continue to be my bedside reading.
Having worked with the Synergistic Accounting tool for eight years and seen how it transforms human relational dynamics while being an incredible personal development tool, I was unsure how to answer the question – what is the currency of value?
But I knew with certainty that the world we must bring to life would flat-out refuse to convert everything to a monetary or token exchange value. The moment we attempt to commodify precious moments, love, and beauty – the weightless, immeasurable qualities that make a life valuable – we are again lost in the very structure of everything that says yes to the exploitation of life and our future.
Many times, the currency of value is the experience we value itself. Not convertible. Never able to be commodified. Never reducible.
The world we have now is a world that converts everything to a monetary value with a growth imperative, which is in the final throws of collapse.
Into this milieu of my inner exploration and multi-faceted inquiry, a field ripe for seizure – I watched this video recorded a few weeks ago with Daniel Schmachtenberger, a person I admire as one of integrity and wisdom. Daniel is speaking at the close of the Impact Summit in Sweden.
He spoke to me, confirming all I had been feeling, thinking and sensing.
It is time for me and Syntropic World to step up and out. For me to be a more explicit stand for the world I hold possible.
As Bucky said in the 1980s – it is touch or go if we will make it. I suspect it is more to the negative side now than the positive. We may not make it.
But I affirm that the work I have started – a culmination of all of those slings and arrows of life – is on track. My sensing around the Synergistic Accounting tool, money and the currency of value is essential.
The earth beneath my feet has shifted. I have shifted. I don’t know which one came first, yet the way is clearing. I can see the beginnings of a path. And the right people are showing up.
If we apply the principles of a Syntropic Enterprise, which has us attune to the Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea we are stewarding to life, and seek only the next step, knowing that when we are on path, the people and opportunities will open that were not there previously, then I feel strongly I am on path.
I feel restored to ground in my being, the itch of being off path and needing a recalibration gone.
The wheels are turning. I hope you continue with me and Syntropic World on this journey. We have important work to do, with urgency requiring all consideration and slowness to get started so we can move ever faster.
And an unapologetic commitment. The one Daniel asked for at the close of his talk.
Let me know if you are in. Reply to this email.
