Here’s how profit works

I’ve met loads of people doing meaningless work for loads of money.
I’ve met loads of people doing meaningful work for fack all money.

My bubble I’m constantly struggling to burst is the ‘social enterprise’ space.

I know lots of people/orgs/events/funding/theory/etc working in this space.
Here’s some familiar phrases I hear/ see on a weekly basis:

• Business as a force for good
• Profit and purpose
• BCorp
• Social enterprise
• Triple bottom line

I’m frustrated by us missing the point.

Isn’t it about priorities?

If you haven’t already, you will, in time, reach crossroads.
You’ll reach many of them, big and small, in your decision making and strategy; as an individual and an organisation.

If not immediately obvious, then pausing for a moment in the mirror, will reveal which road most serves planet before profit, and which serves your profit before our planet.
(remember, you are part of life on our planet! and giving without receiving will burn you out and deplete you — not a powerful position to be in, when you want to be in service to something meaningful. Everything that is alive is taking something while giving something of equal value).

That’s it.

I see profit before planet organisations akin to a cancer; more concerned with growing and spreading than anything else — killing their host and on a trajectory to its own demise; taking the host with it.

From Quora, on ‘What is cancer?’

I think we have too many cancerous organisations in the world today. The result of people forgetting to explore their relationship with the bigger picture of life on this earth and disconnecting themselves from something that feels deeply profound.

If profit meant increased value for all life, for all time
(value = improved quality of life)
then profit would be heaven for us all.

Otherwise, it’s a distraction. Narrow minded and short sighted.

When I meet someone who sees money as just one of the forms of fuel/ energy harnessed by someone who priorities serving planet before profit, then I hope they make a lot of profit/ surplus, because they will spend it on ways that protects and regenerates the living world and meets long term and diverse needs on this planet more than it impedes them.

That’s how I understand profit.

Ugly when a person is in service of it.

Beautiful when it’s in service to a person, who is in service to planet — working for a net increase in the long term well-being of life; and not just human life.

So in the absense of a meaningful definition for profit,
Laughter and goosebumps are my success metric.

PS. When unsure; I look to non-human nature for inspiration.
It’s been around a lot longer than us. It knows how to live in harmony with itself. We don’t. Is that not why we commit suicide, suffer an epidemic of depression, cause genocide and ecocide?
I feel like we’re struggling, and it’s not the planet that needs saving — it’ll self-correct, as it always does — at the expense of our species. It wouldn’t be the first time Earth is uninhabitable for humans.
It’s us, that needs to save ourselves, and each other.

We’re also doing beautiful, inspiring things. I think this is when we’re most in touch with non-human nature, and we reconnect that with our human nature; changing the story of what the Anthropocene is.

I believe we’re the only species to ever have lived that has this level of capacity to decide what guides us.

So. What guides you?

I’ll just leave this here:

I don’t know who’s going to read this. But I care about you.