The Modern Humanitarian

James Bushong
Aug 25, 2017 · 7 min read

“How do you define purpose in life?”

It sounds simple, but in reality it is a pretty tough question to answer. Humans have contemplated the question of purpose in life for thousands of years, and the answers have been at the center of philosophical debate for just as long. The important point for the moment is to realize we all have a choice to define purpose in life- for our own individual lives as well as on a broader scale as humans. This choice of how we define purpose is the underlying theme of this article, and the culmination will be a definition of the term “Modern Humanitarian” as one possible choice for purpose of life in present day society.

When I was younger, I thought I knew the answer to all of life’s questions. It turned out that I didn’t really know much at all, but through life experiences and the good fortune of having amazing teachers in the last couple of years, it seems to me that a good answer for defining purpose in life is:

Feeling like You make a positive human impact

+

Finding ways to enjoy the journey along the way

= a Purposeful Life

Presuming this is a reasonable answer, the next question is “How might we be able to achieve this ideal for more often, and for more people?”

Well, we know that jobs and commerce are a necessary part of life. So, what if we focus on finding purpose in life through creating more purposeful jobs and commerce, and making investment and purchase decisions that support these purposeful jobs and commerce? Creating and supporting economically viable jobs with positive human impact can enable:

· Purposeful meaning in each worker’s life

· Enjoying the journey of life by way of work

· Living in a land of positive culture

In essence, this ideal is to make conscious decisions to create and support commerce and jobs that lead to purposeful lives for individuals as well as purposeful culture for all of humanity. Humans do, in fact, have the very cognizant choice of the type of jobs and commerce they support. This choice has always been the case in commerce, and the choice can change quite rapidly. The internet craze of the late 1990’s is a recent example of how quickly economic support can rise in a relatively short economic time scale, and there are numerous other examples of the proverbial “Tulip Mania” throughout the last several hundred years.

Some of these rapid behavioral changes proved lasting and changed commerce and culture forever over the long term (railroads, internet, etc) while others faded, but the main point is that behavioral support of commerce is a choice. Related to this article, making the choice to support the ideal of humans creating economies based on more purposeful jobs and commerce so that individuals, their friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens can live more meaningful lives and live in a more purposeful culture has a real chance to stick and make a wonderful future. And although each individual may not realize this at first, this cognizant choice will have the multiplying effect of creating a positive and purposeful human culture globally. This ideal forms the foundation for the term “Modern Humanitarian” that will be defined in full toward the end of this article.

Profit versus Purpose

Before we get to the full definition of “Modern Humanitarian”, it is important to refine the underlying foundation so that we can have proper guidance for specific actions that can turn ideals into reality. First, it is pretty widely accepted that for-profit capitalism in the form of product / service / economic platform based solutions are usually the best way to create sustainable commerce and jobs in general. An ominous issue in modern era capitalism is the conflict of “profit versus purpose.” It seems that all too frequently, profit takes an excessive place over purpose. Taken to the extreme, an excessive focus on maximizing profit over purpose will likely lead to one of the following outcomes:

· Most people will work for an oligopoly (picture the “Buy-n-Large Corporation” from the Disney/Pixar movie “Wall*E”)

· You (or your kids) will lose your jobs to a robot

· You (or your kids) will lose your job to the workforce in countries with questionable labor practices

To graphically illustrate this “profit versus purpose conflict”, here is technique taught in a marketing course by Seth Godin, the modern day master of marketing for positive culture — with the goal of helping to create our best possible present and future. Seth asked each student to create a 4-way axis graph that highlights what message we want our business to portray, and how our message / position is different from the “competition.” Here is what I came up with:

The easiest way to understand these plots is to first study the labels on the axis. In my plot, the bottom axis is “Business that stands only for maximizing profits.” Taken to the extreme, this is likely to create the “Buy-n-Large” oligopoly future (or other undesirable side effects mentioned) as shown on the left axis. The lower left quadrant therefore represents business models that would be considered the “Competition” to what we want our business models to represent.

We want our business models to be in the polar-opposite quadrant; with the upper axis being “Business that supports and values Positive Human Purpose”, and the right axis being “Creating Meaningful Jobs and a Culture of Positive Human Purpose.” There will be varying degrees of “support and value” relative to “amount of meaningful job/commerce creation” relating to Positive Human Purpose for different business models, and this is represented by the blue circles and the blue line in our quadrant. But in all cases, our business models are designed to be profitable product / service / economic platform based solutions, so we refer to them as “Human Capitalism.”

There is a specific reason why the shape of the blue curve in “Human Capitalism” never falls below the horizontal axis; once this line is crossed, a downward spiral towards maximizing profit at the expense of all else tends to dominate the business destiny. Human Capitalism business models always stay above the line, in our quadrant designed to create a culture that values and supports positive human purpose above maximizing profit.

With our foundation now more refined and guided by our “Human Capitalism” quadrant in the 4-way axis plot, we can begin to define specific actions to turn ideals into reality. In Human Capitalism, this means defining specific business models that value and support positive human purpose, and that create meaningful jobs to enable the workforce and consumers to live more purposeful lives while fostering a culture and economy of positive human purpose.

Putting ideals into action enables more widespread understanding of the underlying concepts, and even broader impact when more people develop business and cultural actions to evolve and grow the ideals. Two example business models we are working on that paint a vivid picture of “Human Capitalism” include Boutiq-IT and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) for Lion conservation.

Boutiq-IT is a platform for nurturing a culture of people consciously supporting people through commerce and technology. Our platform and methods of commerce will guide people to making purchase decisions based more on “to whom does my purchase support and why am I supporting them” by making it fast and efficient to (A) determine and (B) do so. Making commerce more personalized creates a ring of positive culture that is united around self-worth, purpose, and connection derived from the powerful feelings we experience when we support fellow humans with purpose.

STEM for Lion conservation seeks to transform wealth-transfer from modern economies to help solve social, economic, and environmental problems in developing regions of the World. The business model is to make STEM kits for children in the USA (and other modern economies) to assemble into useful social-impact products for developing regions of the World. This provides extremely powerful and compelling reasons for funding to the de-facto donors (parents of kids in wealthy economies); they purchase the kits so their children can learn STEM skills while building and customizing product-based solutions for social impact.

These business models are designed to make it easy to consciously support the human side of commerce, and enable everyone involved to experience the tremendous joy and self-worth that comes from selflessly supporting other people and their dreams. The creation of positive human purpose and culture manifests at the very root of these businesses, enabling all the branches that grow to value and support the same. The hope is that these examples, and the full definition of what it means to be a Modern Humanitarian found in this manifesto, will help spawn many more business models, economies, and cultures with the same core values.

© James Bushong

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James Bushong

Written by

Modern Humanitarian & Human Value Advocate

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