Theory of Indivisibility: Transitioning Away from Capitalism
This post corresponds with Episode 19 of my podcast Theory of Indivisibility, where I talk about my journey as an entrepreneur and how to transition away from capitalism. Be sure to check it out on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Stitcher!
My Theory of Indivisibility has two elements: A Declaration and a Chart that compares elements found in social systems that produce division with elements found in social systems that produce indivisibility.
Theory of Indivisibility declaration:
“I truly believe that we as humans have the capacity to live in harmony with nature and one another. I truly believe that we have the capacity to live Indivisibly. It is my belief that the true leverage point for living Indivisibly is in the recognition that our current social, political, and economic systems are intrinsically designed to produce the perpetual dysfunction that we continue to experience because they are rooted in Power-Over ideals, beliefs, and norms.
It is also in the recognition that there is no one to blame. Power-Over systems were designed and integrated into society approx. 10 thousand years ago based on the communication, problem-solving, and governance tools that had evolved up to that point in time. Just like they had no way to drive cars back then because the skill & know-how had not evolved yet, they also had no better way to manage population growth and the perceived scarcity of resources because the skill and know-how had not evolved yet. That is no longer the case. We currently live during an era where many people possess the necessary skills to live Indivisibly and there is an abundance of resources available to help more people obtain them. However, by no fault of their own, most people are still mentally trapped within the indoctrination of Power-Over Systems Paradigms.
In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge states that ‘structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Once we can see them and name them, they no longer have the same hold on us.’
I created the Theory of Indivisibility podcast to help more people learn to see & name the inherent oppressions within social systems rooted in Power-Over and control and the ways that we all perpetuate them. I believe that as more people learn this, they will begin to intentionally make changes in their lives in an effort to organize and live in ways that inherently produce equity, sustainability, liberation & unconditional love for themselves, the environment, and other human beings.”
One of the things that I think makes my work unique is that it’s based on both theory and practice, because I am both an academic and a serial entrepreneur.
My entrepreneurial journey began in 2003, when I adopted the mindset of becoming a millionaire by 30, an attitude echoed in the song 50 Cent dropped that year “Get Rich or Die Trying”. I opened my first business at the age of 22. It was a clothing store called One Clothing One Culture. With the help of a local bank, family and friends, a business plan and a business partner, I experienced the successes and failures familiar to entrepreneurs. We encountered shady business practices when faced with high paywalls between us and decision-makers that would make or break our clothing store. When I sought help from similar businesses back in my home town of Philly, the business owners didn’t want to share their insights with me. Perhaps they saw me as competition.
During the time that I ran the clothing store, I also decided to go back to school to work on my master’s degree in social work. A few years later, I was introduced to network marketing or multi-level marketing (i.e. Amway, Mary Kay, etc.). I signed up for a company called ACN, which was a phone company. This was a time in the early 2000s, when people still used home phones to make long-distance calls. I thought this industry would help me reach my goal of becoming a millionaire faster. So I transitioned away from the clothing store and put all my time, effort, and energy into building this ACN network. It was a great experience to travel the country, meet people, and I learned so much during that time. Building this business led me to drop out of grad school.
As time went along, I began to realize that the other independent sales reps didn’t have the same drive, resources, or access that I had. I saw a lot of burnout, and after selling people on this idea that they would be able to make a lot of money, and watching them lose more time and money than they gained, I began to feel guilty for asking them to sign up on my team.
Although some might argue in the network marketing industry that there’s no need to feel guilty since “everyone has the same opportunity to succeed,” I saw what I thought were predatory behaviors, and it no longer felt good to me when people would sign up to be part of my multi-level marketing business because the odds were that they would fail. It didn’t feel good to me, so I walked away.
In the mid-2000s, I noticed the real estate market was rising. Flipping homes became popular. I saw friends selling mortgages and making tens of thousands of dollars every month. That’s when I thought, “That’s what I need to do to become a millionaire by 30!”
I initially experienced success in the real estate industry, but again, witnessed shady practices such as putting people into adjustable-rate mortgages, which spurred the foreclosure crisis and led to the housing crash in 2008. The way the industry works is, the riskier the loan, the more money there is to be made in sales commisions.
I personally was not willing to participate in the shady practices that predicated success in that market, and my conscience would not allow me to be involved in that, so once again, I walked away.
From there, I got into real estate investing, moved from Philly to Atlanta, and right before the housing market crashed, I purchased a home and a rental property as well as invested in a commercial property project. When the market crashed, I lost a lot of money.
Keep in mind, at the same time that I was working my way to becoming a millionaire, I was also engaging in community work like being a Big Brother mentor and volunteering for summer camps. I’ve always had a heart for children and youth in inner cities.
After the housing market crashed, I went into teaching elementary school and went back to school to earn my master's and doctorate. While teaching, I licked my wounds for a little bit before eventually getting back into the business world. While teaching I also started a non-profit after-school program outside Atlanta. During my 5 year stint as a teacher, once again, I began to recognize aspects of the education system that didn’t sit well with me because I felt like they hurt both students and teachers. So in 2012, I walked away from teaching intent on starting my own school rooted in unschooling principles.
In 2014, while working as a real estate agent, I had a light-bulb moment, an idea for a mobile app. I dove in with both feet, learned how to be a CEO of a tech startup, how to develop an app, and invested a lot of time and energy into getting this mobile app built. I dumped all my savings and retirement into this app idea, and again encountered multiple barriers to success.
Certain mobile app engineers that we hired drained money while building the app only to find out they couldn’t complete it. Eventually, the app was out on the market, but without capital, we couldn’t continue to iterate and improve it. I found out the hard way that hundreds of thousands of dollars are needed to get a tech startup off the ground and produce a viable app. Since I did not have that type of capital, and wasn’t able to raise it from family and friends, again, after lots of lessons learned, this idea became yet another step along my journey.
The final thing I ventured into that I want to share with you is forex — foreign exchange. Similar story…I got into it, and I know people who have experienced success with foreign exchange, but it just didn’t work for me. I trusted someone to do the investing for me, and ended up losing $5,000. I’ll spare you the details.
Ultimately, I tried many different industries and pursued success at many angles, each time finding that ambition was not an indicator of true, long-term success. There were always major risks, barriers, and shady business practices that I ran into.
What stands out to me the most from my entrepreneurial experience is the opportunity cost.
The tangible and intangible things that I lost pursuing my dream of becoming a millionaire.
I think about the time I lost that I could have spent cultivating deeper bonds with family and friends. I think about the money lost personally and by those who invested in my ventures, the time that I lost that I could have invested in my mental and physical wellbeing. And lastly, I think about the time lost that I could have used to cultivate my innate gifts to fulfill my purpose on this earth. Because, I guarantee that my purpose is more than just becoming a millionaire.
I began to shift away from the “Get Rich or Die Trying” mindset after I learned about Systems Thinking.
For the first time in my life, I began to connect the dots along patterns in society that served to create and maintain the Haves and Have-Nots, the “Us vs. Them” societal scripts that create divisiveness in our lives.
I also began to see that there were a whole lot of elements in the business industry where people profit from other people’s misfortunes.
In the past 5 years, I’ve transitioned my entrepreneurial spirit into what I’ll call “next systems work”. This work includes my anti-oppression activism (like my podcast, this publication, and social media presence), unschooling organizing, authentic dialogue training and consulting. At the beginning of 2020, I started working as a real estate agent again in an effort to increase my income. Prior to this year, I primarily drove for Uber for a few years to preserve my mental energy for my next-systems work. The beautiful thing about the time when I was driving for Uber was that it didn’t take any brain power, so I was able to invest a lot of time into anti-oppression work, doing research that would later become my Theory of Indivisibility podcast (and this publication!). It took several months to research the foundational science that supports my theory. My goal is for my next-systems work to sustain me.
At this stage in my journey, I’m focused on divesting from capitalism as much as possible. Based on my journey and the knowledge I’ve gained about the negative impacts of capitalism on both social and environmental sustainability I’ve come to see the entire system as inhumane.
So let’s discuss some alternatives that people have created… alternatives that are rooted in systems of power-with and collaboration instead of power-over and control.
Circular Economy:
Capitalism is a part of the Take -> Make -> Waste linear economy where we take resources from the ground to make products, we use them, and when we no longer want them, we throw them away.
A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. The circular economy is a new way to design, make, and use things within planetary boundaries.
Educator, Sociologist, and Sustainability provocateur, Leyla Acaraglu, states the following:
“The future is circular, not just in the wider economy, but also in our daily lives. We can no longer avoid the reality that our planet is in need of better care. The linear economy has helped us advance to this incredible point in time, but the advancement has come at major costs to the ecological systems that sustain life on Earth, which in turn affects our health and quality of life as we battle climate change, air pollution, global pandemics and loss of biodiversity. These issues are all interconnected, and until we change the way we do things, we will continue to be the victims of our own poor decisions.
The circular economy is seeking to remedy this through shifts in the way we arrange society, the way we produce goods and services, and the way we all consume, in order to ultimately design the kind of future we want to live in. One that is equitable, sustainable, and regenerative by design.”
In that same article Leyla, lists 9 circular economy business models that are underway and will become more prevalent in the near future. The fundamental shift is in how we design goods to flow through the economy and the responsibility that producers take of their goods, enabling customers to return, reuse, or repair to ensure that value is continually increased.
I discovered a circular economy company here in Atlanta called Lehigh Technologies in an article about 11 companies leading the way in the circular economy movement.
The Atlanta firm turns old tires and other rubber waste into something called micronized rubber powder, which can then be used in a wide variety of applications from tires to plastics, asphalt, and construction material. Five hundred million new tires have been made using its products, which has earned them recognition and awards.
I see so many possible benefits to this transition because many of the principles mirror what is needed to end the capitalistic pollution that is poverty, homelessness, and many other socio-economic ills.
The circular economy is picking up steam worldwide and I believe that it’s a necessary stepping stone as society transitions away from capitalism. However, I don’t see it as a full-on solution to all of the oppressions found within capitalism because it’s still invested in the creation of goods for profit instead of only producing goods based on need.
I believe that a needs-based economy without competition or profit would drastically decrease the consumption of natural resources as well as reduce the amount of time that people have to work…thus liberating us to invest more time into activities that improve our mental and physical wellbeing.
The economic system that has the DNA of Indivisibility and best aligns with my Theory of Indivisibility declaration is the Gift Economy.
A gift economy or gift culture is a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received.
In Charles Eisenstein’s book Sacred Economics, he traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. He suggests that a gift economy needs these 4 qualities:
- Over time, giving and receiving must be in balance.
- The source of a gift is to be acknowledged.
- Gifts circulate rather than accumulate.
- Gifts flow towards the greatest need.
In a gift economy culture, a sustainable sense of success is taking pride in the value of our contributions to others rather than taking pride in the value of our possessions.
In an article that I really really enjoyed titled How To Run A Business in The Gift Economy, Marie Goodwin adds the following:
“The essential idea is that when you have enough of a surplus of something, you give away what you can to friends and neighbors. With everyone practicing this type of exchange, a web of connection is forged. In this way, people get their needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, and luxuries met. The more generous you are, the more you are held in esteem by your community. Your community esteem matters because, in times of crisis, that web then supports you in turn. Your generosity is your wealth and your security. Receiving gifts from others acknowledges that you wish to be in relationship with them and that you will be there when they need you. It is a very beautiful way to live.”
Marie goes on to describe the gift economy in a business context as follows:
“When you work in the gift, what you are doing is asking the receiver to decide on their own level of gratitude rather than you, the seller/creator, dictating it for them by attaching a price to the transaction. You are also asking them to choose the timing of the return gift. The idea that gratitude is created in a business exchange is a novel way to view buying and selling but is the very crux of gift economics.”
So what are some examples of the gift economy?
Most of us have experienced potlucks, clothing exchanges, or doing favors for family, friends, and even strangers.
I offer a “pay what you can/want” in my authentic dialogue consulting and mediation work as well as my unschooling consulting and online trainings. Patreon is also an example of this…where you, the listeners, can determine if you’d like to gift me money for the value you get from listening to this podcast in exchange for the time I invest in researching, writing, and producing it.
The largest and most ambitious example of a gift economy that I’m aware of is a city in India called Auroville that has thrived for over 50 years without religion, government, or money.
Auroville is an international city in southern India founded in 1968. Currently, it has 2,800 citizens from 54 countries, with the capacity to grow to 50,000 citizens. Auroville is a “collective experiment in human unity” based on the worldview of Indian yogi Sri Aurobindo. The idea is if people from all cultures and castes can learn love each other in Auroville, maybe the rest of the world can follow suit. The township was created with support from the Indian government, UNESCO and well-wishers around the world, but is becoming more and more self-sufficient over time.
Think about how much food, clothing, and other things that we throw away and waste that we could possibly gift to others if we were more interconnected within our neighborhoods. Of course, these aren’t new concepts…our grandparents and previous generations grew up this way.
These are ideas that the forces of capitalism have destroyed over time, which I’m happy to say more and more people are actively working to restore.
Until next time,
I love y’all, Peace
Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta
2023. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart
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SOURCES
Articles:
11 Companies Leading The Way To A Circular Economy
Quick Guide To Circular Economy Business Strategies
Gift Economy Wikipedia Article
The Gift Economy & Community Exchanges
How To Run A Business In The Gift Economy
Worlds First Money-Less City Thrives On A Gift Economy
Video:
Charts:
The DNA of Divisiveness
- Tools: Power Over Systems use these tools to maintain power-over and control of people.
- Fear, Scarcity, Dependency, Standardization, Moral Judgement, Competition, Laws, Conditional Love, Lying, Exclusiveness, Social Norms, The Illusion of Freedom, Intolerance, Mistrust of Human Nature, Self-Oppression (born sinners).
- Language: The communication framework of Power-Over systems is Debate.
- Characteristics of Debate: Only one side wins, insults, us vs them language, blame, & shame.
Outcomes: Incremental hard-fought and slow progress towards healthy functional social norms amidst perpetual divisiveness (Classism, racism, xenophobia, party politics, etc) war, crime, violence, poverty, pollution, homelessness, hunger, mental illness, and dysfunctional relationships.
The DNA of Indivisibility
- Tools: Agency, Affirmation, Sharing, Consent, Collaboration, Liberation, Transparency, Unconditional Love of Self and Others, Personal Boundaries, Pluralism, Authenticity, Trust, Mediation, Tolerance, Empathy, Inclusion.
- Language: Authentic Dialogue
- Authentic Dialogue is a communication framework that involves listening and speaking in an effort to find common ground, broaden perspectives, create mutual understanding, and work together to create solutions that all parties involved can feel good about.
- Outcomes: Authentic Happiness, Peace, Healthy Relationships, Thriving Communities, Self-Actualized People, Healthy Ecosystems, Sustainability.
