I have been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about my next step. Ideally I would like to try to do all my work on a ‘Give Freely Receive Freely’ basis. I have already started with my clinical work and also with my qigong classes, courses and workshops, and it has been going ok. It hasn’t been a massive success, but it hasn’t been a miserable failure either – I believe the idea has potential and CAN work. This leaves one major area of my work to try GFRF with and that is my Kung Fu teaching.
I have a number of reservations about trying GFRF with my kung fu teaching, one is that while a lot of people love the idea of GFRF there are others who just don’t seem to get it and they feel awkward about it. My view is that GFRF is the fairest deal there can possibly be for both the provider and receiver, but I don’t want people to shy away from using it because of unfamiliarity or discomfort. Being faced with making your own choice about price can be quite confronting when you have not spent any time thinking about it and my aim is not to confront, but how else can I introduce the idea?
Another concern I have is that while I have contact with the students attending my classes every week, I often do not have a lot of contact with the parents of students. All too often I think paying for the classes can be easily forgotten about. It is a problem I have now with set prices that I have to chase up some parents right till the end of the term to be paid. This takes a lot of time and effort which quite frankly I don’t have to spare. I actually wonder if by putting the responsibility on the parent to decide how much to pay, they might also be more prompt in paying and understand better that it is their responsibility to support what I am doing for their child rather than my responsibility to chase them for payment. It comes down to the idea that under GFRF both parties to the transaction become free givers rather than takers from each other (see my earlier blog post here). But then again… it may not work out that way in practice.
Another concern is that I think people often underestimate the true cost of providing things (in this example kung fu classes). There are many overheads to cover: rent, power, equipment, wages, advertising and so on, even really simple things like GST make a big difference. Also I think people tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes to provide things like classes, looking just at the actual time the class takes when in fact there is a significant amount of time spent on administration, preparation, travel time and so on. Owners of small businesses tend to be the exception as they have experience with all the things that need to be done to keep something running and what they cost, but for other people I think they often look at things from the perspective almost of the person providing the service receiving all the money.The reality is far from this. The truth is that many of my classes are marginal with some even running at a loss, but I continue with them because I believe that learning kung fu has a lot of value for people by developing fitness, confidence and social skills (there are some really good studies that show that children allowed to play fight go on to be better socially adjusted than those who are not allowed to play fight). I also believe that we have a great kung fu syllabus and organization that will grow over time if given the chance. I can only do so much with the classes if they are not profitable though, and there is so much more that I would like to be able to offer in terms of competition, advanced training and performance, but I can’t until I have more financial resources to support them.
Similar to my concerns mentioned earlier, I wonder if GFRF may actually provide a solution to some of these problems as certainly it would allow any families who cannot afford my current prices to be able to attend at a price that they can afford, increasing class sizes. Also the GFRF model would allow those who can afford more, to give more if they want to help support the ongoing running and further growth and development of the kung fu organization.
So there are significant pros and cons on both sides. I guess one final factor is that I want to move to GFRF because I like how it changes my relationships with people. I have noticed in my clinic work and qigong teaching that whether the client or student pays more, less or exactly the same as they did previously, there is a subtle change in how the interaction feels. It might sound a little corny, but there seems to be more warmth, love and respect in the interaction from both sides; and that really is how I want to live my life.
I’m still nervous about it though… Due to the overheads and the time commitment involved in running classes it could easily go wrong and make it difficult for me to continue. I wonder maybe if it is too soon for me to try this, but I also think if not now when would I start? What I’m thinking of doing at the moment is trying it out at just one location where I have kids and teens classes and see how that goes… but I’m still not even sure about that. I have a few weeks to think about it before the next term begins.
A parent of one of the kids who comes to my Kung Fu classes gave me the details of some people who teach horsemanship humanship workshops on a GFRF basis (although they don’t call it that, it is the same idea. They also have other programs that they have set prices for. You can read their pricing philosophy here).
I am always encouraged when I hear about other people doing the same or similar things. To be honest I am not finding the journey of converting to GFRF particularly easy and I often find myself facing doubts and fears so finding other people doing similar helps to give me a boost of confidence and encouragement.
I will also be contacting them myself as I would like to hear more about their experience using their pricing philosophy. I may be able to interview them and put that on the blog at some point.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about different aspects of the Give Freely Receive Freely concept and how it applies to our current economic and political system, and how it can address those problems at a fundamental level. As I’ve thought about all the different applications of GFRF I have been planning in my head a whole series of blog posts discussing the different issues, how the GFRF relates to dominant recent political models such as communism, socialism and capitalism, why previous attempts to live in ways similar to this have generally been unsuccessful and what I think needs to be tweaked in order for this to be successful in the future.
I have been really interested in the wider implications of groups of people choosing to interact in this way and it has been an interesting experience thinking about these wider issues. But when I think about writing all the blog posts they seem to stretch out before me infinitely, each one takes a long time to write because there are quite complex issues to address (and even then I am only really giving them a very superficial treatment, I currently have a half written post about greed being the basis of our financial system and why this is not a good thing), and there are MANY different fundamental issues to be looked at. It seems like it will take me so much time and effort before even getting in to the really valuable stuff, which is my experience with actually trying to make it work in the current environment.
I have just realized that I had fallen into the trap of focusing on the negative instead of the positive. When you focus on the negative you see endless problems which take infinite work to deal with. On the other hand, when you focus on the positive, the path becomes clear and simple. This is what I want to focus on from now on in this blog.
From now on I want to refocus on my own efforts to live in this way and my experiences with it. I think spending time thinking about the wider societal implications was a useful experience for me, and in a way maybe something I needed to do to convince myself that what I am doing is good and would actually be good for everyone else if it was adopted on a wider scale, because if it wouldn’t work on a wider scale then I probably shouldn’t do it small scale either. I am satisfied now that I have thought things through far enough to know that it could or would work on a large scale, and if it did, it would create a utopian society that most of us have not even dreamed of (lots of standard capitalist theory indoctrination to work through to get to this point). I feel like I can now with good conscience put those thoughts aside and focus more simply on my own efforts in the here and now to live as close to the ideal as I am able to. I may refer to these wider issues from time to time as I go, but at this point I want to set aside all the problems and focus on the solutions which is living based on love, compassion and sharing instead of greed and selfishness.
This is a big shift, and one which I think has been enabled by my experience trying my best to give freely and receive freely. Little by little I think actually experiencing this has started to change my perspective and reshape me as a person.
I think the true power of GFRF is to change the individual, I want to live this way regardless of the society around me, so I’ll stop worrying about those social problems and get on with living my own life in my own way.
I think I can feel my life getting simpler already 🙂
I know I haven’t completed phase two of my GFRF experiment yet (offering workshops on this basis), but I am already working on phase three.
Online courses
Phase three is going to be online courses offered on a give freely receive freely basis. I think online courses are a great fit for expanding my use of this concept. This is because there are between low and zero incremental costs for additional users of the material.
Problems with using printed materials for GFRF
At the moment I offer home study courses for some of the things that I teach, these courses involve books, printed study guides and DVDs. The problem for me in offering these courses on a give freely receive freely basis is the fixed cost of producing these physical materials. There is a certain amount I need to receive for each course to just cover the cost of production, let alone to compensate me for my work and provide me with money to live on. This would make it difficult for me to give these truly ‘freely’ at the moment as I do not have sufficient resources to lose money on the production of these if people did not give sufficient in return (and people often seem to underestimate the cost of putting things like this together). Online however, there will still be set-up costs, but once established each new user will have close to zero incremental cost. This leaves me in the position of only having to re-coup my initial set-up costs and minimal running costs before I start to receive money for my work – ie money I can pay my living expenses with.
This means that it doesn’t really matter if some people take advantage of the give freely receive freely exchange, as if there are people who pay nothing or not a realistic amount for the courses, then at least it will not really be costing me anything. Then I just have to rely on those people who do ‘get’ the concept to deal fairly with me.
Getting a fair exchange
I believe there are enough fairminded people out there who will voluntarily pay a fair price for the training they receive to make this work. But I also realize that for many people the GFRF concept takes some understanding, and many people will fall into the old ‘pay as little as you can’ mentality which comes from the way our current exchange environment is structured.
Prompting payment
I have given this quite a bit of thought as to how I deliver the online content I am preparing, and I see this also as an opportunity to experiment. I think a key to making the GFRF idea work is helping people to understand that there is a real person behind the product they are using that has put a lot of time and effort into it and that they need to be paid in order for them to be able to continue to provide the product to them and other people, and in particular they need strong prompts to actually make the payment. I know that even in a price based exchange people often forget to pay and need strong reminders before they do. (Incidentally I actually think that this would be less of a problem in a well established GFRF community due to some of the underlying psychology, but I think will certainly be a major issue when people are new to the idea).
Different delivery models
So I am planning three initial courses all set up in different ways which offer different opportunities for payment prompts.
1. Open Access on Youtube – No advertising
I will use this for my first course which will be on qigong. This gives people very easy access to the material. Payment prompts will be included in videos at the start and end of the course, in the written video information that shows below the video and in some of the downloadable material at the associated website.
All these prompts are quite passive, in that they can be seen and ignored, or the person can think ‘I’ll do it later’ and then forget about it quite easily. But there will be several of them, so hopefully this will be enough to prompt some people to actually follow through and make payment. It is also easy to set up.
2. Open Access on Youtube – With advertising
Very similar to option one, but with ads enabled. This will mean that even if people do not pay me due to the prompts, I will still receive some payment from advertising shown along with the videos. I am somewhat hesitant to use this (to do with my thoughts on advertising and society – more on this in another post), but figure it is a good opportunity to experiment and see the different results. I don’t expect a high number of people to follow through on the relatively passive payment prompts, so using advertising would ensure that I get at least some money for the people viewing my videos (it is not a lot, but can add up if there are enough people watching). I will be able to compare the money received from my course without advertising to the one with. If enough money comes in without advertising, I can always turn the advertising off later. Alternatively if not enough money comes in, I can always turn the advertising on on the other course.
I will use a self defence course to test this model.
3. Pay what you want ‘Pay Wall’
The final option I am planning to test initially is to create a ‘Pay Wall’ where people cannot access the content unless they go through a payment gateway. In this case it would be a pay what you want gateway, so they can still put in zero as their payment if they want to, but this is a much stronger prompt to make payment as it is right in front of you and you have to click past it to move on. From a theoretical point of view I like this model best, I think it has the best probability of actually prompting payment from the people using the course.
I will probably set it up so that the initial material is open access, so the student can see how they like some of the material before they are faced with making a payment, and I think I’ll put another prompt at the very end of the course for those who paid zero initially, if they have reconsidered after using the whole course they can make a payment then.
The reason I will use this model last is because even though I like this model the most, it will be the most difficult to set up and require the most time and expense. I will have to host the videos somewhere other than on youtube so they will be secure, and purchase software and become familiar with it etc etc. Basically this one is going to take me awhile to figure out technically and I want to move ahead and start offering the courses now, so I will start with the youtube based models first to get me started and hopefully have things figured out by the time I am ready to put my third course online.
I will trial this model with a course on breathing.
It’s going to be a lot of work, but I’m kind of excited about it as well. People have always enjoyed these courses and told me that they’ve got a lot out of them when I’ve delivered them live or through my offline homestudy courses. I think that putting them online in an easily accessible format will open these courses up to many more people – maybe even internationally, and provide really useful resources to my current students as well, with the added bonus of it being better for the environment as well due to physical materials not having to be produced. I’ve been working on the first course for a couple of weeks now, and I am hopeful that if I work hard I will be able to get all three courses up by the end of the year. I will announce on this site when the first course is available online.
Well, I can’t say my experience with GFRF so far has been a runaway success, but it hasn’t been a resounding failure either. All in all it has been close to business as usual. It will be interesting to see how things develop as I continue on with using GFRF in my clinical work. I have some ideas to spark things up a bit there which I will look at implementing in the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime though I am ready to embark on phase II of my experiment. I am going to expand my GFRF offering to include the next set of workshops I will be teaching.
I have three workshops scheduled in August, one on qigong, one on self defence, and one on breathing. They will be listed on an online events directory, so this should expose a reasonable number of people to them and also to the GFRF concept.
I am a little concerned about the outcome, as I have put a huge amount of work into preparing the material for these workshops, and quite a bit of work goes into delivering each one. For me to re-coup the opportunity cost, or the time cost of having spent so much time on these which has meant I have not been working on other things that would pay me, I really need to be paid quite well for them every time I deliver them over the course of several years.
Will people pay/contribute enough when attending these workshops to make them viable for me? I don’t know. There is a tendency here in New Zealand to contribute minimally to things that are perceived as ‘free’ or ‘community’ events, or even some idea that somehow someone else is paying for them (which is often the case through grants etc), so therefore the attendees don’t need to. Of course I’m trying to get past this idea into having people understand that the value of something is not determined by the price, but they themselves can determine the value to them, and they should exchange based on that value – within what they can afford. This would mean that people pay different amounts for something according to how useful it is to them and according to their financial situation. It also means that they are realistic about the cost of provision of whatever it is that they are receiving and understand that for that thing to continue to be offered those costs need to be met. Quite simply if those who use the service or whatever it is offered don’t collectively contribute enough to meet those costs, then it will no longer be able to be offered (as the person or people offering it will run out of resources). This is the case with these workshops. I am not wealthy (far from it) and able to do all this work as a fancy. I have bills to pay just like everyone else. If I am not able to receive enough money for delivering them, then I simply won’t be able to continue to offer them on a GFRF basis. Either I will have to stop offering the workshops or go back to charging a set price to bring in enough money.
Operating in a GFRF way makes the individual very powerful, they essentially vote with their money (or other resources). If they want something to continue – they contribute a reasonable amount so that it can continue or even grow. If they do no want something to continue, they just pay less or nothing for it and it will quickly shrink or cease. You might think this is the same as a conventional economic arrangement, but there are some significant differences which I believe makes the GFRF concept a much more effective way for people to shape what goes on in their society than a set price approach. I’ll discuss these differences and there implications in future blog posts.
I believe that what I offer in these workshops is valuable to people. The feedback I have received about them has always been universally positive. But will people contribute enough on a GFRF basis? There are a number of ways this could happen. Either the average amount paid could come out close to what I would usually charge ($100 per workshop, which I think is good value, I know of other people who charge about $300 for similar workshops). Or seeing as people can pay whatever they like for the workshop I could have more people attend – which would mean that a lower average contribution would add up to me still receiving about the same amount of money. This would maybe happen if people attended who previously would not have been able to afford to attend, but take the opportunity to make the most of the GFRF system.
I would be happy with either of these scenarios. I’m still a bit nervous about it though. It is a radically different way of doing things than people are used to. I also realize that some people who might have attended may not attend if they are uncomfortable with paying this way. I expect to a large degree the success of the workshops will come down to how well I communicate about GFRF to those who are interested.
Well nothing ventured nothing gained. I am sure I will learn a lot from this experience. I really want to be able to offer as much of what I do as possible through GFRF as I feel good about working in this way, as it makes what I offer affordable to everyone, and I believe it can do this while also providing me with what I need. In a way it is a great natural leveler, and naturally creates a type of social equity which is sadly lacking in our current environment. But it is hard when this concept is so different to what people are familiar with.
I thought I would write this post about my broader vision for the potential of giving freely and receiving freely. The main reason I am experimenting with ‘give freely receive freely’ is because it is something I want to do. Somewhere deep inside it is something I feel almost COMPELLED to do. In short it is something that I want to try and see if am able to do regardless of whether or not anyone else does it. But I think there are many factors behind these feelings to do with the current economic environment and wanting to interact with my fellow people in the best way I possibly can, and I think a lot of other people are having similar thoughts and feelings. This leads me to wonder about the possibilities of what could happen if entire communities operated on this basis…
No Offence Intended
In my upcoming posts on this blog I will continue to write about my experiences with GFRF (I think I might use this abbreviation from now on to make it faster to type), and any new developments and also anyone else I find doing similar things. I will also write about theory and underlying concepts behind GFRF. As I do this I don’t want to offend anyone. I will write about ideas for a system of exchange that is very different from how our world now operates. In order to do this I will point out some of the shortcomings of our current system and may make reference to particular professions and industries. I don’t want people in those industries to think that I am leveling criticism particularly at them. I actually believe that almost all people at their core are GOOD PEOPLE and they want to do things for the good of both themselves and others, but our current system shifts the goal posts and means that people feel that they need to put their effort into things that in the bigger picture aren’t that useful. It is the system that has shaped these actions, not necessarily the inner motivations of the people involved. In fact within the current system people involved in these professions ARE very useful and can do a lot of good for people if they choose to, but what I am thinking about is a very different system from what we have now where much of what goes into maintaining our current economic system is no longer necessary.
Hippy Weirdo Fanciful Dreaming
As I write about some of these things, some people will ‘get’ them straight away because they will already be thinking along those lines anyway or it may even seem completely obvious to them like “Duh – of course its always been like that”. Other people will struggle a bit and may think that what I’m talking about is crazy hippy weirdo fanciful dreaming nonsense that doesn’t acknowledge the ‘realities’ of the world. I must admit that I probably fit more into the second category than the first. Like all of us I am a product of my environment, I have been born and raised into our current system of economic control and it has become ingrained in my psyche. In addition to this my undergraduate degree was in Finance (straight A average from the top ranked university in New Zealand – I’m kind of proud of that) and my postgraduate study was in Marketing. So I know the theory of the current system pretty well, and for most of my life have taken it just as a given fact. But deep down I think there has always been something about it which has made me feel uncomfortable. It has taken many years for these feelings to come to the surface into a form that I can begin to understand, and I am still dealing with my past programming as I begin to think and act in different ways. I often still have this incredible doubt and a voice shouting at me ‘that’s crazy’ as I think about trying new things with GFRF, because it cuts against almost everything I see in the world around me and against the aspirations and patterns of behaviour of the population at large. But I think maybe there is a better way, and I want to try and see if I can find it, whether I do it alone or with a community of like minded people.
We Are Powerful As Individuals
In terms of addressing the ‘realities’ of the world and how things work, I have a few thoughts about that. What is it that makes up the ‘system’ as we currently know it? It is the collective action of all of us that contributes to this system. What would it take for the ‘system’ to change. Well the actions of each of us makes a difference, it is up to each individual to decide how they will act, and this in turn affects the whole. Often we think that we can’t change the world, there is no point in trying to change the system because it is too big. But the reality is that each one of us makes up part of the system, as we change how we think and act the system of necessity has to change. This is not a new idea.
“Be the change you want to see in the world” – Mahatma Gandhi
The truth is that the world and society is always changing, it has changed massively in the last 100 years and even in the last decade. Many of the things we do now and the ways we interact of many levels (socially, legally, economically, technologically) would have be near inconceivable a mere century ago. The world and society will continue to change and it is up to each of us as individuals to decide how we will act which will in turn shape the future direction of our world and society.
Utopian/Dystopian Visions
What does the future hold? Well science fiction often points towards a dystopian future of one kind or another, or if it does imagine a utopia it is almost always a utopia with rotten core – the facade of a utopia on what in fact is a dystopia.
Some classic examples:
And there are many many others. There is an underlying theme to be careful of wishing for or dreaming of a utopia because it may not turn out to be what we expect. There is this idea that there needs to be conflict, struggle and suffering in order for us to be truly happy. This is classically explained by Agent Smith in the first Matrix movie.
There is also an idea amongst fiction writers that there needs to be this conflict in order for things to be interesting. I personally do not believe this – I think its just a habitual way of thinking we have got into. I see no reason why things can not be interesting without conflict and suffering. I think as humans we need to learn and to grow in order to be fulfilled, but I think we can receive sufficient stimulus for this development in positive ways without the negativity of conflict and suffering.
We Move Towards What We Focus On
It is a fact of life that we tend to move towards what we think and dream about. When steering a boat you look towards the horizon where you want to go as this will keep the course of the boat steady. From time to time you may zig and zag and get blown off course, but if you keep your eyes on where you want to go, that is where you will head. While we continue to believe that it is a requirement for us to have conflict and suffering in order to lead fulfilling lives, that is what we do. While we continue to believe that any possible utopia will actually be a dystopia, we will self-fulfill that expectation.
Why Not Dream of Utopia?
Wouldn’t it be an interesting challenge to imagine a TRUE utopia? To create fiction that depicts this utopia in an interesting way so that it seems compelling and exciting? To look consistently towards this end, even while understanding that we will probably be blown off course frequently and go up and down over many waves along the way? If we could do this as individuals and as a society, maybe that’s where we would end up instead of in one of the dystopias that is currently portrayed in much of our fiction.
I think its interesting that there are common threads that run through much of this utopian/dystopian fiction. The fundamental flaw is often to do with greed, excessive consumption, subjugation of personal freedom and so on. In my blog post I will write about how the GFRF concept addresses these problems and how it can create system wide change right to the core of a society, I think that maybe it can dig out the rot and uncover the true good core of humanity. I know that from a social perspective a lot of what I will write may seem like science fiction, but I’ll put my thoughts out there anyway. I don’t have all the answers by any means, but I do have ideas and I think those ideas are worth sharing, they might spark other ideas in other people which together can add up to something good. I will also document my own experiences with trying to implement these ideas – you’ll get to find out the results, good or bad. I expect a fair bit of trial and error, a fair bit of being blown of course and having to get back on it.
As I mentioned earlier, this is something I want to experiment with by myself anyway, but I will also share with you some of my dreams of how this could effect society as a whole if it were to spread and grow. In my dreams this could lead to a TRUE UTOPIA.
Historic/Fictional Precedents
Is there precedent for this? Do all our stories and histories involve conflict and suffering? I can think of at least a couple of examples that describe groups of people who have achieved a true utopia in their society. They are scriptural accounts from LDS scriptures and I think they offer some insights into what contributes to a true utopia. One of these groups is the people of Enoch (referred to in the bible, but there are additional insights into their history and society in the LDS scriptures) who built a city called Zion. The people of Zion were “of one heart and one mind and dwelt in righteousness; and there were no poor among them” You can read about Enoch and his people here
Another group were the people living on the American continent shortly after the time of Christ (The Book of Mormon is a book of scripture from the people of the American continent that describes the occurrences in that part of the world and a visit by Jesus Christ to these people) These people are described as:
“there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another. And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift… And there were no envyings nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of laciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God. There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one.”
These people “did build cities” and “did multiply exceedingly fast, and became an exceedingly fair and delightsome people”.
Now that sounds like an interesting time to live in! According to the scriptural account this period lasted for almost two hundred years. You can read about this time and the eventual breakdown of this society here
Now these accounts are from LDS scripture, there are probably others in other scriptures, or maybe even in works of fiction (Shangri La? – I’m not entirely familiar with that story). If you know of others perhaps you can mention them in the comments below. The stories point to the possibility of true utopia and some of what made the society that way. I think this is interesting to think about, dream about and work towards.
