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.
So I’ve enabled advertising on a select few of the videos for the online qigong course that I have created. I wanted to keep it advertising free so as to compare returns of putting the courses up in different ways and also just so people wouldn’t have to deal with the ads, but I noticed something from my other youtube channels. In preparation for putting these courses online I enabled advertising on my old channels with videos I put up awhile ago. What was interesting was that after enabling advertising my video views went up significantly. I later found out that youtube actively promotes your videos with enabled advertising, which makes sense as they make more money that way.
While I wanted to keep the course advertising free I also want people to see the course and benefit from it. So I’ve enabled the ads on just a few key videos that it should not really impact on the learning as they aren’t really the types of videos that a learner would watch over and over. I think this is a good practical compromise that will lead to more people finding the course and being able to still use most of the videos advertising free.
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 🙂
As I have continued with my give freely receive freely experiment, I have of course continued to have conversations with people about what I am doing and why I am doing it. For the most part these conversations have been really positive, often with people expressing what a great idea it is and that they hope I have lots of success etc etc. But then some of the conversations have just been awkward…
Part of this is probably due to me not being all that great at expressing my ideas about GFRF yet, and then part of it is probably that the idea is so different from what people are used to and have experienced for their entire lives that they really struggle to understand what its about. Some of our ideas about exchange are so deeply embedded that they become invisible to us, they become fundamental assumptions that we do not question or even necessarily realize exist. So when a new idea is presented to us that operates outside those sets of assumptions we still try to interpret them in the context of our underlying assumptions even though they don’t apply, and this can lead to confusion and misunderstanding.
In a way its a bit like trying to tell someone that ‘there is no spoon’, those who’s minds are ready embrace the idea readily, while others just think you’re weird. I guess what I need to do is demonstrate that there is no spoon to help them to understand. I’m working on it but I think it’ll take some time. (If you don’t get the reference, watch the video clip below, and if you do get the reference still watch the video – its a great scene).
So in this post I thought I’d mention some of the comments or misunderstandings I’ve encountered in my awkward conversations.
One of the biggest misconceptions I have encountered has been that by using ‘Give Freely Receive Freely’ I am not valuing what I do. One quote “Yeah I get what you’re doing, but I don’t think I could do that myself because I value my time too much”. Honestly this couldn’t be further from the truth. The way I see it is that I value my time so highly that I don’t want to put a price on it. The moment I put a price on my time, even a very high price, it becomes a commodity to be bought and sold. My life, and my time is more valuable to me than that, I will however give it freely at my own discretion.
Another misconception related to this when I mention this system of exchange is that I am expecting people to pay less because of this. Again not true. Essentially I expect people give to me freely in return because they want to support what I am doing. This is not tied to any particular price level. People will give according to their means and the value they find in what I provide. I want people to find and evaluate that value for themselves though. Too often our ideas about value are determined by marketing efforts or by power relationships (monopolies, cartels, vulnerability of one of the parties to the exchange) rather than by the actual value of what is provided. This leads to distortions in our economy and society and causes resources to be directed to things that aren’t actually useful to us and to be diverted from things that are. If each of us is able to determine value for ourselves then our individual and collective resources would go to the things that are truly worthwhile and make us happy, rather than being wasted on things that actually contribute no value to our lives. (Many of the things our money and therefore resources go to under our current way of operating, far from adding value to our lives actually take it away – more on this in another post).
I believe there is great value in what I do, that it really helps people in their lives, and that left to find the value themselves they will value this appropriately. Of course there is the challenge of helping people see past the common externally imposed marketing and power relationship driven value system, but you’ve got to start somewhere and I believe that exchanging in this way may actually cause people to value what I do more highly than if I put a set price on it. Most people are actually quite intelligent if you give them a chance to be.
A third misconception again related to the other two, is that somehow by doing this I have given up on having all the things our material society values. Basic things like owning my own house, take holidays and so on. Again not true at all, I still want those things and think I have a good, maybe even better chance of receiving them by giving freely and receiving freely than by charging set prices.
What I have given up on is the idea of struggling and competing against others in my society. I guess you could say I have given up on the rat race, but I don’t think that the rat race is the only way to achieve those material aims. I think there is a better way, and that is what I am pursuing. This way involves more trust and more co-operation with others in our society. It will bring out the best in me so that I end up contributing more that is of true value to individuals and society without wasting as much energy on the things that are not of value; and if it works properly I will receive more in return for the true value I create.
This way is the Give Freely Receive Freely way. I hope you’ll continue to follow my journey as I explore these ideas and learn how to make this work in practice.
For those not in the know, there has been a lot of discussion in the media and in politics in recent years about a demographic crisis which we will reach soon where we have a much larger number of older retirees and a much smaller group of working age people to support them. The level of taxation to fund these retirees would be extremely high, so a lot of thought and analysis (and hand wringing and headshaking and arguing, but very little action) has gone into what western economies can do to deal with this potential crisis.
The fundamental flaw
A lot of this discussion (including that in the linked article above) revolves around the need for these retirees to save more so that they will be able to self fund their retirement, meaning that the government won’t have to support them through untenable levels of taxes on the smaller working population. And this is where I think there is a fundamental flaw in the thinking. What is it that these retirees are going to consume/need when they retire? It will be things like food, clothing, housing, travel, medical care and so on right? How are these things going to be provided, or rather who is going to provide them? Well one way or another it is the working population who is going to provide these things. So regardless of how much these retirees save we end up with the same problem of a smaller working population supporting a too large retired group. This will have to balance itself out one way or another. The most likely way is that prices will simply rise due to supply and demand imbalance and the retirees savings will be devalued, so in the end they are no better off than if they had not saved.
At the heart of this flawed thinking is a common mistake that many people make in our society today, and that is to think of money as ‘real’ or a ‘thing’. The hard truth of the matter is that you can’t eat money, it won’t keep you warm at night or dry from the rain and it certainly will not carry out any medical procedures on you. Most money today isn’t even physical in the sense of a piece of paper or metal or plastic, it is merely an electronic blip stored on a computer somewhere. Money is an abstraction of value within our economy.
What actually makes sense?
So what does make sense to prepare for this potential crisis? Well in a certain sense, saving is effective for individuals, because if you have saved more than those around you then you will have more purchasing power for an easier retirement. But this doesn’t do anything for the group and our society as a whole. To deal with the wider societal issue we need to look at what we are doing with our resources now and how we can adapt our societal structures to deal with the changing situation in the future.
There is a kind of saving we can make now that will make a difference in the future. That is building infrastructure. If well planned this will make everyone’s lives easier in the future as it will allow things to be done more efficiently. A smaller number of workers will be able to provide more goods and services for everyone in society if they have better infrastructure to work with. Building infrastructure is a type of ‘real’ savings vs the abstract hypothetical savings of accumulating money. If we build the housing, medical facilities and other productive assets now that will be needed by our population in the future, that is taking a load off those future workers (it would also stimulate our stagnant economies in the current economic environment).
The other thing that makes sense is to get rid of the idea of an expected retirement age. This is one idea that has been discussed to some degree in the mainstream political commentary, and while it clearly makes sense, it has not been a very popular idea politically. I think this is due to the fact that many people see work as a hardship, something they only do because they have to, so they look forward to retiring as soon as they can and see it as ‘unfair’ to have to work longer than they expected. But when you look at it objectively, people are living longer and healthier lives, why should they stop being productive, providing for themselves and contributing to society? In nature if an animal does not ‘work’ the animal dies, there is no ‘retirement age’. Why should it be any different for us? This is in fact similar to the situation when retirement ages were introduced. The average life expectancy wasn’t much past the age of retirement, but things have changed and our ideas need to change as well.
Work doesn’t need to be a hardship. People who truly find fulfillment in what they do, do not want to quit or ‘retire’. They want to keep doing it for as long as they can. We may need to create ways to make it easier for people to move from physical labour (a much smaller part of our modern economy now anyway) to other types of work as they get older, and to work less hours and so on to fit with their capacity, but ideally work should be something that people enjoy doing and look forward to rather than something they want to get out of and ‘retire’ from.
I believe that the Give Freely, Receive Freely concept holds answers to how we can address these issues or resource allocation and intrinsic work motivation. These answers would not only address future economic concerns but make for a happier more productive society for all of us right now. It starts first with change inside the individual, and can then spread to influence how communities and eventually whole societies function. I hope to flesh more of these ideas out in future blog posts.
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(I did think of one more idea of what makes sense to address the future retirement crisis – investment in developing artificial intelligent robots (I guess this is a subset of building infrastructure)…. if we have a smaller human working population we could supplement this with a robotic one. Not something I think we should hold our breath about though, and then of course we would have to always be on the watch in case they try to take over the world :P)
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.
I have just got back from my trip to China. My purpose in going was mainly for my kung fu and qigong teaching, to check out the schools there, gain ideas and inspiration, and prepare for when groups from my school may make trips there. But I also found that I had a lot of experiences and saw a lot of things that gave me food for thought about the ‘give freely receive freely’ concept.
The Great Wall of China
One thing that was particularly relevant was that in China there is no fixed price on almost anything. Almost everything is negotiable and the locals expect there to be some haggling before a final price is established at which an exchange will take place. At one of the major markets the vendors will typically ask in the region of 10 times what they will actually accept for what they are selling. Then a drawn out negotiation begins during which they will act like whatever price you suggest is ridiculous, tell you how other people they would normally quote a higher price for but for you they quoted a reasonable price, they will try and show you inferior products and suggest that maybe you could buy one of them instead, they will suggest a price not much lower than they initially offered, you walk away and then they call after you with a better price, they may act sad, angry etc and then eventually you come to a price you a both happy with.
Inside a market in Shanghai
The process can be entertaining I suppose, but also takes quite a bit of time. On the two occasions when I tried to shorten the process and get to a price I was happy with faster (and KNEW I could get from experience with other stallholders), they wouldn’t sell to me. It seems like in order to get a reasonable price I HAD to go through the charade, even though getting to a price we both new was reasonable faster would have saved both of us a lot of time and energy. After awhile I began to avoid the markets because I didn’t want to put so much time and effort into a simple transaction, although I suppose I would still go there if there was something I really needed.
But it doesn’t stop there, even in the big flash department stores with marked prices on everything, apparently things are still negotiable. It became very difficult to know what price to really expect for things.
The bright lights of East Nanjing Road, lots of upmarket big brand shopping.
The one exception was food. I had a long conversation about this with a Chinese lady who made sure to let me know that I should negotiate on absolutely EVERYTHING in China with the only exception being food, for food the price was the price. She probably wasn’t aware that there was a slight proviso to that, the price is the price as long as you are CHINESE. Probably 90% of the time or more I think the people selling me food just charged me the same price as they would anyone else, but there were a couple of occasions at fruit shops where I was charged far more than I should have been. At one of these I know I was charged 10 times the price of a local, because I saw what a local was charged for the same items. I could have entered into negotiations at this point to get a better price, but was quite bemused by the whole thing at the time so just paid the money and left. But while I may have had more money than some of the locals, I certainly did not have enough that I would have been able to afford that price for food on a regular basis, so if I had been staying in the area I never would have bought from that shop again.
A fruit and vegetable stall at Deng Feng (not one of the ones I was ripped off at)
So how does this all tie in to the ‘give freely, receive freely’ concept? Well for a start in many ways I liked there not being a fixed price, it provided a mechanism by which those with more could pay more and those with less could pay less. A lot of the time I am sure that even with some hard bargaining I still paid considerably more than a local would, and I don’t mind that, because it was a price I could afford and was happy with. The bargaining to reach a price though became tedious and time consuming. So much energy was put into the transaction by both sides to make sure they got as much (or gave as little) as possible in the deal. Surely we all would be better off if this energy was put into other productive things. With give freely receive freely, no energy is expended on negotiation, meaning we all have more time and energy for the things we really want and need in life.
It is very hard for us to know the circumstances of everyone we deal with. Sometimes the initial price quoted by a vendor would be so high it seemed ridiculous even to a westerner used to paying more in their home country. They really seemed to have little conception of what would seem like a reasonable price to us. On the other hand, for a foreigner it was very hard to tell where the true local price point was, because many things were so cheap that you could pay two or three times what a local would and still feel like you got a pretty good price. Using a give freely receive freely approach means that we do not judge the circumstances of another but let them give according to what they can. I wonder how some of the stall holders might have fared under such a system. I know there were times when I would have gladly paid more for something, but the whole mindset of bargaining sets you up to try and get as low a price as you possibly can (or have the time and patience to bargain for).
I also respected the fact that for food at least the price was usually the price. I think there is a basic human understanding that there are certain things we need to survive so at least for those things we should deal fairly with each other. While it was possible to pay a lot for food in China, there seemed to always be very cheap options as well, even in the big cities, that I think even the poor would have been able to afford. For the most part I think I was treated decently by the people selling food in China, and I appreciated that. Maybe the exceptions with the fruit could be due to fruit being viewed as a luxury? I’m not sure about that.
Yummy noodles in Deng Feng, apparently the Henan province noodles are quite famous.
When we deal unfairly with someone in our community, it may make us a short term profit, but ultimately in the long run do us harm. In the case of the fruit stands that charged excessively for what I bought from them, they would have really lost out if I had stayed in the area. I eat quite a lot of fruit, but having been ripped of once, I would not go back to that shop, I would find somewhere that charged me fairly and they would get all my business. I am sure this also has wider implications that will affect those involved even if they manage to only overcharge those who would not be returning to their shop anyway. The world is all interconnected and our actions tend to have ripple effects. Others would observe how the shop owner treated foreigners, and this in turn would shape their view of the shop owner and how they interact with them, I’m sure in the end there would be some effect even if not immediately – a bit like the concept of karma.
So all up China was an interesting and thought provoking experience. There were many other things I saw or experienced while I was there that have a bearing on ‘give freely, receive freely’ too, but I think I will write about those more when I get to writing about various specific topics.
Well its been almost two months since I began my ‘give freely receive freely’ experiment, so I thought it was about time I posted an update about how it has been going.
To re-cap, I am trying this experiment with my clinical work (Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qigong Therapy, Massage and Lifestyle Advice). You can read the explanation that I first posted about this on my clinic website here: http://developyourqi.com/?p=468
Results
Since that time I would guess that maybe about 40% of my clients have paid a bit more than they would have in the past, about 40% have paid about the same and maybe 20% have paid a bit less. So overall, I think I am a bit ahead in terms of the money I have received for my clinical work compared to what I would have under my previous set price approach.
I have not had a huge rush of people booking in for treatment as some people thought I would with this pricing approach, and I think there are two reasons for that.
1. I think that still not a lot of people know that I am using this ‘give freely, receive freely’ exchange idea.
2. People are unfamiliar with the idea, and maybe a little uncomfortable about it.
Research
This is not surprising at all as it is an unusual idea and one which is quite different to what we are used to in our normal day to day transactions. Some people have actually done some research into this kind of exchange – referring to it as ‘pay what you want’. You can read about some of this research here: http://www.economist.com/node/21554218
One of the key findings from the research was that less people would buy something paying whatever they want for it (even though they could pay nothing if they wanted to) than would buy something with a low set price. I believe that this is because most people have an innate sense of what is a fair exchange, and only want to engage in exchanges that feel fair to them.
I believe this is a very good thing – even if it does not maximize income. My aim in experimenting with this type of exchange is not to maximize the money I receive, although I certainly wish to have enough to pay for my needs my main aim is to engage in a more free type of exchange with people that encourages them to think about and recognize the true value of what they are doing. This requires thought and can be quite difficult when people are not used to considering economic transactions in this way. It is also to make my services affordable to everyone, not matter what their economic circumstances may be.
Therapeutic Value
From a therapeutic point of view I believe that this type of exchange can be beneficial because it causes the patient to consciously think about the value of the treatment they receive. All to often we go through life not thinking about the reason or value of what we are doing. By consciously thinking about this it helps to open the way for the patient to actually ‘receive’ the benefit of the treatment. In the end while I as a practitioner will have an effect on the health of my patients, most of the work is going to be done by them. It is their cells that will have to repair themselves, it is them who may have to do remedial exercises, it is them who may need to make changes to eating habits, lifestyle and thinking patterns. Conscious engagement in assigning value to the sessions they have with me can help to create commitment on both a conscious and unconscious level to follow through on what they need to do to become well.
This type of conscious engagement can then spill over into other areas of their lives as they learn to recognize value in what they do. They will hopefully continue and do more of the things that are truly valuable and find themselves doing less and less of those things that have little value or even take value away.
It has been interesting over the last few weeks as I have shared this ‘give freely receive freely’ idea with people. I have found myself eager to see a new client or one I haven’t seen in awhile, as much to share this concept with them as for any other reason. I have seen many smiles, nods of agreement and a few laughs as people have heard or read about the concept. Some people have been excited and enthusiastic, others self conscious and maybe a little confused. No-one has been outright negative. One client who was not very happy with his work situation told me that what I am doing had inspired him to investigate a new joint venture opportunity that was coming up.
The Experiment Continues
It is early days for the experiment yet. I plan to keep it going for now, and maybe permanently. I am actually already thinking about how I might be able to viably use this concept for some of the other services I offer.
I do hope that as I continue people will become more and more comfortable with this concept. ‘Give freely, receive freely’ does not mean that you suddenly have to pay more for something to show that you fully value it, it does mean that you have to engage with your role in an exchange and deal with concepts of value, integrity and fairness. I hope that people will remember that what is ‘fair’ for them to give in an exchange has a lot to do with their resources. Those who have little should not feel bad that they can only give little. Those who have a lot should feel good that they are able to give a lot. And those people somewhere in between (which is probably most of us) need to be realistic about what they can give in an exchange – so that they are satisfied and feel good about the exchange, both what they have received and what they have given.
(Those who are scripturally inclined might like to check out these links Mark 12: 41-44, Mosiah 4:27)
I know that this is challenging and maybe even confronting when you are used to having the price of something set for you. But I think there is real value for both parties to exchanging in this way.
I have quite a lot more that I would like to write about ‘give freely, receive freely’ and the way it can change our perception of the world around us and our relationships with others. That is why I have set up this blog. I think the idea has potential, and I am sure I will learn a lot more about it as I experiment with it in practice. I realize that to some of you this whole concept seems very strange, but I hope that you will continue to read this blog as I post more about my ideas and experiences with this concept, and maybe it will still seem strange to you, or maybe it will start to make sense. At the very least I hope it will give you some food for thought and maybe even some entertainment.
