I was listening to an amazing podcast yesterday between Sam Harris (Waking up) and Benjamin Todd (80000hours.org) about Effective Altruism.
Both are very awakened folks, the conversation was mainly focused on how to contribute in the best way for the common good within our current capitalist society.
They covered the classics:
- changing our way of consuming & living
- being of service and allocating our time where it’ll have the most positive impact.
- meditating and improving the quality of your mind.
- etc.
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A side note about my path:
Due to lots of changes (being propelled by BoL and Capital Governance among other fields), those last weeks & months I was feeling into going back on a full-blown “Bill Gate path”.
→ Thriving at capitalism, so you can accumulate a buttload of money and build a philanthropic powerhouse (Gate foundation)
The execution to get there?
The “Peter Thiel path” (Co-founder of Paypal with Elon Musk): you find a niche problem and build a monopole, using all the startup tools & methods available.
(Recommended reads: Zero to One, Lean Startup, Y Combinator free resources and Startups School)
Honestly, with all the resources we have available (DW fields included) it is more than do-able in a matter of years. This is a path you need to fully embrace though.
But what if this path is too ego-based and not truly what we want for this life?
…
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Back to the conversation “Effective altruism within our current capitalist society.”
This talk made made me realize there is another way than the one above.
What if you could have a comfortable living, have a true impact working on what you love and avoid the 100+ hours a week Thiel/Gate/Musk path?
How so?
- Picking your priorities wisely
- Working with the Larger Consciousness System
- Being Humble.
Without a family to support and/or major health issue, this guy Benjamin Todd, is living on $20k net a year, and investing/donating everything he makes on top of that to very effective charities or onto his own organization.
(though he recommends to start with giving 10% of your salary and/or doing yearly donation to effective charities).
Giving away 10% of your revenue, isn’t it a Law of Attraction thing?..
His perhaps over-donating attitude started decades ago when he became vegan and realized that changing his way of consuming had an impact, but the biggest impact he was having was by donating money to very effective NGOs.
→ The example he gave: by being vegan you save hundreds of animal lives per years (not counting the suffering…), whereas by investing even a few bucks in those highly effective NGOs you help thousands of animal due to massive programs being launched (effective much?).
…
Listening to that talk, I started pondering on how could I apply this to my specific scenario?
Clearly, giving 10% away of my revenues is not such a big deal…
Despite my low-income currently (in the last years I went from “Bill Gate path” to blowing everything away on an uncompromising “Buddha path” , to seeking more peace & harmony now).
Some of you might resonate with that
Clearly though, we can find a compromise between the paths…
Not going full Bill Gate / Peter Thiel (which is quite Ego-based when you look into it), not going full Benjamin Todd either, not becoming a Monk or Ascetic to “free ourselves from that reality” (another ego-alert woop woop ).
Following Conscious Capitalism ideas, what would be the best way to invest our time/energy/revenue?
Like a trader, you do not want to put all yours eggs in one basket.
And as an evolved human being, you want your time/energy/money to benefit your other parts of you the most, while having a good life for yourself.
Some of the basics:
- Investing into yourself
- Supporting wisely the close ones you care about.
- Being an entrepreneur or working in a company where you kick asses (
- Donating & Investing into effective altruistic endeavors.
- Not wasting time/energy/money on detrimental things: junk food, drugs, alcohol, some people, etc.
Then it came to me that among all the organizations/people I am donating to and know that they will have a positive impact on humanity, one of the most important to me currently is THIS endeavor
Dream’s work and our crew being built…
A delusion perhaps… But I am convinced that Captain, if he wishes to, will be one of the leader of the New World (don’t mind the ugly link, only the book and its source matters).
So should I invest 10% of my monthly revenue to Sapien Med in Patreon money?
Perhaps. But perhaps my lil Ego won’t appreciate it in the long run, cause it is lacking control.
So what if a viable solution would be to:
- donate 10% of our net monthly revenue within all the actors we truly believe in (thinking 1€ invested → 1000+ of lives impacted), and in the process raising our Patreon money to Sapien Med (yes they do need it and invest it well)
- giving some of our time to the truly serious people around here (like _Om does ) and our environment.
- continue to buy paid fields around here, without over-thinking about how we spent our money, cause it gives us huge level-ups and it goes in the right pockets. *
*a not-so-bad behavior btw, if you’re not at ease with raising your Patreon money.
No more complains about the price of paid fields anymore and keeping in mind where this money is being invested in. Evolving humanity.
Any thoughts folks?
Would love that to be challenged and/or completed