Hello World! Why 1o1.org:
We humans have remarkable generative capabilities and ample resources needed to create beautiful, thriving expressions of life–but to get there, we must rediscover fundamental connections to ourselves and the worlds around us.
Entrepreneurs practicing the art and science of beneficial change-making are encouraging examples of humanity’s steps toward balancing conservation, abundance, and exponentially increasing rates of change. However, effective use of empathy-over-profit frameworks and integrity-based investment criteria remains fragile and oddly rare.
We can’t effectively change anything unless we first radically accept it, so let us examine how we got here:
Extraction over Exchange
We sure seem to be doing a fine job alienating ourselves from our humanity—love, connection, and creation. This is partly due to substantial shifts from spirituality to dogma, community to individualism, and nature to unsustainable landscapes. These global trends, driven by fear and a systematized, dogmatic pursuit of capital gains, have caused a slow but steady separation from both ourselves and our shared humanity. In other words, we’ve chased the protagonist (humankind) up the proverbial tree.
Our shared predicament is reflected by global markets and the industries that continue to receive most of the world’s financial resources year after year. Sectors that are poorly, inefficiently, or detrimentally advancing humanity, including war & defense ($2.24 trillion), sickness & pharma ($1.48 trillion), and extraction of non-renewable resources ($628 billion), have seen an estimated $4.35 trillion in 2022 alone. Meanwhile, achieving universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation services would only take an estimated USD 114 billion per year (less than 2% of that,)
… and so, it’s time to accept that here, we are.
Waking Humanity: Rediscovering a North Star
(& With it, Ourselves)
Imagine a world in which we readily choose to direct a small fraction of these trillions of discretionary dollars toward basic necessities such as food, water, healthcare, and affordable housing. If that sounds too good to be true, you’d be right to ask, to demand an answer as to why we should not make it so?! Fundamentally, we all know that it shouldn’t be too much to ask of ourselves; and when we look back through the lens of history, we will see that so much of the suffering today had, in fact, been addressable.
Freely choosing to really invest discretionary resources towards something beyond basic survival requires us to recall our fundamental mindset and value connections—on both individual and community dimensions.
The Shift: From For/Non-Profit to For-What-Purpose?
With profit-oriented (zero-sum transaction) models deeply ingrained in our psyches, we have become desensitized to the appalling suffering and resulting detriments to our fellow humans, creatures, and landscapes. Many have come to view extraction as the norm, and out of the meager funding allocated to produce “beneficial” outcomes, most are woefully inefficient, and downright deadly. Too often, philanthropy, charity, and community outreach initiatives are used as shields to “offset” and redirect attention away from significant investments in short-sighted, extractive, destructive, or unsustainable enterprise.
As the perceived value of available products that meet the “meaningful” or “this will matter in 7 generations” criteria decreases, so does the availability of money that funds them. Conversely, there is no shortage of available resources or demand for solutions; there is also an ample supply of people ready and willing to live fulfilled lives, working at the intersection of truth, beauty, and Love.
But how can we effectively channel this passion, willingness, and love toward new organizational visions? A piece of the answer lies in our fundamental understanding of our most abundant resource: Love.
As bell hooks posits in her book, All About Love, “Love is an action, a participatory emotion.” To reconnect to our empathic human nature, we must trust the practice of love is a fundamental premise: an ongoing set of behaviors that demonstrate the practicality of a “For People and Purpose” approach to growth.
A Blueprint for Action: Connected Entrepreneur’s Toolkits
Entrepreneur’s Toolkits provide changemakers and entrepreneurs with a shared framework for analyzing structures, projects, and proposals to ensure they align with beneficial societal outcomes. They serve as a grounding source and a launch pad for investors and changemakers to realize their ideas, passions, and dreams from a meaningful and sustainable foundation.
Plato’s litmus test is one of the pivotal pieces of this toolkit. By ensuring that we form our change efforts at the intersection of truth, beauty, and justice, we develop environments where we can recognize and discover more of ourselves. Our toolkits share the out-of-the-box language of action to create a just, beautiful, thriving world.
Imagine the impact of directing just 1% of global resources using this investment criteria. Simply put, it would change the world. We have seen from decades of experience that lives transform when we apply these time-tested tools and frameworks to our life’s work.
1o1.org invites you to witness what happens when you apply Plato’s litmus test in your personal life. Experience the ripple effects it creates in your communities and the broader world. Join us in making the essential leap toward a world where we all thrive.
P.S. As with most (good) ideas, this post has many authors; it is (perhaps perpetually) in Beta; please participate in shaping and improving its shared value; feel free to post your thoughts, improvements, concerns, and suggested edits to v 0.1 HERE
