Raam Dev

Hello, future.

Income Ethics: Embracing the Human Family

Photo: Searching through the Trash

This essay is the first in a four-part series on income ethics. The series describes my discovery of a need for income ethics (this essay), explains why we need to define our enough, discusses the problem with art and equality in the digital age, and lays out the income ethics that I have defined for my own creative work. If you'd like to follow my work, please subscribe or check back here for updates.

A few days after returning to the United States from my first trip to India, I found myself in a movie theater, leaning back into a comfortable chair and quietly feeling the tears roll down my face as I looked around the dimly lit room and watched people stuff their faces with popcorn and slurp on giant cups of soda. I couldn't help but think about the millions of starving children on the other side of the planet who, while I was enjoying comfort, would be going to sleep later that night hungry and cold on a concrete sidewalk.

A few months later I was invited to attend the last launch of NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery. As I watched the spaceship blast off into outer space, I was again flooded with emotions as I realized how in such a short period of time I had observed the poorest of humans barely surviving in the slums of India to seeing firsthand evidence of the incredible technological advances our species had achieved.

Almost a year after my return, the bulk of these emotions seemed to have all but disappeared, numbed away by the time spent living again in a privileged and abundant society. But, as I walked down a beautiful pathway in California one sunny day, surrounded by perfectly landscaped gardens that wrapped me in pink, yellow, and blue flowers, their petals lazily swaying in the wind, I caught myself once again choking up.

What did I do to deserve so much beauty? Why did I have so much while millions of others lived in heaps of trash, scrounging around in the filth in search of food? And what right did I have to ask for more, to seek an income and ask others to give me more when I already had so much?

Whenever I thought about how I could earn an income through my creative work, I felt embarrassed to even be considering it. While billions were trying to feed themselves, I bathed in the luxury and the privilege of being able to create income streams with virtually no limit on growth and no need for accountability. It felt irresponsible, selfish, and wrong.

I have not always felt this repulsion to asking for more or this difficulty justifying an income. For most of my life I lived with more than I needed. I worked towards goals that were not really my own and I spent the majority of my time doing things to afford stuff that I thought I wanted but didn't need.

When it came to my career, nothing I did ever felt purposeful to the bigger picture. My potential always felt grossly underutilized and I never felt satisfied. But instead of doing something about it, I unconsciously contributed to the continuation of this dissatisfaction by telling myself that I needed to stick with whatever I was doing, no matter how rote or routine, because the next great opportunity might be just around the corner.

Instead of living life guided by my heart, I was living life guided by the fear of missing out on the next big thing, the thing that everybody had convinced me I would be foolish to throw away. Time was a cheap accessory and I was always willing to sacrifice today in return for the security of knowing that tomorrow would bring something I could expect, something that was already known and easily handled.

It didn't matter that I was quietly suffering inside. I willingly accepted suffering in my career and in my life because everybody else was suffering too, and sharing that suffering felt easier and more logical than standing out as the person who gave up everything in search of a better way.

But all of that changed last year when I made the decision to rid my life of all that fear and all those external expectations. I voluntarily gave up my attachment to the achievements, the accomplishments, and all the positions and career advancements. Saving myself from the decay of the status quo became more important than all the golden opportunities I might miss in the process.

From that moment forward, I committed myself to living a simple, more purpose-driven lifestyle and proceeded to wipe the slate clean of all my material possessions so that I could discover my enough and allow my heart the freedom it needed to guide my life.

I began living with only what fit on my back and in the process I discovered that letting go actually decreased the sense of scarcity and fear of not having enough.

Instead of being scared to miss opportunities, I began to feel a sense of abundance, a sense of absolute contentedness that came with the knowledge that I had recognized my enough and that I had the freedom to focus on the soul-empowering creative work that I now fully recognized enriched both my life and the lives of others.

But with this freedom came something very unexpected: An unbelievably strong sense of responsibility for using my time and my resources to help rebalance the global inequalities that were brought to my attention by travels abroad.

The decision to travel the world had opened my soul to a feeling of being inexplicably connected to everyone else on the planet. Earth had become my home and everyone on it genuinely felt like family. It became clear that whatever lifestyle I led and whatever work I did, my existence needed to contribute in some way to the well-being of all. I now felt an inherent planetary social responsibility.

Read the next part of the series: Income Ethics: Planetary Social Responsibility

Notes: Testing Ideas and the Beauty of Being Human

This comment was left by Jaive on Ali Dark's site. Jaive is a native of Indonesia and is trying to help improve the country by using the potential of the Internet.

The comment gave me a perspective into how people in developing countries are exposed to technologies that many in the developed world take for granted. I loved Jaive's point about how humans have the special ability to take theories and ideas and challenge them and how when we don't challenge them, we're throwing that gift away. (His English isn't great, but I decided not to correct it so that I could preserve his voice.)

You know when i was in Uni, we didnt have any internet connections, emails or web mails. ( this was in the early 2000s). We all shared computers, 40 PCs between 200 students.

In our library all we had on computers and internet where books from the 80?s, early 90?s.

And like you said…when people talked about the internet and the possibilities, it was all third hand ideas, collected from random articles in newspapers and second magazines.

But the beauty of being human is to test ideas, take theory and apply. It is when we are no testing ideas, that we are slaves to someone else’s opinion of what works or what doesnt. We are trapped in their interpretation, caught in their translation, forming our own opinions based on what is not our own opinion.

It is only when we test these ideas, its is only when we challenge them and challenge ourselves that we move beyond and in the process if discovery, helps others move to make or break their own ideas and concepts.

I have seen how an increase in blogging and internet projects by many friends in PNG and many tell me that it was because i started.

Create to Share

Have you ever seen a baby get excited about a new toy and then almost immediately turn around and hold it up with bright eyes and a big smile, pleading with you to share in the excitement? The baby has no expectations, only a desire to share.

When we share without expectation, we're sharing love. When we create without expectation, we're creating with love. But if we put a condition on sharing the things that we create -- I'll share this if you give me that -- then we disconnect from the ultimate reason that we possess the power to create: to share love.

That doesn't mean we can't receive something in return for what we create. Receiving in return for creating isn't the same as creating with the intention of receiving. The latter is based in scarcity, the former in abundance.

Like the baby pleading to share in the joy of discovery, we instinctively want to share what we love. When we do something because we love it, the act of doing it becomes enough. When we create with the intention of sharing, everything we receive in return becomes a gift.

Lighten Your Life

Life is not an ever-growing collection of successes and failures. It's not a bag of decisions, opinions, mistakes, or mishaps, or a rucksack full of bricks that you're condemned to drag through the sludges of time.

Life is more like the stroke of a paintbrush, emptying itself of all that clings to it and refining its precision with the passage of time. It's the vessel that exists to hold water, effortlessly releasing its contents to the next destination.

It's important to remember that not every destination can be reached by a well-paved path: some destinations require taking flight. When it's time to fly you just can't fill a giant bag with everything in your life and expect that plane to soar.

If where you're going is important, decide what really matters and take responsibility for your freedom. Hold tight to everything and everyone that will support your voyage and let go of everything else. Embrace your essence and when there is doubt let love lighten your load: a life painted in love outweighs a voyage completed unprepared.

This Moment

Close encounters with death are the ultimate reminder that each day, each breath, is indeed a gift, a precious privilege that we must respect and protect, a reminder that each moment is an opportunity to express the qualities we are worthy and responsible for living, qualities of courage, curiosity, compassion, kindness, and creativity; qualities of strength, intelligence, peace, love, and humility.

This isn't an opportunity we can waste. It's not something we can put aside until we have more time. We must use this moment to live with zest, with vigor, and with veracious valor. We must use this moment to express what it means to be a living breathing human being. We must use this moment to live fearlessly responsible for life because the next reminder we get may not leave us with another moment.

Karma Generator

A middle-aged man struggled to slide the heavy door open and behind him a line of people were piling up, waiting to get onto the train. He hauled the door open and stepped through, passing the job of holding the door onto the person behind him: a young lady chatting on her phone. The young lady passed the job onto an elderly man, who passed it onto a middle-aged woman, who passed it onto a young man.

The train door was designed to close itself, but if pushed just a little further the door would catch on a latch and stay open. All of the people getting on the train were regular commuters and I was certain they knew how the door worked, so I was puzzled that nobody put in the extra effort.

That's when I saw a young man in his late twenties come through the door. Instead of holding it for the person behind him, he pushed the door just a little further and propped it open.

As dozens of people walked in, I realized that although they were all oblivious to what the young man had done, his extra effort was still having an affect on each and every one of them. It was the gift that kept on giving, a generator for good karma.

When you lend a helping hand, aim to do more than hold the door: prop it open. When you do your work or create your art, do more than enough. Those who follow may not notice your extra effort, but like a magic pot of gold that keeps on giving, the fruits of your labor will be magnified by each person that your work empowers.

Notes: Thom Chambers on the Future of Publishing in 2011

This entire interview between Everett Bogue and Thom Chambers is great, but this particular response from Thom really made me think (I had to read the last two paragraphs a few times to let it soak in):

Ev: How do you decide what is important enough to make it past your high filter?

Thom: The lack of gatekeepers online means that we’re living in the age of the amateur. It’s great that you don’t need anyone’s permission to create or to publish anymore, but the unspoken consequence of this is that there’s a lot of low quality stuff out there.

That’s not necessarily the creator’s fault, either – now you need to be your own writer, editor, designer, publisher, marketer, promoter, customer services department, PR department, and all the rest. It’s rare for anyone to be capable at all those things.

That said, the gatekeepers were there for a reason – to keep out the dross.

For every JK Rowling who was foolishly turned away by a dozen publishers, there are a thousand correct calls about authors who simply aren’t up to scratch.

The way I choose who gets through? Professionalism. There’s a bit of a craft stall mentality at the moment online – “I’ll set up a store and try and sell some stuff if I can, it’s not particularly pretty or grammatically correct or anything, but I’m only one person so that’s okay. As long as I’m ‘myself’ then people will forgive me”.

But there are others who set up with a boutique mentality – “I’m small now, sure, but I’m high quality and I take pride in every aspect of what I do and anyone who visits can see that I’m going places”. Both are small, niche people trying to make an impact but the mentality is poles apart. Within a few seconds of visiting someone’s site or reading their work, you can see which attitude they have and whether they’ve actually got a future and are worth your attention.

Notes: 'Curation,' and journalists as curators

While trying to figure out if the word 'curations' was the correct thing to call the bits and pieces of stuff I save from around the web (I later decided to use the word Marginalia), I stumbled across an interesting article. It's is a bit old in Internet-time (2008), but it's very insightful. I love what Phil Meyer says in one of the comments regarding how the Internet is causing us to view information differently.

"It is a natural result of the shift from information scarcity to information overload. When information was scarce, journalism was mostly hunting and gathering. Now that information is plentiful, journalism has to shift to processing. Mindy's list enumerates many of the ways to add value through processing."

Currents of Chaos

On a bed in the middle of an emergency room, a small boy sits. Around him is total chaos: people yelling, nurses running around, trauma to the left and to the right. Everyone is moving with urgency while the boy sits motionless and watches it all unfold. A nurse notices and assumes he must be terrified. "Don't be afraid," she reassures him. The boy looks at her calmly and replies, "Oh I'm not afraid."

If we're not participating in the chaos -- if we're not being wrapped up and swept away by the current along with everyone else -- that doesn't mean we're inadequate, missing out, or living in fear. But in the busyness of life, that's easy to forget. It's easy to unconsciously allow our lives to be written by the currents. It's easy to assume that if everyone is riding them, they must lead us in the right direction.

Those assumptions allow the currents to affect our energy levels and our work schedules, our eating habits and our career tactics. They influence our skills, the possessions we own, and the actions we condone. They cause us to assume that life is chaotic, a competition, a race against time, and a mad dash to the finish line.

Let go of the expectation that life is an endless chaotic current. Give yourself permission to be still. Walk through your day observing the currents of life, holding your ground and allowing those currents to sweep past you like the wind sweeps around a tree. Be like the boy in the hospital quietly observing the chaos. You are not helpless and adrift. You are conscious, strong, and fully capable of directing your life.