The Caring Economy initially emerged in response to trends in the cryptocurrency movement that aim to use the blockchain to create better systems of exchange. The intention was for “smart contracts” and distributed applications to mediate transactions that align with shared values like fairness and accountability, on unhackable networks without central control. While we resonated with the intentions of the crypto world, we also saw that these solutions were essentially transferring people’s trust from money backed by governments to money backed by distributed systems without addressing an underlying question:
Direct Intervention & Immersive Initiative
Caring Economy
What would an economic system look like if people could actually trust each other?
What if trust was the unit of exchange?
We recognized that this transition starts with moving beyond transactional exchanges to building real authentic, transparent, and caring relationships between one another. In other words, the value of our economy is rooted in the strength of its communities.
We based our design on Nature’s patterns of relationships, asking how our community can mimic the flow of nutrients, the recycling of energy, and the necessity to nurture every element for the overall thrival of our ecosystem. We then built a proof of concept platform – a new social system – where we each can openly express our needs and share our resources (time, talent/skills, money, etc) freely with one another, without expectation of payback or exchange.
The “currency” in this experimental platform is love and generosity.
Because we live in a world that reinforces transactional behavior and scarcity, we’ve had to train ourselves to relate to one another differently and re-value resources, and re-evaluate the very notion of what a resource is. We are learning to listen more CAREfully and feel more deeply. We are better able to anticipate and fulfill each other’s emotional, material, financial, and spiritual needs, as we identify and vulnerably express our own needs. We’ve pooled money to pay for rent, for surgery, to pay off debt, etc. We share our homes with one another; we create outrageous surprise birthday parties. We’ve babysat each other’s kids. We galvanize ourselves to stretch beyond our perceived limits.
The “currency” in this experimental platform is love and generosity.
Because we live in a world that reinforces transactional behavior and scarcity, we’ve had to train ourselves to relate to one another differently and re-value resources, and re-evaluate the very notion of what a resource is. We are learning to listen more CAREfully and feel more deeply. We are better able to anticipate and fulfill each other’s emotional, material, financial, and spiritual needs, as we identify and vulnerably express our own needs. We’ve pooled money to pay for rent, for surgery, to pay off debt, etc. We share our homes with one another; we create outrageous surprise birthday parties. We’ve babysat each other’s kids. We galvanize ourselves to stretch beyond our perceived limits.
With consistency over time, we observed our trust in each other growing exponentially.
We have viscerally experienced having each other’s backs no matter what, and have felt the costs when our listening, caring, and actions fall short. We have felt our stinginess, selfishness, and compartmentalized way of operating, and we have felt the reward and expansion from generosity of spirit.
Together we are shattering our stories of scarcity and separateness.
We are releasing our need to “figure it out alone”, discovering our individual and collective genius, astonishing each other with spontaneous actions of love, trust, commitment. We are weaving a financial and emotional safety net that allows resources and energies to flow where they are most needed, freeing each other to focus on growing a thriving community. We are experiencing the safety and joy that comes with interdependence.
We are now designing ways to expand and scale this experiment into a larger platform that can help other communities take the same journey, encoding trust into formal mechanisms that encourage deep work with ourselves and each other.
Watch the Video
Experience the Caring Economy
Caring for Sebastian ~ 8 Minutes
Sometimes it takes an outrageous act, or many, to help shatter our stories of scarcity and separateness, and to feel what it means to live within a Caring Economy. Our community created an immersive LOVE experience for Sebastian on his 50th Birthday, and the “return” on our “investment” was, and still is, transformational impact.