Discussion Boards

	Topic	Posts	Replies	Last Post
	Out of the Box Making a difference in the world starts with thinking and acting creatively - getting out of the box.  We all tend to fall into actions of habit and routine.  Doing things because everyone one else is doing it or that's just the way it has always been done.  Change requires effort and can be uncomfortable.  Initiating change can be supported through "friendly" discussions and encouragement.  What "out of the box" ideas inspire you?  Want's your next step? Want feedback and support?	0	0
	Socially Conscience Business Ideas Putting theory into practice, plans into action.  Not just talking about but doing something.  This discussion board is for business ideas or actual businesses that bring it all together.  Post an idea, get group feedback, look for others to help with the project, expand upon the concept.  In short, utilize the pod as your outside (non-paid) board of directors.	2	4	Re: Business model Mar 26, 7:59 PM by eConsciousMarket.com
	Social Capitalism Individuals and organizations in striving to make this a better world utilizing the framework of capitalism. Does it work?	1	1	Re: Working to Live Oct 14, 2007, 9:17 AM by mary
	Values in Action: Conscious Capitalism What values underlie and support our current implementation of capitalism? And what values do we need to shift toward a system that balances competitive market forces with cooperative distribution of essential goods and services?	7	23	Re: Conscious Capitalism, an oxymoron? Mar 17, 3:02 PM by Tom
	Values in action: What is your bliss? What is your business? Share how you incorporate your values into your business and still manage to make a living! Keep us posted on your projects and share your trade secrets -- We are the foundation of wealth, after all...	9	9	Organizational Synergy Dec 9, 2007, 1:10 AM by Dathane

Welcome!

This pod is designed to dig into the fundament of capitalism: our own personal system of values. The language itself makes this connection abundantly clear, providing a sort of neon sign on the social construction of the system of exchanges that shapes our marketplace.

Picture our economy as a river, a fluid currency flowing through a system of values, which following natural laws, traces the contours of our hearts…

Unfortunately, the contours of our hearts are too often shaped by the mutilating forces of an exchange system that values people as objects and positions them vertically according to self-reinforcing and arbitrary judgments of worth.

It is this, the valuing of the material markers of value, that drives the stampeding herd of capitalists over the cliff. We are similarly doomed if we remain unable to extricate ourselves from their ubiquitous, under-examined and therefore poorly articulated values.

For instance:

1) Our economic system supports objectification, competitiveness and materialism, each of which in a thousand ways results in oceans of tears;

2) It supports social stratification and the many manifestations of disrespect;

3) By organizing around a principle of scarcity, our economy nourishes a rampant anxiety and the use of compensatory control strategies. Anxiety also decreases intelligence and relevance of response as it coarsens our perceptive filters and increases our autonomic reactivitiy. This in turn produces a general apathy to oppression, rationalizes poverty and institutionalizes greed;

4) Our system also disintegrates family units, disenfranchises dependency, and punishes, or fails to reward, many expressions of compassion;

5) Our system supports mass production and discourages craft and accountability, and only sporadically rewards allegiance to quality. The very best of us is easily lost between the ledger lines, as the subjective matrix of our complexity is reduced to units of production and consumption, profit and loss…