What’s Good??
That is a fun greeting as well as a pretty philosophical question. It’s also one I was asking myself for the business. I recently stopped by my old high school for the first time in five-ish years and talked to my high school Spanish teacher, he’s a veteran and I always looked up to him for traveling and bringing what he learned back to our tiny town. One of the things he asked me about was ‘The pie in the sky’ outcome for the business, so I felt like sharing what my personal view of success for this company is.
To start, my personal view of ‘good’ went through a lot of transition as I experienced more. As a kid it was definitely shaped by my family’s Faith and Santa Claus, but when my older brother spoiled the illusion of the gifts for obedience I was shook… but not enough to start behaving badly because I STILL wanted presents and candy. Simple priorities back then. The most friction was definitely the discovery of other Faiths and scientific world views later in high school and college. Having a pretty rural upbringing meant my cultural and environmental influences were limited; both physically and digitally since I’m older than Google. What I took from that clash of faith and facts is that I still wanted to be good, and that understanding what that is would require both faith and facts. The fact was, I didn’t and probably couldn’t ever know everything. I have to believe in choice, because no one can prove I really have it but it will only exist if I exercise it. Logically, that makes me responsible for the choices I make; use what power I have to create more for myself and others or use it to oppress others’ power. If I get to choose, I’d rather make allies of other people when there are plenty of hostile forces out there already… If more people choose to create power instead of oppress it, we can all benefit. That’s the foundation for a network that supports each other to reach a sustainable balance to grow from.
Business success in todays world is defined by one thing: profit. Stock number go up = good. This doesn’t seem to be working. Not because the system is broken, but because it is functioning in the way that system allows it to, and the system is not designed to align with prosperity. We use Fiat Currency instead of Commodity Money. One major difference between the two is that Fiat is not based on a finite or actual resource so it can grow exponentially, it can reach an infinite amount… But our environment is a finite resource. And after some calculations I am confident that a finite sum can not provide the infinite amount of resources to match an infinite money supply. I view our current environmental degradation as environmental debt created from practices like printing money instead of doing the work to manage resources. We can do better. We have to. The planet needs some TLC to continue to provide resources at a rate that can support all of us earthlings. The labor, products, and efficiency of processes that add to our environments ability to produce have to become the definition of value, and thus success, for us to move society in that direction.
I want DoGood to be a catalyst in the realization of a sustainable civilization. And I feel like we’re all a step closer whenever someone like yourself, with the patience to listen to anyone’s idea of ‘What’s Good’, comes to our community knowing that we’re more likely to reach solutions together. This newsletter and our social media will be a place for us to offer opportunities to act at different levels of society for systemic changes that ensure a future for dried fruit eaters everywhere! On the way we’ll choose to DoGood one bite at a time: Offering rich flavor from natural food that gives us the energy to make good choices and maintain our health. Appreciating the work everyone in our communities contributes to produce value and sharing the prosperity equitably. Advocating and acting to redesign social systems in a way that make our basic resource production and processes sustainable for the planet. I don’t want to put DoGood forward as a big moral statement, I just hope it will be encouragement for us to make the choices that create some good for everyone.