:: June 2005 Volume 4/Number 4

Looking for Work at the Ritz.
Will a change in the way we do business come from the top down or the bottom up?

By Bob Belinoff

God or Mammon? Whether it
is nobler to own the realm or subdivide it and sell it in order
to play in the realm, that is the question.

It is a question we all ask ourselves as we embark on our own personal journey — attempting to live consciously and compassionately in an interconnected infinitely powerful universe and attempting at the same time to participate in the good life — and increasingly any life at all, here on earth.

A new market, we are told, and a new way of doing business is growing up around us that might just allow us to have our cake and eat it, too. This new business category, according to Gaiam, the producer of yoga mats, blocks and an enormous catalogue of many things good and green, is a $226 billion market for environmentally aware consumers and producers. The consumers, some 60 million strong are the “Cultural Creatives” described in Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson’s carefully researched book of the same name. Growth in this environmentally conscious market indicates that spirituality is “no longer relegated to the New Age periphery but is undeniably migrating to the center of mainstream cultural awareness.”
There is, we are told, a growing economic sector, which does business according to a shared understanding of the interconnectedness of how things work. When you do business in this way, you are not so fixed on growth, and you see that expansion can take many forms. It is a kind of merging of a business and personal style. This is a gentler way of doing business, it allows us time and space to explore ourselves and get in closer touch with that mysterious current that draws and pulls us, that is our path.

The challenge for us all, for a car company that depends on the combustible engine, a teacher that depends on students or a magazine that depends on advertisers, is to stay both in business and true to what calls us. The idea is to be in the market but not of the market. This kind of balancing act can really put your faith to the test.

Recently Gaiam and Ford Motor Company with the help of over 40 other “green” corporate sponsors convened a conference to showcase their products and present the state of this new green marketplace and business leaders who are active in it.
It was the 9th annual LOHAS Conference (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) and it was held this year at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Rey. Though there were many small, innovative organizations with heart on hand — Utne Reader, Natural Health Magazine, The Crossroads Conference Center, Cliff Bars, Peace Cereals, consultants, thinkers and many more, the conference, from discussion panels to test drive to pool- side dinner was more or less dominated by Ford.

And the theme of the conference, like that for Ford’s new Hybrid, was about a bridge to tomorrow. The conference was about making conscious choices for yourself and the planet, and “building a bridge to the future.”

In the morning there was yoga and Budokon. During the day there were discussions on stage with experts and show business celebrities and many presentations: power points with graphs indicating the new green market place, charts and investing opportunities. Intel sponsored a cyber cafe´. The Co-President of J. Walter Thompson, Ford’s advertising agency and one of the largest in the world, was there.

At night there was wonderful and almost combustible hobnobbing before a backdrop of yachts dockside at the Marina.
There were film screenings from the new “Inspiration Film Festival,” networking sessions, groaning boards of food, open bars and music by Ricki Lee Jones.

It is part of the new American Dream to have it both ways, hence the analogy throughout the conference of the bridge. One foot here, the other foot there. Spirituality teaches us, however, that there is no real bridge between here and there, it’s all right here right now, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it does not take walking across a bridge to get there. The bridge is our excuse to have it both ways — for just a little while please, just our lifetime longer.

The “system” works, this conference said, and you can make it work for you, your new values, your business, the planet and a conscious approach to life.

Not to spoil the party, and I had a grand one, but you have to ask yourself: Can the system that helped create our current ecological crisis and lust for consumption mess be the same system to help fix it? Maybe.

Can our hard driving market system be adjusted nudged and fixed so it becomes compassionate, giving and wise? Possibly. If it costs 30% more to shop at Whole Foods and buy sustainable products, what do we say to the 40 million American families who can barely afford to sustain themselves at Food 4 Less now? Or the 80% of the world’s 6 billion population that lives at or below the starvation level? Can a green label and a few more miles to the gallon really make the kind of difference we’re looking for, and can it make it in time?

The current systems in place, all of which are intertwined one with the other — from health and education to food production
to power generation to transportation — took generations to create, capitol investment in infrastructure is enormous, conversion times for adoption of new technologies (even given an accelerated rate of change) take decades because so many secondary technologies need first to be in place. New growth companies are interesting and necessary, but alone they have no leverage with systems of this scale. These systems are super tankers, and they do not turn on a dime.

The very systems that created a predicament that even some members of the Bush Administration say is looking a little scary are unlikely to yield any but incremental change. The system cannot be changed from the inside. The conference itself would soon demonstrate this.

A system really changes from the outside; anyone who has ever worked in a bureau, department or a division of a big organization knows this. And the small players with roots deep into the consciousness movement know this, too. That’s what makes the outsiders and small players the real potential stars of this movement.

They understand that it isn’t really about getting a slice of a new market, nor is it about recalibrating the American Dream, it’s about waking up from it.

This is what yoga is about. This is what healing is about. This is why natural medicine and natural law is so important. Once you understand that the earth is a living, breathing continually replenishing itself system and a master healer, you begin to live and work that way in every part of your life — personal and business. This particular approach to life is what gives the green marketplace such potential, not the large corporations that are trying to buy a piece of it in the public mind.

The choices in front of us are less about a hybrid or organic vegetables or even paper, plastic, nylon or hemp. They are about our faith in the totally interconnected universe, the leverage it provides — and our ability to leap into its calling and act on our belief. Paul Stamets did.

Paul Stamets spoke at the end of the LOHAS conference on a panel called the Future of Sustainability. Paul has always loved being outdoors; he was drawn to the woods and used to be a logger until he discovered his connection to old growth forests was a little more benign, and he took instead to the mushrooms that grew up under the forests wings. From Paul Stamets’ presentation it was very clear that a lot could be done — not by going across — by expanding into other markets, but by going down into your own.

Paul today is a microbiologist specializing in mushrooms. He has written six books now on mushrooms and researched and developed important new drug free ways to use mycelium, a kind of fungi, to break down toxic waste. He and his wife, Dusty, work in a world of fungus and microorganisms, models in miniature really of Gaia. Fungi are important because fungus makes dirt. And dirt grows what we eat and everything on the planet that is green. It’s the microorganisms that make the redwoods and just about everything else in the forests.
Paul walked the audience through a 20-minute slide show of mushrooms and their ability to create a natural healing system for toxic waste. Then he announced that his work with mushrooms and the National Institutes of Health was now leading to a strategy that would save old growth forests. In fact, Stamets announced, he was now to begin work with the U.S. Government to protect giant redwoods because they harbor an eco-system that helps produce a natural non-toxic cure for Small Pox. The Bush Administration sees Small Pox as a major potential terrorist threat because it can be easily disseminated and, until now, there was no known way to address it. Now the government wants to protect the old growth forests as a matter of Homeland Security and its new strategic defense policy.
Paul Stamet’s presentation, and the raucous panel it was a part of (there was a bit of poetry and concluded in a standing ovation, and a burst of song) was not about tapping into new consumer lifestyles, or getting a few more miles to the gallon. This was about what you could do if you dug down in your field and hung out in the undergrowth. This kind of standing on the edge of a system and using nature as a lever is a personal path technology with real promise. There at the end of the LOHAS, on the stage that Ford built, emerging out from under the canopy of the old system, like the very mushroom itself, was a new system — this one based on the natural intelligence of the universe.

Ford has openly acknowledged that the climate is in trouble and has invested a lot of eggs in a lot of alternative energy baskets. Aside from a raft of new SUVs, Ford has, of course, also introduced its new Hybrid. What it hasn’t done is act very quickly; the Japanese are way ahead in the Hybrid arena, and it hasn’t really introduced any new way of thinking, which if it comes form any big company might be expected to come from Ford. Henry Ford practiced yoga and the Ford running the company now, William Ford Jr. is a practicing Buddhist, “nature is where my heart is,” he says. If he cannot change the system from the top — who can?

A system changes from the outside. And what the new green marketplace is really looking for is the driving power of a movement capable of upsetting the applecart and creating entire new systems of thought and consequence. Can Ford do this with a few more miles to the gallon or Ben and Jerry with a new management style?

This is not to say that change is a cottage industry; on the contrary, it is a completely interconnected universe-sized organism… and it is around this organism’s edges, among those who go down deep in their calling, the mavericks and heart path followers that hope lies. Instead of presenting its new Ford Hybrid, Ford would have served itself and the planet better if it had presented Paul Stamets.

The future may not belong to the world’s most fit mega corporate survivors. This is a good thing to remember if you’re looking for work or thinking about starting a “green” company. It is more likely that the future belongs to those who inhabit the edges, live in the undergrowth, go down deep, and know how to dance.

Bob Belinoff is a Los Angeles documentary filmmaker and writes frequently about the media and social marketing. He can be reached at bob@digitalwkshop.com.

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