Jeff Vander Clute: I've been speaking on keys for thriving in the new pattern. And I'll say a few of the gems, there are new gems every day, actually, it’s the leading edge after all. And in my meditations, I was aware of the archetype organizing patterns of society at different points in history. And sometimes society would be organized around warriors or around intellectuals.
Most recently, I would say it's fairly clear that in the Western world, we've organized ourselves around commerce and the merchant archetype.
And it's been a wonderful experiment. We've learned a lot. We've built, in many cases, marvelous businesses - enterprises that have changed the world. We've also learned that some of
our ways of being, if we're not conscious, don't work as well, when we scale them up. So big business isn't always better business. But even big businesses can be conscious now as we're learning, and that's delightful.
So, looking now to what seems to be revealing itself, still, I don't see that there's a different archetype as if it's a pendulum swinging from one to another, and now we're all going to be artists, per se. But I would say, two thoughts merging at once, that if there is one archetype among equals, to emphasize, it is the artist, and that we're all invited to bring our creativity forward now. And if, if you're naturally a merchant, be a merchant. You'll do well if you're naturally an artist or a spiritual teacher or somebody else who hasn't maybe fit in snugly to the structures of society in the past.
We can let go of the idea of the starving artist, we can let go of the ideas that you can't be spiritual and prosperous. This really is a new time. And I would say that the new economy that's also emerging, and we can't see it fully yet - although if you look at the grassroots, you see it more clearly - is an economy of many to many connections. Is an economy that is distributed, decentralized, radically inclusive.