Anti-Social Enterprise

Barefoot and Submerged

I went to Greenbelt Festival a couple of weeks ago. My feet barely touch the ground all weekend (except most of the time they were submerged in the ground- check out the photo), I went from talk to performance to worship to panel to art thing to food to pub and back to talks. I get a bit overwhelmed by so much going on but I think I gave myself a bit of a theme this year instead of going to anything and everything I fancied, it’s set me on a bit of a thought tangent. I ended up at a talk called ‘Capitalism, Consumerism and Social change’ I imagined it would be a turn the world upside down, rebel against the system type talk but when the lady opened her talk with the phrase ‘I am a rampant capitalist’, ‘Error’, I thought, ‘I’m not going to like this’.

As she continued it seemed, although she did indeed support the ideas of capitalism and consumerism, she also left her high paying job to become a baker of bread. Simply, in a small social enterprise where her monthly salary is the same as her previous daily rate. She has chosen a livelihood which builds community, makes bread and got her out of the rat race.  That, I can get on board with. But she said some other interesting things which sent my mind a wandering.

We all know the financial climate we live in, we all know that unemployment and funding is a big problem. Many of us are living in the constant possibility of redundancy and some of us are beginning to plan for such a time, some of us are in such a time.  Others are taking matters into their own hands, like this lady or others who have already started their own entrepreneurial journey.

I have no problem with this, I freelance myself out for various different bits and bobs to help pay the bills, I have for years, because what I do tends to work like that. So I can understand people doing this to protect themselves financially.

The interesting point I found myself thinking was to do with how self serving this can become. See we don’t trust anyone, we don’t trust our jobs to still be here in a years time, we dont trust the funding to still be around to do our jobs, we don’t trust the government and statutory services to continue to do their job because they are being cut significantly too and we dont trust anyone to be able to pay us at all so we make ways to do it ourselves. Because we don’t trust anyone, we trust only ourselves. We decide what skills we have and what we can make money doing and we form private enterprises to bring about self sustainability. Social enterprises, are essentially private enterprises which look a bit better, you’re not our for major profit, you’re just in it to survive and try to help the world in the process. Great, but our motivation for getting there is anything but social. We’re setting these up from a place of deep mistrust, and therefore keeping all our cards close to our chest and competing in a crazy world of small business for small money. None of this is very social.

From my current role within the statuatory youth service, almost weekly I hear of a new social enterprise or community interest company forming to help community and effectively save the town. Great aspiration, but it’s all coming from a place of distrust and bitterness and the belief that no one else will do a better job. The thing is, none of these social enterprises, or committees or charities are particularly talking to each other. Town wide, one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing. Everyone wants to change the world but they all want to do it their way, looking after number one first. Unfortunately I don’t see myself behaving any differently.

I believe in social enterprise and making work for yourself, but I also believe in Community and this should come into consideration. I don’t think many people are doing much market research. No one is asking ‘what needs changing?’, everyone is asking ‘what can I change?’, regardless of need. It’s good to know what you bring, what your skills are and where you fit, but it’s also good to know what everyone else brings, what other’s skills are and where they fit in relation to you. 

It’s also making me think about churches and how you can have so many in one town and they all try to do the same thing; love God and love other people. We probably need to pool our resources a bit more to achieve this. I was thinking about examples in the Bible and how we see lots of people being ‘called’ but God didn’t really think about specific skills so much when doing the calling, He called people together, not apart. I’d like to see less business models in church, less anti-social enterprise and a bit more community. a bit more working together for the whole of a community rather than our own church growth.

I’m hoping this isn’t an anti-social rant. Just a bit of a pondering about how communities work together in a climate of mistrust. I want to learn to be community the way God intended.

All sharey sharey. I hope.