Red ~C Diary: Starship Social Enterprise

(Crossposted from www.c4chaos.com)

"Social entrepreneurs have existed throughout history. St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order, would qualify as a social entrepreneur -- having built multiple organizations that advanced pattern changes in his "field." Similarly, Florence Nightingale created the first professional school for nurses and established standards for hygiene and hospital care that have shaped norms worldwide. What is different today is that social entrepreneurship is developing into a mainstream vocation, not only in the United States, Canada, and Europe, but increasingly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In fact, the rise of social entrepreneurship represents the leading edge of a remarkable development that has occurred across the world over the past three decades: the emergence of millions of new citizen organizations."

Source: How to Change the World : Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas

I'm an only child who grew up in a humble country along the Pacific ocean. I remember spending my lazy afternoons with friends and neighbors just chilling out under a bayabas tree. Me and my friends were fond of watching Jackie Chan movies and anything that had to do with ninjas. We were crazy about sci-fi movies too. Thank God for VHS tapes!

I consider myself a social person but I'm the type who is more on the introvert side of the scale. That's why I can watch movies alone and get lost in books for days, only getting up if I need to eat, drink, stretch, or pee. Some people will label that as "geeky." Then call me a blissful geek for all I care.

There was a point in my life when I had the urge of developing my personality. So I devoured inspirational books, spiritual books, philosophical books, scientific books, self-help books, and those uber-mindblowing books about enlightenment and integral stuff. Yet I was still screwed up. I still didn't know where to start and what to do with my life. Books are fingers pointing to the moon. It's so obvious now, but I was still clueless back then.

I'm at the stage in my life right now where I get easily bored with spiritual talks, philosophical dialogues, stupid lemon-eating debates, and feel-good literature. Those are still cool once in a while but most of the time I find them empty at best, or just another version of a blissful drug at worst. They give me a sense of elitism and make me think I'm special, that I'm much more intelligent and compassionate than others. Well, nothing wrong with that, and besides, those blissful drugs water the seeds of vision. But where's the action? Ah, exactly! That's the main ingredient that has been missing in my life all along.

Philosophical, intellectual, and spiritual stuff can really pump us up, but they're very partial. Most of them lack the real world examples to put our vision into action. At worst, they could even make us more naive about how interrelated things are in the social dimension --  politics, economics, business, science, religion, and stages of moral development.

You see, I'm one of those naive people. So I've decided to do something about it. Instead of the never-ending personality development and purely intellectual, theoretical, and spiritual stuff, I will switch my focus on more "practical" matters in the area of social enterprise. This is my way of taking off too much attention on myself, and instead, investing a better part of my psychic energy on how to really make a better impact on others.

The first phase of my solution would be to change the flavor of my intellectual consumption, starting with books. I've created a Starship Social Enterprise book list via zBooks so that I can keep tabs of these books while sharing and discussing them with others.


The next phase would be to integrate everything I've learned and put them into collective and collaborative action in the real world. Zaadz would be my tool. Zaadz would be my livelihood that will make it possible for me to do these crazy things. We'll see.