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This reality, in fact, is one of those amazing coincidences that can only be called either inspiration or serendipity.

The current crisis is offering an opportunity for men to develop their nurturing side.

Before you discount this, consider that men are as naturally prone to nurture as they are to provide.

Thousands of years of the Nomadic, Agrarian and Industrial Ages have conditioned hundreds of generations of men to find success through work.

And the long era of comparative peace and prosperity since 1945 have tended to make them feel entitled to plentiful jobs, extra cash, vacations, and leisure time, and numerous other opportunities—often with minimal effort.

The Great Recession has challenged these assumptions, requiring a new type of individual with two sets of character traits and skills:

1. First, extremely high levels of initiative, resiliency, ingenuity, and tenacity.
2. Second, much higher than traditional levels of cooperation, communication, unselfishness about who gets rewards and credit, and teamwork.

Today’s generation of men and women are capable of the first list of needed traits and changes, but many men struggle to compete with women on the second list.

Indeed, for much of history it was man’s lack of these very “weaknesses” that made him independent, self-assured, bold, assertive, ambitious, and what has been called simply, “manly,” “Roman,” and “tough.”

When boys are taught, “be a man,” “don’t cry like a sissy,” and men are told to “cowboy up,” it often means precisely not to be the cooperative, communicative, depend-on-others types.

“Stop talking and just do it.” “Who cares what others say or do, just do what you want.”

Men still laugh at Tim Allen’s grunts as the essence of male communication, and even in team athletics boys are taught to stand out and rise above the crowd.

What used to be the unwritten rules of “male dominance” are now actually seen as inability to excel in the vital second list of characteristics (communication, cooperation, unselfishness).

While of course this generalization is overcome by a number of individuals, it remains a reality for many.

Wise fathers, grandfathers and role models will help teach boys and men that there is much more to manhood than the wartime and gang-related values.

Indeed, the lessons taught from fathers to sons by generations of hunters, farmers and entrepreneurs differ greatly from those idealized by warriors, politicians and corporate raiders.

The first group idealizes cooperation, communication, and progress whereas the second prefers competition, dominance and victory.

In the Industrial Age, the “Organization Man” became the ideal for males—detached, admired, cash-carrying, benefitting from a lot of leisure time, and considered in charge of his family and its members.

The Industrial Man was the provider and the boss. At work he was an employee, a servant, but at home he was the center of the universe. He too often tended to treat his wife and children like employees and act like the boss he resented at work.

With a life experience built on succeeding as an employee, he didn’t know another way of acting.

His wife was either an employee, the boss, or perhaps a fellow worker in competition for advancement, attention and rewards.

His marriage was most often seen as a contract, where both sides were expected to perform their agreed upon roles, rather than a covenant where he would give his all in sacrifice and longsuffering regardless of what the other side did.

His relationships with neighbors and his nation took on this same contractual perspective.

He voted like an employee, for what he wanted—rather than for what the nation truly needed like a farmer or owner protecting the land or the organization he raised from scratch.

Today some men are lamenting (often quietly) the loss of this concept, while at the same time the need for a new male ideal is vital.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the masculine ideal was often the best nurturer. It takes nurturing, not detached management, to grow a farm, build a business from the ground up, and raise children into adults.

The necessary attention to detail is legendary. Indeed, in the Agrarian Age the iconic man’s occupation and business was Husbandry.

Providing was part of their role, but it was a secondary natural outgrowth of nurturing children like a small business in its infancy, encouraging and husbanding plants and coaxing them to grow and flourish into a farm in full bloom.

As Wendell Berry put it:

“…a man who is in the traditional sense a good farmer is husbandman and husband, the begetter and conserver of the earth’s bounty, but he is also midwife and motherer. He is a nurturer of life. His work is domestic. He is bound to the household.

“But let ‘progress’ take such a man and transform him…sever him from the household, make…‘uneconomical’ his impulse to conserve and to nurture…’ and not only will much of his incentive to be a good husband end, but his attachment to the land, to his nation, and to his wife and children, who are, after all, not particularly economical.

“Then, send his children away to school during the day, thus severing the wife from both husband and children, and she will naturally follow him to work looking for connection and meaning.

“Our homes are left abandoned and barren across the nation—father, mother and children are all elsewhere, seeking love and acceptance and nurturing.”

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Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 5 Here

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Perhaps no other industry is as aristocratic as industrial food production.

As a Georgics-loving, passionate gardener and an advocate of locavorism and sustainable agriculture, I’ve been studying this topic for a couple years.

I’ll be publishing more articles on the topic in the future, but for now I wanted to share the following links with the community.

If nothing else, exploring these resources will make you a more aware citizen. If you feel mission-driven toward sustainable agriculture systems, I encourage you to explore these in depth.

Books:

(Affiliate Links)

• Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin
• In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• Wisdom of the Last Farmer by David Mas Masumoto
• The Other Greeks: The Small Family Farm & the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization by Victor Davis Hanson
• The End of Food by Paul Roberts
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

Films & Television

• Food, Inc.
• The Future of Food
• Fresh
• King Corn
• Supersize Me
• The Garden
• Homegrown
• Homegrown Revolution
• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
• Food Matters
• The World According to Monsanto
• Simply Raw
• Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food

Urban Food Production

• Urban Homestead
• Backyard Farming
• Urban Homesteading
• Backyard Food Production

Sustainable Agriculture Thought Leaders

• Jules Dervaes
• Joel Salatin
• Michael Pollan
• Alice Waters
• Anna Lappe
• Raj Patel
• Eliot Coleman

Seeds

• Seed Savers
• Freedom Seeds

Local Involvement & Gardening Resources

• Shared Earth
• Urban Gardening Help
• Sustainable Table
• Square Foot Gardening
• Earth Box

Associations

• Organic Consumers
• Small Planet
• Land Institute

Farms

• Polyface Farms
• Four Seasons Farm
• Pine View Farms

Online Forum

• Freedom Gardens

Online Store

• Peddler’s Wagon

*****************************

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

Note from CSL: In The Coming Aristocracy, Oliver DeMille lists networking marketing as one manifestation of “mini-factories.” In this article, network marketer Orrin Woodward describes how to be successful at network marketing specifically, though the principles apply to any entrepreneur, mini-factory builder, and aspiring social leader.

Links throughout are for informational purposes and do not represent specific endorsements from CSL of companies or products.

 
IN A HOME TOO CRAMPED FOR OUR GROWING FAMILY, in a relationship where neither of us understood the other, in a time of increasing responsibilities and decreasing hope, in a desperate move to keep my baseball cards, my wife Laurie and I started our networking business.

Can there be a more bizarre beginning to a destiny-changing day?

Your story is different in the details, but alike in the life-changing opportunity presented to you.

Networking provides people the opportunity to take control of their futures and no longer swim with the current of the times.

There are only 3 steps to master to accomplish nearly any goal or dream that you can imagine through the power of networking:

1. Define
2. Learn
3. Do

Define

Life is not always a bowl of cherries as it pulls us in so many directions, requiring more than we would give in three lifetimes, forcing us to clearly define what we want to accomplish with the time God has given us.

Clearly defining your objectives, narrowing your field of vision to the critical few, painstakingly visualizing, repetitively experiencing in your mind, and developing your game plan are essential features of all successful lives.

DO NOT WORK THE BUSINESS, BUT CHASE YOUR DREAM THROUGH THE BUSINESS!!

Businesses are not built with an employee mentality, but with an ownership mentality (affiliate link), meaning, to do everything with a specific intent.

Why do you go out night after night to build this business? You didn’t have a dream as a young child to build a community did you?

The business is just the vehicle to accomplish your dreams, just as you buy a drill if you need a hole.

No one buys a drill because they have always dreamed of owning a drill. A drill is the specific tool used to get the specific hole you need.

Networking is the specific tool to give you the time and money to get your dreams.

When you know what you want, learning and doing become the necessary steps to achieve what you desire.

If you do not take the time to clearly define why you are in business, then you are setting yourself up to fail.

Why share the product, why show the plan, why start the process, if you have no reason to?

If you are not showing the plan 15 times a month, it’s not because you are lazy, it’s not because you are loser, it’s not because you are incapable, it’s only because you lack focus by not beginning with the end in mind.

• Where would you live if you could live anywhere?
• Who would you choose for neighbors?
• What car would you drive?
• What charities would you support?
• What vacations would you take?
• What random acts of kindness would you do?

It must be defined, imagined, and experienced mentally before it will happen physically.

Learn

Learning is one of the most natural things that we do as human beings. Anyone with children has experienced the endless questions that your kids will ask you as they seek to learn.

“But daddy, why is the sky blue? Why do we drive on the right side of the road? How do our brains see the pictures from our eyes?”

We are born hungry to learn, but society quenches this hunger through ridicule and scorn.

Networking has reversed societies rules and created a culture that is hungry to learn. No one is above learning and the quicker you learn, the quicker you will apply, the quicker you will have.

Learning is not a part-time hobby, not a full-time job, but a lifetime of joy.

Have you experienced the joy of learning lately? Are you listening and learning from CD’s and mentors’ advice? Are you reading books, brochures etc?

Are you pounding through the information from the best of the best?

If you’re not, perhaps you need to revisit your dream.

Do

Making contacts, picking up the phone, showing the plan, talking in front of people, were some of the most fearful things that I had to overcome.

In fact, the only thing that helped me get over my unbelievable shyness and corresponding fears was the power of my dreams.

It makes me want to gag when I hear people say, “Well you have to be a certain type of person to build a network,” assuming that you are born that way.

Yes, you have to be a winner to build a network, but anyone can be a winner with the three steps that we are covering.

Winning is simple, but it isn’t easy because you must swim against the current.

It you want to win, then you must Define your win, Learn how to win and then JUST DO IT! No guts, no glory!

Are you going to let the negative thoughts of others deny you from the destiny you desire?

Laurie and I decided to follow our dreams, not our dreads and it made all the difference.

Are you dreaming, learning and doing or dreading, lying, and dying?

The choice you make weaves the strands of your destiny. Your posterity will either be blessed by your courage or cursed by your cowardice.

Choose wisely.

****************************

Orrin Woodward is the co-founder of Team, a leadership development and training company, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Launching a Leadership Revolution.

Named by the International Association of Business as a Top 10 Leadership Guru, he is dedicated to building leaders and entrepreneurs and promoting freedom and prosperity.

Orrin blogs regularly at Orrin Woodward. He lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida with his wife and four children.

Connect With Orrin:

David wasn’t paid to do this; he saw a need and filled it. Thanks, David.

Tell David what you think of the video by commenting below.

*If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or email, you may need to click the title of the post to view the video on our blog.

It’s at once humorous and infuriating. Humorous because of Joel’s genuine, down-to-earth writing style that just makes you chuckle throughout. Infuriating because of the jumble of insane bureaucracy he reveals.

Joel can be pretty far out with some of his political views, but that adds to the appeal of the book. Joel defines authentic — he lets it all hang out, doesn’t mince words, and states things plainly.

Whether you agree with him or not, he’s a likable guy whose thoughts should be considered seriously.

Proponents of locavorism, sustainable agriculture, and gardening, such as myself, will devour this book with glee.

But even if you’re not a “foodie,” this is a must-read for anyone dedicated to building a mini-factory.

In The Coming Aristocracy, Oliver DeMille points out that one reason we’ve lost freedom in America is because we have so many employees relative to owners, and employees don’t directly struggle with the loss of freedom on a daily basis.

He writes:

“In our current model of government and corporate dependence, aristocratic institutions, laws and policies encounter only nominal resistance. More to the point, relatively few people are even aware of how burdensome our current regulatory environment is. Employees are largely shielded from red tape. Ironically, they feel its effects indirectly in almost every aspect of their lives, but few make the connection.

“Create a multitude of mini-factory owners and it’s a different story. Suddenly, freedom issues are brought to the forefront as more and more people clash with bureaucracy, and mass consciousness is awakened.”

Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal is the perfect example of this. Unless you’re on the front lines, as is Joel, you don’t know how burdensome our bureaucracies have become.

But a good starting point is to learn from an in-the-trenches farmer like Joel Salatin. Joel caught the attention of Michael Pollan in his New York Times bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma when he refused to ship T-Bone steaks to New York. Since then, he’s been featured in a lot of media, including the documentaries “The Future of Food” and “Food, Inc.”

As Joel writes:

“Our farm, Polyface, has been featured in countless publications and media…All this notoriety has vaulted our family farm into the spotlight, the darling of local food advocates around the world…

“What many people do not understand, however, is that at every step on this journey toward success, government officials have unceasingly tried to criminalize us, demonize us, dismiss us, and laugh at us. We have fought, clawed, cried, prayed, argued, and threatened.

“The point is that if it had been up to public servants, Polyface would not exist. And the struggle is not over. Some battles, as you will see, we did not win. Some we refuse to fight. The war goes on…

“Supporters of local, heritage, artisanal, organic, ecological, sustainable, humane, biodynamic food need to know that every day, their food farmer friends receive visits, phone calls, threats, summonses, confiscation, and criminal charges.

“The harassment from government officials would make your hair stand on end. This book is about one such farmer’s lifetime of dealing with these issues.”

If you care about freedom, I urge you to read Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal. It makes theory concrete and will motivate you to stick with the fight.

*****************************

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

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Solutions Old and New

The anti-Federalist solutions for these problems may well have helped. They proposed that the people amend the Constitution, specifically in the following ways:

1. The Bill of Rights would include the requirement that juries consist of local peers who know the accused and can protect citizens from government.
2. Treaties would require full debate in and passage by Congress—just like laws.
3. Any decision by the Supreme Court could be overridden by a majority of the States.

How effective these amendments would have been is debatable.

But the answer may be found in another proposed anti-Federalist amendment which actually did get passed.

To counter the danger of huge expenditures and taxes by the Executive Branch, loss of power from the House to the Presidency, and transfer of powers from the States to the federal government, the anti-Federalists wanted an amendment clearly stating that all power not specifically given by the Constitution to the federal government would be retained by the states.

The anti-Federalists got their way in the ratification of the Tenth Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Unfortunately, these were weakened by Court cases between 1803 and 1820, and later by treaties adopted between 1944 and 2001.

We the People

It turns out that Constitutional limits and language are only guaranteed to last as long as the people are vigilantly involved.

No matter what the Constitution says, it won’t endure if the people don’t closely read it and demand that it be followed.

In this sense they are the fourth branch of government: The Overseers.

When the people stop requiring officials and experts to adhere to the Constitution, those in power alter the Constitution, redefine its precepts, and sometimes mutually agree upon a revisionist and opportunistic definition of its language.

The people are left out of the decision, and their freedoms decrease.

At times, as designed, constitutional checks and balances keep one branch from usurping power even if the people aren’t involved.

But the greater danger occurs when a collusion of branches agree in taking away power from the states or the people (this happens too often, especially since Butler v. the United States in 1936).

Arguably the most important document for freedom ever created by mankind was established and ratified by those who supported the U.S. Constitution.

The second deepest freedom analysis of government was provided by their opponents, the anti-Federalists.

This second group saw that whatever a Constitution says, as important as it certainly is, the people simply must stay actively involved or they will inevitably see their freedoms decline.

The Producer Perspective

The fact that both groups came from a society of owners and producers is neither surprising nor insignificant.

Owners value freedom over security, see the most decorated experts and celebrities as merely other citizens, and see their own role as citizen as vital to society.

Producers think in terms of protecting society’s freedoms, and they simply don’t believe this responsibility can ever be delegated or ignored.

Successful ownership, farming, and entrepreneurship are all about keeping track of all the details; taking action whenever it is needed to achieve the desired results; listening to the counsel of experts and authorities—and then leading by making the best decisions even if they goes against expert advice; and building effective teams that work together without depending too much on those at the top.

People trained and experienced in such skills are truly competent in handling and preserving freedom.

What we need in our day is not necessarily more specific proposals from the Federalists or anti-Federalists.

Rather, we need a return to the producer-entrepreneurial style of thinking and expertise that founded and built the freest nation in history.

If we want a society of freedom that lasts and prospers, we must as citizens become talented and practiced in the arts of freedom.

America was created on the basis of freedom, and until we choose to become a citizenry steeped in freedom principles and actively involved in their promotion, freedom will not likely increase.

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This is part 1 of a 5-part article.

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Howard Gardner’s research suggests that there are fundamentally seven basic intelligences: literary, mathematical, artistic, musical, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal.

Modern education tends to emphasize basic knowledge in three of these (literary, mathematical and interpersonal) fields followed by career specialization in one.

During the American founding era that produced a generation of citizen-farmers and citizen-entrepreneurs who established the freest society in history, a different sort of education-career path dominated.

Today’s professionals and experts tend to be trained in problem solving under structured guidelines, whereas successful entrepreneurs seldom have the luxury of easily knowing what the problems are.

They have to figure out what the real issues are and define the problems, and only then find ways to solve problems and overcome roadblocks.

This requires high levels of initiative and resiliency, independent and analytical thinking, ingenuity and creative thinking, tenacity and self-analysis.

These entrepreneurial skills and talents are precisely those needed to establish and maintain freedom.

Intelligences

To prepare youth for success in entrepreneurial (and free) cultures, education tends to emphasize originality, creativity, breadth, depth and leadership skills rather than rote memorization, standardized curricula or socialization.

The latter skill set is vital in societies with strong upper classes employing the lower castes, but the former is essential to free democratic nations.

Where class societies tend to educate for general knowledge in literary, mathematical and interpersonal skills, entrepreneurial nations educate for depth in literary, mathematical, interpersonal, artistic, musical, spatial and intrapersonal (self-understanding, self-discipline, and self-starting) excellence.

Then entrepreneurial societies go a step further by educating to the hyphens.

This means using personalized and mentored learning in the greatest classics and works of mankind along with current original sources to establish skills and train experts in multi-intelligence categories.

Examples include many who used two or more intelligences to significantly impact societies, cultures, paradigms, governments, policies and worldviews:

• Interpersonal-musicians like Mozart and John Lennon
• Literary-artists such as Goya, Cecil B. DeMille, and M. Night Shyamalan
• Interpersonal-literati like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and John Steinbeck
• Spatial-artistry like gladiators, NASCAR, and the Louvre
• Mathematical-artists like Michelangelo and Picasso
• Literary-mathematicians like Newton, Einstein, and Hawking
• Literary-intrapersonalists such as Tolstoy, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Goulding and Ayn Rand
• Intrapersonal-mathematical thinkers like Montesquieu, Hume, Madison, Mises, Keynes, C.S. Lewis, and Buckminster Fuller

To make sense of this, consider a society where the youth become proficient in reading biographies of great leaders from Socrates to Washington and Andrew Carnegie to Ray Kroc and of effectively applying the lessons learned to their own lives.

Or where every young person knows both the formulas in calculus and also how to build and implement a business plan, including detailed financials, to turn “thin air” into great institutions of profit and non-profit value in society.

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***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

This is part 4 of a 4-part article.

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Read Part 3 Here

But all of this commentary falls short of the real point. Only the individual can truly become an entrepreneur.

If there is to be a much-needed revolution that brings many more entrepreneurs to society, individuals, and families must take action and lead out.

If what we want is more independence, then we must have more independents—more producers.

If you want society to be leavened by a greater proportion of individuals with producer mojo, then you need to consider whether you should be a producer yourself, and how to become one.

To be a producer, it is up to you to make it happen.

Here are three suggestions:

1. Study successful producers.

The most important part of this is to see the power of focus, integrity, and faith in abundance that producers exemplify.

Where the media often tries to paint producers as greedy and immoral, the truth is usually very different.

Pay special attention to what great producers believe, and learn to think like them.

The habit of truly believing in abundance and principles makes one a true independent, permanently free of dependence on others and able to build, create and lead.

2. Study what the great producers study.

The material most studied by the greatest producers and leaders has been the great classics.

Producers are voracious readers, going far beyond any prescribed lists. Leaders are readers.

Read the greatest works of mankind and everything else you can get your hands on. Keep reading, studying and learning throughout your life.

3. Find and work with mentors who are successful producers.

The unwritten lessons gained from this kind of experience are invaluable, real and profound.

Coming face-to-face with greatness by working with successful producers is essential to becoming a successful producer yourself.

Our society desperately needs more producers.

We need more people who think like entrepreneurs and more people who take initiative and fulfill the needs of society without waiting for government or the people of wealth and privilege to “fix it for us.”

The future of freedom is directly and literally tied to the future of producers in our society.

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How do we create more producers?

The answer, as frustrating as it is to the experts, is this: We don’t.

That is, institutionalized and standardized programs do not of themselves yield producers, except by happenstance (as noted above).

The very act of systemizing the training of initiative and innovation tends to shut down initiative and innovation.

What can be done, what actually works, is to help young people realize the importance of producers in society and reward their inclinations toward being anomalies, outliers, and disruptive innovators.

The first one is easier said than done; the second one is nearly impossible for most parents and teachers to either conceive of or accomplish.

To support the development of the entrepreneurial spirit in the rising generation, youth need to be:

1. Exposed to those who highly value entrepreneurialism
2. Given opportunities to earn and receive personalized mentoring from successful producers.

In short, as we elevate the honor and accessibility of being producers, we will tend to increase the number of them.

While the example may have its limitations, it is interesting to study the most successful network marketing, multi-level and other like organizations that in recent times have emphasized entrepreneurship among “regular” people.

For instance, Amway and its affiliates created more millionaires than most of the top 100 corporations combined, with each millionaire being an independent entrepreneur.

In such organizations, interested people are introduced to many who highly value entrepreneurial producers, and new affiliates work directly with a producer mentor.

Hundreds of non-traditional companies have accomplished similar results. Ironically, one criticism of such organizations by mainstream (employee) experts is that they are “pyramid schemes.”

From another perspective, the true pyramid companies are those where most of the work hours are done by lesser-paid employees while the highest salaries and bonuses go to the executives at the top.

Hands-on business schools like Acton MBA have similarly helped educate entrepreneurs by a combination of inspiring people to be producers and also providing producer mentors.

And the many bestselling books promoting this same model, from the “One Minute” series to the writings of Steve Farber and many others, show that this system is appealing to many people.

Highly successful coaching services have followed this pattern as well, including such notable businesses as those established by John Assaraf, Leslie Householder, Dennis Deaton and many of those mentioned in The Secret.

Nearly the entire self-help industry is built on this model: Promote the honor and value of successful entrepreneurialism and help would-be producers get direct mentoring from successful producers.

Thinkers like Andrew Carnegie and writers like Dale Carnegie outlined this model a long time ago.

The mainstream PhD/MBA ambivalence toward the “Success” and “Self-Help” community stems from their reliance on and loyalty to the doctrine of employeeship.

Harvard Business School once emphasized that the major changes in the world tend to come from what they called “disruptive innovators.”

These anomalous individuals produce surprising novelties from out-of-the-mainstream sources and dramatically change society, business, and other facets of life.

Disruptive innovators are disruptive precisely because they are totally unexpected by the conventional majority.

The government and big corporations spend a lot of resources trying to predict the future.

And invariably entrepreneurial producers come along every few years and change everything. Reams of articles and books are written trying to predict where the next such innovations will come from and prescribing how to help train future innovators.

But the network marketing companies and other non-traditional entities drastically out-produce government and big corporate attempts to build entrepreneurs.

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Producers are the most important citizens, as Thomas Jefferson put it.

Actually, the word he used was farmers—specifically, “tillers of the soil.” By producing food, farmers obviously had an important role in successful society.

But Jefferson meant more than this.

Because farmers lived close to the land, they were self-reliant with respect to their own survival and received an income from providing indispensable basic needs for others.

This made them more independent than people of other occupations.

If hard times came, they tightened their belts and lived off their farms. In contrast, during the same challenges, most city dwellers and even shop owners were more likely to turn to the government or upper classes for help.

The founding generation was sensitive to the level of dependency of the European populace.

The small but incredibly powerful upper class was the only group that could live off their assets and make it through hard times like war, economic depression, or pandemic.

Because of this, the upper class was independent while everyone else was dependent on the upper classes and government.

Since the first focus of human societies is to survive, the power to survive independently was seen as true independence. Indeed, the War of Independence had this deeper meaning to founding Americans: They were finally independent of the European upper class.

Dependents versus Independents

In our day, nearly all citizens are dependent on an employer or the government.

One way to rate one’s level of independence might be to measure how long you can survive, feed your family, and live in your home after your employer stops paying you anything.

Some people are two-year independents, while others are three-year independents or two-month independents, and so on.

It is not unlikely that most Americans are absolute dependents, living paycheck to paycheck or on government support.

The triple entendre here is interesting.

At a time where the growth of political independents is helping lessen the dangers of a two-party monopoly on American politics, there is a need for more people to become true economic independents (people who can survive indefinitely without a paycheck). As both of these grow, the level of American independence will increase.

Any level of economic independence is good, including everything from two months to twenty years of non-employer-dependent financial security.

But the future of freedom may well depend on those with permanent economic independence.

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