MONDRAGON Corporation is a business-based socioeconomic initiative with deep roots in the Basque Country… Fosters participation and the involvement of people in the management, profits and ownership of their companies, developing a shared project which unites social, business and personal progress.
From Mondragon’s website
If the Best is Yet Come, Exactly What was All of That?
Answer: Global Financial Crisis
There is a challenge to making economics sexy while at the same time making sexy economical. I suppose we all know sex sells, but what a writer needs to do is find the means of selling elements in a story that at first blush don’t look as alluring. I was at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco last night listening to Sadhguru and Paul Hawken’s enter into a freeform conversation. One an Indian mystic (he didn’t disappoint) while the other a bestselling ecology author (heart in right place) go back on forth on the vast topic of nurturing into this earth a capitalism of sustainable and transformational economics. All of this came by way of my being introduced to Yale’s Literary Theory scholar Paul Fry’s extraordinary lectures (all for free at iTunes University) regarding the use of economics authors use when writing narrative fiction. Paul Fry explains in no uncertain terms that all modern fiction is rooted in Marx and Engel’s works. By use of their framework and reference point we can locate where we fit. So, for example capitalism is off to the right of communism, while cooperatives are somewhere left of capitalism. I’ll leave it to the scholars to explain where our revolutionary-socialist-Muslim-Kenyan President fits into this scheme. Making the economics of a thing isn’t all that sexy, but for a books success you damn well have to try. So, try this… First, how does an individual fit into a particular system? Second, how does the society benefit from each individuals effort? And last and most important of all! Can we tell a story about that relationship? A narrative that arouses passion, a story that makes some kind of sense, and can we do it soon? If you haven’t noticed our current story is at risk of a not so happy ending. “Okay, everybody, quiet on the set, let’s take it from the top…”
HOT SPRING HONEYMOON
Tallula jutted her jaw out. She walked around the other side of the fire pit, skinny in jeans, smallest woman of them all, “I remember, first off,” Tallula said unbuttoning her shirt, “you started dating Sharlene, and one night you came knocking at my door, you called out through the screen all innocent like, pretending as if you didn’t know exactly what you were doing, you said, ‘Sharlene’s not feeling so good,’ that’s what you said, ‘maybe we might sit on the sofa, have a beverage, and talk a while, before I go home.’ Those were your exact words. I’ll never forget.”
Sharlene was on the other side of the fire pit with the others, “thought it was the right thing to do. I wasn’t in love with Fletcher, not yet.”
Fletcher’s eyes shot toward Sharlene’s.
