A Self-Less Economy
mindatrisk
Veteran
A Self-Less Economy
- The basis of the economy is the self-less attitude, i.e. a mindset that thinks of others before self. The self-less mind cares about the happiness and well-being of others, and has no concerns or interest in what it gets back.
- So, the farmer - who farms because that is his passion - grows food for a community of 1000 people. Because he has a self-less attitude he provides the food that he grows for free. The people who receive the food also have self-less attitudes, and so they think about the farmer, and they ask him if there is anything that he needs or needs help with - not in exchange for the food, because even if he could not provide food at one point they would still ask, but because they have self-less minds. Anything that the farmer needs or needs help with is provided for him from whoever has what is needed or whoever can provide the help.
- This same model applies for each member of the population. Each individuals primary work is the development and sharing of their own interests, passions, skills and talents. If there is a gap missing in the community, i.e. if someones passion is not waste collection and disposal, then the gap is filled voluntarily through each individuals community service. Community service is a joyful role because it is helping the community that provides a system that allows and supports them to live a fulfilling, meaningful life exploring and developing interests and talents.
- Whilst a selfish mind assures us of at least one person looking out for us and helping us (us), the self-less mind encourages many others to look out for us and help us, and just as we help others and support them, they too help and support us. This is already how we operate now. We are familiar with this.
- Communities might form around certain ideas or functions. For example, those interested in computer development might live in a certain community together. There is no competition. Because everyone has a self-less mind they only wish to see success for each other as well as technologies that are going to help other human beings. If a certain technology is recognised as beneficial to humanity then all the resources needed to produce it will be provided by other communities, again without charge. The products will then be manufactured and delivered to all who want one.
- If a community was lacking a certain skill, for example, a doctor, then a doctor from another community would selflessly choose to move their.
- If someone wanted something then it would be located on the internet, ordered and then sent to them freely. But people would not want things for their own benefit or to accumulate wealth - in fact, because everyone can have anything they want, their is no concept of material wealth, there is no value in accumulating material resources, and it wouldn’t be seen as desirable in and of itself, since happiness and fulfilment is recognised and experienced as something else. The motivation for acquiring material resources would be simple: ‘it would help me to help others if I had this’.
- It should also be considered that because each individuals primary education is in the development of their passions, skills and talents, most people would be what we currently consider to be geniuses. As such, humanity would have access to incredible technologies that would massively enhance our lives, that again would be shared freely for the benefit of all. There would be technologies available that cannot be discussed now because they are beyond current comprehension, as such, as positive as the outline is above, it would likely be much better in reality.
- Trust would prevail. If a technology community requested resources it would be done without any hint of suspicion. It would be a given that the technology had been properly researched and developed and was of benefit to humanity because the minds developing the technology would be self-less, and only concerned for the benefit of others.
- Humans would be naturally productive for two reasons 1. because they are doing what they love and 2. because they want others to be happy and well and so they want to contribute all that they can. As everyone would recognise this shared mindset everyone would be self managed. No-one would need motivating, and if people needed rest then they would take it without question. No-one would think to take advantage of others or the systems in place.
How would we reach this stage?
First we must understand the possibilities of such a self-less attitude and how it would manifest into communities. Then we must practice developing a self-less mind.
How do we accommodate selfish people?
Some people might not want to become self-less. An education system should be able to nurture a self-less mind in most children. Until then, those who wish to be selfish will be free to do so. We will attempt to convert them with our example, by letting them see how our communities work so well and how happy and fulfilling our lives are as self-less individuals. If they wish to continue to be selfish then, so long as they are not harmful to the community, they will be accommodated, and interaction with them will allow us to continue to develop our self-less attitude. If they are damaging to the community and will not change then they will be asked to leave the community. Other communities will then welcome them and provide them with a new opportunity to become self-less. This cycle will continue until the individual converts to a self-less path. Each community will welcome the opportunity to accommodate them and demonstrate true selflessness. Each successful conversion will be shared with other communities so as to gain a better understanding of how a selfish mind can be accommodated and converted. Those who are converted will be encouraged to travel and share their conversion so as to inspire others.
Won’t I be taken advantage of?
Only a selfish mind can perceive itself as being taken advantage of. A self-less mind wants to help, it wants to be of service, it wants what it has to give to be used - it wants to be taken advantage of. However, there comes a point - a point only we can discern - where our helping another only enables them, disempowers them, makes them dependent. A selfless mind will recognise that our help no longer helps but hinders, and at that point it will say no.
Comments
People can live this way right now, in this world.
By being productive, providing for themselves and their families, and contributing time and effort to the community. It's a personal choice.
Indeed, they can, the problem we have at the moment is the impact that the not self-less minded people have on the world.
Welcome back, have you come to expound political-dharma again?
I would say engaged Buddhism but I feel that is different and across political polarities or agendas . . .
We?
You had this agenda, you still have this agenda.
I for one have my personal agenda too. Other people, have theirs.
So how is 'our' meditation practice going?
That's true. Such is life in the world.
We can only do what we can do. I, for one, can pretty much guarantee that I will not be giving my fish away, except to family and friends, during my career. Everyone else will have to pay or I will be poor in my old age.
I will be encouraging my kids to be productive, save some of their earnings and spend wisely.
They can give when they feel they want to. I'm sure they will.
It is true that it is all karma... it is all appropriate, everything is as it should be. But just as those who go hungry suffer their karma, they can also have the karma to have others who care. It's a mixed bag, I guess. So long as the people who do care and who feel able to make a difference do their best, in whatever way they can, as you are doing with your friends and family, then we inch closer in each moment to a better world.
Thanks.
Not really, I was just thinking about all the talk of revolution that is in the air at the moment, and the common rebuttal that those who protest are all question, little solution, so I got thinking about what a different economic model could look like. I figured a good place to start would be selflessness, and then tried to imagine what a self-less economy would look like. But it's not something I know much about, so I don't know what i'm not thinking about. I figured, though, that if I put the ideas out there that someone would know enough to point out flaws etc.
The existing system is badly flawed, that's obvious.
A new system is not in the cards for the near future.
If someone wants to help,(I've said this to you before), they should be productive, get a good job, preferably keeping right livelihood in mind.
Then they are in a position to help. They can support local business with their patronage.
They can raise honest, productive environmentally and socially conscious kids.
They can donate funds to charity if they can afford it.
They will try not to burden the system in their old age by having some savings or a pension plan.
Those are my suggestions.
I like your idea. I also like the idea of removing money from the equation. In olden times people bartered either skills or possessions without the need for currency. If we got back to that we could eliminate taxation and the amassing of obscene wealth.
When I worked as an electrician I had a barter arrangement with a friend who ran a garage - I did electrical work for him and he maintained my van. It was a good arrangement but required a high degree of mutual trust and flexibility, and I wonder if that would be realistic in today's society.
That's the tricky part. Til then we can only do what we can.
I think these are good suggestions, and if more people lived like this then we'd be better off, but I do think there is a place for thinkers and dreamers to sew the seeds of trees that they might never enjoy the shade of (I think that's how that quote goes). I'm just doing what I feel will help given my passion and my abilities. I don't think that following your guidance would be right for me.
I think with the self-less mind we can even go beyond barter and trade, as there is no concern with getting only giving, and because we know that everyone else shares that same mind, we know that we will get what we need through the giving of others.
And I suppose that trust comes through time and experience with someone... well, at least in this society. But I meet some people who I just _know _are trustworthy, and so they prove to be. I think in a self-less society we would all have that knowing towards one another, to the degree where the concept of 'trust' would be redundant, maybe extinct. I think i'm right in saying that there are some cultures that do not have the concept of deceit. It just doesn't exist for them the potential for lying. I think in a self-less minded society that I describe the same would apply.
Strategically speaking, i'd first focus upon those who incline towards selflessness, but are somewhat distorted by the nature of our society... in other words, i'd make it viable for people to live selflessly, which, I think, could be the majority of human beings. That would give us democratic leverage, which we could then use to reform the education system and to pass laws that prohibit selfish actions. This would constrain the immediate damaging effects of selfishness whilst developing new generations that for whom being selfless is the norm. Older generations would die off, including any remnants of the selfish mindset, to be replaced with the selfless minded younger generations. Maybe within those younger generous there would be strongly orientated selfish people to resist education, and we'd need ideas to help them and manage them, but i'd have thought that we'd greatly out-number such minds, such that it would be easily managed. That would be my basic strategy.
You can't overlook the fact that reproduction is a selfish business. It's competition, and certain men will always strive to be better and stronger. And certain women will always encourage them.
For sure there is a place for the poets and dreamers and monks.
I think that is where education would be so important. I don't think that my ideas above could be fully fledged in my lifetime because there would be too much residual selfishness for such an economic system to work. But there is an opening for some kind of shift simply because things have gotten so bad and most people see that change is needed, and if a strong case for a consciousness change can be made... a change from material orientated, greed satiating consumerism to something more thoughtful and aware of others and our environment, then enough of a 'revolution' could occur whereby we'd be in a position to contain and manage selfish instincts until the new generations take over. A very difficult task that would take generations to process and fulfil, but so long as there is something in it - and I suspect there is - then it's something worth working towards.
Your ideal economy is very utopian and noble sounding, though I think you would do well to read the history of many such similar experiments in human history. Particularly the early Soviet Union's abandonment of Communism under Lenin and the New Economic Policy. And then its revival under Stalin with the collectivization of all private property.
Most people do not produce goods and services because of their "passion." They do so because they can provide a service that other people are cannot or choose not to do themselves. I used to be a professional house painter. So I entered into a free arrangement where I was compensated an agreed amount of money and in return, I painted their house. I lifted myself up from poverty after high school to be well off enough to afford a house and raise children.
You seem to misunderstand people's' motivations and how supply is created. For a farmer to provide a season's worth of labor and harvest for free would render him incapable of doing so the next year.
And then what happens when you will inevitably have intransigent people like me who want nothing to do with a communal system? "Laws passed against selfish action." Ban private property and seize what people have?
Free enterprise..capitalism, is a system that is voluntary and non-coercive. Societal communism can only be achieved by force.
OP, do you have any evidence that majority of your countrymen...and beyond...want your revolution?
An interesting way of understanding other peoples' views is to offer the following thought experiment: if you were king for a day, what specifically would you do? If you had unlimited authority to institute your vision, what are the first five things you would do to bring about the revolution?
1: Abolish weaponry.
2: use funds set aside for military use, to construct a system that would harvest, channel or disseminate clean fresh water to everyone.
3; employ 'soldiers' back into civilisation by building, constructing and creating better schools and better hospitals.
4; set up a government where 50% of the members were educated, qualified, dedicated women
5: Use the finest, far-seeing minds I could to build a better society, and harvesting/promoting the cohesion of man and nature.
I'm absolutely certain the above can all be picked to pieces, criticised, viewed as unworkable, and blown to smithereens.
You just asked what I would do.
I'm just telling you.
Nothing's perfect - nothing ever is. But I'd give it a try.
Nobody I work with would. Nor have I at any time in my life been met with anything but an uncomfortable "not unpleasant disdain," FLOABT, in giving beautiful Buddhist or Vedantist books to young people in my acquaintance. Very few people under 35 would be interested.
Indeed, the very way we raise our children in graded school systems, teaches them to nurture their "self-ism." There is no small amount of Idolatry of A's and B's, from which one never really fully recovers.
"not unpleasant disdain," FLOABT (Mocking of strange Ideas?)
There's an old saying: "Don't tinker with perfection." I'd say a corollary is "Tinker with imperfection."
Yeah, and it took guts to stand right up to be first to lay your ideas down.
Here goes ...
Interesting. I (as a UK citizen) would abolish the military. You (as an American) would heighten its general use.... both points number one on our respective lists....staggering what influence living in a particular type of society, will do.
I'm not criticising. I'm just astounded that we have polar opposite opinions on the matter, yet we might be said to be sharing similar (Buddhist) ideologies....
In the 1800's in America there were several utopian communities organized more or less along the lines you outline, OP. The Shakers were one such group of communities. They dedicated themselves and their work to the Divine. "Hands to work, hearts to God" was their motto. It was one of the most successful communities of all time. In fact, to some extent, after generations, they became victims of their own success, according to some historians. A taste for luxury seeped in. Shaker products became popular, and money poured into the community, creating a distraction from their spiritual focus.
But it shows a system like that can work.
There's a neighborhood in San Francisco that has a "community basket" in a central location for people who grow their own fruits or vegetables to drop off extra produce for the needy to take for free. There are lots of ways to practice selflessness for others' benefit. There's no reason you couldn't start doing that today.
It can also set off a chain reaction.... If I stop during traffic, to let someone out of a side road, and they turn, going in the same direction as I am, I invariably find the follow the same gesture for another motorist wishing to pull out....
It's a small thing. Insignificant, maybe. But I find if you're nice to people, it generally follows they are nice too...
We currently have the technology to begin a post-scarcity civilization. By that I mean each citizen has and always will have the assurance of necessities for life, not the least of which are food, clean water, power to run the household and gadgets, transportation, education, cutting edge medical care.
To me, 'freedom' is the assurance of having plenty for you, for me, for everyone, and so much left over that running out of food or having your heat cut off is just . . . ridiculous.
This would be a real divergence from evolution as we know it. We've evolved in the context of scarcity of resources. In order to provide for yourself and yours, it's been necessary to deprive others by preventing them access to resources. Post-scarcity civilization seems only possible as the result of a revolution, I can't see the 1 or so % who control the 'most' resources gladly relinquishing the resources for redistribution, but maybe that is a limitation of my vision. I'm not about to go out and distribute my remaining back account funds, so I'm not in much of a position to judge others who won't do it either.
1) As a slight amendment to Silver's post, I would opt for a militia system as an auxiliary to a standing army. Not every citizen, but ones mentally competent. Something along the lines of what the Swiss and Israelis do.
2) Abolishment of civil forfeiture and eminent domain. Two of the most insidious assaults on property masquerading as do-gooderism.
3) Ending of the war on drugs.
4) Some sort of increase in vocational training. Not necessarily as a government program, but there are way too many people who are pushed into university when they are better suited for trades.
5). Simple, flat taxation. If you made a dollar, 10 cents. If you made a million, you pay 100k. It's the fairest system that leaves everyone with skin in the game.
I was just enumerating what I would do, following your list, so the weapons issue isn't necessarily what would've come first to my mind, but rather the clean water, uncontaminated/unpolluted environment.
My idea about people arming themselves, is that I grew up with being aware people did what they had to in the good old days, and if that meant arming themselves, it's what they did. Today, there are so many other known and unknown influences on human behavior now, that adds confusion to living.
There have been many stories/movies where guns are in the mix, but not as anything more than a common, everyday tool. I always think of Old Yeller when this subject comes up.
And yes, that makes me smile ... about the similar ideologies ... and I reminisce about one of my favorite old tv shows, Kung Fu, where their hands and bodies were deadly weapons.
@Federica, What can be attributed to our polar opposites regarding arming/weapons that we have is the unique positions each of our countries has had. It's all about how our countries were born and raised, in a manner of speaking; history, in short.
As an American, I can't imagine needing a military of any sort when living beings have free access to life's necessities. What's to fight over? Illusions, which will seem so much more obviously delusional within the reality that we all have enough and then some.
What need would there be to hoard supplies or wealth if there were plenty to go around?
Since this is the opposite of the prevailing attitude, I'd end up on the streets trying to practice this. If I don't take care of number one, I'll get taken care of alright. Sure, I see around that thanks to the Buddhadharma. This is samsara after all. We humans didn't create this scarcity mentality, God (or evolution or whatever) did. It's the height of scarcity mentality to be a carnivore who must eat the living or dead bodies of other beings simply to survive another day. Beings who prefer to live must 'hoard' their living bodies away from the hungry bellies. Scarcity mentality is not 'evil' though it has produced some stupendous examples of evil; it's just one of the ways samsara ticks.
@Hamsaka -- Does samsara have the mystical meaning to everyone who practices Buddhism? Just curious - just read what Wikipedia had to say.
Well, I think some humans created the scarcity mentality.
I'm not sure what you mean @Silver, about the mystical meaning of Samsara. I'm not a very mystical person, so I can't speak to that
. I do understand 'samsara' to be the evident manifestation of the delusions that cause craving, but I've heard that samsara and nirvana are essentially the same 'thing'.
Scarcity mentality is alive and well in cyanobacteria, the first manifestation of life on planet Earth. It seems to drive the deepest laws of evolution, like natural selection. We humans come by it naturally, it's implicit in the structure of samsara. At the same time we humans can conceive of existing without that conflict. The Jehovah's Witne sses leave the most alluring little pamphlets, with lions and lambs lying peacefully together in some future promise of the end of the need to be eating on each other. I had a JW tell me once that creation as it is is 'fallen', and that's why lions eat lambs and mosquitos suck your blood and babies die. It's not just people who will be saved, it's all of creation, which we are a part, and ALL of creation is sick.
If human beings existed in a state where food and water were ubiquitous, along the lines of air, the point and purpose of so much we take for granted (like militaries) would vaporize. We'd be fighting over crayons or who gets to host the newest Large Hadron Collider in their community if food, water, shelter and energy were just IMPLICIT. This must be where we get our ideas of the Pure Land, or Heaven or Utopia.
A Self-Less Economy
"Plato's Republic" ?
But not being a philosopher I could well be wrong....
In part, Wikipedia says about the six realms:
These six realms are typically divided into three higher realms and three lower realms: the three higher realms are the realms of the gods, demi-gods, and humans; the three lower realms are the realms of the animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings, etc. and the descriptions sound mystical to me.
I can't be sure if cyanobacteria have psychological/emotional component to their lives, but I feel I can safely say we humans sure do. Since I've been exposed to the philosophy of Buddhism and non-dualism, I was shocked to learn just how steeped my own life has been in emotions -- which is something that I've gotten glimpses of just how unnecessary and undesirable they are, yet rather difficult to be free of the reactions that come from them.
If mosquitos become enlightened, then eventually everything and everyone will get enlightened, too.
In one of those blah-blah-blah G-something summits of yesteryear, actress-cum-Buddhist Sharon Stone presented to all those well-heeled gentlemen the concrete case of a little town in Africa that was in dire need of a water well.
She actually found the way to make each and every gentleman in the room open up their wallets and produce a cheque for her cause.
Dealing in abstractions and discussing of a better world has never produced a change.
Least of all, an actual revolution.
It takes action, not words.
Some good points in here, but I think what you are discussing might be issues that would occur in a transitional period. Also, I am against systems that control or enforce people to live in a certain way. Beyond education (which might need to last a few generations) I don't envisage any need for a government. The root of what I have described is the self-less mind... Why would a self-less mind need to be governed? Aren't most laws in place to manage lesser human instincts?
In the above description people live their lives doing what they are interested in, talented at, passionate about etc. Their love for doing these things would be their motivation, as well as the joy they would attain from sharing and benefiting others with their gifts.
If you didn't want to live in a communal setting then you'd be free to live as you please.
I don't think authority is our answer, true change will occur through understanding.
This sounds good, so long as people understood why.
Very interesting. Thanks, i'll read into The Shakers. I live in a house-share and i've recently set up a 'spare food, help yourself' box in the kitchen as a little experiment.
I don't want a revolution, it's just something that is getting a lot of discussion at the moment, and it got me thinking about different ways we could live. Having said that, I don't think that efforts to progress humanity require initial public backing, because most people will never have thought of certain things to know if they want them or not. In my life, my concern is to do what I feel is right, and then to let go of how that ripples out. I don't try and control results, I don't dictate how people should respond to me, or even desire for them to respond to me in a certain way, I just let that be, and whatever my karma is, I accept it. I let my conscience guide me and I let the universe decide the results. It's fairly simple, very liberating, and surprisingly effective.
Oh, really....?
What evidence do you have, on a measurable scale, that it's 'surprisingly effective'...?
Because in my opinion, the above is unattainable, and if i may put it bluntly, totally cloud cuckoo-land.
People are mammals. Mammals have herding instincts. They also have a need for direction, and seek leadership, either for themselves or via someone else.
They also all have their own ideals, and while it's a nice, liberal free-thinking attitude to hold this view -
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you'll pretty well soon find yourself, at best, taken total advantage of, or at worst, being lynched by an anarchic mob wishing to overthrow your blissful world and turn it into a profitable machine for themselves.
Because you see, experiments have been run by various bodies, on relatively large and measurable scales and left to their own devices, frankly, people fall to pieces.
people need boundaries. They need limitations, they have to have parameters and yardsticks. In some cases the outcomes have been violent, dangerous and extremely horrifically negative.
I've never really tried to put my spiritual growth on a measurable scale, as such. I think we can all sense how / if our lives are improving by, for example, how our relationships and interactions are, or, maybe how effective we are in being of service and helping. I use to feel very protective of my ideas which led to me being controlling and a little dictatorial and a little closed minded to other views, which, if an idea depends upon the assistance of others, isn't helpful, and usually my ideas would crumble because I tried to control the outcomes. This was frustrating for me, so I have recently been trying the 'letting go' approach, and so far it seems to be working better for me. I can't put that on a scale, but that's how it seems to me.
You could well be right about people, i'm not sure. I think it is helpful to think about different ideas and different ways. I am someone who will tend to find the extreme and then, once the counter arguments have restored some balance, focus on developing a more pragmatic solution.
I think this is somewhat addressed in my opening post. I saw some research that said that the ideal sized community is about 250 people, and as I said, those communities could be organised by a certain shared interested... Buddhist communities, computer communities, farming communities etc. And, should it be felt desirable for that community to have a leader, for whatever reasons, then someone could be nominated to guide that community.
Isn't that already happening?
Silicon valley, monasteries, factories, farms....?
Yes, and much more, we have transition towns too now, but the problem we all have is that there still exists those of a more selfish mindset who are wreaking incredible destruction on the planet, other human beings, and themselves, and that potential destruction is too potent for us to ignore or not seek to solve. In the past humans could set up their own communities, and, by and large, be safe. Now we have nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, and potentially tyrannical governments to contend with. For the first time in human history we are all, in a very tangible way, in this together, so we need new ideas, and we need to consider how to bring all these disparate elements of humanity into a harmonious whole. It might sound like cloud-cuckoo land thinking, but it has to be addressed, and we need new ideas, and we need to encourage new ideas, so we can work out what is do-able and what is best.
I like it when you respond to my posts because you always manage to cut through the bullshit and get to the point. Sometimes with other people I feel like I have to decode what they are saying, but you have a good way of saying it straight and being understandable.
And therein lies the problem. (in bold).
That's how everything started out. Everything was simpler then, less complicated, more general.... and it obviously wasn't "good enough" for some. People wanted to do things better, have better living conditions, better amenities supplies, better housing, more comfort, more advanced technology to engineer all these improvements.
Not all social advancement has been implemented or invented to destroy. Nuclear weaponry has been set up to protect, primarily. But Nuclear energy also has its positive uses....
And, btw, which was the last country to use a nuclear bomb in Anger, to destroy, to annihilate, to control, decimate and obliterate?
Whenever you have an ever-increasing demand, by communities for better.... well, everything, you are going to stimulate thousands of different opinions on how matters should be done and run.
Your dream is a fine one - but it's already been done. And it needed bettering, because demand outstripped supply. The simple, got complicated.
And you can't undo invention, progress or evolution.
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Proven, undeniable, indisputable fact:
Where human beings have ventured into the simple, uncivilised, (not to say "pre-historic") isolated, secret, primitive worlds of others, to bring about educational and environmental changes "for the better", they have also successfully destroyed, halted, ended and changed for ever, the lives of those very people they intended to help.
You only have to look at the lives of American indians, in reservations, to see the truth of that.
We, educated, civilised, advanced and cultured people, decide that this could do with improvement! They will benefit form this this and this.... we can supply this that and the other - and life, as they knew it, is gone, destroyed and lost, for ever.
we do this to other cultures, and we do this with the environment, too.
We encroach upon Nature to give us what we require, and end up causing such a massive upheaval, such an ecological imbalance, that it has a ripple, knock-on effect, and devastatingly so.
The Amazon jungle is being decimated for profitable reasons, primarily, first and foremost.
The Florida everglades are shrinking as humans encroach upon it to build housing for ever-expanding communities (and that's another thing: Global population!)
How far have you actually thought this through? Because I'm honestly ready to hear your solutions to the above issues, truly....
I've barely thought this through at all. I think I saw Russell Brand being extolled to come up with a new system, and it got me thinking, but not very far as of yet.
I don't think that all development is necessarily progress. I think the development process requires constant refining, and we've reached a stage where we need to look at what we should keep and what needs to go. There are certain things we can and should undo.
A key point of my idea is that of everyone doing what interests them and what they are good at... basically, from childhood onwards, identifying and nurturing each individuals inner genius. This has a few benefits, one of which is the development of much improved technologies which would allow us to, potentially, provide for everyones needs and wants with ease, and without competing for resources or damaging the environment. So, small community living doesn't mean going back to farming the land - we can still enjoy technologies, just in a different context and for different purposes.