Hi Issac,

Thank you for your feedback and the link to Byrne Hobart’s article. It raises a lot of good points. I definitely believe it would be beneficial for corporations to start opening offices in other markets to boost their local economy.

I also feel that won’t happen until there are pressures to do so either due to the government taking a role in increasing investment potentials or in consumerist demands for companies that give back more to society.

We’ll also have to get through a lot of our internal hurdles. I was born and raised in California and lived on the West coast until I left the country about a year ago. The immediate thought at the back of my mind when suggesting that companies open up in regions such as Alabama, Georgia or Ohio is “why would anyone want to move there?”

It’s not an active thought; I know my actual why is “because it will help boost the economy and change the landscape of American politics which is necessary for global shifts around crucial issues such as human rights and the environment” but the deeply imbedded bias/prejudice of my upbringing dismisses most of the country outside of the two coasts.

It’s a piece of the puzzle I’ve been brewing on lately due to reflections on other parts of society such as our cultural interests in sci-fi and fantasy and my own personal need to shift motivation away from pain avoidance.

It seems to me that at other times in history we have had powerful narratives that caused people to go beyond their discomfort and do what they felt was right.

I don’t see as many of these narratives currently acting prominently in the lives of American individuals. We still have some religious narratives and those of activists and protestors but at the end of the day many of these people still work, consume, and participate in the areas and sectors of life that the market and society have assigned them.

It would seem we need some convincing narrative shifts to move the immediate experience of the mind from “but why would anyone live/work there” to a story gripping enough to change the country from its roots up.

The cultural obsession with individuality and striving for personal “success” (financial liberty) has made it difficult to psychologically accept the responsibility and work necessary for larger community and social empowerment and healing.

Always open to brainstorming how we make that shift.