Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [69]
the bond that the gift brings. It would turn the stranger into a tribe member, and the tribe
is already too big. If I loan money to a stranger, I'm doing it for one reason: to make
money. I risk my money, and if all goes well, we both profit. But there's no bond here, no
connection.
One reason that art has so much power is that it represents the most precious gift we can
deliver. And delivering it to people we work with or connect with strengthens our bond
with them. It strengthens the tribal connection.
When you walk into your boss's office and ask for advice, she doesn't charge you an
hourly fee, even if she's a corporate coach or a psychoanalyst, even if you want help with
a personal problem. The gift of her time and attention and insight is just that--a gift. As a
result, the bond between you strengthens.
(Martin Luther and the Beginning of the Money Culture)
The Protestant Reformation permitted the explosion of commerce that led to the world
we live in now. Once the Reformation began to spread, Martin Luther was heavily
lobbied by powerful local interests. In response, he gave princes and landlords the moral
authority to take over the commons and rent the land back to the people who lived on it.
The new church was looking for political support, and its embrace of mercantilism
guaranteed that it would get that support from power brokers that had chafed under the
Catholic Church's opposition to the practice of charging interest and the
commercialization of formerly common lands. (The Catholic Church wanted to keep
local lords, princes, and kings weak, of course, because it was built around a strong
universal leader, the pope.)
One of the factors in the growth of the Protestant Reformation was that commercial
interests supported its spread because they needed the moral authority to lend and borrow
money. It's hard to overestimate how large of a shift this led to in the world's culture and
economics.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote, it created a world where "the merchant has no homeland." If
everyone is a stranger, it's a lot easier to do business. If everyone is a stranger, then we
can charge for things that used to be gifts. The merchant class was essential to
imperialism and to the growth of the money culture, but it can't exist without a culture
that encourages moneylending.
This thinking destroyed many traditional tribes, but permitted the growth of commercebased organizations. The East India Company or the fashion houses of France or the
banks of Italy could never have existed in a world that honored a ban on usury.
Martin Luther saw that embracing the needs of local power brokers could enhance the
spread of Protestantism. With little alternative, the pope followed suit. The ban on usury
was refined, double-talked, and eventually eliminated. The money flowed, investments
were made, businesses grew, and productivity soared. People could view every
transaction as a chance to lend or make money because they were independent agents.
Everyone became a businessman, a borrower, or a lender.
Suddenly, your tribe was a profit center. If you knew a lot of people, you could make
money from them. Social leadership magically translated into financial leadership.
For the last five hundred years, the best way to succeed has been to treat everyone as a
stranger you could do business with. This is one reason that some multilevel marketers
and insurance salesmen make people nervous. It seems to cross the tiny remaining gulf
between business and the tribe. As the lines have crossed, we've abandoned the idea of a
village as a tribe. Instead, we're left with the tribe of our birth family and the tribe at
work. We practically live with the people we work with, and we identify with them.
Now we live in a world where corporate tribe members are likely to be as important to us
as family. Do you talk to your sister more often than you talk to your boss? What about
the head of Midwest sales?
Human beings have a need for a tribe, but the makeup of that tribe