A conversational interview (Josh Trent with Zach Bush MD) exploring the idea of 'sacred commerce' — rethinking value so economic activity aligns with natural systems and relationships. Zach argues that doing the right thing creates wealth, and uses an indigenous example (the Achuar tribe in Ecuador) to illustrate a non-extractive, abundance-based way of life.
Chapters
We have this opportunity to witness the financial opportunities that lie in doing the right thing. We need to stop believing that doing the right thing is expensive or is going to cut into your profits. Doing the right thing on the global scale is always going to make you more wealthy. I think that that's true in any part of your life. And I'd say relationship is the one area that we most make a mistake in about this is we don't value relationship for what it's really capable of doing. And so we have very surfacey relationships. And we're not trained into sacred, holy relationship at any level. Friendship, marriage. We take these very surfacey versions of it. And so I think it's time for us, when we start thinking about sacred commerce, to put in maybe the word sacred value again. Let's put sacred value back into everything.
Welcome to my home. Welcome to Austin.
I'm glad to be here with you. It's just a joy to see your family settling in here.
Yeah, you got to meet my son Nova today.
What an enormous smile that kid has. Love it.
I flashback to a moment we had in Cardiff and you were like, hey, the next time we hang out, I'll hang out with your family, hang out with your son. And like, here we are. That's wild, man. What's been going on with. With our community, our global community, and also commerce. And this is from my heart today. You know, I. As you know, I did a vision quest this year. It was a hundred hours fasting in nature, Zach. No food, no fire, just water. And I had so many profound revelations, one of them being some learnings that that actually learned from you. And it was about commerce and how human beings, we consume so much, we are literally just eating the earth, and we're not giving as much back as we're taking. And I'm curious as a jumping off point, how do you even see commerce? You know, what is. What does commerce mean to Zach Bush to be in sacred commerce? I think of Charles Eisenstein's work and the gifting economy, and I don't know if I fully agree with the gifting economy. Maybe in a perfect world, but as you sit here today with us, what is sacred commerce, sacred economy mean to you? What is that?
I think for me, I would go straight to what is value? You know, what. What is our value system that we could share in a sacred community? And that value system for me, has to be reintegrated into natural systems. And if we don't do that, we will continue to extract, destruct, and Ultimately, you know, accelerate this sixth existential crisis that we have on the planet called extinction. And so the process of re evaluating value in our lives is really asking for a realignment of philosophy in which we kind of get rid of the schism between the concept of scarcity and need in our lives and a recognition of the abundance and the creativity of nature itself. And a good example of this is anytime you go into an indigenous group that's been living in its natural system for any tens of thousands of years, recently was down in Ecuador with The Achuar tribe, 40,000 years in the sacred headwaters of the Amazon on the border of Peru and Ecuador. And they don't have any storage in their kitchens. That's just a fire pit. And every morning they walk out into the jungle and they collect what they're going to prepare that day. And they share this incredibly beautiful social experience throughout the day of food preparation. And the men are carrying back armloads of hearts of palm that are shredded into these tea leaves and baked over the fire for breakfast. And these grubs that they boil or steam in the tea leaves with that. It's just unbelievable that it hasn't dawned on them in 40,000 years to need to store anything, because they know the forest is going to continue to provide. And so that is a reminder of where we come from.
