Recently, I gradually understood how to play this game—which is called life—well, even with my unique individuality. The multiple perspectives I introduced in recent articles taught me how to deal with it.
In the previous article (this article), I explained we don’t have to use spirituality in business, even if we sell spiritual products. Today, I will talk about a tip for how to do business well for empathic people.
How to think about business to make money
Sometimes, we want to handle our weak areas well. Doing business and making money would be one example, especially for empathic people.
Empathy often prevents us from making a profit because it makes us want to make others happy. If it makes customers happy, we want to offer our products at as low prices as possible. In other words, we hesitate to create profits for only ourselves. That often hinders our profit creation.
That is why we want to have an appropriate perspective on business. How do we need to approach business and money?
However, we often don’t know it. We seldom have opportunities to learn the fundamental aspects of business, including the origin of it.
Today, I will introduce the origin of business. It tells us business is fundamentally a low-empathic activity, like governance and war. This perspective would allow us to do our business and make money better.
The origin of business
Business is fundamentally a low-empathic activity. Even if we create products to make others happy, we don’t need to hesitate to price.
The origin of business will show us why, so let me introduce it.
Originally, humans didn’t do business. Humans separated from apes about 5,000,000 years ago. Of course, at that age, they didn’t have the concept of business. They lived by hunting and gathering. There was also no concept of ownership, property, and wealth. They lived together in a small group, cooperating and sharing with each other while migrating.
The beginning of agriculture
The origin of business is the beginning of agriculture. It was about 15,000 years ago. I don’t know what motivated people to do it, but they started growing harvests instead of hunting and gathering.
Although it brought stable food to humans, it required one sacrifice: patience. For humans accustomed to hunting and gathering, agriculture required effort and patience. They had to cultivate the fields, create irrigation channels, and supply water. They were heavy tasks.
However, those who endured were able to secure more food.
This gave rise to the concept of ownership, property, and wealth. This is because people don’t want to share what they have created through suffering. Why do we have to suffer for lazy people? Suffering for them is meaningless.
That made people stop sharing and start making things their own. It was not only food but also fields and lands. Patience created the concept of wealth.
The birth of governance and war
The concept of heritage and lineage was also born. People had to decide how to divide the deceased person’s property. This is the origin of those concepts and family.
That created a comparison between the noble and the inferior. Naturally, they try to rule people and obtain more abundance. This created the concept of governance and war.
In other words, it created social power. Those who had wealth could command those who didn’t. They could live more easily. People began to desire such power.
The patience that agriculture required gave birth to the concepts related to wealth. It stimulated people’s desires and even greed.
Two fundamental principles: patience and creativity
People have learned that they can also create wealth through their creativity. That accelerated human technology.
It means there were fundamentally two ways to create wealth. One is patience. The other is creativity. This principle has not changed even now.
The concept of business was also born at the same time. People had surplus wealth they could not consume. Food is a primal example. Some had surplus grain, while some had surplus fish. That made people exchange them.
To make exchanges efficient, the concept of money was created.
What the origin tells us
That is why governance, war, and business require a similar perspective. They are brothers to whom agriculture gave birth.
To deal with them, we need to focus on patience or creativity. Those two factors determine how much wealth we can obtain.
This origin also tells us why spirituality has nothing to do with business. Spirituality was born to help weak people in society. That prevents the decline of society. Perhaps the origin is much older than the beginning of agriculture. It is completely different from competing for social resources, like governance, war, and business.
This shows us how to deal with business. Business is a less empathic activity. It requires patience or creativity. We have to focus on either one or both.
Confirming to apply it to governance or war
If you want to make money, consider whether your approach applies to governance or war. If it is effective for them, it would also work for making money.
In other words, empathy is helpless for business. For example, try thinking of whether imagining a successful state or longing for success works for governance or war. You can soon understand that they don’t work. Governance and war require a specific strategy and a cool decision with sacrifices. This attitude is the opposite of spirituality.
It would also help us think of business as a tactical game, like chess or war games. They are not empathic activities. It gives us a perspective on how to manipulate our assets. We don’t have to be empathetic to the pieces and enemies. Business is the same. It is not such a game.
Of course, you can create spiritual products to make others happy with your empathy. In addition, you can imagine how to make better services based on your spirituality. There are also selling methods that make use of spirituality.
However, you need to distinguish that creating better products and making a profit are different. We have to use different perspectives on those two.
Conclusion
That is the origin of business. It tells us business is fundamentally a low-empathic activity.
If you want to make money, consider whether our approach applies to governance or war. If it can be effective for them, it would also work to make money.
This perspective might allow you to do your business and make money better.
Thank you for reading this article. I hope to see you in the next one.
