Selling community: what's the price of connection?
The trend of women spiritual entrepreneurs selling something that should always be free.
People are lonely. There’s no disputing that. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy describes what we’re undergoing as an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” The pandemic exacerbated issues that were already there: the reality that technology, despite its promises of connecting the world and freeing up our time by making us more productive, has done quite the opposite.
“The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.” (Brett Scott)
It turns out that being plugged in to a capitalist selling machine that puts the devastating realities of the world at our fingertips just isn’t that good for us. It distracts us from connecting with our loved ones who are in the same physical space. It lures us away from enjoying time in nature, time spent in community, and time spent pondering “big picture” issues like grief and activism. It disincentivizes critical thinking, and dissuades us from questioning how beneficial it really is to venture down internet rabbit holes that make us fearful of trans kids, vaccines, and bike lanes.
The solution, at least according to Dr. Murthy, is “social connection and community.” He calls upon people to “build a movement to mend the social fabric […]” and outlines six pillars to advance social connection:
Strengthen Social Infrastructure in Local Communities;
Enact Pro-connection Public Policies;
Mobilize the Health Sector;
Reform Digital Environments;
Deepen Our Knowledge; and
Build a Culture of Connection.
I agree with his recommendations to increase social connection and community for healing, both on an individual and a cultural level. The pitfall, as I see it, is when the language of community and connection is co-opted for capitalist gains. In my own life — lived mostly in a small town on Vancouver Island — I see this nowhere more prevalent than with women spiritual entrepreneurs on Instagram.
Women’s spiritual entrepreneurship
Scroll through Instagram and you’ll find glossy images of women offering a solution to your feelings of isolation and disorientation. Some explicitly offer community. For a small fee of, say, $150, you can join a spiritual influencer on a verdant meadow/in a yurt/at the beach for a ritual sharing circle. For another low monthly fee, you’ll be joining an exclusive club of women who, like you, crave community, connection and meaning in this confusing world.
Hate the game, not the players
While it’s tempting to lump women spiritual entrepreneurs into one bucket, I do not disparage the choices that they make. Life is expensive, and traditional, high-earning jobs are not easy to come by. I have a ton of compassion for those who choose this line of work, and I recognize that many of them would likely rather not have to participate in this exploitative, capitalist system.
However, I object stringently to the co-option of inclusive community language and the manipulative phrasing that prompts their target audience(s), mostly women, mostly mothers, to spend in order to belong. I also object to the appropriation of Indigenous practices and rituals without corresponding efforts towards reconciliation. And most of all, I lament the absence of alternatives, the false dichotomy presented: join this club or wallow in your isolation, alone.
Belonging to a community takes time, and it should always be free
I’ve always been drawn to community. I grew up without religion, sometimes feeling like the Little Match Girl peering into the windows of faith-based or cultural communities. I was always drawn to big families, big companies, and big groups of friends at school. Throughout my life, I’ve made it an informal practice to observe what makes communities feel “just right,” what make them so loose that they fall apart, and what makes them feel so tightly controlled that they feel cult-y. I’ve been part of — and even built — a few communities, ranging from the loose and fleeting (a bunch of English-speaking smokers at a start-up in Berlin and a group of “solapreneurs”) to the more structured and enduring (a co-working space full of remote workers, online creative writing groups and an Adult Mythology Club).
While costs are associated with some of the communities I’ve lead or been a part of, the connection part is always free. I contribute a nominal donation to the facilitator of the Adult Mythology Club for her time guiding participants through the myth, and people pay a small monthly fee to rent a desk at the co-working space I run. In each of these cases, the service is what is being charged for — not the connection.
But when it comes to many spiritual entrepreneurs, what’s being sold is a sense of community. That’s what I find so difficult to square with the kind of world I want to see — one in which the social fabric is woven through connection, not dollars.
In the communities I’m a part of, if I were paying for the connection itself, I don’t believe I could ever truly trust it. It would feel conditional. That’s why I believe community should always be free, and that connection should be decoupled from financial gain.
Gendering capitalism
In Kira Ganga Kieffer’s 2020 paper, Manifesting Millions: How Women’s Spiritual Entrepreneurship Genders Capitalism, she claims that women spiritual entrepreneurs typically espouse “one or more of the following characteristics:
Gendered rhetoric concerning either traditional or New Age articulations of femininity;
Affirmation of “women’s intuition,” which can be cultivated through meditation or other spiritual modalities;
Expression of a selfless desire to help or teach customers rather than simply profit from them; and
Narration of a personal spiritual transformation through capitalistic pursuits.” (p. 81)
While each one of these points merits its own exploration, I’m particularly struck by how #3 shows up in community-building. When one of these spiritual entrepreneurs fixes her sparkling gaze on you and tells you that you have “really beautiful energy,” and that she’d “love to work with you” (without defining what she means by “work”), it can feel that you’re being told one thing but sold another. As Ganga Kieffer points out, it would be better to have the motives all out on the table:
“Female spiritual entrepreneurs perform selflessness by employing narratives of an entrepreneurial impulse based on teaching or guiding other women, rather than simply turning a financial profit.” (Ganga Kieffer, p. 84)
Circles or pyramids?
Scroll through Instagram and you’ll find many of these women spiritual entrepreneurs. They often have thousands, if not tens of thousands of followers. But dig a bit deeper and you’ll notice that a lot of the time, the only people liking and commenting on their posts are fellow spiritual entrepreneurs. And when they share their journey towards “manifesting abundance,” it rings hollow — almost as if they’re inviting you to find purpose by becoming a spiritual entrepreneur, too. Because instead of being honest about why they’ve gone into this business (for financial stability and profit), they refer to their work as a higher calling. As Ganga Kieffer says,
“[. . .] it is unnecessary to ask a male entrepreneur why he is going into business. We know why: to make money. Women’s spiritual entrepreneurship provides language for women to rewrite this script.” (Ganga Kieffer, p. 101)
Charge for services; not connection
Women entrepreneurs should feel free to openly charge for their services without couching those services in the language of selflessness and spiritual guidance. Teasing financial gain apart from community is essential if we are to truly liberate ourselves from cycles of exploitation and heal our communities.
After all, the social fabric can only be mended through connection, not profit. May we all find, and build, connection and community without charging — or paying — a cent.