What would you have: fear, force, or pain. Pain is the ultimate. And I don’t mean emotional pain, like losing a loved one, but the kind that comes from force (e.g., being hit with a hammer on the head).

We met with the proto-Radical companies and I explained what was going on in my hear and let them know that I was leaning towards giving “Radical” a secondary role. However, they had good arguments to the contrary.

Fiat and Force

Fiat commands always carry a threat of force with it, move that box from there to there. The implied or else very rarely gets said, but it is always there: the boss can fire you at any time and threaten your ability to survive. So you move the box to avoid Pain.

Radical Is Good

According to Carlos Suarez, the founder of Core Communications, Fiat encompasses the whole cascade,

Paty, Patricia Preciado, told the story of when she got so beaten down by her job that she hit bottom. She decided to quit. Instead, she wanted to build a platform to make it easy for people to do things for the sake of their wellbeing. It’s been a while, but we are building that platform, not with technology, but as a different way of living and thriving.

Chabeli Atahuaman told us about her transformation by a simple act: getting over the fear of bringing up what she really felt. She was concerned that others might react. Finally, she came out and said, Make it for people, not just to make money. It took courage to do, but it was the right thing for her and she felt really good after she said it. As it turned out, the people that she was working with took her seriously and they even enjoyed the process.

These stories resonated with me and they spoke to the power of having a named alternative like Radical.

Wellbeing

The opposite of Pain is not not hedonic pleasure, it is Wellbeing. We need an alternative to the Fiat system we live in today and a Radical-based environment supports and promotes Wellbeing.