What Will Happen When the "Getting" Stops
Culture, Connection, and the Future Beyond Monetization
What will happen when we finally realize that we can create anything, at any time? We already can. With a single conversation, we can bring into being an app, website, poster, product, anything we can imagine. Entire realities can be manifested instantly. And yet, so much of this creative energy is being funneled into the same old funnel: selling ourselves.
It seems as though each human being has been handed the same template, make yourself visible, make yourself marketable, tell the world what you do, and then, try to monetize it. The pull of capitalism is strong, and many of us older than the millennials have been thoroughly steeped in it. But what is interesting is how younger generations, starting with the millennials and moving forward, are interacting with this template in new ways.
Yes, they still market, still create and share, but so often, they are not just selling. They are expressing. They are pointing out, “I see this,” “I noticed that,” “I am interested here.” They are not asking, “Will you buy this?” But rather saying, “This is what I have seen.” “Do you see it too?” Their communication is not transactional, it is observational, generous. That difference matters.
It brings to mind the true nature of art. Capitalism has trained us to see art as a commodity, something you can sell, something with value because of its market price. But truly, art is a gift. Music is a gift. Our words, our thoughts, our creative offerings, they are gifts meant to be given away freely. And there is a rising generation for whom this is the currency that matters most.
So what will happen when these generations come fully into their own? What will the world become once the systems built on image, ego, and monetization are no longer upheld by the hands of the past? I sometimes say, only half-jokingly, what will happen when the millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, are the only ones left here, and the rest of us have left this mortal coil? What kind of world will they build?
There is a chance, maybe even a good one, that it will be something like heaven on earth. A world with fewer rigid structures built to control or impress. Fewer systems that depend on extraction and performance. A world that is, instead, guided by communication, by thoughtful presence, by face-to-face connection and deep listening. A world where people come together without needing to figure out how to sell the moment to someone else.
That may be the greatest gift these future generations offer us, the reminder that we can simply be together. That our value is not in how well we monetize our place in society, our relationships, or even our talents. In a decentralized world, where money, systems, and ownership models are evolving, there is a new kind of bartering emerging. One based less on fixed value and more on fluid exchange. I have this, you have that. Let us share.
And perhaps this is the true tipping point we find ourselves in now. What would the world look like if we stopped trying to monetize our conversations? Our identities? Our communities? What happens when we release the question of What am I going to get from this?
Because the moment we ask that, we step out of authenticity. We bring in agenda. Even if that agenda is shaped by need, need to pay rent, need to survive, it changes the fabric of the connection. So what would it mean to live agenda-free? To be in a relationship simply because we want to be, because there is joy in listening, in sharing, in witnessing the other. No extraction, no goal. Just presence.
This way of being is already emerging. It is not a dream; it is a direction. And it is being pointed to, with increasing clarity, by those who are coming of age now. A generation that shows us, maybe life can be simpler than we have ever allowed it to be.
