DailyJim: What if MLK Jr had as much financial power as Donald Trump?

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Monday, January 20th, 2025. And today I want to talk about what if Martin Luther King Jr. Had as much financial power as Donald Trump.

So the impetus for this conversation was that today is both the inauguration day and also the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S. So Donald Trump will become president again today. And trying to, the juxtaposition of reflecting on that also with reflecting on Martin Luther King. And something I have been thinking about over and over again is what if Martin Luther King Jr. or people like Martin Luther King Jr. Actually had the financial power comparable to someone like Donald Trump, comparable to someone like Elon Musk, comparable to some of these very financially wealthy people who, I would say, in their current state are pulling society more apart rather than bringing us together, who are not necessarily very good at apologizing and forgiving and reconciliation, but rather at escalating conflict, at driving division, kind of pushing people away instead of bringing people close. And so it's something I've reflected on very personally as well as over these last 12 years or so, I have been doing this work of trying to get better at resolving conflict and bringing myself closer to other people and other people closer to me and helping other people do that. And frankly, one side of it is just running out of money so that I am struggling to do this for myself to maintain the ability to resolve these conflicts and focus on that and focus on the new tools because I am focused on simply resolving the money conflict more often than not. So that's kind of the bottom side of it. But what if we instead of look at how can people who are in this very generous, loving state merely survive financially. What if we looked at, what if they were near the top? What if there were a way for them to gain financial power that didn't involve them.

Having to go through highly transactional, often very profitable slash, sometimes transactional profitable interactions can lead to lying and hiding and almost an antagonism. That like, yes, I care about the customer, but I care about myself more. And so I'm going to try to get as much as I can from the customer.

And that's not how giving generously works it's not how loving and having a deeper closer relationship really works there's a certain boundary there's a certain limit to it so i wonder what would somebody like martin luther king do with one million dollars a year ten million dollars a year a hundred million dollars a year what if they had the wealth of not even the wealth but had the money coming in so that therefore they could use that money, transform it, and put it out.

What would he transform it into if Martin Luther King Jr. was getting $10 million a year directly to him, no strings attached? Do you think he really would have bought a mansion if he did buy a mansion? Do you think he would have just sat in the mansion by himself and said, you know, screw the world, the world can do what it wants? No, he probably would have conducted trainings on nonviolence. He probably would have brought people in from different walks of life and had them share meals together. He probably would have done so many things using that house that would focus on, again, the civil rights movement, but not even just the civil rights movement. I think he had a much bigger vision for humanity than just civil rights. I think he also focused on the Poor People's Campaign and ending the war in Vietnam. And he wasn't just focused on lifting black Americans up. He was focused on lifting humanity up and bringing humanity together. And I think sometimes when we give money to organizations that have very specific purposes, then we don't allow leaders to lead.

They have to follow what the organization wants. And I wonder if this is something that actually came up at the end of Martin Luther King's life, is that he started to shift away from the civil rights movement as it focused on African-Americans and focused more on economic class struggles. And I think that clashed with a lot of the organizations that he was supposedly leading because they were more focused. I think so. So I think there was more conflict about that, like, hey, why are you focusing on poor people now? You should still be focusing on black people. And it was like, no, but poor people are black people, white people, people from all walks of life. And how do we help bring together the rich and the poor and actually resolve that conflict or that division?

And I think when we give to organizations that have specific purposes, they often can't transition, whether that's legally or whether just in terms of inertia, they don't want to transition.

And the consensus, the majority of people pull it back. And so this is why the idea of what if we gave two leaders and we trusted them to lead? What if we gave them financial power and said, go lead, lead us. We don't know where to go. We believe you can take us there. We don't know if where you're going is where we want to go. But we want you to go there anyways, and we want to watch. And then maybe we'll follow, or we'll see somebody else follow, and then we'll follow them. But when we don't give them the resources, how do we expect them to lead? Now, sure, you're going to have your outliers, like MLK or like Gandhi, I think, who are in the right place at the right time, who were boosted, I think, financially by the organizations that they were part of.

But not everyone's going to have that. How many people do you think we would have in the world who are more like an MLK or more like a Gandhi or more like a Mandela who just don't have the finances to be able to do it, that they have family members that they care about, and the families say, hey, you know, you should stop working on that stuff because we have kids and you have to feed the kids, or do you really care about me you care more about your work than you do about me because we need some monies can you just go get a consulting job or just do something so that you can bolster this. How many people are able to continue not working in a more transactional way and to maintain a life that is less transactional and more communal?

Much more on giving and receiving freely and openly than giving and receiving conditionally.

It's hard. It's really hard. And I think the way that we receive money matters. And I don't think we talk about this much. And so what would it be like if we actually empowered these people financially?

And I say these people because I don't think it's just about me. Yes, yes, I believe I would love to be empowered financially like this. Yes, sure, everyone would love to be empowered financially. No strings attached money. Sure, it's everyone's dream. How many, actually, I mean, one, I don't think most people have the strength to be able to receive the money yet or the skills to be able to receive unconditional love. It's really hard. It's terrifying for most of us to receive love. We feel attacked. We fight back. But what if, what if we challenge that norm? What if we push the bounds so that the people leading us in society are leading us towards love? The people leading us in society are leading us back together. They are not shouting on platforms that they bought that the government is oppressing us and that the immigrants don't care about us and that the world is falling apart and nobody cares about you, I'm the only one who cares about you. What a miserable way to live life. How do we pull even those people out of that stage? We need strong leadership.

I would say we need people who are expressing a lot of love but also expressing a lot of power.

Martin Luther King had a book called Strength to Love. Strength to love, power to love, power and love. I think he even has a quote talking about power without love and love without power.

They need to exist. They need to coexist. And so, as we think about this day today, I want people to reflect on what would life look like if we empowered, we collectively empowered some people financially to lead us back together. We said we believe in you. We believe in your abilities, your conviction.

We believe in your, ability to figure it out. You may not know right now, but believe that you have a better chance than anyone to figure some of these things out. And we need it now. We don't want to fall into despair. We don't want to fall into apathy. We don't want to give up. We want someone who's Show us the way. And if the easiest, you know, if the best thing or if the most important resource we can give to that person right now is some money. Wow. What a great investment in life. What a great opportunity.

So, this is me talking about this new initiative I have called Leading Hearts Fund. You can find it at leadingheartsfund.com or leadinghearts.fund if you'd like. And it will be developing over time. But the idea is how do we financially empower these leaders, empower them in general, but especially financially because so many of us who are working in this space feel very powerful in other ways. We have so much emotional support. We have so much intellectual support, physical support in so many ways, but we often don't have the financial support. We don't have the financial power. And God, what could we unleash if we did? What could we unleash?

How many people could we help? How many, how many communities and societies and families could we change? Could we bring back together if we just had more resources to do it? So I just want you to reflect on that a little bit as we look at the new leadership coming into the United States today and reflect on a cultural leader, one cultural leader we had in the past, Martin Luther King Jr., and the different messages that they are spreading. I would say the current leader Donald Trump spreads a message more of nobody cares about you, maybe I'm the only one who cares about you everyone is lying, everyone's corrupt and then MLK spreads a message that everyone is a child of God we're all brothers and sisters in this struggle of life and people care about you more than you believe and stand up straight have some respect for yourself have some love for yourself and we'll get through this together Who do we want to empower? Not even who, which message do we want to empower? Because you know what, even the people who are spreading, even the message that Trump is spreading, I believe he can change and spread a different message. I think a lot of it just depends on how these people receive love and how they receive support. So let's, I think we should try this experiment to see what happens Because my hypothesis is that if we give money to people who are fighting so hard to bring humanity back together, that they'll be able to do it a lot faster and a lot more effectively.

And what better thing could we give our money to? All right. Talk to you all tomorrow. Bye.