46. Rescue your dreams from capitalism: visioning at the scale that your ancestors meant for you - with Dr. Joey Liu

Capitalism taught you that "generational wealth" is the pinnacle of success. 

But what if that vision is actually a trap designed to keep you stuck?

Your ancestors might be crossing their arms and giving you a side-eye, asking: "Really? Is that all you think you're here for?"

Listen to hear more about:

• How to think at the scale that your ancestors knew (but capitalism made you forget)
• Why whatever you're doing now is a fraction of what you're capable of — and what your ancestors have marked you for
• Questions that will get you thinking at the scale that you're meant for
• How to hold way bigger visions in your mind without collapsing

If something stirs in you as you listen to this — pay attention. That's how you know you're marked for more.

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Take the free course Building Post-Capitalist Wealth: https://play.simonegraceseol.com/pcw

Apply for the 8-week course, Ancestral Wealth: https://play.simonegraceseol.com/ancestral-wealth

Transcript

 Welcome back to Liberatory Business. I'm Simone Seol, your host. Thank you so much for listening. This is another conversation with Dr. Joy Liu. I spent years thinking that if I could just take care of myself and my family, that would be enough.

That would mean I'd overcome all the obstacles, proved all the doubters wrong, and made it. And then my ancestors started knocking, actually more like yelling that they were not impressed. So many of us have been conditioned to celebrate victories that are actually kind of small, not because taking care of yourself and your family isn't important.

It absolutely is. But that's where we've been trained to stop dreaming. Today we're having a conversation about what happens when you let your ancestors show you the actual scope of what you're here to do. Fair warning, the math might completely blow your mind.

Let's get into it.

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Simone: So mainstream capitalist conversations about money and wealth and business have conditioned us to think that generational wealth is like the ultimate achievement, the ultimate thing you can aspire to. But what that does — it's actually very subtly conditioning us to think very small.

It's conditioning us to think in capitalism-coded...

Joey: Capitalistic. Yes. Right.

Simone: Very capitalistic, which is inherently small and disconnected. Right. So that you are only thinking about yourself and your kids. And their kids. When they say generational wealth, they're talking about you, your bloodline only.

Of course they always pay lip service to, oh, and then you'll give some to your communities. But it's always an afterthought.

Joey: How often are we prompted to even go to those depths or lengths of imagination to say —

Simone: Never.

Joey: What else? Because, and this is so shaped by narrative, this is so shaped by the examples that we see where it already feels like you are exceptional. You are the exception to the norms. If you can just get a higher degree, start a business, much less say like my business is actually doing well and I'm able to be generous with that. And that's crazy that that's fed as sort of like —

Simone: Right, like you be the exception, you could be the shining beacon of success and prosperity, which again — individualism, right? The system is trying to cultivate the myth of the lone hero, the one exceptional, right? It is all just training us into the separation that capitalism requires us to operate inside.

Joey: Well, I'm not trying to position myself here as some outlier or anything, but I'm really having to take a moment to let this sink in because it is really different from my experience. Like there's just no way I would even give myself into the exercises of creating a business if it weren't for my much larger vision than what you just described. And if that vision didn't capture ideas of systemic change and paradigm shifting change and work that impacts so many people's lives, like I just wouldn't be interested in learning or doing business at all. So I'm really curious to see your story too about how you got here and why it matters so much to you to push this conversation about having all of us dream bigger.

Simone: I think the same seed was planted in me since I was created by my parents because in an earlier podcast, you know, I talked about the founding philosophy of the Korean Nation 홍익인간, which means to be a benefit to all humans. And that is something that my dad always talked about. And so at some level of my spirit, I held that, but it also took me forever for my self-concept to catch up and for the level at which I can imagine my own capacity to catch up because — and this actually ties in a lot to a lot of the wounding that I have growing up neurodivergent, because I always felt very incompetent. I've always been told, you're irresponsible, you're immature, you're too impulsive. Like, all the things, all the shaming that most people who grew up with ADHD can identify with. 'Cause we all heard it a million times. And so on the one hand, like in my bones, I knew the truth of who I was and what I was capable of. But on the other hand, there was a lot of socialization that told me you are not capable. So I spent a lot of my life thinking that if I could just take care of myself, like that would be amazing. Right? That means I would've overcome these obstacles. Mm-hmm. After a lot of time and work and growth, I arrived at a point where I was very well able to take care of not just myself, but my entire family. And that was a huge sigh of relief. I've always been redistributing a lot and my business had acted like an unofficial grant-making entity for a while, and that was very important to me. But I was like, oh man, I'm able to take care of my family and I can give in a significant way.

That's good. I am set. Hmm. And it's only recently that my ancestors have been knocking at me being like, really? Is that good enough? Like really?

And they kind of started to cross their arms and give me a side eye. And then all of that also coincided with the ways that I had been drawn by my ancestors back to my ancestral lands. And I mean that very specifically, right?

Joey: Yeah.

Simone: The rural lands of Korea. And how much of the medicine and the blueprint for what humanity needs in order to not destroy ourselves and heal and become whole again and to flourish in the future is in the rapidly diminishing strands of connection that we have with our own indigeneity.

Joey: Ooh.

Simone: Now like my devotion is toward that vision, shall we say. And it's so much bigger than just my family being provided for.

Joey: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Thanks for sharing that.

I was able to make a few connection points into my story through yours. I'm really grateful you shared about being neurodivergent. 'Cause for me, as somebody on the autism spectrum, I was like, oh wait, actually, maybe that is why I've always cared about the things I've cared about. I've always seen things as so interconnected.

I've always seen the like hidden systems behind things, which is why ever since I was young nothing else mattered more to me than like saving the animals and the planet and the environment. 'Cause I was like, well, I can't live a good life if those things perish. I understood that.

But then as you were starting to peel apart the layers of your lineage and your lands, that was something that I wasn't able to really find out about until I was older. But to discover that both my Hakka and Irish lineages, we are peoples of resistance.

I mean, on the one hand, because our people were under threats, right? But it's been so healing for me to find out later that it wasn't just a resistance for self-preservation. It's also cultivated a spirit of standing up for what's right and fighting for other groups of people that are under attack from both the Irish and Hakka lineages.

And I could see this play out even in my childhood where my parents, I mean, we were very, very working class. Like we did not — when we moved from Taiwan to America when I was young, we lived off of my dad's single income as a non-English speaking builder and construction worker. And despite having very little for ourselves, I can remember there were always refugees from other countries, from more war-torn countries, from more climate-afflicted countries living with us.

Like my parents were just always caring for other people and it wasn't ever — I thought of like, we have to get to this level of wealth or having this hoard, you know, or this reserve before we have the capacity to help others. So that was very much my norm that I was brought up in. And so I think it's taken me some unlearning to look around and in the world of business realize that okay, not everybody has these paradigms that they're operating from where they see things as interconnected and where they see themselves as a channel for collective flourishing at every single stage of what they're creating.

Simone: That's incredible. And you know, we've talked about this in previous episodes too, but how these disconnected individualistic ways of thinking and being are very new in human history. Right?

Joey: Mm-hmm.

Simone: Because they were instilled by capitalism. And capitalism — that's actually very young and new in human history, and most of us, if not all of us, if we go up enough generations, this is how probably most of our ancestors lived.

Joey: Mm-hmm.

Simone: There was no sense of, if I got my own, then other people can take care of themselves. It was, I think most of our ancestors lived profoundly collectivistic.

Joey: Mm-hmm.

Simone: Profoundly collectivistic ways, and I feel like — yes, in this world, it feels like the paradigm that you were brought up in is rare. And it is rare, but I feel like all of us have what it takes to remember our way back.

Joey: Yes.

Simone: — to that way of being. It's all our inheritance. All of our inheritance, you know?

Joey: Yeah. I definitely believe it. I say it all the time. This choke point capitalism that we've been conditioned in under for the last couple years is so new.

When you look at the whole scope of human history —

Simone: And you mean last couple of centuries? 'Cause you said last couple of years.

Joey: Oh yes. Not two years, literally. Yeah. Yeah. Last couple of centuries, decades even. You know, post-industrialism. I mean, I can remember as somebody born in Taiwan, like we were still a third world country when I was born here in the eighties.

Yeah, like the modernization of the land, my homelands, and where I'm geographically situated now is literally within the last few decades. We have intact paradigms that we get to set foot within that like — intact as in unbroken. Right, right. You know, yes, there's revitalization movement and not to diminish that, but there is something so powerful about being situated in spaces where the paradigm wasn't broken, where the lineage wasn't broken, the ways of being wasn't broken. The vision that we are responsible for now that we are currently stewarding now, putting our all into right now, is — we are so indebted to our lands, our homes, our living elders, and our ancestors, and we hope to spark that conversation within so many people about even if you're feeling fragmented or disconnected now, where is the closest space that you can go back to plug into? Because we do strongly believe everyone can remember and that your vision that you are most responsible for needs to have something to plug and root into.

Simone: I feel like here, it's really important to speak to siblings of the global majority who have lineages that have been severely fractured by colonization and violent white supremacist systems like the transatlantic slave trade.

Joey: Yes.

Simone: — who might feel like, I can't relate to that at all, you know? Yeah. Being so close to unbroken lineages of history.

Joey: Yeah, I'm always so open and I'll name, I am not a Black woman, so to speak.

In the Black experience, I do so carefully and open to correction, but what I have come to learn, observe, and absorb from those who have bestowed on me is just deep humility and reverence that there is something very particular in the experience of those of the Black diaspora, and I'll just — I said it to you, I said, your ancestors got you.

Like it does not take digging too deep to look into Black culture to see that despite maybe not knowing the exact names or tongues of your ancestors, because of such deeply painful and violent histories, there is something miraculous about the way that ancestral knowledge is still being transmitted in the Black diasporic experience.

And you see it in the food, and you see it in the music, and you see it in the poetry, and you see it in the language, and you see it in the ways of being. You see it in the ways of knowing. And it's really not for me to talk on, it's really not for me to claim. So I'll just leave it at that and open the dialogue to whoever else has more to say about it.

I've said it so many times, like, I'm so indebted. I'm so indebted to, and I'm so shaped by, and forever grateful for the ways that I've learned from elders and members of the Black diasporic community and just wanna honor that.

Simone: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that. Mm-hmm. I'm also very cautious to speak on it, except for where you said, but you can tell their ancestors got them, their ancestors got them. You know, I was like, it is not my place to say, but it's also so obvious, and I think all of the rest of us are so indebted to the living wisdom and spiritual power that so many Black elders and teachers and creators share with the world. Yeah, it's not ours to claim at all, but very, very grateful and humbled to be able to benefit from it and to learn from it.

Joey: Yeah.

Simone: So I had this idea for this episode, and what I told Joey was I need to yell at people about their dreams being too small and how a successful business is actually not good enough.

And even generational wealth is actually not good enough because a successful business can't change systems. Generational wealth by itself isn't gonna fund revolutions. And neither one builds what our communities actually need at this point in the 21st century.

And what if a successful business became a floor rather than a ceiling? What if that was like the minimum that we all had? You know, and with the stability of abundance and the safety of abundance, we reserve our real — the biggest, most expansive, imaginative capacity for imagining new systems, right?

Joey: Yes.

Simone: What a post-revolutionary world looks like. What we want the current world to be replaced with, and building the capacity to be able to create that with our own hands, right? Like that's the bar.

Joey: When you said you wanna yell at people's visions being too small, I'm just laughing 'cause I'm like, how many times have our own ancestors yelled at us in this process, in this just very finite process of creating this course — for just minimizing ourselves, you know?

Simone: Yeah, yeah.

Joey: Yeah. So this is coming from a place of, we're just passing it forward, right? We're just passing down the lessons that we've got.

Simone: Lemme just share a bit more of my story because like I said, after overcoming a lot and learning a lot and expanding a lot, I've come to this space of being able to say, okay, you know what? I think me and my family are gonna be fine. And that was a huge relief because that was not always a given at all. And while I was coasting on that, my ancestors started to yell at me and they're like, what about more than that? Right? Because you weren't here just to take care of your family.

That is not why we put you here, right? Mm-hmm. And then so I started, especially — a lot of this was precipitated by my conversations with you and I started asking about, okay, how much money to buy back land, how much money to fund this movement so that it's sustainable for decades?

How much money to build a school, how much money to build clinics, how much money to build community infrastructure, how much money to build to hire this many people at thriving salaries. How much money to create systems that have radical redistribution built in.

Yeah. And how much to fund the processes that can test out different ideas and learn iteratively 'cause we're not gonna get to the perfect solution on the first try. This is a scale at which Joey and I are asking all of our siblings of the global majority to think. Because the math completely blew up for me, and I kind of hated it at first.

'Cause I was like, I dunno what to do with this. Right? I was like, I was so proud of myself for being able to get to the point where I could take care of my family and now you want me to do what? I don't know how to do that. You know? So I put up a big fight at first, and now I'm working with an entirely different, you know, set of digits in my mind.

Joey: I mean, I'm thinking about my story, like maybe I'm the converse of that because my vision was always radical learning spaces and then working in educational systems, looking at the budgets of what it takes to run. And then for my dissertation process, like literally working with founders of radical learning spaces and their biggest issue being how to sustain funding.

So I always — I entered into this arena, knowing the numbers were super big and blame it on the autism and the obsession with spreadsheets. But one of the reasons I didn't jump full force into this when it was first planted in my heart seven, eight years ago was because I always knew the scale. I always knew.

I mean, we gonna have people on payroll, we are gonna be buying land, we are going to be funding climate mitigation, we are going to be funding political sovereignty. We are talking about multimillions of dollars incoming every year and millions —

Simone: Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions. I think a big piece of being able to hold these kinds of scales and numbers in our minds is knowing that no one's asking you to figure it out by yourself.

Joey: Ugh, that part.

Simone: Because if you think it's all on you and you have to be the genius that figures it all out, right — that's impossible. I was just talking to my friend Rashida about how much of this work requires rooting radically into faith and ancestors, belief in the web of inter-being that is holding you. Yes. Right.

Joey: Absolutely.

Simone: And how no one's asking you to come up — figure out how to come up with all of the tens of millions of dollars by yourself and figure out how to architect everything and run everything perfectly yourself.

When your ancestors give you a vision and a mission, they're saying, we expect you to show up for your part. Mm-hmm.

And then we got the rest.

Joey: Yes, absolutely right.

Simone: We'll connect you to the people who are gonna be able to do things that you don't know how to do. We're gonna open the right doors for you that you don't even know exist at the right time.

We're going to help you uncover capacity that you didn't even know you had access to. It's like I am one person playing the violin in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Like third violin actually.

Right.

Joey: Orchestra nerd to get that reference.

Simone: I know. And I was always third violin 'cause I never practiced, so I can say that right. No one's asking you to carry the show, but you do have to show up for rehearsal.

Joey: Time out. Time out. I wanna say something right now 'cause I already feel resistance coming from our audience.

If you are listening to this and going, okay, well, Simone said I can play third violin, so you're automatically now negotiating to minimize what that looks like. I wanted to let you know and take it up with your ancestors. If you're listening to this podcast right now, it's for a reason. You probably need to be nudged to do something a whole lot more and a whole lot bigger.

'Cause yes, while it is interconnected, there has to be a radically larger number of architects and builders of this new world infrastructure in order for empire to truly be dismantled and replaced by healthier living systems. We are nowhere close enough yet to having the devoted minds and hands and willing servants of this.

So please do not count yourself out if you're listening to this right now —

Simone: — of being one of the drivers, of being the what do you call it, the first chair of the violin, like the chair, the soloist, the —

Joey: The principal. The principal.

Simone: The principal, right? It's principal. Principal violin. Because if you think about how many like tech bros are out there who are trying to become millionaires and how many millionaires running businesses that have nothing to do with serving humanity are trying to become billionaires, right? How many people are doing crypto trying to become — trying to generate these large windfalls? So as many of those people there are, that's how many of us there need to be.

Joey: And if you are someone who's like, okay, I'm just gonna master generating money. I'm not gonna necessarily like build the systems for where it goes, but I'm gonna generate the money and then hand it over to those who are already doing the work on the ground. Do that. If you are someone who's like, my skills are shaping the culture, right? You do that. We are asking you to do the deep, nuanced work of learning what your ancestral role is, what your revolutionary role is, because that is the job that is necessary for collective liberation. Like we need you and we are saying to you, whatever you're doing now is a fraction of what you're meant to be doing and what you're capable of doing, and what your ancestors have provided for you to do.

Simone: I just wanna plant these questions in everybody's heads, right? Like, everybody, listen, listen to me. If you could somehow steward the flow of let's say, $10 million to start, 'cause I mean, that's a giant number for most of us, but it's also kind of a small number in the grand scheme of things if you actually think about the scale of real economies, right? Mm-hmm. So let's say $10 million, if you could be a steward of $10 million, even like over the course of your lifetime, mm-hmm. How many families in your community could you employ at thriving wages? What buildings or lots would you be able to buy and turn into community spaces?

What land could you buy back for your people or for someone else's people? Right. I get so fired up when I think about contributing towards like buying land back from like the Dole Company in — yes — Hawaii. I'm like, ah, let's get that money. I mean —

Joey: That's literally Joey's vision, part of Joey's agenda.

Simone: What movements could operate without constantly having to fundraise? How many interest-free loans could you make to people in your community? How many mutual aid funds could you seed? How many elders would you be able to retire? What projects could you fund that banks would never fund? Because it doesn't make sense to capitalism.

Joey: How many people can you bury with dignity?

Simone: Ah, yeah. And like buy —

Joey: — back land so that people can be buried on ancestral homelands without extortion. Oh my god. And I'm thinking of a personal — I've loaned how many thousands of dollars to friends so that they can bury, they can get their loved one's bodies out of the hospital so they could take it and bury it.

Like that's the level of dehumanizing systems we are up against right now.

Simone: Those are the numbers that I'm asking you to think in, and I promise you, I promise you, if something about this is stirring something in you, I promise you it's because you were meant to be one of the ones to do this work.

Joey: You're marked out.

Simone: You're marked out. If you're like, oh my God, no way. Not me, uh, but there's a stirring inside you. The reason you're listening to this podcast at this time is because you are the ones, your ancestors have marked you for this. It is not your job to find out exactly how. It's not your job to know the exact blueprint or the exact timeline. It is not your job to now suddenly have 10 different areas of skill sets that you didn't already have. It's your job to be exactly who you are, but just think at the scale of liberation.

'Cause that's actually where you belong. That's where your skills belong, where your imagination belongs. And actually that's where your people belong. The communities that you want to attract and serve and steward, that is the scale where they belong.

Joey: If you're hearing this and you're getting stirred up right now, but that colonized part of your mind is starting to try to put it into a form of logic, like a business plan, an elevator pitch, and you're starting to notice that tension within, I want to encourage you that this is the moment to take it up in prayer. Whatever version of prayer you belong to, whatever version of prayer where you can find your ancestors in, and anything that feels foggy or obscured to you — it's like Simone's saying it's not your job to see everything, but to be willing to have the next hand of guidance in you and on you for that. Just that next step.

Simone: Exactly. I actually feel like my ancestors very often only show me the very next step. And I'm always frustrated, like, I'm like, I wanna see the whole plan.

Tell me — gimme, tell me exactly what needs to happen. But I feel like they hold back intentionally because they don't want me to be distracted or overwhelmed. I feel like it's a way of them keeping me on track and allowing me to focus on one thing at a time.

Joey: I think it's also such loving wisdom coming from them to know what is our capacity and our maturity level to really grasp. There's a weight with seeing — the more you see the more responsibility you have and the more you see the further away from your peers you get who don't see, and I wanna acknowledge that. It can be a little lonely. And, but you know what, Simone, maybe this is a part of, for our story, like literally you and I have come together.

My awareness at the beginning of this was just that I had a deep longing and loneliness for a friend, and I prayed very specific prayers to my ancestors for a friend in Asia because I'd lost so many friends since my move sometimes just because of the time zone itself, like when I'm waking up and starting work, they're going to bed. And after months and years of not being able to really communicate, I looked around and I'd lost so many friends and I really prayed for a friend in Asia and my ancestors sent me Simone, and she was an answer to that prayer. But also, as we've seen in hundreds of different ways, answers to prayers that have to do with our bigger vision and this bigger ancestral assignment that each of us have been walking with and that our ancestors have been preparing us for, for pretty much our whole life. Right? So this is another reminder to not minimize the desires that are on your heart and not to shoo them away just 'cause you don't see how it fits in. So much of this work asks you to unlearn the constructs that you have been brought up in by formal colonizing systems and to be willing to kind of just sit at the feet of your living elders and your ancestors and just receive things as they come with humility and with devotion. And we're just here kind of sharing our stories as maybe evidence that you'll be okay if you start walking this path.

You'll be more than okay.

Simone: In my experience, the more we pray, the more we ask, the more our ancestors give.

Not always right away and not always in the way that you think, but they get really excited when we start asking after having ignored them for a long time.

Ooh, like, oh my gosh, she's finally asking. That idiot! Took her so long. You know, I'm gonna —

Joey: It's like asking a mama who loves to cook and feed babies for another plate of food. Like —

Simone: What? I'm like that. Yeah. Yes. Totally like that. And you have to be open to all the ways that the answers arrive.

And by the way, if you're like, okay, sounds great. How do I actually do this? Before I forget, this is where I have to tell you about the free course that Joey and I created that takes you through a lot of this work, very methodically. It's called Building Post-Capitalist Wealth. The link is gonna be in the show notes, so please download that for free if you're a person of the global majority.

The other thing that I wanted to make sure to say is that I think of a lot of the work that I start to not be completed in my lifetime. Yes, some things will be completed in my lifetime, but many things I will leave in a much more advanced shape for my descendants to carry on.

Yes. And I don't mean my blood descendants, I only have one son, but those who come after me, and we have to start thinking in these multi-generational terms because that is — yes — how all of our ancestors, once again, if you go back up enough generations thought they had a — is that just an Asian thing?

I don't think it is because I know that Asians are particular, Chinese are partic — when I say Chinese, I always count myself among because I'm like, but the greater Chinese-influenced regions of East Asia of which Korea is part. We particularly have a very long view of history, right? We think in multiple generations, hundreds of years.

Not next quarter, next fiscal year, even next 10 years. And it's very grounding for me as well as, you know, expanding to think that my job is to carry the torch and to pass it on to whoever's gonna go next. But the bigger that I dream, the more expansive the vision that I hold, the bigger capacity that I step into is going to exponentially change what's possible for the next generation.

And I know — I want you to know that for yourself.

Joey: Yes, and that's why you'll see some of these questions reflected in the workbooks that we've created in the free course Building Post-Capitalist Wealth, and in all of the curriculum that we're planning for you. This is why we always redirect you to having these conversations within your communities.

Simone referred to her one son from her bloodline, but also this idea of lineage from intellectual relationships, teaching relationships.

Simone: All my friends' kids are my kids too, you know?

Joey: Exactly. Right. And which is the constant paradigm.

Simone: They're gonna be neighbors to my kid when he's grown and I'm dead and they're gonna, you know, have kids with my kid. Yeah. And you know, like we're all bound together.

Joey: Exactly. Which is why, like, you know, when I talk about having a farm or building a school, I talk about it with my 5-year-old and 8-year-old kids. When I talk about creating this learning platform, this right learning platform that centers people of the global majority, I talk about it with my former students and the people that I'm training now to work with me alongside me or I'm building this business with, because they will be the ones that are carrying it on and braiding their visions into it. Right? We are — this is, we are not on solo ego trips here. We are just channels and vessels for our greatest gifts to serve that of the collective systems that we are already a part of and that, you know, those that we are still yet to be a part of.

So that's why the pedagogy that you will see in the work that we're giving you invites you into multi-layered conversations so you're always reminded you're not doing this work alone.

Simone: You don't have to carry everything on your own, but the more of your own capacity, the more of your own ancestrally implanted, appointed capacity that you step into, the more you expand things for everyone else in the network, right, across geography and across time. So we get to, of course, take this work way, way, way deeper and get more, way more personal and practical and more deeply spiritually powerful with it when you enroll in our eight-week course starting on December 9th, Ancestral Wealth. Applications for that are open right now.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. We invite you if this resonates to apply. Thanks so much again for this conversation, Joey, and thanks a lot. We'll talk to you next time.

Joey: See you next time.

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  Hey, thank you so much for listening. If what we share today resonated with you, I want to invite you to take our free course Building Post Capitalist Wealth.  It's designed specifically for people of the global majority. It's completely free, and it's also a beautiful introduction to the work that Joey and I will be doing together in our full eight week course, ancestral Wealth, starting in December. You'll find the link to the free course in the show notes, and I'll be back next week with more with Joey.  Until then, may you feel the love and protection of your ancestors.