What if the happiest humans who ever lived had no money, no government, and no ambition?
I know that sounds like a provocation. But stay with me, because over the last two weeks something has been quietly dismantling my understanding of progress — and I think it might dismantle yours too.
It didn’t come from a book. It didn’t come from a billionaire on a stage at Davos. It came from a group of people who have lived on this land for longer than any culture on Earth. People that most of the West has never heard of. And people who have heard of them have called them “primitive.”
They are the San people of Africa.
And what I learned from them might be the most important thing I write this year.
The thought experiment that changes everything
Before I get to San, I want you to try something. It’s a thought experiment, and it’s not a light one. It’s the kind of question that, if you sit with it long enough, starts to rewire how you think about civilization itself.
Here it is.
If you could go back in time and be born into any culture, in any era of human history — but you had to come back as a random person. Not the king. Not the nobleman. Not the person with the right gender or the right skin color. Just a random human being in that society. You could come back as a woman. As a slave. As a member of a persecuted minority. As anyone.
Which civilization gives you the best odds of actually being happy?
Think about it.
Ancient Greece during the age of Pericles? Maybe — if you came back as a wealthy male citizen. But there were tens of thousands of slaves who built the Parthenon, and women had no legal rights. Roll the dice wrong, and your golden age is somebody else’s nightmare.
America in the 1950s? Sure — if you happened to be white, male, and straight. Otherwise, you’re drinking from a separate fountain.
The advanced Muslim Abbasid Empire in 12th-century Spain? A genuine golden age of science, art, and tolerance. But still, constant wars and battles with Christian Spain.
I started asking this question to historians, to thinkers, even to multiple AI systems. And the answers were fascinating. Modern Scandinavia kept coming up. The Abbasid Caliphate. Periclean Athens. But then there was one unlikely candidate that surfaced again and again.
The San people. Anytime before the 21st century. In three different AI models (Claude, OpenAI, Kimi), the San Culture came in the Top Ten.
Of all the cultures that have ever existed on this planet — cultures that built pyramids and parliaments and empires — the one where you could come back as anyone and almost surely live a dignified, equal, and connected life… was a group of hunter-gatherers roaming the savannahs of southern Africa.
That stopped me cold.
Because here’s the fascinating thing. This culture is the longest unbroken culture we have, dating back tens of thousands of years. And mostly unchanged.
Writing this from Namibia & Botswana
I’m writing this from a hotel room in Botswana. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been traveling across Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe — watching wildlife that feels almost mythological, standing in landscapes that look untouched by time, and learning about a continent that many of us in the West have come to severely misunderstand. Or worse — to underestimate entirely.
Last week, I wrote to you about what female elephants taught me about leadership. About how the matriarch leads not through force but through memory. About how nature, across species, keeps arriving at the same answer: wisdom over dominance.
This week goes deeper.
This week gets uncomfortable.
Because the San don’t just challenge how we lead. They challenge how we live. They challenge what we call progress. And they hold up a mirror to the modern world that, honestly, I wasn’t prepared for.
The oldest culture you’ve never heard of
If you haven’t heard of the San, you might know the term “Bushmen.” That’s what the West has called them for centuries. But that word carries the stench of colonialism — it comes from the Dutch bossiesman, meaning “bandit” or “outlaw,” a name given to them by the very people trying to destroy them.
The San have their own identity. And it goes back further than almost anything.
We’re not talking about a few hundred years. We’re not even talking about a few thousand. Genetic evidence suggests the San lineage diverged from other modern humans somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. Their culture has been continuous for at least 20,000 years. Some scholars argue it’s the oldest living culture on Earth.
Let me put that in perspective. The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids about 4,500 years ago. Ancient Greece peaked around 2,500 years ago. The Roman Empire rose and fell. The Renaissance came and went. The industrial revolution, the digital revolution — all of it — and the San were already ancient when those civilizations were young.
We built progress. And lost happiness.
They never had what we call progress. And may never have lost what we’re desperately trying to find.
6,000-year-old maps of the mind
In Damaraland, Namibia, I stood in front of rock paintings left by San ancestors over 6,000 years ago.
I expected something crude. Stick figures. Basic hunt scenes.
That’s not what I found.
These were sophisticated. They depicted animals and watering holes, yes — but they also depicted something far more startling: altered states of consciousness. Shamans in trance. Humans transforming into animals. Maps of inner worlds that were as real to the San as the physical landscape around them.
See the Lion at the bottom with the extended tail. That’s not representing a physical lion. It represents the Shaman entering the consciousness of the Lion to gain insights on the world around him. This was breathwork and trance states 6,000 years ago.
The San didn’t just survive in the desert. They built a civilization of the mind. While we were still millennia away from writing our first philosophical texts, they were already exploring the architecture of consciousness — and painting what they found on rock walls.
The moment I didn’t expect
A few days later, I visited a small San school in Namibia. I sat down to greet the children, expecting maybe a few shy smiles. Some polite curiosity.
Instead, the children rushed toward me.
They surrounded me — laughing, reaching out, completely unafraid. And then they started touching my beard. Gently. Carefully. Almost reverently, like they were discovering a new texture that didn’t exist in their world.
Image shared with respect and permission from the Ombili Foundation that runs this school in Namibia
It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. About a dozen kids, all stroking my chin, giggling, fascinated. And in that moment, it clicked:
They had never seen a beard before.
What a beard might reveal about violence
Now here’s where things get genuinely fascinating.
There’s a hypothesis in evolutionary biology — still debated, but compelling — that beards may have evolved partly as protection. Studies have shown that facial hair can absorb and distribute the force of a blow to the jaw, reducing the chance of a fracture by as much as 30%. In environments where male-to-male violence was common, this would have been a significant survival advantage. Over thousands of generations, men in violent cultures would have been selected for thicker facial hair.
So think about what it means when an entire culture barely has beards.
The San are known to be one of the least violent societies in human history. No wars. No armies. No glorification of dominance. Anthropologists who have studied them describe them as “fiercely egalitarian” — not passively peaceful, but actively committed to preventing any individual from rising above the group.
And possibly — even at a biological level — they carry the evidence of tens of thousands of years without the kind of violence that shaped the rest of the human family.
Some evolutionary biologists suggest that their faces may be telling a story their culture has been living all along.
An operating system that actually works
If you’ve read my book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, you know I think about human behavior in terms of operating systems. Every civilization runs on one — a set of models of reality and systems for living that determine how people think, act, and organize themselves. I call the outdated, unquestioned rules in these systems Brules — bullsh*t rules. And most of the Brules we carry about what makes a “successful” society come from civilizations that lasted a few hundred years at best.
The San operating system has been running for tens of thousands of years. And it breaks almost every rule the modern world takes for granted.
No hierarchy. The San have no chiefs, no permanent leaders, no one who accumulates power over others. Leadership is fluid and contextual — whoever has the knowledge the moment requires takes the lead. A skilled hunter leads during the hunt. A healer leads during the ceremony. Then they step back into the group. No pedestals. No thrones. No corner offices.
Men and women are genuinely equal. Not in the performative way modern societies talk about equality — where we write policies and still pay women less. In the San world, men and women hold distinct roles that are equally vital and equally respected. The men hunt. But the women are the navigators. They know where the water sources are hidden beneath dry riverbeds. They track the movement of game across vast stretches of savannah. They know which plants heal, which nourish, which kill. When the tribe moves — and they move constantly, following the game — it’s the women’s knowledge that keeps everyone alive.
If you read last week’s newsletter on female elephants, you’ll recognize the pattern. In elephant herds, the matriarch leads because she remembers where the water is. Among the San, the women carry the same knowledge. Nature keeps arriving at the same answer, across species, across millennia: memory and wisdom over force and dominance.
Everything is shared. When a hunter makes a kill, the tribe moves its portable shelters to the site. They feast together. Then they move again. They’ve been doing this for 10,000 years. There is no accumulation. No identity tied to what you own. No hoarding. This isn’t poverty — it’s a design choice. The San solved an equation that modern economists are still struggling with: beyond a certain point, more stuff doesn’t make you happier. They figured this out before the wheel was invented.
Insulting the meat
Now here’s the part that really broke something in me.
The San have a practice that anthropologist Richard Lee documented called “insulting the meat.” It is, without exaggeration, one of the most brilliant social technologies I’ve ever encountered.
Here’s how it works. A hunter goes out. He tracks an animal — sometimes for days. He makes the kill. He comes back to camp. And instead of being celebrated, instead of anyone saying you’re incredible — everyone, including the hunter himself, downplays the kill.
“That? That skinny old thing? Barely worth eating.”
“Look at that pathetic animal. You call that a hunt?”
And the hunter joins in. He laughs about his mistakes. Jokes about how the giraffe nearly trampled him because he tripped over his own feet. He makes himself small — on purpose.
This isn’t cruelty. It’s not false modesty. It’s a social technology designed to prevent the most destructive force any community can face: unchecked ego.
An elder from the group explained it like this: “When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his inferiors. We can’t accept this. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way, we cool his heart and make him gentle.”
We cool his heart and make him gentle.
Forty thousand years of social cohesion. Built on a single insight: ego is the enemy of community.
Now hold that in your mind. And think about the kind of leaders we celebrate today.
The ego problem we refuse to see
We are living in an era that glorifies the opposite of everything the San built.
We amplify ego. We reward dominance. We build pedestals for individuals who speak about power as though volume equals vision. We have world leaders who threaten to wipe out entire civilizations and face no consequence.
In the San culture, this doesn’t stand. It can’t stand. Their entire social operating system is designed to prevent exactly this — the elevation of any single ego above the group.
Last week, I wrote about female elephants and how nature chose wisdom over dominance. This week, the San are showing me the same pattern, but in human terms: civilizations that glorify ego eventually collapse under the weight of it. Civilizations that regulate the ego endure.
So I keep coming back to the same uncomfortable question: What if we have this fundamentally wrong? What if the future of humanity isn’t in glorifying certain individuals, but in equality? What if the world needs less of the strongman archetype and more of the leadership model that nature — and the San — arrived at independently?
Less ego. More community. More women in positions of power. More leaders who foster connection rather than division.
The San figured this out before the Bronze Age. And we still haven’t caught up.
The fire, the dance, and the oldest technology of consciousness
One evening in Namibia, a San guide walked me through their shamanic healing rituals. And it felt like stepping into another dimension of human experience. I didn’t witness the healing, but my guide explained it to me via a mural on the wall of a San School in Namibia.
The San have healers — both men and women — who enter altered states of consciousness through what’s known as the trance dance. Women sit in a circle around a fire, clapping and singing medicine songs that they’ve known since childhood. The healers dance around the periphery, sometimes for hours, until a spiritual energy the San call n/om rises through their bodies. It starts in the belly, rises through the spine, and then the healer crosses over into what they describe as another reality.
My guide described a ritual where…as the “patient” goes into a trance, the healer heats a knife in the fire until it’s red hot. He then plunges the knife into the patient and pulls it out. When the knife is pulled out, there is no scar, there is no wounding. The patient also experiences no pain. The illness is then healed.
You will see this in the mural above. One shaman gently caresses the woman while the shaman behind her is about to plunge a knife into her.
In this state, healers touch the sick and draw illness from their bodies. They mend disputes. They restore the social fabric of the group. The San describe it as “arrows of sickness” being pulled from the community and flung into the darkness.
My guide explained to me that his grandfather, a San shaman, still performs this healing ritual today.
By the time San adults reach maturity, roughly half the men and a third of the women have become healers. This isn’t a priesthood reserved for the elite. It’s distributed. Communal. Available.
The rock paintings I saw — 6,000 years old — depicted exactly this. Shamans in trance. The boundary between human and animal is dissolving. Consciousness expanding beyond the body.
We in the West tend to dismiss this as superstition. But I’ve spent two decades studying consciousness, meditation, and human performance. I’ve built Mindvalley on the premise that transcendent practices — the Silva Method, meditation, altered states — are not fringe experiences but essential human technologies. And what the San developed isn’t primitive. It’s the original technology of consciousness. It’s been running, unbroken, for longer than any other system on Earth.
We think we invented mindfulness. The San have been practicing it for 20,000 years.
What I learned building Mindvalley
This brings me to something personal.
When The Code of the Extraordinary Mind hit number one globally in 2017, I had a choice. I could lean into being “the guru.” Build the personal brand. Become the center of the platform. Every incentive in the modern world pointed that direction — because our systems reward exactly that kind of ego amplification.
I chose to break the model.
Instead of positioning myself as the singular voice, I opened Mindvalley to hundreds of teachers. Different perspectives. Different modalities. Even ideas that conflict with my own. Because I believe that truth doesn’t belong to one person. It emerges from many.
Compare this to the guru model that dominates the personal development world — where a single personality becomes the brand, the doctrine, the untouchable center. Some of those gurus built grandiose names for themselves and then turned up in the Epstein files. That’s what happens when ego goes unchecked. The San would have seen it coming.
That decision to distribute authority rather than concentrate it changed everything — not just for the company, but for me. Because the moment you remove ego from the center of leadership, you create space for something the San have always known is more powerful: community.
I am because we are
There’s a word that echoes across southern Africa. In Botswana, they call it botho. In South Africa and much of the Bantu-speaking world, it’s ubuntu. The translation sounds simple, but it contains an entire philosophy of what it means to be human:
I am because we are.
Not “I think, therefore I am” — the Cartesian formula that built the entire Western model of selfhood on the isolated individual mind. But something fundamentally different: I exist because of my connection to you. My humanity is not mine alone. It is something we create together.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it like this: “Ubuntu is not ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather: ‘I am a human because I belong. I participate. I share.'”
The San embody this more deeply than perhaps any culture in history. When a healer enters trance to draw out sickness, they’re not treating an individual — they’re healing the community. When the tribe insults the meat, they’re not putting down the hunter — they’re protecting the collective from the cancer of ego. When men and women share leadership based on who holds the right knowledge for the moment, they’re not being “progressive.” They’re running an operating system that’s been tested and optimized across more generations than any civilization on Earth.
The future is moving toward them
Now layer something else onto all of this.
AI.
Over the next decade, we are heading toward a world where work becomes optional for many. Where universal basic income shifts from theory to inevitability. Where ownership starts to lose its meaning because access becomes abundant, and the cost of goods approaches zero. Where the game we’ve built our identities around — accumulation, status, dominance — begins to dissolve.
In other words, whether we realize it or not, the future is starting to look less like modern capitalism and more like a campfire in the Kalahari.
Shared resources. Fluid roles. Community over status. Identity rooted not in what you own, but in who you are to others.
We are drifting — some of us kicking and screaming — back toward something ancient.
And the most important thing I can tell you for the next ten years is this: be careful who you follow. Avoid egocentric leaders. Vote for people who foster community rather than division. The world doesn’t need more strongmen on pedestals. It needs more leaders who understand, at a bone-deep level, that their power belongs to the group.
The San knew this before they had a written language. We’re going to have to re-learn it with all of ours.
The question that won’t leave me
So I sit here in Botswana, about to fly home. And one question keeps looping through my mind, and I can’t make it stop.
What if the most advanced civilization in human history wasn’t the one that built the tallest buildings, the fastest computers, or the most destructive weapons?
What if it was the one that figured out how to keep every single member of the group — regardless of gender, regardless of role — fed, healthy, equal, and connected? For longer than any other culture on the planet?
What if we didn’t evolve forward, but sideways — gaining technology while losing something essential about how to be human together?
We optimized life. And forgot how to live.
But the blueprint for something better has been here all along. In a place where children have never seen a beard, because they’ve never needed protection from each other. Where a hunter comes home with a kill and the first thing his people do is laugh at him, because they know that the moment his ego grows, the community dies. Where healers dance themselves into another dimension to keep their people whole. Where the oldest woman in the group holds more authority than any king, because she remembers where the water is.
I am because we are.
Maybe it’s time we remembered that.
If this sparked anything in you, take a moment to leave a comment below—I read them all.
Vishen
PS: Everything I wrote about in this newsletter – community over ego, shared learning over guru worship, the idea that human beings thrive when they grow together rather than alone — that’s exactly what Mindvalley U was built to be.
Every year, we bring together people from over 100 countries to live, learn, and grow side by side for two full weeks. Not in a lecture hall. Not behind a screen. In person. Families, entrepreneurs, artists, seekers, all eating together, learning together, raising their kids together in a pop-up community that, honestly, feels closer to how humans were designed to live than anything the modern world typically offers.
There are no pedestals at Mindvalley U. No single guru on a stage telling you what to think. There are hundreds of teachers, dozens of perspectives, and a community that operates on the same principle I saw in the Kalahari: I am because we are.
This year, we’re in Tallinn, Estonia, from July 20 to August 2, 2026. If anything in this newsletter stirred something in you, this is where you come to live it.
Featured image shared with permission from the Ombili Foundation (instagram: @ombili_foundation_namibia) that helps preserve San Culture.
264 Responses
Reading this article from Botswana stirred something in me; a realisation of the magnitude what ‘botho’ embodies. The ubiquitous qualities of the principle of botho. And, as a motswana, that’s something I have taken for granted. Always. We have a saying in my country that, you are worthy as a person because of your community or other people. Anyone devoid of compassion, kindness, tolerance, empathy, respect, generosity, sympathy etc has no botho. Period. It’s these humane qualities that have earned us a peaceful and loving nation description. The healing dance ceremony, a 30 minute or more, non stop physically intense exercise leaving the dancers drenched in sweat are now very much part of official and wedding ceremonies in the country.
Great article, about something that everyone should think about. Sadly, most people are far, far away from the realization that “there’s a problem” in the way we live today. Hopefully you and MV will keep growing and sending the message around. It’s a long process, but we have to endure. It will probably take centuries….
Vishen,
Thank you for sharing this. For my entire adulthood, I have intentionally built my life around this way of being and living in relationship with the life we are, centering our shared wellbeing.
There are and have been many people and communities who chose to live and offer/model/teach this way of living, despite dominant culture norms and the systemic structures built to uphold them. You offer many such teachers through the Mindvalley platform, and there are so so many more: dr john powell (Targeted Universalism, Belonging without Othering), Dr Leticia Nieto (Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment, a Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone), Beena Sharma (Vertical Development Academy), just to name a few I have worked with.
I founded, raised children, and live in an intentional cooperative-living community, just one of many around the world.
I intentionally access and engage with alternate states of consciousness in community through traditional indigenous ceremonies and deep meditation practices.
I work in the field of human systems development, social and organizational psychology, for liberatory leadership on the edge:
• between reactivity and relational courage.
• between cultures that fracture under pressure and cultures that grow stronger through honest engagement.
• between the leadership models we inherited and the ones this moment now requires.
Our work lives in this threshold: if we want healthier organizations and a more connected society, we must build the human capacity to stay engaged, accountable, and collaborative in the middle of tension.
Given ever present collaborative communities such as these throughout history, alive and well around the world today, I want to engage in conversation and efforts with you and others as to what it will take for these “alternative”, collaborative cultures to shift from being the alternative/exception to being the norm.
Vishen,
I really enjoyed this article! It is so true that we have become so disconnected from each other and forgotten that we’re all in this together. It is all about “I and me” instead of “us and we”. We need each other and nature. What we put importance on these days has gone out of control. We’ve set unrealistic standards and live in a state of fear that we could lose what we have or in despair that we don’t have enough. We have forgotten our own humanity in our quest for money and power. We destroy the very things that give us life. Thank you for being a voice for us like minded individuals. We can work together to be the change that the world needs!
Thank you for sharing this! It is moving and comforting to know that other humans also see and feel this unease with our society as it currently operates. I think it’s not IF we have this fundamentally wrong, it’s that we DO have it wrong, and for centuries. Since childhood, I’ve felt “off”, not just like I don’t fit in, but that I don’t WANT to fit in. And with time, I’ve slowly been able to put into words why. The system is broken and sick. We prioritize the wrong things and, in doing so, hurt ourselves without realizing it. So, why would I want to fit into that?
I think technology can be a wonderful thing when used for the right reasons and too many humans use it to control and hurt. Technology evolves way faster than we mature (intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually), so it’s hard to say whether it’s helped us more than harmed us. I want to believe the idea that the rise of AI will help us reconnect with our nature and find a better, healthier way to exist and operate, and not the other way around.
It is amazing what these tribes have achieved. Knowing that communities like the Sans tribes exist gives me hope. I hope we continue to wake up, feel, heal, care, and act to change for the better.
P.S. I have to research more, but I read that they don’t like being called “Sans” and prefer that their tribe names are used instead.
Hola Vishen y comunidad de Mindvalley.. leerte en cada texto resuena profundamente y este artículo sobre el pueblo San propone una reflexión sobre las nociones predominantes de desarrollo y progreso en la modernidad. Como narras la descripción de sus prácticas culturales, se visibiliza una forma de organización social basada en la interdependencia, el equilibrio ecológico y la suficiencia, en contraste con los modelos extractivistas y acumulativos dominantes. Definitivamente este abordaje permite problematizar la idea de ‘atraso’ atribuida a comunidades ancestrales, sugiriendo que, más que vestigios del pasado, constituyen referentes relevantes para repensar la sostenibilidad, el bienestar y las relaciones humanas en el contexto contemporáneo. Me encanto y entre todo conservo: “Recursos compartidos. Roles fluidos. Comunidad por encima del estatus. La identidad no está arraigada en lo que posees, sino en quién eres para los demás” Vishen – Cultura San.
Beautiful and relevant story. One of my favorites on the blog, so far.
We need more of this and less of the other stuff! <3
Interesting and ideologically I agree. However it’s the transition that is frightening, who blows up whom during an attempted transition to this state of being. The mere transition at the next election is concerning alone. Overly simplistic view of mine, probably.
For years, I’ve watched “third world” countries desperately trying to catch up with the western world. I want to say to them “Can’t you see that our systems are screwed?” and encourage them to find a different, better model. Maybe this is it!
What wisdom the San people have. Our prospects of peace, happiness, planetary sustainability and genuine holistic wellbeing depend on us all working together, without the influences of inflated egos!
Hi Vishan,
Really interesting post and something that definitely deserves further analysis. I was wondering if we as a species both lose and gain something every leap forward we take and should always be look back from where we came from. Funnily enough at the same time this blog post came through on my emails I also got one on “Neanderthal Maxxing” about how we should be copying those habits of connecting with nature, sustainable fashion and tight-knit clan life from our ancestors. It’s a bit tongue in cheek but this has to be more than coincidence, right? Here’s the post if you want to check it out: https://www.milbel.com/p/you-need-to-be-neanderthal-maxxing?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=1qimm2&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Anyway, keep out the great work and the great thinking! Love reading these 🙂
Thanks so much.
What a beautiful piece of writing, thank you. In the West we have moved so far away from what is possible. How can anyone be content with their lives, when so many suffer?
Thank you Vishen for this beautiful article. I often feel like I would have liked to have born in a hunter-gatherers community. The modern society that human has created is so crazy. It lies so far away from our natural way of living.
I am happy you’re sharing this and I really hope you’re right and that future will look more like a campfire in the Kalahari.
Let’s hope that one day beards will have completely disappeared, because no man needs it anymore for protection.
This was really a lovely post Vishen and certainly got me thinking. Over the last few years I have been leaning more into community. I’m really at the very baby stages of engagement and involvement. Yet it so rings true. It’s fabulous, there is an example of a civilisation or a culture so many thousands and thousands of years old where this has been working to the benefit of everyone. Thank you. What a lovely and amazing trip you have had.
We are waking up one ‘aha’ at a time. I am so excited to see that Ancient African ceremonial frameworks can ignite new thresholds and gently open new doorways to us reclaiming what was never touched by colonialism or survival of the ‘most civilized’ mentality – our innocence, holiness and sovereignty. Thanks, Vishen for another great article. It’s time for Africa!!
Dear Vishen, I love the way you reflect on what you experienced and discovered in Namibia and Botswana. Your words truly resonate with me.
I used to work as a full-time safari guide in Botswana. Now and again I would fly with my guests to the Tsodilo Hills in the far north to see the ancient rock paintings and meet members of the San community.
Sadly, we would usually only encounter women and children. The community had been forced to move away from the cool, shaded rock outcrops, where water and trees offered life – into a barren, desert-like area, all in the crazy name of protecting the paintings!
I always found this deeply troubling. In the process, the community lost not only their home, but also their connection to the land – their knowledge, their way of life. Young men were forced to find work far from home, breaking the family bond. For the San, who traditionally live, move, and exist together, this separation was like losing a limb. It was heartbreaking to witness.
The women and little children would walk for 30 minutes through scorching heat and deep hot sand to reach our small aircraft. There, they would try to sell a few handmade items – small leather pouches crafted without industrial thread, scissors, needles, or glue, or perhaps an old tortoise shell used for carrying small belongings. Objects my guests often had no real use for back home.
The evening before these visits, I would always prepare my guests carefully. I tried to give them context – to help them understand the harmony this community once lived in, their deep knowledge of survival in such a harsh environment, and the immense challenges they faced after displacement. Naturally, I hoped they would support the community by purchasing a few items.
Yet at times, I felt disheartened by the lack of understanding among some of my safari guests. It was not easy for them to place themselves in the San’s reality. Some would even complain about the “quality” or practicality of the items, questioning what they could possibly do with them.
I often found myself torn. On one hand, I wanted to help convey the depth of this community’s struggle; on the other, I sometimes felt that these carefully made artifacts should remain with their makers, where they held true meaning and value. Simply handing over a few dollars felt like an unsatisfying alternative.
I believe there is still unresolved tension today: protecting heritage vs. living heritage, and conservation vs. cultural continuity. We all need to understand that we are constantly evolving and moving forward. Let’s carry the valuable lessons with us – without destroying the very cultures and connections they come from.
Today, I run a small travel agency, and I am in the process of launching a project that feels very close to my heart. We plan to bring Europeans and local communities together – to experience the wilderness, wildlife, and cultural heritage side by side. The goal is a deeper understanding: for both sides to see, feel, experience and appreciate the beauty of our planet.
Part of the proceeds will support trusts and programs for young people in Africa – offering hope, vision, and a renewed sense of direction. It is about opening pathways to new opportunities, restoring recognition of their role as custodians of the land, and inspiring them to build a future rooted in their own rich and valued heritage.
And for the travellers, I hope they return home with a new perspective – optimism and an understanding that joy can come from shared moments, from human connection, meeting others at eye level, and from the quiet beauty of untouched nature – with all it’s amazing inhabitants!
It’s is a big project for me, and one I deeply believe in. I hope it grows into something far greater than I can currently imagine, with a truly positive and lasting impact.
Please wish us well xx
Thank you for you additional, very precious insights. Rita Margareta!
It is sad to see that while we could learn so much from this ancient culture, the seems to be already a for ce to destroy them. I hope they will adapt in a way that “keeps their souls alive”!
And I hope your business will thrive; you seem to be involved with your heart and to practice what Vishen is writing about: community – I am because we are – across the cultures.
How wonderful to hear of people living this way. We try, in our small communities, and yearn for a world that works this way.
Although it’sa long road, let’s not talk of leaders and women in power. That just sets up repetition of the old model, until women can lead without being like men, competing in a man’s world. Let’s talk of finding the leader inside ourselves, who can step up when needed and step back when another’s expertise is more relevant.
I may be naive, but I think changes like this begin on the ground.
So lucky the San have not disappeared.
Wonderful hope for humanity.
Thank you for the great read Vishen.
Vishen, thank you for your reflection. It was honestly a balm a needed over the overwhelm that washes over me from time to time right now with some of the chaos caused by ego-led leaders. It helped me formulate in my mind the heartbeat of some ideas I am working on right now.
I am because we are. So powerful.
Vishen, A beautiful and thought provoking piece that I am reading whilst on holiday in Egypt, where as you say civilised, sophisticated, and intelligent societies thrived 4500 years ago. The temples here covered with extraordinary images of daily life filled with knowledge, wealth, but also scenes of epic battles and slavery.
Whilst the ethos of the San people is one that we can, and should learn from, I wonder if this is at all possible when humans live in larger communities.
It is in our nature to compete and it seems inevitable that someone will always want ‘that little bit more’.
The consequences of unchecked ego are being played out on a global scale as never seen before, with tragic and horrific outcomes, that we are at risk of becoming sanitised to, as they are happening ‘somewhere else’.
Mind Valley provides hope that like-minded humans can brace these challenges and build a future based on love, acceptance and community.