A year on, LUTTAI founder gives a 2nd interview to Thoughtfox; discusses future plans
Mr. Thomas Schwendener—the Swiss trade school employee who pledged a personal entrepreneurial donation of USD 21, 000 last year and also discussed it on this website in an interview—sits down for a 2nd interview with Dr. Piyush Mathur. This interview was conducted for Thoughtfox via Gmail messenger, and is being published here after very minor editing for clarity.
Mathur: It was just a little over a year ago—on March 28, 2021, to be precise—that I interviewed you for Thoughtfox regarding your public declaration of your desire to donate USD 21, 000 to a worthwhile entrepreneurial proposal from anywhere in the world. Details of your pledge—and how to apply for your grant—were included in the interview; those details were also presented separately in a report on this website. While links to these two items were widely circulated on social media platforms, you had also personally circulated the URL to your own website showing the same details as well as your video appeals about them. Despite these efforts, you did not in fact receive any proposal meeting your requirements by the end of 2021, which was your deadline. Did you then donate that amount to GiveDirectly.org, as you had also pledged?
Schwendener: Yes.
Mathur: Do you have any speculation regarding why you failed to receive a viable proposal?
Schwendener: Not really. Maybe I didn't seem trustworthy enough. Or maybe too few people saw the videos. But there could also be other reasons. I don't know.
Mathur: Well, I might venture to speculate about the reasons further down this interview; but let me first ask you this: Your open offer of USD 21,000 was only one step within an overall philosophy of entrepreneurial philanthropy and general coexistence of living beings that you wish to promote (You have called it LUTTAI.) Where are you at now in this philosophical endeavour of yours?
Schwendener: Correct. I am at the very beginning of my endeavour. For the humanity's sake, I hope to achieve some of my goals. But for myself, the path is already fulfilling. I have reduced my current job load from 100% to 50% starting from February 2023; I would then have more time to work on LUTTAI.
Mathur: So, do you yet have any specific shape for your endeavour? I mean, do you hope to create a non-government organization focusing on pushing your philosophy and associated entrepreneurial philanthropy? Or, would it basically be an ongoing advertising of your philosophy—with some virtual and real-life engagements with those who seek to support it through actual action? Or would it be something else that we can't yet put a finger on?
Schwendener: I have several goals. I would like to build a profitable company that operates according to the LUTTAI economic model. If I succeed, then I can support business ideas that want to operate according to the same model. These would then spread the model further if they were also financially successful. So the question for me is, how can I make money with LUTTAI?
Mathur: Well, there are a few red flags in the path that you seem to have in your mind for yourself—in regard to this philosophy. For one, you have already donated USD 21 k, when we know that you are not exactly rich (only sufficiently financially stable)—and ahead of making LUTTAI itself profitable. Then, you have arranged to reduce your current duties at the school by 50%, as you just mentioned; this would also result in a pay cut, as you were mentioning before we started this interview. Third, we don't know what specific product or service you have in mind that you might sell under the banner of LUTTAI, which might then make it profitable. If what I have written above has any validity, then where does that leave your vision for LUTTAI as a profitable business-cum-inspiring, actionable philosophy of philanthropy?
Schwendener: It is true that I gave away the USD 21,000. That can simply be seen as a donation—and I am glad that the LUTTAI experiment made me make it. The reduction of my job allows me to spend more time on LUTTAI—my heart's project. Whether I would ever be financially successful with it, I don't know of course. But I can explain to you how I imagine earning money through it—and I am in the fortunate position to be able to make ends meet with the salary from my 50% job (and I do not have to touch my savings).
/Amazon-India Clearance Store/
〰️
/Amazon-India Clearance Store/ 〰️
Mathur: Well, would you mind explaining to me how you might make LUTTAI a profitable occupation for yourself—and thus a successful philanthropic organisation, in turn, further down the line?
Schwendener: Gladly. I currently have three areas in mind. One, I might explore, in the form of a video blog or podcast, the question of what it might mean to act well toward oneself, one's fellow human beings, and all other sentient beings. For this purpose, I would interact with people who take an interest in what I might have to say: I would also promote their projects, make them better known. I may be able to profit from advertising revenue.
Two, I might give lectures that question the common definition of intelligence or stupidity—and present my definition as an alternative. In my opinion, the common definition does not make sense; and, so, I have developed a definition that seems more sensible to me. In my view, we should not use the word ‘intelligence’ or ‘stupidity’ to refer to cognitive-performance characteristics of individual people; rather, we should ask ourselves what a truly intelligent world would look like.
My definition of intelligence is as follows: No human being is stupid, only actions can be stupid. Every human being can act intelligently or stupidly. The goal of true intelligence is the maximum well-being of all sentient beings. We therefore find true intelligence in actions that increase the well-being of sentient beings. True stupidity, on the other hand, is found in actions that diminish the welfare of sentient beings. Let us try to be intelligent: LUTTAI.
I hope to show people that none of us is stupid, even though many of us believe that lots of people are stupid.
My third idea to earn money looks like this: I would sell second-hand gifts that can be given away along with the message, ‘I am unique.’ I have already made a video for this. I hope that people would want to give a gift to a friend and, at the same time, give them the message that they have recognised them as unique.
Mathur: It is an exceedingly tall order, I have to say—and little of it makes true business sense at this point in time. Nevertheless, let me turn to a specific component of the material that you currently have in the form of your video uploads conveying your philosophy.
Why did you necessarily focus on 'intelligence', per se, rather than on compassion, empathy, sympathy, and/or emotional bonding directly?
Schwendener: Because I believe that the prevailing definition of intelligence and stupidity is not meaningful and causes great harm in our society. And I would like to change or improve upon that.
Mathur: But does this focus on intelligence—its redefining, etc.—actually has the potential to give impetus to your profitable entrepreneurship-cum-philanthropic agenda?
Schwendener: I think so, yes. I consider the LUTTAI definition of intelligence to be the heart of LUTTAI.
Mathur: Alright, so let us play a little with all these relatively newer details you have provided. The way I see it, you wish to promote and sell a philosophy via virtual products; you also wish to promote and advertise those who would have adopted your philosophy (and presumably done so profitably); and you also wish to sell a series of tangible products—say, second-hand gifts that would display or retain your message. Is that roughly all at this point in time?
Schwendener: I think you have understood me only partially correctly.
Mathur: Please correct me.
Schwendener: What do you mean by ‘virtual products’?
Mathur: By ‘virtual products’ I mean digital videos, lectures, etc. (that you seek to monetize via advertising revenue).
Schwendener: That’s correct. However, I do not want to advertise for those who have adopted my philosophy—but for those who act in the spirit of my philosophy: i.e., those who seek to promote the welfare of sentient beings on our earth.
Mathur: Fair enough. So, you hope to be a digital entrepreneur, a public philosopher, and a promoter (for other, like-minded entrepreneurs), who also sells second-hand gifts carrying the LUTTAI message?
Schwendener: Something like that, correct.
Mathur: And you would presumably do the above while working as a school teacher, just the same, in Switzerland?
Schwendener: Correct.
Mathur: Alright. So, if somebody had come up with a plan remotely similar to yours, would you have gifted that person your USD 21000?
Schwendener: Thankfully, my plan costs me practically nothing. So, a person who would have put forward this idea would not have really needed money. But if they did, I admit that I probably wouldn't have given the money, because the risk is very high that the business would never be profitable.
Mathur: Thanks for being candid. Please notice that a prior requirement of funding is not the yardstick by which to judge LUTTAI as a potentially profitable venture; the yardstick that you have yourself set for it, as of now, is that it be profitable as an entrepreneurial venture. By your own admission, it is highly doubtful that it would be. Another way to say it is that LUTTAI has a far greater chance of remaining an unprofitable personal endeavour at promoting a philosophy of existence that has a mandate for both profitability and philanthropy. With that in mind, may I suggest that what you are trying to set up is a mass communication social enterprise with a subjective philosophical goal—whose potential for profitability is minimal. And if that is the case, then should you not focus, first and foremost, on how to turn yourself into a captivating communicator?
Schwendener: I never claimed to be a good entrepreneur; but I showed in the video of the LUTTAI experiment that I admire entrepreneurs, and I hope that one day I would be one myself. For me, this is a goal worth striving for. I would at least like to have tried. And of course, I have to keep improving in every respect—also in the direction of a good communicator—but only if my message with LUTTAI also makes sense for other people (and that's what I'm trying to find out). So far I have received very little feedback.
Mathur: Right—and maybe my line of inquiry, which has been far from sympathetic, is part of the feedback that you appear to need. In which regard, allow me to suggest that, depending on how serious you are about LUTTAI—as a wannabe entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and as a mass communicator—you might want to seek guidance from a media management professional as well as from a business planner. Doing so might require you to make some upfront investment—but it would be worth it, and it might also reveal some key reasons why your first campaign, at offering free money to somebody else's viable business project, failed.
Schwendener: Thank you for your note. Right now I want to try it alone. I don't want to take any big financial risks, either. I'll try to reach out to people with great ideas and give them a platform starting next February.
Mathur: Well, I can see the value in your choice of the immediate path ahead—and would certainly like to remain in touch with you about your new platform. I would also like to thank you for your generous donation of USD 200 to Thoughtfox last year. And I can't help but end our conversation by reproducing your words from your January 24, 2021 video on YouTube: "No human is intelligent or stupid—but every human can act intelligently or stupidly."
I believe we could also benefit from those words, especially if we see in it a warning!
Schwendener: Thanks for your time. I will be glad to stay in contact. And I wish you all the best, too
Mathur: Thank you!
Dr. Piyush Mathur is a Research Scholar at Ronin Institute—and the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). If you wish to get in touch with him or with Mr. Thomas Schwendener let us know here.