Redefining Wealth with Seth Tabatznik, by Anjou Dargar
- mia8893
- 12 minutes ago
- 10 min read
“When you take something from the Earth, remember to give something back.” - Anishinaabe teaching
Growth Beyond Measure
Most of us move through our days without pausing to wonder where everything around us comes from.
Whether it’s the minerals that power our phones, the stone that builds our homes or the coral reefs and ancient forests that give rise to life-saving medicines, every form of material wealth finds its origins in the Earth’s ecosystems. Even something as wildly unnatural as a Lego brick can be traced back to primordial plankton. We’ve become so good at reshaping the planet’s resources that most of us have lost sight of what everything we make is made of.
And from an early age, we’re conditioned to equate wealth with accumulation and consumption. The culture of more has gone global, where possessions are frequently tied to status, recognition and belonging.
But as the world strains under systems that reward extraction over renewal, perhaps it’s time to ask: what if wealth weren’t about what we own, but what we help grow? What if those we call rich were the ones who help life flourish?
What if success lay in what we nurture, heal, restore and let flow?
Seth Tabatzik is uniquely positioned to help us explore these questions. Born into a great pharmaceutical fortune, Seth experienced both the privileges and paradoxes of immense wealth.
What sets his story apart isn’t the scale of his resources, but how he has navigated the responsibilities, contradictions and opportunities they carry. Money alone, when divorced from a deeper understanding of the whole, can be a destructive force but Seth has learned to wield it wisely. His curiosity, humility, intuition and ability to connect seemingly disparate dots have led him to rethink the merits of the system he was born into.
Flowing into Alignment
Musician, father, investor, philanthropist and systems thinker, Seth has worn many hats, all rooted in a deep desire to nurture life, community and connection.
During our conversation, he spoke with an ease reflecting a strong inner alignment, the kind that comes from living in tune with one’s values. His philosophy of flow clearly shapes his stewardship towards ecological, social and cultural regeneration. And yet, he grew up in a world that celebrated accumulation, where value was measured in assets, investments and financial growth.
For years, he believed monetary wealth was the ultimate gauge of success. That began to shift about 15 years ago when Seth was invited to a family board meeting.
At the time, he was largely uninvolved in the family finances. But as he reviewed the papers presented, he spotted a glaring contradiction. His family’s philanthropic arm, Bertha Foundation, had just funded a film exposing an oil company for its destructive actions in the Amazon. Ironically, the family office was invested in that very same company, an incongruity Seth termed financial schizophrenia.
“It didn’t make sense,” he recalls. “We’re funding against this company on one hand and on the other, we’re invested in it.”
Seth’s warm and creative nature belies a sharp business mind. He recounts how he took an active role in the family office, learned the ropes of finance and set up an investment company.
“Over about 10 years, we moved the majority of our family capital into more environmental or human centric investments. It’s still work in progress, but most is now invested beyond ESG, into intentional businesses.”
This kind of misalignment isn’t unique to Seth’s family office. Most foundations and companies generate revenue in ways that undermine the impact they aim to achieve philanthropically. “You’re trying to have an environmental impact,” he said, “but then you’re developing properties or holding bonds that have a huge ecological footprint.”
The Enough Principle
Aligning investments with values is a daring balancing act. The systems society operates in aren’t designed to support renewal, and even with the best intentions and ample resources, creating harmony between money and meaning requires unlearning deeply ingrained habits.
For Seth, it meant shifting from a mindset of ownership to one of stewardship.
This evolution also brought a question to the fore: how much is enough?
“Enough is measured by how much I need to live my life,” he explained. “To have everything I want and need within reason - or even without reason. Then, what do I want to leave my kids. Once you know that, anything above it is excess, something to manage, a burden, or for some people, a source of ego or power. But it’s still a burden, because on some level, you start to use your bank account to prove you are valuable.”
There’s no posturing with Seth. Free from those pressures, he radiates a grounded ease that’s wonderfully refreshing. He summed it up simply, “The real question becomes: how can I give the rest back to society, back to nature, where everything ultimately comes from.”
Be The Earth, the foundation he co-founded with his wife, Renata, sprang from that vision and from a desire to confront the discord so common in philanthropy and business.
Seth had already spent years steering family capital toward impact, but Be The Earth is about bringing every resource under one umbrella, aligning investments, philanthropy and intention.
“Instead of making profit and then giving it away,” he explained, “we asked how we could put all of our resources under the enough concept and one shared goal of being in service to life... Projects can still generate returns,” he added, “but those returns need to serve life itself.”
When Inner Wealth Blooms
But what does it really mean to serve life? In the day-to-day, it might be as simple as asking: does this choice feed connection or separation?
We’re so conditioned to optimise for convenience and speed that the question itself can feel almost fanciful. Yet, this is precisely where service to life begins: by recognising that nothing thrives in isolation. Manufactured siloes can run smoothly in the short-term but they often mask deeper imbalances that manifest over time.
When we treat a living system by their distinct parts rather than as an interconnected whole, we often end up solving one problem only to create ten more.
And that’s why Seth’s holistic approach is so powerful. He’s brought systems theory into practice at 42 Acres, his regenerative estate in Somerset, England, which spans 173 acres of ancient woods, farmland, rewilded meadows and a lake.
“The land volunteered itself for a shift in human consciousness,” Seth says calling the site “a lighthouse and a kind of laboratory of what our regenerative future could look like.”
What began as a serendipitous intention has transformed into a sanctuary where food, land, community and wellbeing all connect.
The majority of food at the estate is sourced within a 42-mile radius. It’s all organic with British-grown pulses alongside fermented and foraged foods. While they occasionally bring in dry goods from outside, Seth is committed to minimising environmental impact.
“We very rarely import anything that’s wet because we don’t want to be shipping water around the world.” He also believes that food should be a connector. “We don’t grow everything ourselves because we want to know the farms nearby, what they’re growing and what they specialise in.”
Seth’s relational approach may seem intuitive to some, but it runs counter to how we’ve been conditioned to live, where the structures of the contemporary world almost encourage disconnection.
Modern culture often distances us from nature, from community and even from our own bodies and minds. For those with ample resources, nearly every aspect of life can be outsourced.
But separation from the sources of our wellbeing can slowly deplete us emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. It’s a realisation that led Seth to the land that would become 42 Acres, which also serves as a sanctuary for inner work. He views reconnecting with the self as foundational to everything else.
“It takes a lot to work on ourselves. And that’s the most important thing we can possibly do. When you work on the inside, everything shifts.”
Seth sees the world as a mirror of our inner lives, for better or for worse. If neglected, it can spiral into depletion and disconnection. If nurtured, beauty blooms, circulating outward in ways that nourish land, community and spirit. His work at 42 Acres is a living example of inner wealth in action, where what grows within sparks growth all around.
Can Music Heal the World?
Returns on inner wealth present in countless forms: gardens, stories, paintings, food cooked with love, or simply attention, care and presence.
Some show it through leadership and the dedication they bring to their work. For Seth, that expression presently flows through his music, which feels like a natural extension of who he is. His songs carry a gentle, luminous energy infused with a reverence for nature that echoes the tradition of 1960s folk while remaining distinctly his own.
Stories fade from memory, but songs tend to remain with us for the duration of our lives, touching us in ways that can be deeply transformative.
Where political and social divides pull us apart, music is one of the few forces that unite people across time, culture and circumstance.
Seth channels this power to craft songs that invite presence, reflection and reconnection, seeing his creative gifts as another form of stewardship. “All music has the potential to shift our energy,” he says. “My music is intentional; it’s an invitation to come back into ourselves and reconnect with nature and with others.”
Building on that intention, Seth gives himself space and stillness for inspiration to arrive. With teams keeping his financial and natural capital in flow, he’s now focused on what he calls his creative, spiritual and intellectual capital.
“Music is just another form of how I use different forms of capital to be in service to life.” It’s a practice that allows him to both give and receive, to share messages through song, and in his words “get good energy into the world.”
This focus on presence and connection aligns naturally with Seth’s belief in music as a form of healing.
While we’ve all felt the power of a song to soothe, uplift or energise us, research increasingly shows its therapeutic effects. Music can stimulate neural repair,[1] synchronise heart rhythms, release natural opioids, boost the immune system and sharpen memory.[2] And listening to or playing it is apparently one of the most effective ways to keep our brains young.[3] Seth’s regenerative ethos translates this science into practice, allowing sound to become a form of inner restoration that mirrors the way he uses all of his forms of capital.
Music, in many ways, is a metaphor for how Seth sees wealth. Both are rooted in a wider ecosystem where connection, community and flow sustain wellness and nurture life.
“Wealth is health and health is wealth,” he tells me after reflecting on a period of illness. “When you’re unwell, you don’t have many problems. You have one problem and it’s front and centre.”
From his home in South Africa’s Western Cape, Seth speaks of health as something larger than the body. “It’s feeling safe, connected, part of a community, having clean air, clean water.” In his view, this broader sense of wellbeing is the foundation for everything else he values, including how he engages with the world through music.
So can music heal the world?
At the very least, it can awaken our shared spirit and remind us of what it means to be alive, a theme Seth celebrates in his recent single Choose to Be Alive.[4] It might even help us fall a little more in love with the Earth, something Seth sees as essential to real transformation.
As Jimi Hendrix boldly affirmed, “If there is something to be changed in this world, it can only happen through music.”
Perhaps the change we need is already taking root and music could help it spread.
Regenerative Futures
Witnessing regenerative systems heal and revitalise severely degraded lands makes meaningful change feel well within reach. I asked Seth if he thinks this awareness could spark a contagious awakening.
“Yes, it’s really stories,” he responds. “Because stories ultimately are what guided us to where we are today. The old paradigm measured success in financial wealth but now it’s about what moves your heart.”
He describes the potential for more purpose-led narratives.
“People want to be part of the new story where the hero is someone who helps save the planet. When we look back in 30 or 40 years, we’ll probably criticize those who only cared about money.” He adds that he has no idea who the wealthiest people of the last century were.
“The heroes we celebrate today - Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa - these are the people we love, celebrate and remember.”
Seth believes most people want to be in service to life, yet are ensnared in structures that run counter to life’s logic.
“There’s a very small minority of perpetrators supporting the system, but the vast majority are trapped in it and don’t know how to get out,” he says. Scarcity-based models reward extraction, competition and short-term gain, bringing out fear, greed and disconnection instead of our deeper instincts for cooperation, reciprocity and care.
Yet, Seth sees opportunities even within these constraints. He believes we can take the structures we’ve inherited and put them to work for life.
“If you want to build an off-grid house with renewable energy and bring foods from all around the world into your garden, we’ve got a really efficient system to do that,” he says. The question, he adds, is whether we use these tools destructively or regeneratively.
When I ask Seth who he considers wealthy, he reflects on indigenous communities around the world, where wealth is measured in relationships, generosity and harmony with the land.
“We can’t ignore that they have financial poverty, but they have abundance in so many other ways.” The wealthiest, in his view, are those who live in connection and gratitude, people who could survive and thrive even if the systems we rely on collapse. “Some of the richest people in the world feel like they don’t have enough and so they’re always striving for more. But being grateful for what you have, that’s as wealthy as you can be.”
If we learn to understand wealth holistically rather than solely in monetary terms, we begin to see that regenerating our soils, landscapes, food systems and communities is wealth itself. With vast financial resources circulating globally, there’s enormous potential to invest in life-centerd growth.
When wealth becomes synonymous with what we help grow, new stories and models gain strength, firmly anchored in the inherent logic of nature’s living systems.
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I’m currently seeking values-aligned collaborations across food, land, nutrition and regenerative systems. If you think there might be a way we could work together, I’d love to hear from you. And if you’re enjoying The Earth Dispatch, please help these stories find their way to more people by sharing and inviting others to subscribe.
Endnotes
[1] Zaatar, Muriel T., et al. “The Transformative Power of Music: Insights into Neuroplasticity, Health, and Disease.” Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health 35 (December 2023). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10765015/
[2] Levitin, Daniel J. I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine. New York: Dutton, 2023.
[3] Johns Hopkins Medicine, Keep Your Brain Young with Music. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/keep-your-brain-young-with-music
[4] Listen to Seth’s debut single Choose to be Alive from his forthcoming album Awakening Embers: https://sethmusic.co
