In this weeks human group we discussed the power of the gift, of generosity and whether our society could function as a gift economy.
The check in,
‘Share a moment when you were the receiver of a perplexing or overwhelming act of generosity.’
The group shared these magical moments and various themes were found across each human’s offering. The feeling of being indebted to somebody, feeling undeserving of the gift, suspicious even; what’s the catch, and even feeling a little helpless and vulnerable.
Is receiving something placing us involuntarily into the same vulnerable state that can occur when asking for help?
Are we too proud to receive?
Members of the group offered their experiences of inviting people around for dinner in Sweden but nobody accepting due to the social debt and agreement it creates. In Sicily, favours are recorded and expected to be returned when the time calls for it.
Is this gifting?
It seems as though this kind of activity could have pre-dated the technology of money and signals perhaps the growing fear around a return and the scarcity mentality itself in its younger days. This then evolving into a system that ensures the payments are made in full.
What happened to trust? A very human technology that we have limited incentives to practice.
Within the two discussions we came to a crunch point, set between our attachment to money and things and surrendering to non-attachment in order to live the possibility of a gifting economy. Living with trust instead of money.
There was an underlying fear and tension to fully believe that the world can run without a transactional account of everything. This means no money in the bank. Yikes!
Money is an IOU, a receipt of what has been given, this IOU is a tangible representation of value and enables us to use our energy outside of where the initial transaction has taken place. It keeps people accountable and insures a relative balance of giving. However not everything is represented by a monetary value and over a period of time, utilising the technology of money we have gradually undermined that which is not easily represented by our economic system.
We have neglected the qualitative by over emphasising the quantitative with the convenient technology of currency.
This imbalance is indicative to the current problems we are faced with today. The inaction around climate change and protecting our natural ecosystems, undermining and extracting the mothers and fathers from the home and neglecting the parents who stay to raise their children, the feminist movement, the oppression and colonisation of indigenous cultures, equality concerns, and a systemic disempowerment of the essence within every individual.
We are being asked to reassess our values and are being shown that life is not made up of the possessions we have or the money we hold in our bank accounts. We search for satisfaction in the wrong places, neglecting our own present day gift of being. Life is made rich by the qualities of being, not of the quality of being rich. The satisfaction we hunger for is in the opposite direction, in honouring the mothers and fathers of the world whose tireless effort goes mostly unnoticed yet is priceless if ever we attempted to put a price tag upon it. In listening to the wisdom of the environment in which we have been born from, the mother Earth, who holds us unconditionally as we neglect her and make plans to live on Mars where it is virtually lifeless and we continue to cut down ancient forests of elders for a dollar in the bank.
The reasons to need each other, to spend time investing in being a mother, have been washed away by the currents of money. The quantitative reasons for relationship exist in a diminished way, so we must turn to the qualitative.
Notice all the giving that is not represented, notice the mothers, the relationships that endlessly pour out support and love with no expectation for a return. And what about the greatest mother of them all, this beautiful being we call Earth.
Perhaps it’s time we started to notice the unconditional gifting that happens on a daily basis and give back?
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