 The Idea: The
Gift Economy offers us a means to learn, to understand, to take charge,
and to change our world. It is a natural economy, steeped in millions
of years of pre-civilization human culture and the culture of all life
on Earth. If enough of us embraced it, the modern 'market' economy,
built on the faulty and inhuman foundations of inequality, scarcity,
false quantification of value, and acquisition, could not survive.
Several
of the comments I have received about AHA! The Discovery &
Learning Centre have been about the idea of reciprocality(my
preferred word: the more common word 'reciprocity' now has an
unfortunate connotation of negotiated market exchange rather than the
simpler idea of sharing without obligation). I've explained that AHA!
will
have the effect of forcing down the 'price' of transfer of knowledge
and ideas, and of leveling the value we put on every individual's
contribution to discovery and learning conversations, so that there is
no 'premium' on the contribution of an 'expert', and so that great
ideas and important knowledge are affordable to everyone.
The end result could be, if we had the collective will to bring it
about, a world in which everything is free, and everything has
inestimable value. All of this
is consistent, I think, with the (suddenly very popular) concept of the
Gift
Economy, which is not at all
the same as an 'exchange' or even a barter economy.
What is the Gift Economy? A seminal work on the subject was written over 20 years ago by
Lewis Hyde, a book called The
Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. Hyde wrote:
I speak of the inner gift that we
accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a
vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or
fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my
concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks
commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.
In her review of the book (which I have not yet read), JoAnn Schwartz writes:
Hyde is interested in examining
the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of
the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to
give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal,
but the whole purpose of the 'gift economy' is to establish and
strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the
other. It is this element of relationship which leads Hyde to speak of
gift exchange as 'erotic' commerce, opposing eros (the principle of
attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason
and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular).
A market economy is an emanation of logos.
In a market economy, one can hoard one's goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased
by hoarding--- although we generally call it 'saving'. In contrast, in
a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the
circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to
increase--- increase in connections, increase in relationship strength.
Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts,
their flow and movement and the impact that the modern market place has
had on the circulation of gifts.
Here's an explanation by Genevieve Vaughan of the fundamental difference between an 'exchange' or 'market' economy and a Gift Economy:
The present economic system is based upon exchange, giving in order to receive. The motivation is self-oriented
since what is given returns under a different form to the giver to
satisfy her or his need. The satisfaction of the need of the other
person is a means to the satisfaction of one's own need. Exchange
requires identification of the things exchanged, as well as their measurement and an assertion of their equivalence
to the satisfaction of the exchangers that neither is giving more than
she or he is receiving. It therefore requires visibility, attracting
attention even though it is done so often that the visibility is
commonplace. Money enters the exchange, taking the place of products
reflecting their quantitative evaluation.
The very visibility of exchange is self-confirming, while other kinds of interaction -- nurturing, unselfish and other-oriented
gifts -- are rendered invisible or inferior by contrast or negative
description. What is invisible seems to be valueless, while what is
visible is identified with exchange, which is concerned with a certain
kind of quantitative value. Besides, since there is an equivalence asserted between what we give and what we receive, it seems that whoever has a lot has produced
a lot or given a lot, and is, therefore, somehow 'more' than whoever
has less. Exchange puts the ego first and allows it to grow and develop
in ways that emphasize me-first competitive and hierarchical behavior
patterns. This ego is not an intrinsic part of the human being, but is
a social product coming from the kinds of human interaction it is involved in.
So the exchange or 'market' economy is entrenched in the concepts of
inequality, scarcity, quantifiable equivalence of value, and
acquisition, while the Gift Economy is rooted in the concepts of
parity, abundance, unquantifiability, generosity and connection. As
Eric Raymond puts it:
Gift cultures are adaptations not
to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not
have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We can
observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in
ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe them
in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business,
science, Open Source and among the very wealthy.
In a 'market'
economy, says Hyde, the highest status belongs to those who have
acquired the most. In a Gift Economy, the highest status belongs to
those who have given the most. But what is most important, he says, is that the gift must always move.
This idea was recently popularized by the terrific little movie called
Pay it Forward. Every gift is its own reward, but that reward is
multiplied, without limit, when the gift, or any gift, is passed along
to others. A story is a gift. Blogs are gifts. Ideas and insights and teaching and counsel are gifts. Conversations are gifts.
Here
is a gift from Chris Corrigan, Jack Ricchiuto and George Nemeth, a
wonderful 45-minute Skypecast conversation (with George's contribution
unfortunately inaudible). I am paying it forward by linking to it and
by summarizing below some excerpts I have taken from it, much of which
are about the Gift Economy.
Until
you put something in front of people that they are hungry for, you
can't bring out the best in them. We all have a hunger for connection,
for "mates" who understand our frames, our terms of reference.
Weblogs can create powerful virtual relationships. After reading them
for awhile you come to "know" the author and when you then "meet" them
you can then go to work with them right away.
The media have stripped us of direct emotional connection to our world.
We now look at the news anchor for clues on how to respond to the news.
The media 'mediate' our emotional response to the outside world.
When tribal elders witness Open Space they say "This is exactly how we
used to meet". Open Space is an indigenous technology, a technology of
connection, allowing rapid emergence of understanding.
When something is given, something is always inherently given back in
exchange. But gifts work best when you pay them forward. You must find
another place to use your learnings acquired from others -- it's this
passing along that creates the Gift Economy.
Scientists have long understood the Gift Economy, the networked way of
giving their thinking to each other and relating with one another. This
is where the real science happens. The Internet serves a similar
purpose, as those who have tried unsuccessfully to make money or bottle
up knowledge on the Internet have discovered.
The Gift Economy is about 'agency' -- you can't be a passive consumer
of gifts. Everyone has within them the capacity to contribute, and the
network will only grow if everyone turns the gifts they have received
to others. We need to learn to become aware of our own agency.
A friend of [Chris'], a Lakota doctor, speaks of the 'circle of
courage', and describes the way giving builds self-esteem and hence
spirit. Everyone, he says, must build four 'capacities':
- The capacity of belonging -- reflecting the need to be recognized
- The capacity of mastery -- reflecting the need to build personal competence
- The capacity of independence -- reflecting the need to know your own power and agency
- The capacity of generosity -- reflecting the need to know our own goodness
The ways in which we connect --
these 'technologies', need to be in the service of presence. Open Space
and similar technologies create the conditions for authentic presence.
These technologies work best when they 'go away', when due to good
process design the technology becomes invisible, transparent. Then,
when you're in it, it's simple because it's natural. It is just a part
of the process.
Good technologies provide 'back porch aesthetics' that enable natural conversation, comfort and connection.
If we accept that we do not have all the answers then we acknowledge
that each one of us has a crucial piece of the answer, and what is
important is the aggregation and emergence of the pieces of truth each
one of us carries.
Here
is a great gift from Yes! magazine by Beverly Feldman and Charles Gray:
37 ways you can participate in the Gift Economy. What else can we each
do to bring about a Gift Economy? The most important things we can do
are internal -- transformation of the way we look at our world and its
economic principles and the way we act towards others and the world in
which we live. Chris calls it "passion bounded by responsibility".
Responsibility simply accepted, not thrust upon us. Passion that comes
from understanding and the sense of personal capacity. We need to
constantly engage ourselves and others in communication and connection,
and fight furiously the media paradigm of passive consumption and the
market-economy paradigm of only giving when we receive measurable fair
value in return. We need to constantly invite each other to address the
all-important question What do you really care about?
When we engage each other in conversations about this question, we open
up possibilities, we begin to feel and realize our own power, capacity,
and mastery, we recognize that generosity has nothing to do with
charity, and we sense the movement and strength of collective
understanding, will and passion. We realize that together,
collectively, collaboratively, we know more, and know better, than
leaders, presidents, executives, economists, experts, and others who
exploit our passivity to tell us what we should do and believe, and
engender in us feelings of helplessness, dependence, and addiction. We
have more capacity and power to act than all the multinational
corporations and the tyrants and the state apparatus of control and
repression.
Perhaps AHA! will begin its mandate not only exemplifying the
attributes and capacity of the Gift Economy but collaboratively helping
to encourage and broaden that economy, enabling it to undermine the old
economy and replace it with one of parity, abundance, generosity and
connection, helping us to imagine and realize a world without money,
without personal property, without poverty, without 'economic diseases'
(those that kill thousands each week simply because the inexpensive and
ubiquitous cures are unaffordable to half the world's people). A world
where the very idea that pollution, ecological destruction, loss of
biodiversity, slavery and exploitation of humans and other animals
could be 'economic', becomes simply absurd.
As Chris says, "When each of us does something that is more true to who
we really are, the collective impact of all these actions can have
profound implications for the direction of our world."
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
