stargeek
Saying Thanks in the Gift CultureSaying Thanks in the Gift CultureSaying Thanks in the Gift Culture 12/09/2003 03:46 AM The traditional way to say thanks is to contribute some code or documentation or maybe just a few nice words or a link from a visible place; but I wonder how well these services and software will survive the various threats, and I will go so far as to suggest that we invest a little bit of actual money into those things that we want to continue. This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)Saying Thanks in the Gift CultureGrok Headline matches for Saying Thanks in the Gift CultureThe Fight Between Sharing Culture And
|
 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.
Here's an explanation by
Genevieve Vaughan of the fundamental difference between an 'exchange'
or 'market' economy and a Gift Economy: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. 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 pu ts 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':
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." |
d-i-r-t-y.com/index2.html?first=http://www.d-i-r-t-y.com/mixes
track this
site | 5 links
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: