Tag Archives: gift economy

From Philanthropy to De-Accumulation

From Philanthropy to De-Accumulation The path towards flow is simple and immensely difficult: shedding what we have accumulated and restoring trust in natural abundance after having broken it to create artificial surplus and manufactured scarcity; uncoupling giving from receiving and restoring trust in each other’s capacity for gifting after millennia of exchange; and releasing control and restoring trust in ourselves and our capacity to face hardship after being habituated to fixing every little discomfort with money and technology.

From Exchange to Gifting Part Two: Beyond the Exchange/Gift Binary

From Exchange to Gifting  Part Two: Beyond the Exchange/Gift Binary Many people, even those who live fully within the exchange paradigm and don’t ever think about maternal gifting, prefer going to a farmers’ market, if one exists where they live, or to a local store, rather than to a supermarket. Sometimes they prefer it enough that they are even willing to pay more money. There is a reason for it.

Matching Resources to Needs: Learning to Receive through Participating in “Money Piles”

Matching Resources to Needs: Learning to Receive through Participating in “Money Piles”

Embracing the consciousness of togetherness, of caring for the whole, of interdependence, is immensely challenging in cultures that are not based on these values, regardless of where we are positioned on the power map of the world. Most especially, I find that those of us living in modern settings are …

Starting the Future Today

Starting the Future Today

(I am back from a three-week hiatus. For the time being, I am not writing about the Occupy Movement, though I imagine I will return to this theme.)

In April, 2004, in the last week of her life, my former colleague Julie Greene participated, with my sister Inbal and with …