The Gift Economy

Tom Lane, July 2010

As I sit down to write this article, two new emails have just arrived in my in-box. The first one contains a quote from Marc Ian Barasch: “ A selfless deed, witnessed up close, is like a lamp blazing up from darkness before your pupils can adjust.” The second one reads “Fortuna Casino: For a fun filled way to make money - Play here”. How do I feel when I look at each? Which one uplifts me and which brings me towards darkness and despair?

The international financial crisis has prompted me to study and reflect a lot about money. The more I study money, the more subtle and surreal I find it. There are many definitions of what constitutes money and many theories of its evolution, but for the purposes of this discussion I will take the view that money is a social construction. From this perspective, money is a token that represents value. Its most important characteristic is that people accept it and are willing to exchange goods and services in return for agreed amounts of it. A token-based money system needs people to trust in it and accept its “value”. This is usually provided by some authority (often a national government) or more occasionally by some code of honour amongst those who use it. For the purposes of this article it is useful to consider money as a token rather than something that has an inherent value. As the Cree Proverb says, “Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.”

Regardless of its definition, the vast majority of us need “enough” of it in order to live in a modern society. Many of us seem enslaved by it. It seems the whole economic system is geared towards getting more and more of it. Money has become an end in itself rather than a tool that assists us in our lives. The more I think about money, the more apparent it becomes to me that the money accumulation drive is responsible for so much poverty, inequality, environmental destruction and impoverishment of the human spirit.

It is often stated that economics is driven by two motives – greed and fear. Using this analysis we could say that the recent boom was driven by greed and the current crash is driven by fear. At some stage the economy will “recover” and we will sow the needs for the next boom, followed by the inevitable crash. Now I don't wish to be driven by either of these two motives, but how can I find a good way to live that provides me with at least some level of material comfort and personal freedom?

For a time I looked into the feasibility of using alternative currencies and credit systems, such as LETS or WIR. While I think they are moving in a good direction, as they can help free us from the tyranny of bank-issued debt-money, I was left with a feeling that they don't really address the fundamental issue: Can we find a new way that avoids the negative consequences of the greed/fear paradigm.

Now I'm beginning to see the possibility of a parallel economy, which I call the Gift Economy, that might solve this dilemma. It seeks to minimise participation in the official money economy (the amount needed to get enough tokens to make necessary purchases of goods and services). But in parallel, it seeks to maximise providing and receiving goods and services as gifts. It relies on a spiritual perspective that goes something like: trust Spirit to lead me wherever it Wills, try to see all other people as one self of my self, gift to others what I reasonably can and allow Spirit to provide what I need through gratefully accepting what others gift to me.

This might seem crazy at first sight. It could never work, one might think. But maybe it could work, and there is mounting evidence in my life that it works far more effectively and aesthetically than token based exchange. An example might help: Sabine and I plan to visit the US for two weeks. We need token money to pay for flights and for buying a few things while we are there. We have been offered accommodation in various places so we don't need token money for that. We have been offered the use of a car too. People will probably feed us in quite a few places. Each gift we receive reduces the amount of token money we need. And we never asked for any of this – the offers just arrived! We won't go on a shopping spree in in New York, but that doesn't cause me to lose any sleep (but maybe that's easier for a man than a woman).

I could provide numerous examples of things that I need arriving “out of thin air” just at the right time. Perhaps that is not so odd when one considers that our official money is created out of thin air by banks! And I try to offer gifts whenever the opportunity presents itself. For example, I might do some gardening, give people vegetables, help construct a shed, offer that people can stay with us and give them food, maintain a website and a host of other things without expectation of reward or return.

The beauty and simplicity of this approach is that I don't need any tokens, whether of official money, or LETS, or whatever, and I don't need to keep an account of what I owe to others or they owe to me. I just do what I can, whatever it feels right to offer, and then allow somebody or something “upstairs” to take care of the details. I believe, more and more, that Spirit (or God, or the Universe, or whatever one cares to call it) has an Intelligence way beyond our comprehension and the highest reaches of our reason. The more I trust this and put myself into Its hands, the more this belief is confirmed by experience.

Of course I still need to do some things for official money (at the moment this comprises of gardening and the occasional consultancy contract, and some other assorted things – whatever Spirit presents to me and feels right to do). But I feel hopeful and excited about the prospect of living more and more in a gift economy.

Once upon a time I used to receive a lot of token money, firstly when employed and latterly as a consultant. The odd fact is that nowadays I receive relatively little official money, but I seem to live a far richer life. When I got a lot of it, I used to seem to need to spend a lot of it, and somehow I never had enough of it. Many of my choices were driven by the greed/fear dynamic, which reduced my freedom in subtle and not so subtle ways. For example, when working as a consultant there was a background greed/fear around getting another contract which subtly influenced my behaviour and constrained my freedom to speak my truth.

I don't always manage to live in trust and that is when the Trickster aspect of Spirit seems to appear. I still have the tendency to hoard and the desire to accumulate tokens, which I'm being weaned off gradually. Whenever this tendency gets a bit out of hand, Spirit arranges for all my tokens to disappear (through car problems or some other unexpected expense) or else arranges that my opportunity to amass tokens disappears (through back problems preventing me from working, or through not getting some anticipated work). The lesson seems to be to live in trust fully and not to hedge my bets.

But the Trickster works both ways, thankfully. The two emails mentioned at the beginning of this article were the only ones that arrived while writing it. Just what was needed! And I recall an evening I suddenly felt I would love a glass of red wine. There was no wine in the house and only 10 euros in my wallet. I didn't want wine badly enough to use all my tokens on it. At that moment my neighbour appeared with a bottle of red wine to thank me for taking care of his dog. One can interpret these events any way one likes, but I like to interpret them as Spirit looking after me.

Nowadays I get what I need (which isn't always what I desire, but usually, with hindsight, turns out to be exactly right) and have the freedom to do lots of interesting things – and to increasingly speak my truth. The biggest personal challenge for me seems to be to let go of fear and really trust in this new way. At times my trust has faltered, or abandoned me temporarily, and this has led to much anxiety, fear and even depression. But as time goes by I see that Spirit has never failed me - not for one second - that Spirit has a Plan (I don't know what that Plan is) and that if I go along with Spirit this Plan unfolds in the most beautiful and extraordinary ways. It's an adventure of unanticipated twists and turns, but one with a direction. For me, part of that direction is the gradual awakening of my awareness and consciousness and the slow, relentless, compassionate stripping away of all the dross within me that needs to be transformed into something brighter and more benign.

At times I imagine what the world might be like if the majority of people operated a Gift Economy. I like to think this may come to pass. It is beyond my power or control, but in the meantime I look forward to operating more and more in circles where I can practice it.