Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition (45 page)

Motivation:
The expansion of the money realm has come at the expense of other forms of economic circulation, in particular gifts. When every economic relationship becomes a paid service, we are left independent of everyone we know and dependent, via money, on anonymous, distant service providers. That is a primary reason for the decline of community in modern societies, with its attendant alienation, loneliness, and psychological misery. Moreover, money is unsuited to facilitate the circulation and development of the unquantifiable things that truly make life rich.

Transition and policy:
Thankfully, the money realm is already beginning to shrink, and that degrowth allows new space for gift economics. The internet is in important respects a gift network, and it has made it easy to give away information that was once very costly to produce. In various ways, this has pushed services like advertising (think Craigslist), travel agency, journalism, publishing, music, and many more toward the gift realm. It has also facilitated gift-based modes of open-source production. What once required paid intermediaries and centralized administrative structures now happens directly. People and businesses are even creating credit, via mutual-credit systems, without the intermediation of banks. Meanwhile, on the local level the ideals of the connected self, the yearning for community, and sheer economic exigency are leading people to restore gift-based community structures.

Governments can liberalize tax and banking regulations to give free rein to the new systems of economic circulation emerging today. The commons in which these systems reside, in particular the internet, must be kept public. Governments can also establish
and promote mutual-credit systems for business and industry, shielding the domestic or local economy from predation by international capital.

Economic life:
People will meet their needs, whether for goods, services, or money itself, in a great variety of ways. Face-to-face gift circles and online coordination of gifts and needs will allow many needs to be met without money. People will have much more of a sense of being a part of a community they rely on. Complementary, user-created credit systems, along with internet-based P2P lending, will obviate some of the traditional need for banks. On a local level as well as mediated through global networks, new nonquantified “currencies” of recognition and gratitude will emerge that connect and reward qualitative contributions to society and the planet.

* * * *

As you can see, all of the seven elements I have described are tightly synergistic. Indeed, none can stand on its own. Negative-interest currency, for instance, won’t work if other sources of economic rent are still available to invest in. Localization depends in large part on the removal of hidden subsidies that make global trade economic. Gift economies allow the quality of life to improve even as the economy shrinks.

Together, the various strands of sacred economy I have described in
Part II
of this book weave a tapestry, an organic matrix that we can see emerging today. The new economy will not come from a new beginning, a sweeping away of the old and a starting afresh; it is rather a phase transition, a metamorphosis.

Just as no piece of sacred economy can stand alone, so also does each piece naturally induce the others. But if there is a linchpin, it
is the end of growth, the transition of the human species to a new relationship with Earth, a new Story of the People. Ultimately, it is our emerging desire to be Earth’s partner, and our newfound spiritual realization of the uniqueness and connectedness of all beings, that underlies what I have called sacred economics.

The transition to sacred economy is part of a larger shift in our ways of thinking, relating, and being. Economic logic alone is not enough to sustain it. Many economic visionaries have devised mathematically persuasive revolutions in money and property, but of the handful that ever came to fruition, none survived the test of time. The final third of this book, therefore, is devoted to the shift of consciousness and practice that goes along with the new money systems I have described. As we heal the spirit-matter rupture, we discover that economics and spirituality are inseparable. On the personal level, economics is about how to give our gifts and meet our needs. It is about who we are in relation to the world. By changing our everyday economic thinking and practices, we not only prepare ourselves for the great changes ahead; we also set the stage for their emergence. By living the concepts of sacred economics, we ease its acceptance by all and welcome it into the world.

We have in our age created a distinction between money exchanges and gifts. The former is in the realm of rational self-interest; the latter is at least partially altruistic or selfless. This division of economics into two separate realms mirrors other defining dichotomies of our civilization: man and nature, spirit and matter, good and evil, sacred and profane, mind and body. None of these withstand deep scrutiny; all of them are crumbling as the Age of Separation draws to a close. And so, just as we erase the matter-spirit distinction and resacralize all of matter, just as we give up on the effort to transcend nature and realize that we are part of it, so also shall we return the spirit of the gift to all aspects of human economy, whether or not money is involved.

Each aspect of the monetary evolution described in this book imbues money with the properties of gift:

1. Over time, giving and receiving must be in balance. The internalization of ecological costs ensures that we will take no more from earth than we can give.
   
2. The source of a gift is to be acknowledged. The restoration
   of the commons means that any use of what belongs to all is acknowledged by a payment that goes to all.
   
3. Gifts circulate rather than accumulate. Decaying currency ensures that wealth remains a function of flow rather than of owning.
   
4. Gifts flow toward the greatest need. A social dividend ensures that the basic survival needs of every person are met.
   

The foundation of a sacred economy, then, is gift consciousness. The remainder of this book explores the ways in which we can restore the mentality of the gift in our own lives to foster and prepare for the coming world.

I am not suggesting that you become a saint and abandon selfishness. Gift culture is not so simple. As we imbue matter with the qualities we once ascribed to spirit, we are also imbuing spirit with the messy qualities of matter. No longer is the spiritual realm of our conceptions a place of perfect order, harmony, goodness, and justice. Similarly, as we imbue money with some of the characteristics of gift culture, we must recognize that the gift realm never was, and may never be, a realm of pure disinterested selflessness.

Consider the ideal of the free gift, which Jacques Derrida characterizes as follows: “For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt.” This would preclude any benefit accruing to the giver, such as social status, praise, expressions of gratitude, and even, perhaps, the feeling that one has done something virtuous. The closest example of this in real life would be anonymous charity, or perhaps the alms given to Jain ascetics, who make sure to offer neither thanks nor praise for the food.
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Jain religious beliefs are quite relevant to this association of
the free gift with purity, spirituality, and nonworldliness. The Jain seek through asceticism to burn away karma and purify themselves while creating no new ties with the world. Thus they take care never to visit the same house twice and never to respond to an invitation, striving toward the ideal of an unexpected guest receiving pure charity untainted by any worldly bond.

The Jain are an extreme case, but similar ideals inhabit the other world religions. Christians, for instance, are enjoined to fast, pray, and give charity in secret. Buddhists following the Bodhisattva path are supposed to dedicate their lives to the liberation of all beings, putting others ahead of themselves. In Judaism, the principle of
chesed shel emet
, the highest form of kindness, is to give with no hope of repayment or gratitude, while the highest level of charity is when neither donor nor receiver knows who is giving or receiving. Anonymous charity is one of the five pillars of Islam, and huge Islamic charities are funded anonymously. I don’t think I need cite too many examples to persuade the reader of the association of altruism and anonymous charity with religion.

The religious ideal of the free gift that doesn’t create any social bonds is, ironically enough, very similar to monetary transactions! These also generate no obligation, no tie: once the money is paid and the goods delivered, neither party owes the other anything. But with the exception of the idealized true gifts described above, gifts are very different. If you give me something, I will feel grateful and desire to give in turn, either to you or to someone else that social custom prescribes. Either way, an obligation has been created, an assurance of continued economic circulation within the gifting community. Anonymous gifts don’t create such ties and don’t strengthen communities. The recipient might be grateful, but that gratitude has no object save the universal or abstract.

Gratitude, moreover, arises not just from the receiving of gifts, but also from their witnessing. The generosity of others moves us toward generosity ourselves. We desire to give to those who are generous. We are moved by their openness, by their vulnerability, by their trust. We want to take care of them. With the possible exception of anonymous charity, gifts don’t happen in a social vacuum. They expand the circle of self, linking our self-interest with that of anyone who, when he has more than he needs, will give us what we need. The religious ideal of the unattached gift, which diffuses the resultant gratitude to the universal level, has a place insofar as we wish to identify with the community of all being. But I do not think that the resolution of the Age of Separation is a state of universal oneness. Rather, we will step into a multidimensional self that identifies with all being, yes, but also with humanity, its own culture, its bioregion, its community, its family, and its ego-self. Accordingly, the anonymous, unencumbered gift has an important but limited role to play in the coming economy.

This was certainly the case in primitive gift cultures. While there did exist the equivalent of the universal, unrequitable gift in the form of sacrifices to the gods, most gifts were social in nature. In his classic 1924 monograph
The Gift
, Marcel Mauss establishes a strong case against the existence in primitive societies of a free gift. Generally speaking, Mauss said, appropriate gifts and return gifts were quite precisely determined and were enforced through social approbation and obloquy, status and ostracism, and other forms of social pressure. This is a desirable state of affairs: the obligations and commitments that arise from gifts and their expected requital are a glue that holds the society together.

We can feel the absence of that social glue today. In the logic of me and mine, any obligation, any dependency, is a threat. Gifts
naturally create obligations, so, in the Age of Separation, people have become afraid to give and even more afraid to receive. We don’t want to receive gifts because we don’t want to be obligated to anyone. We don’t want to owe anybody anything. We don’t want to depend on anyone’s gifts or charity—“I can pay for it myself, thank you. I don’t need you.” Accordingly, we elevate anonymous acts of charity to a lofty moral status. It is supposed to be a great virtue to give without strings attached, to expect nothing in return.

Part of living in the gift is to recognize and abide by the obligation to receive as well as to give. Mauss gives the example of the Dayaks, who “have even developed a whole system of law and morality based upon the duty one has not to fail to share in the meal at which one is present or that one has seen in preparation.”
²
I personally experienced something of this during my years in Taiwan, where vestiges of the old gift-based culture of agrarian times still persisted in the older generation. There, not only was it a serious faux pas to fail to offer food to a visitor to your home, but it was also quite rude to refuse it. If dinner was in preparation, it would not necessarily be polite to attempt a gracious exit before mealtime (without a really convincing excuse). To refuse a gift is to spurn relationship. If gifts create bonds and widen the circle of self, then to refuse to give or receive a gift says, “I refuse to be connected to you. You are an
other
in my constellation of being.” As Mauss puts it, “To refuse to give, to fail to invite, just as to refuse to accept, is tantamount to declaring war; it is to reject the bond of alliance and commonality.”
³

To reject this bond is a serious matter. Author Mark Dowie speaks of an Alaskan tribe he lived with that convened a meeting of elders to discuss the grave transgression of a certain tribesman on the sharing ethic. The person in question was hoarding the fruits of his hunting for himself, flouting the tribe’s gift customs. How seriously did the elders view his behavior (which was of long standing)? The purpose of their meeting was to decide whether or not to kill him.
⁴