Gift Economics (and Free Hugs)

I came across this intriguing essay on the gift economy.

Want to fix the economy?

Next time you buy coffee, purchase a cup for the person behind you. Or as you grind your way through the morning commute, pick up the tollbooth charge for the driver behind you, draped over his steering wheel and ranting at the long delay.

You’ve heard that famous Gandhian quote about being the change, well these are good measures to start with, packing more punch than you might imagine…

It makes some nice points, but (of course) a couple of things about it bother me:

1. It’s still so “bought into” the money culture.  Not just the “buy something for the person in line behind you” but what that something is and where the lines are:  toll booths and take-out coffee… arrrgh! It’s not just the money culture, it’s the car culture, the disposable culture, the drive-through convenience culture.

2.  I thought about what I might do that was a “gift” act while not being so beholden to the money culture and car culture.  What could I give someone that I know they would appreciate and use?  I envisioned making some muffins or somesuch, and taking them to the guys who hang out in front of the parking lot of the local big-box home repair place (and one for whoever took the prime panhandling spot today, at the island in the middle of the street at the nearby big intersection).  But I realized that this wouldn’t result in a pay-it-forward cycle.  Where there is genuine need, that ripple doesn’t actually spread.  The gift itself may be appreciated, but probably with that twinge of uncomfortableness that comes from being part of a culture that says begging is wrong, and getting charity is wrong.  But their means to pay-it-forward are limited.  Perhaps their friendlier or more helpful that day.  I suppose that should be enough, but I wonder.

And, along with that is the trust problem.  If I gave food that I made to some stranger less in need, it would probably be discarded, and not paid forward.  They would be too creeped-out to eat it, too suspicious that someone would just give them something of value. It’s like the inclination I have every Halloween, to bake something or give fresh fruit and thereby avoid pre-packaged crap.  Only, parents wouldn’t let their kids eat non-pre-packaged food… it’s not “safe” to take food that a stranger might have tampered with.  The toll-booth and the take-out coffee work because the gift is really just money,  just paying for something that they were about to pay for anyway.

How did we come to this level of craziness?  I suspect the Halloween issue is media-driven, and I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to imagine that packaged candy manufacturers put pressure on some media/advertising outlets to hype the razor-blade-in-the-apple or poisoned-cookies stories they might come across, just to ensure that only factory-processed, individually-wrapped treats will be considered acceptable.  Humans have offered food to other humans, even strangers, for millenia – probably since before we were recognizably Homo sapiens.  Only in the last few decades, inside the money culture, did this become a source of suspicion and mistrust.  Heck, even free hugs are met with skepticism, and were outright banned in some places.  And who wouldn’t want a FREE HUG!?!?!?!?!

 >

 

And then, of course, there’s the getting off my butt and going out and doing something part of this equation.  Free hugs, homemade treats, whatever… making the time, garnering the ambition and courage… it all sounds highly unlikely.  But maybe, later today, or someday soon, it will come to me.  How about you?

The Money Culture, Part 1

Can you think of five things you did today that were not somehow connected with or influenced by money? As mentioned in my first post, I’ve been itching to delve into the origins and possible alternatives to this thing that Lynne Twist so aptly described as “the Money Culture.” The Money Culture would almost certainly be the culture of anyone reading this post – anyone who regularly encounters money or something like paid work, rent or purchases mediated by money is part of the Money Culture.

Upon hearing Lynne Twist‘s depiction of someone from outside the Money Culture first encountering our culture, I believe (I hope) many of my Introduction to Cultural Anthropology students experience a sudden “paradigm shift,” where they are first asked to face a crucial set of unquestioned assumptions that form the deep structure of their worldview.  I remember this experience myself, 20-some years ago – that thrilling, vertiginous sense that everything you thought you knew about how the world works turns out to be a fanciful story, not unlike Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

The Money Culture is something that is only characteristic of very recent history in terms of human evolution (offhand, I’d say only the last 5,000 or so years, so only about 0.1% of the time since genus Homo and genus Pan diverged, or less than 3% of the time that there has been a species we call Homo sapiens), and only became truly ubiquitous over the last few hundred years.  To an anthropologist, this is a very new phenomenon, that has rapidly spread over the globe, and threatens to drive other cultural forms extinct.

From what we know about a handfull of food foraging (gatherer-hunter) cultures, who were/are the last remaining representatives of the lifeways of all humans until the first appearance of food domestication (about 10,000 years ago), foraging peoples did not use any form of money.  They had no need for such a cultural invention, living in “The Old Way” (read Elizabeth Marshall Thomas‘ outstanding 2006 book of this title for a deep exploration of one such foraging culture, the Ju/wasi).

Sometimes, one of my students asks, “So does everyone else just use barter?”  In fact, barter is probably only about twice as old as money.  Most foraging cultures studied by anthropologists do not practice barter – they have food-sharing (especially among members of a hunting party returning with meat from large game) and other forms of gift-exchange, but it never takes the form of “I’ll give you three of these tubers if you give me a basket of berries.”  Such direct barter exchanges probably became more common as people began to rely on more intensive food production (agriculture) and live in larger groups.

In foraging societies, food sharing was essential, because hunting is unreliable and food is not easily stored.  Foraging peoples had to remain mobile, ready to pack up and leave as an area was temporarily or seasonally depleted of good food sources.  Their communities could never get very big (you can’t have more mouths to feed than can be supported on what you can find within about a day’s walk), so they would rapidly get to know who is likely to cheat or be stingy with gifts.  These non-reciprocating individuals would then be shunned by their peers, or at least would be less likely to receive gifts.  The way to win friends was to be generous.  In traveling bands of a few dozen adults, with little privacy and little in the way of possessions, reputations of generosity or stinginess spread quickly and reliably.

Economist Paul Seabright’s book In the Company of Strangers posits that money, and the systems of trade it allowed us to develop, originated as a proxy for trust among people who do not have the opportunity to work and live with one another on a day-to-day basis.  Barter is a simple way of reducing the risk of being cheated because you do the exchange immediately.  Money fills in as societies become larger and more complex, allowing you to exchange something you have (goods and/or services) for an item that you can be fairly confident will subsequently be accepted by someone else – even a stranger – who has something you want.   [BtVS fans: I'm sure you can hear overtones of Anya here.]

So, now that we’re here, with the Money Culture impacting pretty much every ecological and cultural system on the planet, maybe it’s time to rethink this basic structural component of our way of life.   In later posts, I’ll explore some of the ways that the Money Culture operates in more detail, and speculate on how it drives many of the converging crises we are facing as a civilization. I believe someone once said that “Money is the root of all evil.”   If we did without it for 97% of the time we’ve been human, can we find a way to do without it now?  What would take its place?  How can we get there from here?

…End of Part 1 in a series of indeterminate length…