Gift Economy Opens Hearts and Doors

This week I want to share with you two people’s visions of how our economy needs to change.  

Author and speaker, Charles Eisenstein says in this video that the money system has built into it debt and growth  But we are ending the limits of growth so the current money system works less and less well.

Eisenstein points out that we didn’t earn air, birth, the sun, or the Earth.  Therefore life is a gift.  And gifts generate gratitude. In a gift economy, if you have more than you need, you gift it to somebody else.  Gifts create communities.  Watch this video and see how he explains this shift in thinking.

I checked out Eisenstein's website and I found a podcast interview where he speaks with Nipun Mehta who founded Service Space in 1999 to help non-profit organizations with technical help.  Service Space has expanded over the years to provide an umbrella platform for everyday people who want to be of service.  On their website, they write, “ Above all, we believe in the inherent generosity of others and aim to ignite that spirit of service.  Through our small, collective acts, we hope to transform ourselves and our world.”

In the interview, Mehta defines “capital” as a form of wealth that creates more wealth.  He wants to broaden the idea of capital beyond that of money.  He feels we can create a lot of value with the resource of service because it is regenerative.  In other words, we are rewarded just by doing it.  And with that resource we have the capacity to relieve a lot of suffering.

Nipun Mehta is big on the idea of transformation.  He feels that the act of service changes the giver, thereby creating transformation.  The giver falls into a deeper interconnectedness which quietens the mind.  Therefore, acts of kindness don’t just change the world on the outside, but also on the inside. 

On his website, I found a TEDtalk where he describes Designing for Generosity.  He is a very animated and inspiring speaker who clearly walks his talk.  Check it out here:

 I will leave the closing words to the13^th century Persian poet Rumi:

“Spirit is so mixed with the visible world that

giver, gift and beneficiary are one thing.”