If you’ve read it Knitting sweet glassRobin Wall Kimmeller’s bestseller Pean to Earth and its existence, ServiceBerry It’s a natural extension of the conversation she cultivated. Extended from the magazine’s essay, it offers a peek into the basket of economic alternatives to capitalism that Kimmar forged.
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The shared ideas bundled as “gift economy” are sown from indigenous culture, imitation of nature, motherhood and mutual aid.
This article was first published Resurrection and the Ecologist magazine.
Each inspiration in the gift economy is based on the “unconditional love that plants have for people” and the reality that we humans must consume because we humans are animals that we have not been given photosynthetic gifts.
Mutuality
The idea of ​​reciprocity encouraged by Kimmerer’s first book planted so many seeds of change; ServiceBerry It provides multiple pathways to further strengthen your praxis.
In Gift Economy, goods and services are distributed without explicit expectations of direct compensation. Currency, not commodities or money, is gratitude, connection, and community happiness. An economy that receives wealth and secret sexuality by sharing wealth rather than hoarding.
Unlike the (false) story of scarcity needed to maintain capitalism, the “gift economy” mentality, created by an extractive personality (which she calls “Darrens” after ExxonMobil’s CEO), nominates everything we receive from Earth as gifts.
This wants to create an interconnected being that feels membership within the web of life and is naturally responsible for every gift they receive.
Kimmerer reminds us that an economy of gifts already exists. They exist in the relationship between mother and baby. Reciprocity that occurs spontaneously in the event of a disaster when people give each other freely through a network of mutual aid.
emergency
“It’s raining rain, rainy, rainy, rainy, depicting maples that gave leaves to the soil, countless invertebrates and microorganisms that exchange nutrients and microorganisms, and cedar waxwings that sink rotten humus through microorganisms. Seedlings.”
The list continues. In each of these instances, the shape becomes circular and the act of gratitude becomes a shared culture.
Like Knitting sweet glassKimmerer challenges us to practice reciprocity, learn the circular tales behind every gift we receive, and follow the threads of each item of living world experience to follow what it is.
She works to help us imagine how to offer gifts in exchange for everything we received. And the actions we can take to practice that appreciation.
It’s an incredibly hopeful read, but it lacks some urgency by suggesting that the economy of new gifts relies on “slowly and steadily replaced that didn’t help ecological prosperity.”
Hope
Kimmerer acknowledges our place in the “tension between what is possible and what is possible,” but there is no clear, pointed solution to the major polluters driving the crisis we are facing. Instead, her beautiful prose is directed at the individual, perpetuating change from the bottom up, warning that the angle that climate activists are warning is a backward approach. Certainly, applying a mosaic of possible Kimmerer sharing possibilities to the community could potentially fill the deep gaps our current extraction economy is creating.
Without a doubt, by fostering a deliberate community based on a place of mutual independence and reciprocity, we are more prepared for the great changes and challenges of the very near future. It allows us to weather the world while being based on the living experiences of the world we want to create.
Because where life is always hope. And there is always a life with hope.
This author
Holly Rose is a British-Canadian author and author of children’s books with a focus on sacred ecology and food sovereignty. You can follow her work on Instagram @hollyrose.eco Or on her blog www.hollyrose.eco.
Servicerberry: The economy of gifts and abundance That’s what Robin Wall Kimmeller is Published by Penguin Books.
This article was first published Resurrection and the Ecologist magazine.
