Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition (47 page)

I have in this book articulated a conception of wealth as flow rather than accumulation. This is not a new idea: wealth only became an accumulation with the rise of agricultural civilization. Because hunter-gatherers are, with very few exceptions, nomadic, possessions are a literal burden to them. But the farmer is sedentary; moreover, the farmer’s livelihood depends on the storage of food, especially in the case of grain-based agriculture. Hunter-gatherers stayed at populations beneath the carrying capacity of the unmodified ecosystem; in times of drought or flooding, they could easily move and adapt. Not so the farmer. For the farmer, seven lean years could easily follow seven fat ones, which meant that the best security was
to keep large stores of food. To accumulate and store was the best form of security; from it flowed wealth, status, and many of the habits we identify today as virtues: thrift, sacrifice, saving for a rainy day, good work habits, industriousness, and diligence.

Living without food storage, hunter-gatherers worked no harder than necessary to meet immediate needs and enjoyed long periods of leisure. The farmer’s leisure comes with a bit of guilt—he could be working a little harder, storing up a little more just in case. On the farm, there is always something that needs to be done. We have today inherited and taken to an extreme the attitudes of the farmer, including the agricultural definition of wealth.
¹
After agriculture, these attitudes (work ethic, sacrifice of present for future, accumulation, and control) reached their next level of expression in the Age of the Machine,
²
which led to accumulations of wealth undreamed of by the richest pharaoh.

And today we are in the so-called Information Age, which is yet another intensification of the same attitudes, and which has seen an accumulation of wealth, a contrasting poverty, and an alienation from the natural world far exceeding any precedent. Many observers have pointed out that each such “age” is succeeding (actually overlaying) the last at an exponentially accelerating pace.
Very roughly speaking, the age of agriculture lasted three millennia, the age of industry three centuries, the information age three decades.
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Now, many sense, we are on the verge of a singularity: perhaps a flurry of new ages telescoped into years, months, days, and then a transition into a wholly new era, something unknowable and qualitatively different from anything before. We may not know much about it yet, but one thing that is certain about the coming Age of Reunion is that humanity will no longer pretend exemption from nature’s laws.

Certainly, accumulation is one of the violations of natural law that is inconsistent with the new human being and her relationship to nature. Hoarding resources beyond an individual’s capacity to consume them is not unknown in nature, but it is rare, and many types of food storage (e.g., squirrels sequestering nuts) have other explanations.
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Generally speaking, natural systems are characterized by resource flow, not accumulation. In an animal, cells do not store more than a few seconds’ worth of sugar but trust in the ongoing supply of their universe, the body.

Evolutionary biologists offer two explanations of resource hoarding in humans from the perspective of genetic determinism. The first is that it offers security, a survival advantage. Hunter-gatherers and other species would do it too, the argument goes, but they generally lack the means. The second explanation is that the
ostentatious accumulation and consumption of resources are a kind of mating display. As biologist Walter K. Dodds puts it,

Granted the premises of conventional genetic theory (a critique of which is beyond the scope of this book), the logic seems airtight. Quite subtly, though, the argument is based on circular reasoning that projects our present environment of scarcity, anxiety, and competition onto nature. The ability to accumulate and overconsume resources is a reproductive advantage only in a society where resources are not equitably shared. In a gift-based sharing culture, the welfare of your children does not depend so much on whether your mate is a great hunter or prolific gatherer. Moreover, anthropological evidence contradicts Dodds’s thesis. Consistently, hunter-gatherers and primitive agriculturalists underproduced, preferring leisure over accumulation and control of resources.
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There was no gene-driven competition for ostentatious display of wealth; to the contrary, hoarding resulted not in high status but in opprobrium. Moreover, the widespread sharing of resources rendered productive capacity moot. If anything was genetically selected, it would be
the inclination to share and to contribute to the well-being of the tribe. With small exaggeration, we can say that in a gift community, rational self-interest is identical to altruism.

The mistaken intuitions of the discrete and separate self infect us so deeply that we often assume them, in disguised form, as axiomatic truth. In asking, “What is human nature?” we project back to an imaginary time when it was “every man for himself,” or perhaps rather, every family for itself, and assume that communities were a later development, an improvement on the raw state of nature. Significantly, two of the seminal philosophers in this area, Hobbes and Rousseau, who had opposite views on life in a state of nature, agreed on this point. For Hobbes, life was
“solitary
, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (emphasis mine), and it was solitary for Rousseau too:

Whether or not it was true then, it is certainly true now that accumulation adds at least some measure to our security, and even to our sexual attractiveness. But not for long. The mentality of accumulation is coincident with the ascent of separation, and it is ending in tandem with the Age of Separation as well. Accumulation makes no sense for the expanded self of the gift economy.

An important theme in all my work is the integration of hunter-gatherer attitudes into technological society—a completion and not a transcendence of the past. I have already laid out in this book the monetary equivalent of nonaccumulation (decaying currency), of nonownership (elimination of economic rents), and of underproduction (leisure and degrowth). Tellingly, many people feel a pull toward these values on a personal level too, such as in the movement toward “voluntary simplicity” and in questioning the nature of work. Ahead of their time, these people have pioneered a new and ancient way of being that will soon become the norm.

Bill Kauth, founder of the Sacred Warriors and other organizations, is an internationally known social inventor and a rich man, though not in any conventional sense. He owns very little: an old car, some personal possessions, as far as I know no financial assets. Many years ago, he tells me, he took a personal vow he calls “income topping,” pledging never to earn more than $24,000 in a year. And yet, he says, “I have eaten in some of the world’s best restaurants, traveled to many of the earth’s beautiful places, had an incredibly rich life.”

In the age of the separate self, we carry a grain of cynicism and suspicion that colors our perceptions of other people and organizations. When we hear an inspirational speaker or participate in a transformative seminar, we secretly (or not so secretly) wonder, “How is this guy profiting from this? What is the gambit?” We
instantly recognize any hypocrisy, such as “donations” that are in fact mandatory. Our suspicions are often well justified. Too many religious cults, spiritual movements, and multilevel marketing organizations end up with the people at the top getting rich, and we wonder, “Is this what it was about all along?” Bill Kauth was trying to find a way to tap into the considerable dynamism of multilevel marketing while eliminating the “greed factor,” and he says income topping was the only thing that showed any promise.

The suspicion of any good thing that “it’s actually all about someone trying to profit from me” has an internal counterpart, when we question our own motives. Again, sometimes this self-suspicion is well-founded. I have had occasions where it seemed that everything I ever did was for some base motivation; that all my gifts had been calculated attempts to impress someone or curry favor, that all my generosity was a pathetic attempt to win approval, that my every relationship was motivated by a secret scheme of profit. It seemed that I had never once in my life done something authentically generous; always I’d harbored a secret agenda of self-aggrandizement. This state of self-disgust has archetypal reverberations articulated in myth and religion. Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” comes to mind, as does John Calvin’s doctrine of the total depravity of man. In Buddhism, it is the humiliating realization of how much of one’s actions come from ego, even and especially the attempt to transcend ego!

I agree with Bill that income topping is a powerful way to eliminate the suspicion that poisons organizations and ideas that have the potential to transform lives. It operates similarly on the internal level and, by eliminating self-doubt over our motivations, lends power to our words. It affirms to ourselves and others the sincerity of our motives and frees people to accept our gifts. Bill’s vow
was a deeply personal vow, which he didn’t share with others until, decades later, he gave me permission to write of it. I thought initially that it would have been more powerful for him to share it, but upon further reflection I changed my mind. The essential energy of that vow will radiate from him whether or not he articulates it to others. Moreover, by sharing it publicly one risks the suspicion (from oneself and others) that its true motive is vanity: to look good, to win approval. Bill indicated, however, that at some point he intended to turn the concept into a community commitment, to reinforce mutual trust and interdependency.

The salutary psychological and social effects of income topping led me to think about it in the context of sacred economics, past and future. Rather than income topping, my readings about premodern cultures suggest that something more akin to “asset topping,” which I call
nonaccumulation
, was widely enforced. Recall the Alaskan tribe referenced in
Chapter 18
: the offense was not in being too successful a hunter; it was in not sharing the meat.

Nonaccumulation models hunter-gatherer societies, in which there was great abundance but no accumulation, and in which prestige went to those who gave the most. To give the most, one also had to receive the most, either from nature or from other people. The great hunter, the skilled artist or musician, the energetic, the healthy, and the lucky would have more to give. In any event, this kind of prestige is to the benefit of all. It is only when high income translates into accumulation, frivolous consumption, or socially destructive consumption that it makes sense to restrict it. In other words, the problem is not with high income; it is with the results of the income getting stuck at some point in its circulation, accumulating and stagnating.

Nonaccumulation is a conscious intention not to accumulate
more than a modest amount of assets. It is born not of the desire to be virtuous, but of the understanding that it feels much better to give than to keep, that the seeming security of accumulation is an illusion, and that excessive money and possessions burden our lives. It is deeply aligned with the spirit of the gift, of which a core principle is that the gift must circulate. Recall Mauss: “Generally, even what has been received and comes into one’s possession in this way—in whatever manner—is not kept for oneself, unless one cannot do without it.” In other words, if you need it, use it. If not, pass it on. This is such an obvious principle that even a child can understand it. Why keep something for yourself that you cannot use? It is only the “what if” that drives us to keep and hoard: What if in the future I don’t have enough? In a gift culture, what would happen is that someone would give you what you need. In a hoarding culture, the “what if” fear is self-fulfilling, creating the very conditions of vulnerability and scarcity that it assumes.

You might be thinking that since we indeed live in a hoarding culture and scarcity-inducing money system, nonaccumulation is impractical today. You might think wistfully that it would be nice if everyone else did it, but they don’t, so you’d better protect yourself. This is all very logical. I cannot offer a rational argument to refute it. All I can do is to suggest, as you read this chapter, that you notice whether something besides reason tugs at your heart. Look where reason, practicality, and playing it safe have brought us. Maybe it is time to listen to that other something.