Gift Culture

Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins talks about the culture of giving, that existed in Stone Age life, as being an expression of abundance. This is evidenced by the very fact that people shared everything they had with each other in times that we, in our modern reality, see as being a time that was extremely 'poor' with only basic survival needs being considered. And yet Stone Age Man was a giver. So why, when resources were seemingly so scarce, did he share? Because the act of giving kept the community strong and built stone age man's reputation. Being highly regarded meant that you were taken care of when times were tough. Back in the Stone Age it was important not to hoard when resources were flowing, because living as part of a group was an essential part of your survival.

Fast forward to the Black Rock Desert, home to the Burningman Festival, and a very modern take on the concept of a Gift Economy. At the festival, participants are not allowed to buy or sell anything, and must arrive with everything they need to survive for a week in the desert. But they bring more that that, and they do more than survive - they thrive. Massive art projects spring out of the dust, created by teams of volunteers, and camps with every theme imaginable are created for one week, and then disassembled and brought home, or burned right there in the desert. People meet in the middle of nowhere and share what they have with each other, taking joy in the very act of giving. Musicians play, dancers dance, artists make art; and philosophers speak, even those who are highly paid professionals in their “real” lives, at Burningman they do it without any money exchanged.

Economist Bernard Leitaer tells us “the origin of the word 'community' comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. So community literally means to give among each other.” ( from an interview with Bernard Lietaer by Sarah van Gelder). So the idea that you give within your community is built into the very entomology of the word. And yet for most people the concept of giving gifts is something you do during the holidays, and only to your close friends and family. So what has happened to this circle of giving which started at the beginning of man's cultural roots in the stone age? In some places it survives, with indigenous rituals and even Open Source Software, but it certainly isn't the norm.

The most surprising thing about the lack of giving in our culture is that most people will say it feels really good to give. So it feels really good, it builds community and it meets people's needs, and yet we don't do it. Why? Because the message that we receive from the media tells us that there just isn't enough to go around and that someone, somewhere is going to have to go without, and in order to ensure that isn't you (and your family) you should save up for a rainy day, keep your resources close in, not rely on anyone, and not give anything to anyone without getting paid. We are given the impression that to give a gift is naïve, and that people who give will be taken advantage of.

Looking back at all these successful examples of gift culture, it begs the question- what are elements that exist in these models which can be transferred into modern culture, loosening people's grip on scarcity and giving them first hand experience of how good it feels to give?

Shared Goals - Stone Age man wanted to survive, and that goal lead them to share what they have. Agrarian cultures join together and share resources to build granaries. At Burningman, camps collaborate on creative projects, and share the bigger vision of creating a temporary city in the desert. Having a shared goal means that you are likely to have shared values, and therefore you can feel good about giving your gifts.

Reputation Building - Although your gift is given without expectation of a direct exchange, if you give freely and openly to your community, your reputation will build and elevate your status. Even if you are not intentionally giving to gain reputation, the only way to avoid it is to give anonymously. If a person gives within their community, then it will inevitably lead to people having higher opinions of them.

Trust Building - Some people need to know that when they give a gift, it's received by someone who they consider to be worthy of it. They are afraid they they will be taken advantage of, and so need to build trusting relationships within their community in order to give.

Gathering Together - Giving gifts is a reason to gather, and being in a physical space together means that we can fully experience what it is to give and to receive. Community is strengthened when we celebrate together and get to know one another.

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Quotation Nation

Do magic things
that the future,
surprised, will find.
Ben Okri

End Of The Beginning

Recently,I have taken as my personal mantra the not very transcendent phrase,“I don’t know.” The list of things I feel unsure about seems to be steadily increasing. For instance, I don’t know if our solipsistic species will survive much longer, and sometimes I am not even sure how much I care.

I don’t know if Barack Obama is a warm-hearted leader who will unite people at a time of adversity, or the most brilliant puppet ever put forth by the New World Order conspirators (who, as radio journalist and documentary filmmaker Alex Jones suggests, may be plotting a program of rapid depopulation). I don’t know if the increase in UFO sightings means we are approaching a benevolent contact experience or a horrific predatory ambush. I don’t know if global warming is mainly caused by human action, or if it is part of a phase transition of the entire solar system, as the Russian scientist Dmitriev proposes.

I don’t know if men and women should be monogamous or if it is better to be bonobo-like in one’s erotic habits. I don’t know if we will develop some type of new energy technology that will rescue us from Peak Oil, or if we are destined to see industrial civilization devolve and disintegrate as fossil fuel becomes scarce. I don’t know whether to learn to grow food and harvest rainwater or to master some weird new esoteric discipline like Vortex Healing or Keylontic Science. I don’t know if free will exists, or if we are conditioned robots, performing an illusory spectacle scripted by Hindu deities or dreamtime ancestors.

I don’t know if we should get rid of religions or create a really cool new one. I don’t know whether to stockpile gold or create an intentional community. I don’t know whether to stay in a city or head for the hills. I don’t know whether we are approaching global enlightenment or regressing into barbarism. I don’t know whether biotechnology and nanotechnology will fuse to give us immortal physical bodies or if we will all croak as our mistreated planet falls apart. I don’t know if anything special will happen on December 21, 2012. I don’t know if I should start a riot or throw a party. I don’t know whether to panic or relax.

Something seems to be happening that is beyond my capacity to understand or articulate. I can only assume other people are feeling this way as well. We are witnessing the collapse of the old, rigidified structures, while the new hasn’t come into realization yet - that is, if there is going to be a new anything. A change seems to be happening at the level of logic, which is becoming less dualistic, less “either-or,” and more binary, “both-and.” Former diametric opposites are moving toward confluence, as well as dissonance, in various areas: Like tweaked out psychonauts, the physicists at CERN discuss opening portals into other dimensions. As the financial system evaporates, incredible new gizmos like Pandora and Cool Iris spread freely on the Internet.

Reality is becoming more improvisational and up-tempo. Although I don’t pretend to have certainty about it, the ideas that Jose Arguelles, Terence McKenna and others have proposed about time speeding up and going through ever-faster fractal spirals of historical pantomime - including, alas, the mass suffering usually caused by historical convulsions - seem increasingly on the mark. If we are shifting away from dualistic separation and linear logic to a binary thought marked by polarities, this also suggests a shift from the modern historical perspective to a revived mythological consciousness. Like processes in the unconscious, myth resolves oppositions through symbol and image, without need of rational explanation. A society that reintegrates mythic thought at a deeper level of awareness will be able to handle seemingly contradictory perspectives without breaking down.

I don’t know if we will live to see the birth of such a new worldview as part of a regenerated civilization, or if we only get to see the decline and fall of our current dinosaur. It does seem that ever-increasing numbers of people are done with it and ready to move on, but move on to what? Some theorists propose we have reached a point in evolution where we have the capacity to consciously co-create reality, and choose our own script for the future. Sometimes, this feels fuzzily plausible to me. On the other hand, our past actions and intentions have created the reality we experience now. It seems highly unlikely we can phase-shift to hyperspace, the fifth-dimension, or whatever it is until we have learned how to take proper care of this material world and those who share it with us. Although, maybe, I am wrong and we will get a free pass. I just don’t know.

One Man World Summit

Survival Of The Kindest

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.


In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits. They call it "survival of the kindest."

Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others. Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. The human capacity to care and cooperate is wired into particular regions of the brain and nervous system. One recent study found compelling evidence that many of us are genetically predisposed to be empathetic. It found that people with a particular variation of the oxytocin gene receptor are more adept at reading the emotional state of others, and get less stressed out under tense circumstances. Informally known as the "cuddle hormone,” oxytocin is secreted into the bloodstream and the brain; where it promotes social interaction, nurturing and romantic love among other functions.

While studies show that bonding and making social connections can make for a healthier, more meaningful life, the larger question is; "How do these traits ensure our survival and raise our status among our peers?" One answer is that, the more generous we are, the more respect and influence we wield. In one recent study, participants each received a modest amount of cash and were directed to play games of varying complexity that would benefit the "public good.” The results showed that participants who acted more generously received more gifts, respect and cooperation from their peers; as well as wielding more influence over them.

The findings suggest that anyone who acts only in his or her narrow self-interest will be shunned, disrespected, even hated. But those who behave generously with others are held in high esteem by their peers and thus rise in status. Given how much is to be gained through generosity, social scientists increasingly wonder less why people are ever generous and more why they are ever selfish. Such results validate the findings of positive psychology pioneers like Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, whose research in the early 1990's shifted away from mental illness and dysfunction; delving instead into the mysteries of human resilience and optimism.

While much of the positive psychology being studied is focused on personal fulfillment and happiness, researchers have narrowed their investigations into how it contributes to the greater societal good. For instance, to assist in and promote the rearing of emotionally literate children; many parents are turning away from materialistic or competitive activities, and rethinking what will bring their families true happiness and well-being. Parents who start consciously cultivating gratitude and generosity in their children quickly see how much happier and more resilient their children become. What is often surprising to parents is how much happier they themselves also become.

This behaviour, the sympathetic touch, is common to mammals thanks to the vagus nervous system. In another Berkeley study, two people separated by a barrier took turns trying to communicate emotions to one another by touching each other through a hole in the barrier. For the most part, participants were able to successfully communicate sympathy, love and gratitude and even assuage major anxiety. Overall, these and other findings challenge the assumption that nice guys finish last; and instead support the hypothesis that humans, if adequately nurtured and supported, tend to err on the side of compassion. This new science of altruism, and the physiological underpinnings of compassion, is finally catching up with Darwin's observations nearly 130 years ago; that sympathy is our strongest instinct.

Faith and Disbelief

When it comes to religion, believers and nonbelievers appear to think very differently. But at the level of the brain; is believing in God different from believing that the sun is a star or that 4 is an even number? While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief. Nor is it known whether religious believers differ from nonbelievers in how they evaluate statements of fact.

In the first neuroimaging study to systematically compare religious faith with ordinary cognition, UCLA and University of Southern California researchers have found that while the human brain responds very differently to religious and nonreligious propositions, the process of believing or disbelieving a statement, whether religious or not, seems to be governed by the same areas in the brain. The study also found that devout Christians and nonbelievers use the same brain regions to judge the truth of religious and nonreligious propositions. Sam Harris, who recently completed his doctoral dissertation in the lab of Mark Cohen, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, was a lead author on the study. Jonas Kaplan, a research assistant professor at the USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, was the co-lead author.

The study involved 30 adults - 15 committed Christians and 15 nonbelievers - who underwent three functional MRI (fMRI) scans while evaluating religious and nonreligious statements as "true" or "false." The statements were designed to produce near perfect agreement between the two groups during nonreligious trials (e.g., "Eagles really exist") and near perfect disagreement during religious trials (e.g., "Angels really exist"). Contrasting belief and disbelief yielded increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), an area of the brain thought to be involved in reward and in judgments of self-relevance. "This region showed greater activity whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc., or statements about ordinary facts," the authors said.

The case for belief being content-independent was further bolstered by the fact that while the trial statements accepted by religious believers were rejected by nonbelievers, and vice versa, the brains of both showed the same pattern of activity for belief and disbelief. A comparison of all religious with all nonreligious statements suggested that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation and cognitive conflict in both believers and nonbelievers, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks. Activity in the brain's anterior cingulate cortex, an area associated with cognitive conflict and uncertainty, suggested that both believers and nonbelievers experienced greater uncertainty when evaluating religious statements.

The study raises the possibility that the differences between belief and disbelief may one day be reliably distinguished by neuroimaging techniques. "Despite vast differences in the underlying processing responsible for religious and nonreligious modes of thought," the authors write, "the distinction between believing and disbelieving a proposition appears to transcend content. These results may have many areas of application - ranging from the neuropsychology of religion, to the use of 'belief-detection' as a surrogate for 'lie-detection,' to understanding how the practice of science itself, and truth-claims generally, emerge from the biology of the human brain."

Harris is the author of two New York Times best-sellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation which have been published in more than 15 languages, and is the co-founder and CEO of The Reason Project. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Times of London, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic and many other journals. Other authors on the study included Cohen, Susan Bookheimer and Marco Iacoboni of UCLA; and Ashley Curiel of Pepperdine University. The authors report no conflict of interest.