The Giving Culture
“Like Shel Silverstein’s concept alluded to in “The Giving Tree” there are aspects of culture that are dedicated to giving rather than exploiting or acquiring power. Imagine an entire culture emerging from within the belly of our narcissistic capitalism. This culture is a culture of giving, of selfless compassion and helping, not because we are of any religion or law, but just because it is who we are.“
The quote above is a gift to this article, which is apt since this idea—itself—begins with a gift. Since this gift is a new culture for humanity — a Culture of Givers, this gift also contains the concept of a gift within itself. Just as the seeds of life contain the ability to eventually create their own seeds of life. This culture is also a gift to Life, and since you are a being infused with the essence of life, it is a gift to you. Like all gifts you may accept or reject it; it is your decision. Your have the right to decline it, or to receive it, to disbelieve it, to believe it. It is your choice — your freedom. Do with it what you will.
As this article is published, this Giving Culture already exists amongst us. Yet for now, we are small and fragile. It may be too early for our idea, just as democracy seemed premature in the fifth and sixth centuries when appeared in ancient Greece and India. Even so, those early democracies paved the way forward for more mature democracies, with checks and balances, universal suffrage, racial and gender equality and other enabling features allowing human beings to enjoy the greatest amount of freedom since the dawn of civilization.
Like any new idea, our early culture of Givers holds the potential to be a seed that grows into a new way for humanity and life to interact. It offers the promise of undoing the damage that has been done to the Earth, of finding a new respectful relationship with the life on this planet, and as a way of creating, for ourselves, a world that is exciting, rewarding, new, beautiful and full of richness and freedom. This new culture exists, in part, to displace—but not replace—the Culture of Consumers currently dominating the planet; our goal is to cooperate with them, yet to limit the destruction that they are causing to the Earth. It proposes the eventual transformation of society — from a majority of takers to a majority of givers.
What is a Giving Culture?
One of the simplest explanations of a culture could be stated as a shared way of living. A Giving Culture is simply a framework for a way of living that heavily supports creativity and discovery. Composed of creators and seekers who share and give their creations and discoveries freely amongst others, our new culture celebrates our creativity, freely shares our discoveries, and wishes for our gifts to spread onwards. This sharing, of knowledge, art, inspiration and discovery, is an enabling force for all members of our culture, pushing the limits of what we can do and what we can know. Since it is an open culture, we allow and encourage all beings to join regardless of what is currently seen as gender, race, class or beliefs. As regards to beliefs, each member is encouraged to seek and create a customized belief and personal subculture, to try it and test it and alter it if necessary. This is ultimately a culture, not an ideology or a religion, and even more than most cultures, we are able to support a variety of ideas and beliefs — and even encourage and celebrate this diversity.
As instruments of this arising Giving Culture, we are more interested in expanding our knowledge and experience than acquiring material goods. Material goods are not shunned, but used simply for what they are and are shared whenever the opportunity arises. We come together, in centralized locations to learn and share knowledge. We seek knowledge anywhere we can, whether from their own members, or from members and institutions of the Consumer Culture, from direct experience, or from the dwindling populations of Hunter-Gatherer societies that still exist.
Our culture is also rooted in the laws of cooperation. It considers, as recent mathematics suggest, that generally cooperation is often a superior, more stable strategy to competition, especially in the long-term. Cooperation is encouraged, amongst ourselves, amongst other cultures and amongst life itself.
Givers wish to create more than they consume. Whether we create stories, paintings, ideas, music, poems, sculptures, connections, meditations, dances, teachings, structures, jokes, families, communities or many other forms—we create and share with whom we can. With members of the Consumer Culture, we do as members of the Consumer Culture already do, trading our creations for currency. In turn, we use currency to help better the world. Our finances are used to create films, books, games, software, scientific research, inventions, crafts, art, music and creative corporate entities to help produce goods, that contain low material costs, to be sold for a profit to consumers. Our profits are then used to help buy and protect wildlife reserves that are given freely to the collective life on Earth.
A Giving Culture, through sharing of resources, respects life and holds a cooperative spirit, tending to leave a small footprint on the Earth. We organize ourselves together to pool and share resources that do not need to be purchased by each individual. By doing so, we can use our time and money more wisely furthering our communities and ourselves. Since we use less of the Earth’s resources, the Giving lifestyle helps to lessen environmental destruction. It also allows for the possibility of more free time for each individual. Members of the Giving Culture can opt to work less to live well and spend the rest of our time creating, discovering, learning new skills and experiencing the beauty and richness of life.
In a more primordial, unorganized form, a Giving Culture is starting to emerge amongst some scientists, artists and engineers of this world. The scientific world is full of cases, in which great, valuable discoveries or inventions are given back to the world community. There have been many scientific breakthroughs—shared freely by those that made the discoveries—that have resulted in many advances and technologies used daily. If counted, the sum of the riches that these advances have given us would be immeasurable.
The inventions and discoveries of scientists are often ones that shape us the most, and although corporations privately hold many discoveries, there are many others that are freely given to the academic world. In the world of computer software, members of the Open Source Software Movement echo many of the key tenets of a Ginging Culture. In this movement, programmers, testers, web designers, and artists, work together, cooperating to create software that is given to the world for free. From doing so, they gain experience, knowledge, friendships, connections, esteem and many other benefits. Even with such, non-monetary rewards, it is often found that their true calling is to create, to collaborate, to discover, to step up to new challenges and have fun in the process. Likewise, this is a calling that we adamantly share in.
Although there is no clear, compelling evidence that life—or the human experience—is endowed with any special purpose beyond simple survival, we, as creators and seekers, cannot idly accept this to be the final verdict. We, as creators, can give life a purpose: to seek and create… ad infinity.
It is not that we assert that this is life’s true purpose, we assume that — unless revealed to be otherwise — life may not have a purpose. Despite this possibility, we do not suppose that we are prevented from endowing life with our own created purpose. Since we continuously seek and discover, we are not prevented from discovering any possible purpose, if it truly exists.
Even if a grand purpose to life does hold to be true, we would try to test and seek the entire depths of what that might mean to us. And as we create and discover, we share. We Give.