I know a lot of people looking for community and gift economy resources right now, so I’d like to share a few things I’ve found with you:
http://shareable.net/
which is a website FULL of information about gifting, sharing, community, and freely available resources of every variety.
http://communiteach.com/ is about how to reach out in your area and teach or learn something. I know a few people working on this idea on a smaller, more personal scale, and I’m so excited to see these resources developing.
http://timebanks.org/ is a way for communities to get together and barter resources and time.
knowing these larger resources exist gives me a bit of hope: that perhaps we really are learning to value connection and community over monetary gain on a larger, cultural scale.
I wish so much that I was a better writer, better at articulation; I see so much going on right now that is addressing the desires that I have to find more and better ways for us to connect to other people and I want to be able to clearly, loudly, celebrate and champion these ideas! I really believe that here, too, is a role for making … for craft, artwork, and aesthetics to tighten this connection between people.
I’m still working on it.
but for now you should have this:
Life is pretty bleak at the top too — and all of the baubles of the rich… they’re kind of this phony compensation for the loss of what’s really important: the loss of community, the loss of connection, the loss of intimacy, the loss of meaning. Everybody wants to live a life of meaning, and today we live in a money economy where we don’t really depend on the gifts of anybody, but we buy everything. Therefore we don’t really need anybody because whoever grew my food or made my clothes or built my house — well if they died or if I alienate them — if they don’t like me, that’s okay, I can just pay somebody else to do it. It’s really hard to create community if the underlying knowledge is … we don’t need each other. Some people kinda get together and act nice or maybe they consume together but joint consumption doesn’t create intimacy — only joint creativity and gifts create intimacy and connection.
