Gifting: Solutions for financial crisis

“Contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.”– Charles Eisenstein, Money and the Crisis of Civilization

This whole issue of ‘financial crisis’ has affected so many brothers and sisters on our side of the world.  For me, it has been a bit perplexing.  It seems like a catch-22.  We have destroyed the environment, Gaia, which we were so dependent on.  The limited resources, unable to be converted into revenue is connected to the economic crash.  Our health (or I would say sickness) has been commodified-  for something that most traditional cultures knew inherently, we have now replaced and become dependent on drugs.  Because drugs don’t grow in the woods, we can charge outrageous amounts of money for them… and hence, as Eisenstein notes, we are “richer”.  The most perplexing to me is the divorcing of economic prosperity from healthy individuals and a healthy environment! How can we think about our health separate from our co-dependents? We are most definitely in a health and environmental crisis but I don’t see that on the front page of any newspaper!

Reading this article, I had the thought, that gifting is the solution! We have had this crash because the economy relies on commodifying the non-commodifiables.  Wouldn’t it be great if we understood that the most valuable things (health, environment, fresh air, clean water, good food, etc) are not always quantifiable in terms of GDPs and monetary gain.  We hope that we can play our small part in “creating something beautiful”… and that by sharing our gifts, we are helping to step outside of that catch-22.  Power to the Gift Economy!!!

Also, check out other thoughts on this article…

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