Our transdisciplinary study in Senior School this term is Eco-Civics, at the moment we are exploring alternatives to the market economy including Doughnut Economics, De-growth and The Gift Economy.
Pan-dora, authentically translates to the Giver of all Gifts. When we think of gifts, we might want them to be some version of peace, kindness and happiness. Yet the story generally told is in lifting the lid of the jar, tumbling and spiralling outward go every strife for all times. Shifting the lens; what if hope, as the quality that remains in the jar, is the wild card, the one that is shape-shifter and transformer? What if it is the very quality we need to transform the poly-strife of our layered lives and in the process, find collective purpose and grace. What if one’s sense of belonging and wellbeing is deeply embedded in relationships where strife is where we deal with difficulties and the unpredictable, for how we transform individually and at a society level, together with our more than human world?
It seems we find ourselves at every turn entangled in the narrative of the western, global, capitalist market economy, where scarcity and competition are currencies of harm on steroids. It’s hard to see the alternatives such as doughnut economics and de-growth economics happening any time soon at scale, but why wait for that?
In our studies this week, we were exploring the tangible but underappreciated thread of what is known as the Gift Economy. Robin Wall Kimmerer in The Serviceberry, speaks of gratitude and connection as the currency of a gift economy. It is one based on indirect reciprocity where we give from our excess (goods and capacities), knowing that in the web of mutually sustaining and interdependent relationships, other things are flowing toward us.
In times of crisis, whether it be personal or collective, friends and neighbours help one another, lean into generosity, celebrating the small joys; building trust, resilience and the sense of belonging in their community. Kimmerer speaks of a radical (to the root) act of undermining and resisting the monolith market economy through a plethora of conscientiously cultivated local networks of generosity and care, the gift economy in practise not just for emergency but for ongoing security and wellbeing.
Through this lens, Pan-dora’s transformative gift of hope, is the restorative that shows the way to turn strife, chaos and calamity into a multitude of small exchanges where wealth is wellbeing. It’s personal and its mutual. It includes caring for Country as Country cares for us.
As I write this, the luscious bounty of colourful fallen leaves skirt the roots of deciduous trees. In our School, at this time of year, the younger children go to local parks, to rake up leaves (and play in them) for our annual biodynamic compost making. Others collect poo from a neighbour’s horse paddock, muck out the chicken coop or pull a harvest of “weeds”. When the collecting is done, the story of transformation begins with gratitude for the gifts of sun and stars that are magically seeded into the biodynamic preparations. We work with earth and sky to build a compost pile of muck and smiles, and secrets of the universe that will feed the soil of our fruit trees, which will be nourishment for birds, bees and children. This also is gift economy accompanied with song!
