Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on June 8, 2026 | 25 Comments
In this post I reflect on the main things I think will be necessary for ‘surviving the future’, to channel David Fleming. The post was prompted by comments under my last one, especially ones by Kathryn, Steve C and Walter. I was going to write my own comment underneath in reply, but I thought it warranted a somewhat lengthier treatment.
At a high level of generality, I’d suggest on the back of those comments that fundamentally people need to attend to four things in navigating the collapse of our present high-energy, stable-climate, urban-industrial edifice:
At an even higher level of generality, I’d suggest these four things become two:
I’ll elaborate briefly.
Skills of practical livelihood-making, by which I mean the ability to produce food and fire, shirts and shelter, and so on and so on. These skills mostly have to be learned from other people – hence this is basically a relationship thing.
Physical capital – but livelihood-making ability also requires physical capital. In addition to the requisite know-how it typically involves applying human energy (or that of other organisms, or energy of some other kind) to some physical thing to turn it into something more useful. For example, to produce food you usually need access to some land and soil. The land and soil are things, while your access to them depends on human relationships. Energy availability beyond human/organic physical capacity (which themselves are physical thing or forms of capital) will be less in the future than at present, so a lot of rethinking is required here.
Human relationships – their importance in general surely doesn’t require further comment, but I want to expand on a specific aspect that I was driving at when I wrote “existing structures don’t really allow us to focus on the kind of cooperations that we need to figure out”. Kathryn replied “I think soft skills are moderately transferable”. Yes agreed, and learning the soft skills of managing relationships well (which is hard, not soft!) are a vital and underemphasised aspect of surviving the future.
But to elaborate on what I meant by the ‘cooperations we need to figure out’, I find that too much contemporary discourse is dominated by two over-simplifications of modernist politics and one over-simplification of anti-modernist politics. In combination, they block a lot of the thinking and institution-building that we need to put in place to survive the future well, or at all.
The three over-simplifications are (1) versions of communism/collectivism (we need to abolish private property and organise society on collective lines!) (2) versions of individualism (we need to give people free rein to pursue their own interest and let the invisible hand of the market do the co-ordination!) (3) a version of the ‘gift economy’ (we need to give freely without expectation of return and let the invisible hand of people’s inherent goodness do the co-ordination!)
For reasons I’ve discussed often enough before, both (1) and (2) lead to disaster, while attempts to combine them into a middle ground of some kind also lead to disaster by a slightly longer route, which is roughly where we are now.
In relation to (3), I’ve just started re-reading Marcel Mauss’s classic anthropological analysis of gift economies, first published in 1925. Mauss begins by quoting some verses from the Havamal, otherwise known as ‘Sayings of the High One’ from the Norse Poetic Edda. I’ll quote here a few lines from his longer excerpt, using a more recent translation by Carolyne Larrington, which lays things out a bit more clearly:
With weapons and gifts friends should gladden one another, those which can be seen on them;*
mutual givers and receivers are friends for longest,
if the friendship keeps going well
To his friend a man should be a friend
and repay gifts with gifts;
laughter men should accept with laughter
but return deception for a lie.
* [Translator’s note] those which can be seen on them: the sense seems to be that presents which can be shown off by wearing them on the body will be best received1
Parsing some key words and phrases from this, I’d emphasise ‘mutual givers and receivers’, ‘if it keeps going’, ‘repay’, ‘laughter for laughter: deception for a lie’, and ‘showing off’. Mauss’s summary is as follows: “In Scandinavian civilization, and a good number of others, exchanges and contracts are made in the form of a gift, in theory voluntary, in reality obligatorily given and received”2.
I won’t dwell on all this much further right now, but generally I think we need to pay more attention to what gift economies have really been like outside the modern world of collectivism/individualism or communism/capitalism – not a world in which things were usually given with no expectation of return (an illusion that can probably only be sustained within the modern world and its legacies of communism and capitalism), but a world in which things were given with definite expectation of return, albeit often not a return that’s easily intelligible to modern thinking.
Figuring out such gift economies (real gift economies – not ones based on just giving stuff away) in a collapse or post-collapse scenario seems to me of great importance. But it’s hard to do, and I’m not seeing much creative thinking about it finding its way into most current discussions. It would be good to get ahead of the game. We can learn from the past (and present), but only if we abandon the collectivism – individualism – free-gift optic.
Kathryn makes a good point about the importance of local relationships and a kind of situated knowledge about them that can be called upon in times of difficulty. I fully agree this is important. What I’m emphasizing here, though, is a need not just for the somewhat random pros and cons of the various people in our lives, but for structuring the wider flow of relationships and things in local post-collapse communities more systematically. If you need some garden seeds, or if you need a garden, and your friends can’t help you, how will that work?
Media of economic exchange – One way that such structuring works is through the whole array of relationships described by words like economics, markets, exchange, trade, commerce, and money.
Walter writes:
The last time I suggested that people buy silver coins, I got quite a bit of pushback from rigid thinkers who cannot think outside their particular ideology …. If you are serious about “finding light in a dark age” and “the path ahead,” you just might want to ask yourself this question. “How in the hell am I going to do commerce in this new Dark Age?” Airy-fairy nonsense of growing all your food or not using any kind of money are right up there with a world-wide Kumbaya Moment in the Sunlit Uplands. You will need some currency alongside barter.
I agree with that. Guess I’d prefer a more collegial tone, but to be fair I also explicitly invoked the dangers of Kumbaya thinking in Finding Lights, and effectively I did it again in my comments above about gift economies.
Anyway, yes I agree it’s a good idea to think about how commerce can happen in a new Dark Age, and what the media of economic exchange might be. Economics isn’t particularly my thing, but my first blush thinking about this in response to Walter’s comments is as follows:
First, although currency can be a physical thing (e.g. silver, salt, grain, whisky, shells and feathers, to pick a few historical examples) and it’s often a means of effecting action in relation to physical things, at its core it’s all human relationship. In that sense, all currencies are fiat currencies.
Second, and given the preceding, the alternative means of exchange to currency is credit, which is based on reputation – personal or institutional, local or non-local. Sometimes, too much emphasis on currency can undermine reputation, which might be a more important basis for commerce.
So, third, yes bet hedging is a good idea, especially in a situation of an emerging Dark Age. But the nature of the beast is that it’s hard to know in advance what will turn out to be a good bet. Maybe silver coins, or maybe not.
Fourth, accumulating silver coins may be a good bet as an individual strategy. The more people that reach this conclusion, the higher the price of silver coins, and the less promising for many people will be the calculation on the napkin that Walter mentions. What then matters is reputation, which may or may not turn out to be strongly proportionate to one’s holdings in silver or whatever one’s other bets are. Walter’s remark about the bandit as fool in the Seven Samurai is relevant to this. So are the associations in various political cosmologies (e.g. European and Indian) between the king, the fool and the bandit as different versions of the same political personality.
Fifth, the amount of economic action that can be sustained through bullion is far less than is sustained through credit in the existing global economy. That’s not something to worry about overly in an emerging Dark Age situation of precipitous economic contraction, but perhaps it concentrates the mind on what matters most in this situation: the rapidly changing and unpredictable nature of human relationships and reputation, more than any particular punt on how to objectify human relationships into a specific means of exchange like silver.
Sixth, bullion currencies are creatures of centralized states and scarcely exist without them. John Tutino argues in his interesting book The Mexican Heartland that the modern capitalist world system was principally forged in the silver mines of sixteenth century Mexico, with a dual flow of silver first from Mexico to Spain and thence Europe and its peripheries more widely, and second likewise from Mexico to China. It seems to me easier to understand the importance of bullion in an expanding global economy of strengthening state actors than in a contracting one of weakening state actors.
Seventh, it may nevertheless be that in a coming world of regional strife differing currencies are settled in gold among the BRICS nations. Or it may not. Whatever the case, it seems likely there will be states for a long time to come trying to orchestrate their national economies in respect of each other. And there will be individual people, families and households trying to orchestrate their much more circumscribed economies in respect of each other too, as well as in respect of wider state action. The two levels are different, and I suspect increasingly so in an emerging Dark Age situation. How bullion will operate at each level is beyond my ken. My guess is that, as in the past, most of the bullion will be in the hands of very few actors, and it will probably give them a lot of power. But how much power in relation to those without, and how power will manifest and be objectified among those without seems to me hard to say.
Eighth, in summary I think Walter is right to emphasise the wisdom of bet hedging. Buying silver is one way to do that. I think it’s also wise to hedge any bet one makes on silver.
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I’ll briefly note how the focus and content of the blog has shifted in recent times from things a bit pastoral and homestead planning to more stark survival and prep for incipient hard times.
(Oh they were and are both part of the mix, but my impression is that emphasis has shifted, and rightly so).
Anyway, along the lines of this post, I have to say I’ve tried to understand the phenomenon of the potlatch culture in our Pacific Northwest, and I’m darned if I can see more to it than just one more quirky way humans have settled on to organize themselves. To say it is a gift culture is way too simple and let’s not forget there was slavery, contentious relations, and other less than desirable things to learn from or emulate.
And I read precious little on how the practice might have improved or organized wealth generation in the first place.
But with your unique mix of professions and avocations, what are your thoughts, Chris?
This paper from 2025 suggests that “the Potlatch economically served as a substitute for a widely circulated medium of exchange or a formal credit system” and that “sustained gift-giving norms can enable societies to overcome growth- and productivity-restricting barter frictions in a manner similar to that of money and credit.”
*Reciprocity* (in contrast with no-strings-attached gifting or trade/barter) is evidently an important part of the potlatch system of gift-giving networks.
The paper argues that “potlatch ceremonies enhanced and improved the social memory of societies that did not utilize written language, for example, through the dramatic retelling of past events. This social memory presumably facilitates the detection (and, therefore, the deterrence) of potential free riders, allowing for gift-giving networks that would not otherwise be possible. These large, elaborate networks can increase the attractiveness of *specialization* [emphasis added], which in turn facilitates the creation of wealth, abundance, and relatively high living standards as seen along the Pacific Northwest.”
The Potlatch as Memory: Ceremony and Gift-Giving along the Pacific Northwest
Casey Pender, Till Gross
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5297516
~~~~~~~~~~
“Before European contact, the Indigenous Nations along the Pacific Northwest were among North America’s most prosperous and densely populated societies. They accumulated wealth through specialization [!] and long-term capital investment [both physical and human], which afforded them significant leisure time and fostered a vibrant arts and culture scene. Part of what made these affluent societies so unique is that they were able to obtain all this despite not adopting a widely circulated medium of exchange or formal credit system. Instead, they primarily distributed goods through gift-giving networks during the potlatch – a sophisticated cultural institution involving feasts and dramatic recounting of history through song, dance, and performative art…”
“This paper introduces a decentralized exchange model to help explain how potlatching—encompassing both its ceremonial elements and gift-giving norms—may have supported economic development in the Pacific Northwest. Thus, we suggest that the Potlatch economically served as a substitute for a widely circulated medium of exchange or a formal credit system. Put differently, sustained gift-giving norms can enable societies to overcome growth- and productivity-restricting barter frictions in a manner similar to that of money and credit…”
“Our findings, therefore, challenge historical Western perceptions by demonstrating that potlatch ceremonies can increase wealth and social welfare. Additionally, our model highlights how geographic and cultural proximity shape participation in gift-giving networks, with barter becoming more prevalent among distant communities…”
“While reciprocity tended to dominate economic relationships along the Pacific Northwest, potlatch communities also maintained extensive trade/barter networks that stretched far into the continent’s interior with distant Nations. The Tlingit (who potlatched), for instance, commonly bartered with those living in the Athabaskan hinterland (who didn’t potlatch), and similarly Chinookans with Plateau Sahaptins (Suttles, 1968)…”
“Early writers such as Suttles (1968) held the viewpoint that, to the extent the Pacific Northwest was wealthy, it was because of serendipitous natural conditions. In that case, the potlatch would be a consequence of this lucky draw of the environment, rather than a contributing factor to wealth and specialization.”
“Yet, the best evidence available today suggests that the wealth on the coast was not “just there,” but was instead created over time. According to Johnsen (2001, 2009, 2016, 2024), the peoples of the Pacific Northwest should be rightly considered as “salmon ranchers” due to their purposeful husbandry and selective breeding…”
“Complementarity between Gift-Giving and Specialization — Anthropologists and historians have long noted that specialization was uniquely high along the Pacific Northwest by North American standards in pre-colonization times (Hageman, 2024; Le Dressay et al., 2010; Tulo Centre, 2014). In fact, there is a remarkably tight and positive correlation between Nations that frequently potlatched and Nations with exceptionally high degrees of specialization (Prentiss, 2023). Much of the pre-colonial specialization within potlatching communities involved the ocean through boat building, fishing, marine mammal hunting, and mariculture. Along with wooden boat building, specialists in carpentry, woodworking, and home building were common in potlatching communities as well…”
“Thus, we see ample evidence that potlatch cultures purposefully generated and accumulated their wealth over time through specialization, various methods of capital investment (both physical and human), and resource management practices.”
Potlatching seems to have been practiced for a couple thousand years, while capitalism (with the use of accumulated capital to enlarge productive capacity) has only been around since the 16th century.
According to the paper linked above, anthropological evidence suggests that “potlatching had taken place for thousands of years before any European contact”.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “capitalism as a system dates only from the 16th century”, and “the feature of this development that distinguished capitalism from previous systems was the use of accumulated capital to enlarge productive capacity rather than to invest in economically unproductive enterprises, such as pyramids and cathedrals.”
https://www.britannica.com/money/capitalism
The origins of capitalism can be pushed back to the 15th century with Portuguese colonisation if Madeira. They established sugar plantations using African slaves for labour. The sugar industry collapsed due to the deforestation of Madeira, the lumber being used to fuel the refining of the sugar. The collapse gave an extra push to Portuguese exploration and colonisation of the African west coast, followed by the east coast and across the Indian ocean and south east Asia.
IIRC colonisation of Madeira was in 1420, so colonial version of capitalism could be dated from then.
Fascinating article relating to African kinship society:
“the glue that holds together kinship society is the occasional immolation of built-up wealth.”
https://davidoks.blog/p/how-funerals-keep-africa-poor?utm_source=direct&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer&triedRedirect=true
Thanks to you, Steve and Simon, for more descriptions of the potlatch and kinship patterns. I guess my brain is too westernized, I still think there must be another way. I’m still very slowly getting comfortable with the informal barter or trading help here with my neighbors, but we’re all just winging it, and I always am worrying that I might short them because of my bad memory.
I imagine at some point I’ll be overtaken by events and learn more in a hurry, but till then……
If you need some garden seeds, or if you need a garden, and your friends can’t help you, how will that work?
It kindof depends on the context, but… other gardeners are offering me seeds and plants all the time, and vice versa. And I collect seeds from wild plants and plants in parks (which are not exactly wild, I think they sit somewhere between a managed commons and an intensive garden). And I currently have responsibility for more garden than I have time to tend, despite my lack of land ownership. So this is an amusing question for me, because I always end up with more seed than I can really use.
If I need a thing I don’t have and I haven’t happened across a discarded one (most recently: an ironing board for altar linens at church), I ask my friends, and if they don’t have it they ask their friends. Eventually I will find someone who knows someone who knows a guy (or a gal or a they, I’m not fussy.)
Will the “I know a guy” system work differently in a supersedure context, one where we’re not drowning in the ridiculous quantity of plastic doohickeys generated by consumerist crapitalism? I expect so. If I need a tumour removed or a broken bone set then I might to need to know a different group of people than if I just didn’t quite plant enough potatoes but have a surplus of linden tea.
Reputation, I think, is very important here. If I have that surplus of linden tea and time to sit and chat and drink a pot of it with someone once or twice a week and it means I can help out someone who is really struggling with, say, anxiety after a traumatic bereavement, there’s an even chance that if I do need a broken bone seen to, someone will help me out. And if the bonesetter doesn’t need any linden tea, or anything that I have in surplus, maybe someone else in my community will. This isn’t necessarily a gift economy in the traditional sense (though I haven’t studied enough anthropology to be precise in my definitions; forgive me), but maybe it helps to think of it in terms of a network or ecology of care.
I think it can be difficult to systematize some of this stuff in terms of keeping track of exactly who has done what for whom and when, because the context of such kindnesses is always slightly uneven. I’ve certainly had experience of conversations that were just a normal Tuesday for someone else and which were hugely important to me in recovering a sense of who I am and whose I am after a major setback.
While certain material things are abundant in this part of the world at present (that is, if you have the money for them, and if they are what is mass produced for consumer markets), I think it’s also important to recognise just how much the current structure and mechanism of concentration of wealth makes it harder to participate in these more informal, care-based networks, because most people are too tired after working enough to pay their rent and buy their groceries to really explore the full potential of caring for one another.
Currency can, of course, be instrumental in these networks of care: I am able to do the voluntary work I do at church because my spouse earns enough to support us (…alongside my contribution to groceries). Sometimes the best way I can care for someone who is far away is to send them some money so they can purchase food or buy a new coat. But currency cannot be a member of a network of care, and as you rightly point out, at root it only works because of relationship. Very often in this “too much month left at the end of the money” context it feels as if currency defines our context, frames the environment in which we try to build our small refugia, but I think there is a strong argument that it is not currency which is at fault there but the type of relationship revealed by the currency and the systems we have created in which it functions.
This makes currency different from, say, land or place, but I have had too much linden tea to be able to articulate what I mean very well…
I think we are already on two divergent paths , those with energy and those without , on one side you have the USA and Russia , on the other you have everyone else , south America and Africa are all in difficulty with energy supply and are being out bid , east Asia and Europe comes next , with failing economies that can’t stand $100 oil ( after the Hormuz debacle is over TX oil men expect $20 A barrel oil for a while as demand distruction works its way out ) , China will probably be able to out bid everyone for mid east oil for a time . If the mid east starts demanding payment in gold that will sort the men from the boys .
With Europe’s industrial base imploding and its government declared hatred for farmers Europe is in trouble , without cheap energy , cheap food imports from south America and Africa stall , there are farms and ranches in Brazil larger than most English counties the 2000 mile salad looks ” local ” compared to south America .
Money is money by mutual agreement , gold and silver were agreed on because of ease of transport and value you sell a ton of grain in august and accept silver , then buy a ton of potatoes in October and pay in silver . All crops are not ready at the same time some kind of intermediary has to be agreed on .
IMHO society was destroyed by TV , I went to village hall dances , high days and holiday get togethers , you knew near everyone within 20 miles , you lent machinery and workers when needed and got them back when needed , you also knew those that took advantage or were ” shady ” . ten years with no media and you will be back in my childhood !
As Mauss says plainly about gift economies and Chris reinforces, gift economies are about obligations. But this obligation is group to group, not individual to individual. In a capitalistic/imperialistic society where that group obligation has been scraped away, people cannot even think that way anymore. So how do we implement it? We start by giving things away on an individual level to shift the paradigm in each individual. Then we may be able to implement that group to group communication/obligation sometime in the future. Thus my experiments over the last several years. I have explained this many times and I thought I had done so with this group of people.
Even individual gift-giving incurs a sense of obligation and it has been instructive to see how this plays out. People don’t feel uncomfortable getting a lot of free stuff, but they are puzzled. So they end up dropping off bottles of wine or jams or other extra foodstuffs. They also have a tendency not to question the price if I sell them a used lawnmower or bicycle.
Greetings.
An interesting topic, in my region, a toloka was widespread, for joint unpaid work of arduous or long work, I don’t think anyone has not heard of it. There were also specific “helps”: the first plow went to the widow’s field (this was done by neighbors or relatives), the father and sons worked to earn materials for the eldest son’s house, and called the toloka to the construction, treating everyone to snacks and vodka every day, and on the last day they slaughtered a pig, the father’s house remained for the youngest son. The community gave no one’s houses and land to orphans or the poor, the tradition of honoring parents (parents in the broader sense of older relatives and godparents) was determined by visiting and treating them at home and giving gifts, helping with the household. Fishermen or hunters always brought a share to widows and orphans.
In a broader sense, a gift was determined by extortion. They give when they need help, when they need something from someone. You never say it, but simply generously treat or invite them to visit, give valuable products or items, share what you have purchased or made. The person you gifted or treated remembers the event and connects it with their recent event of receiving something in large quantities (brought salt (imports), a rich harvest, received honey, or even a daughter ready for marriage, etc.) and is interested in what the giver wants. Often the giver can complain about the difficulty of something that the has friend. In case of refusal, such a person was cursed and insulted for a long time until he brought an apologetic gift or invited to a feast. Often people had nothing to give and were given work. For example, a brother first helps his father, brother and son-in-law dig potatoes or collect hay, and only then collects it for himself, this is an unconditional service, do it for relatives, and elders, receive from younger or younger people, etc. Often brothers and relatives themselves came to help the younger for his help, but not always. If they did not help, then they had to thank in another way, with a gift or other help.
therefore, a big gift has always transformed into a big job for the donor’s team 🙂
Regarding money and economic exchange: of course, there will be some “money”, but it is not a fact that many people will use it due to physical accessibility. At the grassroots level, there is also a simple relational obligation, an agreed equivalent. It is not about earning a penny, but about receiving a service or a thing. Although it is difficult to determine the equivalent in labor for shoeing a horse or a sack of grain, this is exactly what people did, mowing, stacking, carrying, chopping, digging and giving milk and eggs for a certain period of time or a certain number of things equivalent. Elementary – I owe you. In addition, they also established shares received from labor: from grinding grain or pressing oil, from caught fish or slaughtered pigs. In addition, there was a loan for servicing a tool or device, in case of breakage or refusal to return, because of gossip and discussion in the village no one will ever lend anything to someone.
There are many ways to organize a system, you just need to communicate and agree.
About the money, your excelent comment lead me to thinking that you need money only for exchange with distant actors, with someone for whom “I owe you” means nothing.
And it is true that in this sense buying silver makes some sense.
When you will be able to pay salt or clothing merchant for stuff for whole village, it can create you some starting buffer for more local life.
We can then go to debate if you will become target of some violent actors or what you friends around will think about it, but it goes to completely different thinking about security situation and so …
I have few thoughts to this theme and I try to present them in structured way.
First I find important the name, still for some time the path ahead will be determined by economy and not any practical skills and material stuff. Yes, we are heading to dark times, but as important is from where we are heading there, and at least in the north-west it will influence the path and end point very much.
So preparing for some distant point need to take in consideration also the path which leads there, preparing for the stay on top of mountain is very different if there is not so steep long path or climbing rough one.
And for me this is often missing in the collapse talk.
So in the economic sense I think we should focus on how to survive the present, so we can get to the dark times and then survive the future on the place best for it and with the best skills. And it means to be active in our local communities and small politics now. Do not flee to online zoom conversations with like minded, if you are not planning to move to physical proximity, and engage in the slow hard work on the physical place where you are. Plan you daily economic life so it can sustain you and your closest ones and move (or stay) in the place you believe is viable in long time. (It does not need to be sooo long time as Tom Murphy suggest, but at least hundred years :-)).
I am not big believer in learning practical things because of my life history. I am small farmer, builder now, we are having most farm animals kinds you can imagine, we are growing all crops except grain, we are quite into textiles and looms and weaving, I have build barns, did solar and electricity and water management. But I came to this without any specific skills as city person (master in sociology and economy and work in computers) in my 30th with few books about this and open mind and ready to do stuff and solve things. And I have learned all this by doing it, by solving situations when they arise and finding answers for real current questions.
So what I see around as acquiring the skills needed often misses the point. When you do not know the questions you need to solve, there is no way how to get the answers. And the questions are very local and specific to place.
So yes, the future will need new skills, but humans with their brains are ready to learn them when they will be needed in so much faster way then now. And also remember them. I learned German for 15 years, and I can understand something, but I learned English for much shorter, but as I use it often it is now much better. What you do not use, gets forgotten and lost.
On the other way I am fan of physical capital. There is so much things which are needed for the physical life, which are so much more accessible now then never before. And I speak mainly about hoes and clothing and basic machinery as plow or so, not wind turbines or computers. And some of those things have working life of 50-80 years with proper maintenance so well into dark times. And they are less prone to theft then silver or gold.
In current city life people tend to forget the capital and means of production because they are delivered everything just in time and the only thing you need is money (credit card these days). So all this obscures the importance of means of production and when you start your physical life this changes a lot.
So for me getting the right stuff in quite big numbers is important. And it differs from skills in the sense that it can not be transferred easily in time of physical scarcity. And I can tell you that borrowing farm machinery is hard even now, when it is readily available, and I would say not possible in time of scarcity (when you have nothing to offer in reciprocity).
Yes, gift economy, I fully agree with Chriss that this is quite twisted in today’s debate and I believe it is product of the complete abundance of everything in north-west. When you have given something you really missed last time ? Something what you were using often and when you give it to somebody you need to change your life, even slightly ?
So saying gift when you get rid of unused unnecessary replaceable stuff is not gift. And it also refers to time these days, when we are fully cared of, when somehow having enough money.
What for me the gift economy referred in the past times and can mean in the future is some bigger circle of reciprocity without specific price of every transaction. It was very complex barter in some closed physical environment with stable actors.
In our middle Europe environment in past most of the kin households were sustainable for basic survival, you did not trust anybody for your basic survival, which is quite understandable and fair from my point of view. In this very basics you used cooperation only were completely needed, in here it was for example grain harvest, where neighbors provided work to each other in short period of time. The cooperation was much bigger in things beyond the basic survival, in rearing some animals or forest work, but even there it was closely followed and from I heard from my grandparents was that also in this some unreliable members of the village were excluded.
So I would rather call it reciprocity economy, even when it does not sound so fancy.
This also limited the use of means of exchange, money or salt or silver coins, whatever it was. I do not any clue what will work as this in dark times, but from my economic background I believe it will be something what people will generally have and will have way how to get it. When you are the only one having silver coins around, it will get you only to limited number of exchange, and also I have not idea if the coin will be worth so much (because it is so scarce) or so little (because there is not so much possibilities to trade it for). We are now so much in the money economy, that our imagination of non monetary life is limited.
And we also should think about our actions in the sense of what they replace, in the sense that if you have so much money now that you do not know how to use them, then buy the silver coins, but otherwise maybe first think about living in the right place and have the right physical capital to function best in dark times.
first think about living in the right place and have the right physical capital to function best in dark times
Perfect advice.
Organizing a community of families who know how to take care of themselves and have the capital to do so is much easier than having an organized community conjure up the physical capital they need. Land and equipment first, then human relationships. Even the tightest-knit affinity group will be helpless without capital appropriate for living past the end of modernity.
Of course the best path would be to do both for many years before the resources of modernity disappear completely. Intentional communities should be ideal for this, but I don’t think that there will ever be enough of them, especially in the Global North. There are a few on the island where I live, but the vast majority of the people with appropriate capital are individual families. I think that’s the case almost everywhere.
I live in a place with lots of small farms and also people living on parcels that could easily become small farms. We don’t have the history of intense mutual support that Yevhenii and Hynek have experienced, but I’m pretty sure that could happen when our community experiences the stresses of hard times. I hope so anyway. I hope to live long enough to find out.
I’ll chime in on point 4: Media of Economic Exchange
I think people still get very confused about what money is. Just because we now have coins and notes and in the past silver or gold (in small quantities), plus the fact that most economists also still believe this, does not mean that money is a commodity. As David Graeber wrote in Debt: the first 5000 years, money is credit. An IOU either from person to person or from the state to the private sector. Money is best thought of as an accounting measure. Just like centimeters, you can measure something in money value.
You mention bullion currencies, and yes while in the past there were gold standards, and (rich)people may have used gold or silver or copper coins. They always had a higher ‘face’ value than the actual metal would trade for. Otherwise the system would not work (people would have melted the coins). Plus the fact that many emperors routinely changed the value of a coins as it pleased them. (Because history shows that maintaining a gold standard is unsustainable). In Europe the tally stick was used widely, also by kings, to keep track of credit. (The farmer brought his grain to the brewery and marked each beer he drank on a tally stick.)
Buying precious metal, just like any (financial) asset, is mostly done for speculation. Having more of it does not confer power per se, the powerful just tend to buy more of it.
That being said, I do think that having the skills and experience to successfully implement and manage a currency will be useful in a Dark Age. As Hyman Minsky said: ‘Anyone can create a currency, the trick is to get it accepted.’ This means that a taxing authority (at any scale) could issue their own currency and have their taxes payable in that currency. The authority serves public purpose (which is subject to political debate). Here is an example of a new currency being started at the University of Kansas City, UMKC Buckaroo.
https://moslereconomics.com/2011/09/19/the-umkc-buckaroo-a-curreny-model-for-world-prosperity/
Notice that this currency can exist in a country where, at the federal level, there is also another currency (the US dollar) valid for payments. It’s very common that in a geographical region multiple currencies are accepted. And in the case of a collapsing authority (i.e. the authority no longer is able to collect taxes), people do not switch to barter, but they adopt another dominant currency, like the dollar for example. A currency loses its value if there is no taxing authority demanding it for payment. In the Netherlands (where I come from) we can no longer pay our taxes in guilders, therefore all the guilder coins lost their value (except as collector’s items perhaps).
I have one more big remark to all this, which came up during discusion with my partner Alena during the breakfast.
I know Chris wrote about the national state in some of his books, but this is very much omitted in the current collapse debate.
It is also the perspective of former “communist” regimes in Eastern Europe, which might make us more attentive to this.
Currently the state in north-west demands almost NO obligations from its citizens, except paying taxes. But it was not like this most of the history. The states were excercising their power much more directly and controlled the paths of their citizens more closely. In Eastern Europe it was much more common not so long time ago – my parents got a direct command where to go to work after their studies (which were not allowed to everyone), my grandparents got assigned another person to live with them in their place by state – you could get direction where to live in the country and you had no way how to oppose.
My grandparents land (7 hectares) was taken by the state and they were assigned marginal land in the edge of the village in 1960th, so the state agricultural cooperative can work the best land in the village. And some other examples of state executing its will upon its citizens could certainly be found.
And from what I can see in the world today, I would not say the states go to less power but rather to more strict and direct power over the people – even if, hopefully, for some limited/temporary time. It is the excess of fosil fuels energy and technology, which makes people not so important for the state right now. But it will probably change with the excess energy going down.
The path for powerful state controlling the rest of energy and people seems to me as well possible as some diminishing state leaving the people on their own. The grim version of state would not be providing to its citizens but still could be able to demand, control and punish using its force. We could hope such power to be dwindling but there are examples from present e.g. in authoritarian regimes or even in so called failed states, as well as from past, where the state did not need so much of resources to stay in charge. The situaion could differ in case of a complete collapse with total system(s) and infrastucture failures if the state would absolutely loose all substance and ground for coordination …
So just in line with my surviving the present remark above, we also should give our energy to current political processes, because our vision of free individual and collective path ahead may come to abrupt end by the national state.
This is just one more reason why a catastrophic and sudden collapse might be better than a slow and grinding descent.
While the transition between modernity and post-modernity doesn’t absolutely require a turn to totalitarian states (there were several pre-modern democratic states, including the US), it is very likely that the stresses of severe economic contraction will lead to numerous kinds of authoritarian governments. But it can take years for a new totalitarian government to consolidate control, so if modernity disintegrates quickly, there will be less time available for establishing control.
This is also one more reason why poor agrarian states in the Global South might weather the transition much more easily than the modern Global North. They are less urbanized and the hinterlands are under much less centralized control (with much less centralized support, too).
All these considerations make it desirable to choose a location as far from the centers of power as possible. State control will center on the concentrations of population in urban centers first, including their need for industrial agriculture, and that control will likely be less intense in remote rural locations with sparse populations, especially if there is little industrial agriculture there.
Thanks, some interesting points here. Working my way through the comments:
– Steve C, I hadn’t thought much about a switch from homestead matters to stark survival, but I guess it’s true. Partly because of the way the winds of history seem to be blowing, and perhaps partly because I’ve been spending more time writing and less time homesteading of late, drawing me toward bigger picture stuff. How best to divide my time between them is my perennial dilemma, although I’ve been happy to get feedback from others telling me my writing has helped them make a practical shift of their own, so maybe it’s all the same thing!
– Regarding the potlatch, I’ve no great expertise (Ruben may want to weigh in if he’s still reading) but the classic anthropology of it was of a system oriented to destroying potentially accumulated capital while boosting status claims (the gift as a form of social climbing and creating dependents – a strategy of the strong). The newer papers linked by Steve L present it as the exact opposite. My feeling is that the newer ones are probably closer to the mark, but they soft pedal the more inegalitarian aspects and possibly over-egg the capital accumulation aspect. I’m interested in the point about salmon ‘ranching’. The boundaries between foraging and farming, and of making landscapes more productive, are a theme I’m exploring at the moment, so any further comments on this are especially welcome.
– To Kathryn’s points on seeds and land: maybe it wasn’t the best example to use since most of us who comment here probably have more of both than we know what to do with, but this I think is connected to the present temporary abundance, so I’m going to stick to my guns. Land in London and many other places wouldn’t be easy to come by if most people living there needed some to grow a garden. Regarding seeds, I’ll raise the example of our faltering experiments in garden-scale wheat growing and the various losses we incur. This would be a major stress if we really had to secure our nutrition from it, although if that were the case we’d probably have applied our minds to it more quickly and improved our returns. All the same, the challenge of growing a complete living is real for those who have to do it, and having enough seed is part of that. Sure, people spread risks by sharing but a bad year is usually a bad year for everyone, and for everyone’s sake you don’t want to have to put your faith in your neighbours to bale you out, as Hynek rightly observes. The history of this is clear: market price for seed grain shoots up at sowing time even in a good year. You can easily lose your land.
– Regarding knowing a gal or a guy, yes this important (the gift as a true disinterested generosity) but again in tougher situations there are only so many gals and guys to go around – ultimately you might have to be your own gal or guy. So this isn’t only a matter of shortages in the complex things like hip replacements, but also in the simpler things like tin roofing sheets. This is why societies historically don’t leave it to chance and invent gift economies, but not totally disinterested ones. These are often pretty complicated. They’re not necessarily a matter of keeping track of exactly who owes what to who (in fact, doing so can be an outrage to etiquette), but they’re often structured in ways that don’t leave things in the lap of the gods or the variable generosities of human beings.
– Per Diogenes’s point, yes money is energy and I agree we’re going to see some big and troublesome geopolitical realignments in the years to come. As well as oil and gas, there’s a lot of more widely distributed coal as well as renewables, the latter being swallowed up by the rich countries. I’m not entirely convinced that Russia is in a better position than Western Europe overall, but perhaps we’ll see. Interesting times.
– Per Walter’s point, my take on Mauss is that his thinking encompasses both group and individual acts of exchange. But I’m a bit rusty on it, I’ll know more once I’ve re-read. We’re also a bit rusty on the art of the gift in modern capitalist societies. I’d be interested to dig into the puzzlement you mention in some of your recipients.
– Yevenhii: very interesting, thank you. In some ways, perhaps we could define the family as the realm of the pure, disinterested gift – but your account shows the careful way that even intra-familial gifts are structured. Passing on capital successfully to the next generation is of course a key task of families historically. Work groups in farm societies are another interesting phenomenon – Robert Netting’s discussion of beer parties in West Africa stick in my mind. The farmer who brews the most and the best beer gets the most help. Your example of the gift as a way of getting help is interesting too. The opposite of the classic potlatch case. The gift as speculative investment as a strategy of the weak.
– Hynek, lots of interesting points, thank you. Maybe you’re right about not worrying overly about the summit when we’re still on the path up. And I agree with you about the virtues of learning by doing – it was only when I became a self-employed grower that I learned, quickly, what I should have asked when previously volunteering on farms, and also why the state vs market framing of politics is so wrong. My residual doubt is that in rapid onset collapse situations there will be hapless attempts to do things collectively and their failure will help the feeding frenzy of the corporations and disaster capitalists boosted by the likes of Monbiot. So it makes sense to get involved locally and try to push things as best one can. I’m just not very good at it and get easily discouraged by swimming against all the business-as-usual opinion. So it’s back to the online conversations for me, I’m afraid!
– Joe, I’d like to hear more about why you think intentional communities are ideal for capital building, but that families in practice prevail. I’d have thought families generally would be a better vehicle, outside of highly structured religious communities and suchlike.
– Chris, thanks for that. I will ponder. Your comment about bullion as speculation also makes me wonder about the micro-politics of silver. If the banking system implodes, everyone’s in the same boat and at least the physical capital is still there. Those who’ve hoarded some kind of tradeable surplus in that situation might find themselves in a tricky position. The point about multi-currencies is also interesting. Brings to mind the Appalachian whisky currency in communion with the dollar, as discussed here previously. Washington and Hamilton’s intolerance of it tells a tale, however.
– …which links to Hynek’s interesting final point. Maybe I’ve been over-hasty in assuming that decreasing benefits flowing from the state will undermine it. It brings to mind this rather depressing portrait of Russia in an LRB article by Greg Afinogenov “Making a living has been made more difficult by the disappearance of Soviet welfare models and by the decay of social and material infrastructure in an environment rife with corruption, in which the state increasingly demands political compliance, but often without any material rewards … the state they live in is not a communitarian Slavic utopia but a shambolic mess that barely bothers to secure communal goods and tells them to expect nothing in the way of social provision. Yet they see little hope of fundamental economic or political change.”
I’m not convinced such situations are particularly stable in the long term, but that doesn’t mean they’ll devolve into some lovely liberal utopia. More thinking to do here. I think it could pan out differently in different places according to quite long-term culture histories.
@Chris
“The farmer who brews the most and the best beer gets the most help.”
Old stories from around here (Somerset) are similar.
As a farmer, your cider had to be good or you couldn’t attract the itinerant farm labourers to work on your farm. 🙂
My residual doubt is that in rapid onset collapse situations there will be hapless attempts to do things collectively and their failure will help the feeding frenzy of the corporations and disaster capitalists boosted by the likes of Monbiot.
Residual doubt, Chris? I am absolutely convinced that this will happen in at least some cases. But then, most businesses fail in the first few years, too.
I’m not build refugia because I have any guarantee that they will persist, at least not without getting into eschatology, but because it is the right thing to do. And nothing I am involved in during this life will be perfect, and none of it will last forever. But I do have hope that some of it will be good enough — good enough to keep someone else alive for a while, or good enough to help someone live a more dignified and connected life while they are with us, or good enough that their death, when it comes, will be as good and holy a death as it can be.
We lost someone the other week at church, a beloved longtime member of our congregation and also a guest of the Soup Kitchen. She loved everyone. She was growing increasingly dotty in her old age, though still fiercely intelligent in her way; “hapless” is a pretty good description of the way she moved through the world. She stepped out in front of a lorry at a difficult crossing, and probably died instantly and painlessly, though of course that doesn’t make up for the years that she won’t be with us. There is something deeply frustrating in having spent literally years keeping someone alive by feeding her and then having her life taken not by malnutrition but by another element of this hyper-financialised consumerist life, a component of the supply chains that we all participate in whether we want to or not. I suppose an ecomodernist might try to reassure me that without the modernism her life would have been taken by a childhood infection, or lack of access to safe drinking water. But I don’t think her actual death, or any hypothetical death she might have suffered in some alternate timeline, can make her life worth any less.
Yes, there will be intentional communities of one sort of another that misjudge the conditions in which we are operating, and some of them will fail quite quickly, and others will lurch along in some kind of dysfunctional state for ages, and many of them — most of them, even — will be worthwhile in their way.
One of the things I think about in my intentional refuge-building is why, if a project stops short tomorrow, it will have been worthwhile anyway. If I can’t find a reason, I need to work on a different project.
Chris,
It was not that intentional communities are ideal for capital building, they would be ideal for the combination of capital building and community building. The only advantage of an intentional community for capital building would be asset/tool/skill sharing. Of course this would only be an advantage if everyone took equally good care of assets and tools.
I’ve never been a part of an intentional community, but I’ve had long conversations with people who were, and the main difficulty is striking just the right balance between the advantages of collective work and the incentives/benefits of private ownership.
My view is that intentional communities in modern countries are mostly trying to recreate the benefits of the small rural villages found all over the world. There are good reasons why they have existed for millennia.
Chris wrote “I’m interested in the point about salmon ‘ranching’… any further comments on this are especially welcome.”
The paper that I quoted and linked earlier (above) references this other paper (below) which gives more information about potlatches and the Salmon Husbandry Hypothesis (SHH), whereby “the NWC [Northwest Coast] tribes built salmon abundance over millennia of purposeful salmon husbandry”, instead of being subsistence hunter-gatherers.
These NWC tribes claimed “exclusive ownership of the smaller river systems and the territories they drained”, and “effectively owned the salmon stocks that spawned in their streams”.
“Tribal chiefs held exclusive title to salmon streams and other resources. Trespassers were met with swift and violent retaliation. Chiefs managed their resources as stewards for the tribe, and members contributed their labor to the salmon harvest and other activities under the chief’s direction in expectation of receiving a share of the output. The chief retained any residual harvest.”
Along with this, the paper says there was a “nearly complete absence of any kind of political or administrative hierarchy resembling the state.”
The chiefs’ ownership claims were maintained and reinforced by the potlatches. “Common to the salmon culture was the institution known as the potlatch, an Indian term meaning “to give with the expectation of a return gift” (Barnett 1938). Although there were many variations of the potlatch depending on the occasion, a representative potlatch consisted of a winter ceremony arranged by a tribal chief acting as host of another tribe. The chief gave guests a lavish feast during which they bore witness as he asserted various privileges and justified his claims to productive resources such as fine salmon streams. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the chief distributed gifts to his guests, with the value of the gifts increasing according to the recipient’s social prestige. Having accepted these gifts without objection, guests were virtually estopped from disputing the chief’s claims at a later time.”
“Although some authorities question whether potlatch gifts created an obligation to reciprocate (Donald 1997), reciprocity was the norm. Any failure to reciprocate or shortfall in the amount of the return gift raised the social prestige of the more generous party and his tribe. In some regions along the coast, potlatching was highly formalized, and competition for social prestige was intense. Each tribe held a designated social rank that could shift over time depending on its potlatch success (Codere 1950). The potlatch system appears to have involved both direct and indirect reciprocity. Participants could expect to have their generosity returned directly by their former guests. At the same time, the public display of generosity raised their reputation throughout the wider system. Reputation, mediated through gossip, no doubt enhanced the evolutionary stability of cooperation between tribes (Nowak and Sigmund 2005).”
The exclusive tribal property rights (ETRs) were largely enforced through such “long-term reciprocity relations”, aka potlatches. “According to the SHH, potlatching was a substitute for violence in enforcing ETRs.”
“The war records of the NWC tribes bear repeated accounts of one tribe hearing of another’s prosperity and sending its warriors to capture a share of the bounty (Ferguson 1979). In many cases, the encroacher was met with violent retaliation, but as time advanced, target tribes increasingly provided encroachers with tribute to leave in peace. These payoffs gradually evolved into the multilateral network of reciprocal wealth transfers known as potlatching. Competition between chiefs for social prestige prevented them from underinvesting in building their salmon stocks. Chiefs that were successful resource managers would have been able to consume more, to distribute more within their tribe, and to give away more to rival tribes as potlatch gifts, thereby raising their own, and their tribe’s, social prestige. In the event of a poor state, more prestigious tribal leaders could have counted on larger transfers from other tribes. Those tribes who defected by underinvesting would receive smaller transfers or, as a last resort, be excluded from the system entirely (Karthik and Boyd 2004).”
The tribes’ institutions (such as the potlatches) “effectively functioned to resolve conflict, promote technological development, provide reliable information, provide feedback about the environmental effects of resource-harvesting decisions, and encourage the accumulation and transfer of relevant knowledge”.
The NWC tribes’ specific practices of salmon husbandry are covered in the paper, such as transporting salmon eggs to other streams, making capital investments to construct weirs, controlling which salmon were harvested, etc.
Salmon, Science, and Reciprocity on the Northwest Coast
March 2010 Ecology and Society 14(2)
DOI:10.5751/ES-03107-140243
Author: D. Bruce Johnsen
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/42766205_Salmon_Science_and_Reciprocity_on_the_Northwest_Coast
Responding to further comments from Steve L & Kathryn. Also thanks to Joe for the clarification, which bears on some of Kathryn’s points also, Simon for the link and John for the local colour!
Steve – thanks for the follow up on the salmon, I’ll mark those papers to read. From what I read of your excerpts, it didn’t convince me that ‘ranching’ was the right term, or that the abundance was built through social institutions. The salmon seemed to be wild salmon doing their own thing – there seemed to be no selection/breeding by humans for desired traits in the salmon. And then the potlatches seemed to be basically about asserting private property rights – which I suppose is one mode of ranching. The other main one is fuzzy property boundaries that are typically arbitrated by violence – interesting in that sense that the potlatch seems to be an institution for turning uncertain collective property into more defined private property. I can see that the potlatches might have increased abundance in a human economic sense via the circulation of goods and the intensity of resource exploitation (which is what private property rights often do), but not so much how they increased ecological abundance. The clam gardens that also existed in that part of the world might be a better example of building ecological abundance?
Kathryn – first, I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. It must be heartbreaking, for all the reasons you mention. In relation to your other points – to clarify, the ‘residual’ in my ‘residual fear’ isn’t about the chances of disaster capitalism pitching in. I agree with you, that’s a certainty. Instead, it bears on Hynek’s remarks about organising ahead of time. I think he’s got a point about the difficulty of this, but my ‘residual fear’ is that if people don’t experiment with it and learn lessons about the limits of both individual/household and cooperative organisation before it becomes essential to generate livelihood in local communities we make ourselves more vulnerable to expropriation. So I agree entirely with your point about experimenting with different arrangements, and that often they’re worthwhile even if they ultimately fail for some reason. The key is to be honest with ourselves about the reasons for failure, and it’s easy not to be. Learning from long-term history can help – one reason why I find routine condemnations of ‘the family’ on the left frustrating. Your point about modernism and health is interesting – I’d argue that lack of safe drinking water is largely a problem of modernism itself, child and maternal mortality less so. Still, there are some problems with the tendency to claim the benefits of modern medicine for capitalism, progress etc. A theme I’d like to probe further sometime.
Ah! Thank you for the clarification; and also for the condolences.
Given that my current preference is to go and live in the grounds of a literal monastery during term time for the next two years, studying, living and working alongside the community there, I’m going to say that the nuclear family (or maybe nuclear plus a few grandparents and aunts and uncles) as we usually think of it now is not the only form of family or household, either historically or now. Which is not to say that family isn’t important, but rather that I think some modern left-ish critiques of family may be lacking nuance. I have not studied enough anthropology to be able to jaunt through the various arrangements of kinship and clan and household and the messy network of obligations that come about in such contexts. I am both grateful for and have profound regrets about my decision to move countries 26 years ago, so that “home” will now be very far away no matter where I go.
My late friend has a sister, back in India. Except… she called me mother and our parish priest father (and the one before that mother) and half our congregation sister or brother, and so we don’t know the exact nature of her relationship with this sister in India, whether it is a legally recognised kinship or what. All will become clear in due course, but it may take some time.
I had intended to get into foraging wild grains this summer, since enough of them grow in the wilder bits of parks near me and I live walking distance from a world-class grass taxonomist if I get stuck on ID (I know some interesting guys and gals). Instead, with my previous grain crop still mostly unground and my thoughts turning to potentially moving away during term time, I’ve recently been into collecting anything I can dry for tea: so far this year that’s calamint, yarrow, rose petals, pineapple weed, elderflowers, lemon balm, mint, white clover, and linden. When it’s warm I dry them in a hanging dehydrator outside and when it’s cooler and damper (and I am very grateful for the recent cool and damp!) I pop them in the electric dehydrator, which at this time of year hardly touched the energy produced by the solar panels; in a more low-tech situation I would of course hang them near the fire. I think almost all of these have at least some traditional use as medicine, and I have certainly been finding the combination of GABA-ergic lemon balm and linden helpful as I try to manage my anxiety — not about the general.state of the world, dire though it is, but all the uncertainty around my own situation and the major life change on the horizon. Modern medicine may have more precision sometimes but in many contexts it has a tendency to remove agency from the patient, which is not particularly helpful in my case; growing and foraging my own certainly feels like an improvement in that respect. I’ll keep my eyeglasses, though, if you don’t mind, and my fillings, and my friend dealing with a serious infection will keep his prescription antibiotics… modernity does create a lot of illness and dis-ease, and I don’t deny that for a second, but an awful lot of my own ancestors died young of “blood poisoning” after agricultural accidents of one kind of another, and I daresay germ theory is something I’d prefer to hang onto whether or not we attribute it to modernity.
That is all a lot of words to basically say “well, it’s complicated” but… it is.
Meanwhile, I have been offered a place at my preferred training institution, the one at the monastery. But am awaiting a decision by my diocese about whether to send me there or to a non-residential situation… I would complain about the bureaucracy, but it’s fair to say I knew what I was signing up for. And I am still around a month behind on sowing and planting.
Yes, it’s interesting that among the most successful of the institutional attempts to break the hold of kinship have been the world religions … which have basically reinvented and repurposed the terminology and structure of kinship, including the hierarchy – the latter being one of the main objections of left-wing critiques. For their part, left-wing comrades and cadres have also attempted to break the hold of kinship and have basically … anyway, long story short is that I think kinship is here to stay. Agreed, it can take many forms – although fewer than people sometimes suppose. The relatively small and restricted coresidential household unit is a recurrent historical form worldwide. My best wishes to you among new sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers!
Regarding health care and medicine – agreed, as discussed before here it’d be great if we could hang on to as much of the good stuff as we can going forward. While also recognising that modernisation has made a lot of people seriously ill or dead, so the connection between modernisation and good health is, as you say, complicated. There’s definitely something about reductionist scientific or scientistic thinking that’s in the mix here for both good and ill – it gives us good modern health care and capitalism, amazing pharmaceuticals and alienation, incredible prosthetic dentistry and dental caries, hip replacements and nuclear holocausts, global emergency food aid and famine. What to make of it all??
Hey Chris, since you mention my late mentor David Fleming and his emphasis on relationships and culture for surviving the future, I thought I might reference a couple of his entries. As you know, the one on Gifts (https://leanlogic.online/gifts/ ) has been a big inspiration in my life, and ends thus:
“Giving lives in a domain ranging from deep symbolism to basic housekeeping. It is the currency of the small-scale resilient community. It is sometimes magic, in that some kinds of gift can be given over and over again without loss—love, for example, and (in a different sense, since time cannot really be replenished) the gift of reciprocal service to each other. The “reciprocal” part happens, but not by arrangement.
This is the opposite of transparency: you cast your gift upon the waters, and what comes back is trust.”
Here at The Happy Pig (https://www.darkoptimism.org/projects/#TheHappyPig) we have been exploring the tangle of expanding our dependence on gift economics in the real world for a little over a decade now, and I can confirm that it’s a lot more complex than it might sound! But ultimately, yes, all about building deeply-rooted, hard-won relationships of trust and mutual dependency within our small group.
The experience has really helped me appreciate another of his entries — Reciprocity and Cooperation
(https://leanlogic.online/reciprocity-and-cooperation/ ) — with its emphasis that you’re NOT going to live your whole life in deep, gift relationships. Just as you write, other types of interaction (including commerce) are inevitably part of the picture. His framework for all of that still rings true here, and helps me make sense of things in that awfully complex world that insists on existing beyond online conversations!
With love and gratitude, as always,
Shaun