December 6. A few more thoughts on the subject of the last few days. When I said that "paying back" is part of money economy thinking and doesn't really apply to a gift economy, I didn't go far enough. Another frame that we take for granted is that it's more desirable to receive than to give. When we have to be told "It's better to give than receive," that means that the opposite belief is embedded in our culture: Whenever something is given, we imagine that the receiver is being helped and feeling good, while the giver is being hurt or drained. But really we often feel more pleasure and satisfaction from giving than from getting.
This is only tangentially related to the issue of money economies vs gift economies. What it's really about is whether we have a psychology of scarcity or abundance. And that is not necessarily related to whether resources are scarce or abundant. It could even be inversely related: Many forager-hunter tribes have had a psychology of abundance while living barely above survival, and America of the last 60 years has had more material wealth than any society in history, while having a scarcity psychology, where no matter how much people have, they never feel like they have enough and they're always afraid of being ripped off.
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