True Commerce and Gift Economies

"True Commerce," is a phrase I coined which connotes the idea of value accruing via exchange that replenishes rather than depletes the commonwealth. We must conserve and expend, both. Every conversation I have these days is the same. Whether people enter in through the political, the spiritual, the environmental, we all know, some subliminally, others more consciously that it can’t go on like this--finitude of resources coupled with a paucity of integrity.

There are many examples from indigenous society of an alternate commerce. In his book, "The Gift; Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property," Lewis Hyde references the Trobriand Island culture whose primary currency is denoted by shell bracelets. These bracelets are passed from household to household forming a gift economy where status depends on fluency of exchange. The bracelets' value increase in proportion to how often they are given away; the frequency of giving determines net worth.

Not surprisingly, the Internet has spawned the propagation of modern gift economies where, indeed, the "erotic" (as defined by a mediating principle of exchange) life of property becomes available via connection as opposed to commodification. The commons of the commonwealth begin to determine market force, and corporate control must bend or lose; the music industry being a prominent case in point.

Another example stemming from a mythic source: our word "money" comes from the Roman Goddess, Moneta. All coinage was minted in her temple thus making explicit the symbolic denotation of money. The Empire's money literally sprang from her loins, not accidentally as a female deity would best incarnate the feminine principle whereby prosperity is sanctioned through relatedness not accumulation. Hence, money's latent energy is released only when "spent"!

Where Digital Meets the Inidgenous

Indigenous societies hold wisdom borne from a time where the split between body and spirit, nature and culture or any of the many dualities who we moderns hold in the fabric of our psyche. As such, there is a rapidly becoming almost mainstream desire (and with that a “market”) to re-apprehend and integrate these earth-based technologies, ranging from the most primitive to highly esoteric. The Grandmothers’ ways are essential in restoring the sacred balance at this time on the earth.
Yet nostalgia is not an answer. We are in the paradigm shift that is wrought in part by the digital realm. But navigating that realm! How many middle aged women do I know who engage in a time honored exchange; help from young men with setting up their high speed Internet for dinner and some job advice. For many women my age (early fifties) especially those of us who are more intuitive than linear thinkers, the computers’ language, encoding syntax and expansive uncharted architecture can leave one feeling like they have stepped into a parallel universe, foreign exotic, unnerving. I have spent many a moment in front of the computer feeling vaguely caught and seen by cybergod’s blinking screen face, sure it can see my neurotic failures. Hence its power and possibility . But we know the Internet is a whole new arena where commerce and community meet so that, like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the act of engaging its viral capacity changes the essential nature of the market network. Harnessing the Internet’s utility as integral to the planning of a project will generate both its structure and the market co-terminously...

This, too, even for those for whom the Internet has become a necessary tool and resource but less a destination, the technologies meet, the spark of dynamic tension synthesizing science and spirit into “techne”, an applied practice, internally balanced with indigenous tools for accessing and discerning the parallel realms of the spirit while expanding the true commerce vehicle for its manifestation.