Foundations of a Giver Culture
September 10, 2007
One of the most difficult questions, with any social movement, is the question, ‘How to begin?’ It is hard enough to be able to step far enough outside of the box to see what is amiss with modern consumer society, harder yet to visualize what could be done to set it right. To be able to put together a plan to create a new way of living, when human beings have only discovered two other lifestyles (Takers & Leavers) in the hundreds of thousands of years we have existed here on Earth, is a daunting task. Yet, this is what this article will attempt to address: a practical solution to start coalescing the Giver Culture into something much more tangible than its current form.
One basic premise of this article is the claim that the beginnings of the Giver Culture already exist. Yet these beginnings currently exist only in a proto-cultural state. To spot such individuals and groups, one needs only to determine the core values of the Giver Culture. The Giver Culture is a culture of people that highly value creation, discovery and the sharing of their knowledge and creations with others. Where can we find such groups and individuals? In actuality such people are becoming more prolific, and finding them, due to the increasing interconnectedness of society, is becoming easier. Many of these proto-Giver groups have a marked presence on the Internet, and have made significant contributions to society.
One of the most colorful examples lies in a radical expression of creative culture, The Burning Man Festival. This eight day long festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada asks all members to become active participants, exploring the limits of their creativity and sharing everything, from food to art, freely with others. Gifting is one of the core guiding principles of the festival, and is encouraged to be completely unconditional. Another core principle is creative cooperation, supporting any type of expression that brings about creativity in a free communal setting. The participants of this event often suffer culture shock when returning back to regular society after such an event and find ways to connect with other Burning Man participants when they return home. This shared culture, even though it lasts for only eight days in a year in one specific spot on Earth, is close to holding many of the same fundamental values of the Giver Culture. Although there are only thousands of participants, it is a growing phenomenon, and many other festivals have arisen, worldwide, to capture some of its spirit. These participants are experiencing a proto-Giver lifestyle.
Another recent example of a lifestyle that is very close to the culture of Givers is the hacker culture. With this term, I do not refer to the type of criminal activity that breaks into computer systems to obtain data for nefarious uses, but the type of activity that tinkers, hacks into systems to learn, and creates solutions to problems. (For a more detailed explanation of this culture, please refer to the linked article, How to be a Hacker)
Often hackers are part of what is known as the Open Source Software Movement. Open Source Software is a type of computer software that is given freely to all users, and in addition, users can opt to modify and share any improvements back to the community of programmers. Linux, Java (to an extent), the Python programming language, Open Office, the PHP web programming language, Apache Web Servers and other backbones of the internet/computer industry are all free, open software packages that anyone can view and alter for their own use. Countless hours of difficult programming go into these projects and are given, freely, for the entire world to utilize. Many of these projects could be valued at millions or billions of dollars in terms of how useful they have been for the technology industry in the last decade. Open Software is a gift created by a networked group of individuals, who, in the process of creation, discover unique solutions for many difficult problems, and share their creations and discoveries freely with the world, at no charge. They support each other in their endeavors to learn, and often mentor and teach those with skills below their own, especially since they value any additional manpower they can get on the projects. Many programmers have learned extremely valuable programming practices by working on such projects, since many individuals, who are master programmers in their respective fields, give their knowledge openly and freely. This is practically identical to the values of the Giver Culture. It may not be as visibly exciting as the Burning Man festival, but it strikes much closer to what form the Giver Culture will start to take.
There are plenty of other examples: the scientific community, academia, NGOs, NPOs, charities, web-communities (such as Zaadz), web-sites (expertvillage.com, wikipedia.org, wikibooks.org etc.). These are all examples of groups of people who spend time sharing their knowledge, discovery and creativity with others. Instead of simply consuming, they are creating and sharing, often quite actively. As time passes, it seems that these types of organizations and groups are increasing in numbers. These people are forming a proto-Giver culture. As with many other cultures, it is often easier to interact with people who share a similar culture. People of similar cultures tend to clump together; again this is what seems to be occurring. A festival, such as the Burning Man, tends to attract people, such as scientists, artists, spiritual seekers, computer/hardware hackers, for they are starting to share a common culture—a culture of Giving. It is similar here in the community of Zaadz.
With large groups of likeminded people available, who are steps away from forming a true Giver Culture, what are the steps necessary to truly seed the beginnings of a culture that can help balance the uncontrolled growth of the Consumer/Taker culture? How can this culture be robust enough to survive harsh disasters, manmade or otherwise? I maintain that the simple acknowledgement of such a culture is possible an important step, for it would allow those who are Giver-spirited to identify with a cultural movement and seek others who are similar. Once the knowledge spreads, however, additional steps must be taken to solidify the culture, and to enable the members.
Since the Open Source Software movement is quite similar to the Giver Culture, it can be used as an example to find out what holds such a culture together. This software movement has gathered up a large enough group of likeminded individuals, and has remained stable enough to thrive and to continue enabling its members. Often the nature of working on a project together helps cement social bonds, especially after successful completion. A successfully completed project also serves to advertise to other potential members who may have been previously indecisive fence sitters.
So, following in the example of the Open Source Software movement, some of the key steps needed are as follows: A) Attract likeminded individuals, B) Immediately have these new members work on a project together, C) Repeat (hopefully on a larger scale).
So the first question should be, ‘How to attract proto-Givers?’ One method, is here on the internet, other methods could be by spreading the knowledge, word-of-mouth, or via pamphlet, flyer, booklet or presentation at Giver-like events such as Burning Man, or an Open Source Software project, at a university, at a fund-raising event as well as many others. New ideas and old ideas to spread knowledge could be explored. Newly declared members of the Giver Culture could write their own blog posts, and generate enough of a presence to warrant an entry by wikipedia, and possibly an article by a small magazine or newspaper. Virtual communities, such as Second Life, could also include a Giver Culture presence. There are countless ways to spread the knowledge far enough to attract those who are almost already Givers.
After a sizable number of Givers have been attracted our next question should be, “What kind of project do we have in mind?” I have two example projects in mind that I will share in this article. One is a completely hands-on project which requires a physical presence for all members. The other is a little closer to an Open Source Software project, with a physical presence only required for a few members. Both projects would be good for a burgeoning Giver Culture with only a limited membership roster to start with.
I will start with the more physical project; one method of solidifying a community of creative people who thirst after knowledge and discovery is to help build a place where creativity and learning can take place. Gathering up resources to build a center of learning could be a way of bringing together various members of the Giver culture. One idea I have had in mind, is to have various members learn alternative building methods, or to find an existing Giver who already knows an alternative building method (cob, adobe, strawbale etc), and who is willing to teach other Givers for free. Collectively purchase a property, and build a series of structures, as part of a lesson, on the premises. These structures can be used as a center of learning for Givers to meet, teach and learn. Givers can take turn sharing their knowledge with each other on various subjects (electricity, plumbing, carpentry, outdoor survival, pottery, physics, chemistry, Chinese etc). Those who take courses in construction, who may eventually teach or help teach such courses, can expand buildings, as they are needed. Such centers can be valuable places for Giver members to congregate, hold meetings and plan events. These centers can be temples to creativity and learning, holding the community together just as churches and temples hold religions together.
The second project would be a more ambitious project in scope, yet it holds more promise to expand the Giver Culture’s membership and influence. Like the first project, it has a heavy emphasis on education. Yet, unlike the first project, which is geared for Giver members only, this helps the Giver Culture to gain possible revenue, to be used for additional projects, as well as creating new members in countries around the world. This project would be educational software, but not the kind of educational software that we are currently familiar with, but a new, group-oriented software that teaches in an entirely new way. In today’s world, scientific education is increasingly important, yet in some developed countries, such as the United States, scientific studies are on a decline. Ironically, this lack of interest comes at a time when many scientific discoveries are being made, and our models and theories are becoming more accurate and detailed. At the very least, computer software can give people a general overview in the sciences, to rekindle interest, and to stimulate imaginations while simultaneously grounding people in practical knowledge.
With computer animation, we could give an eight year old (or even an eighty year old) an engaging interactive tour of the general basics of scientific knowledge in the span of a half-hour lesson. Starting, for example, at the Big-Bang, the animation could show the user a vision of the universe starting at the very large right down to the very small components of energy and matter. This could widen perspectives and whet appetites for discovering more about science. Too often, elementary scientific texts forget to give the student a wide perspective that allows all of the different faucets of scientific knowledge to make sense. In this design, the software would offer a very general, wide perspective, and proceed to fill in the various details afterwards. After each fifteen to thirty minute lesson, a multiplayer game would be presented, to teach some of the knowledge interactively, in a group setting. This software would not be for individuals, sitting at private terminals at home or in a computer lab. This software would be designed for a classroom setting, using a laptop and a projector ( I am currently creating some prototype lessons and games using this method, interested parties please email me for more details).
This software could start at an elementary level, and slowly work up into high-school and then undergraduate level software. The teacher/instructor would be able to control the software in real time, to realistically gauge the actual situation at hand. The software would not need to be limited to science, but could cover many topics, such as language, mathematics, history and others, eventually including all classes. Instructional videos and animated demonstrations would be followed up by fast, fun mini-games that reviewed the concepts at hand. (Match chemicals with their symbols, catch the correct falling equations, properly create a working electrical circuit to stop the ticking time bomb etc.) This software could measure a student’s progress and would tend to review/test on an individual level automatically tailored to each student.
This software would be sold to schools. Schools that use such software would have advantages over schools that did not, which would create a demand for schools with this software. Since the Giver Culture would collectively own such software, it could be used, internally for members to freely learn any subject we create. Another aspect of this project that could help expand membership, and help create new Givers, is to use such software to help educate people in impoverished areas. A volunteer Giver teacher, given a projector and a laptop, could go into impoverished areas, teaching people whatever useful lessons available. These people could be empowered by software that taught basic science and mathematics. Lessons geared towards survival techniques, health and hygiene and simple economics would also be helpful. Hopefully these people, after lifting themselves out of poverty, would become Givers, instead of new members of the Consumer Culture. Since education tends to lower birthrate, especially when women are educated, this may also help offset population growth rates in poor, developing nations.
Hopefully both projects could be created simultaneously, since any Giver center of learning could highly benefit from such software, and by having a center of learning, teachers could be found to provide the content for the software. Either of these options would help gather various Giver peoples from around the globe. By working on such projects, a greater camaraderie and shared culture would emerge. These projects would increase the visibility and capabilities of the Giver people. Givers would discover and create new artistic visions and scientific knowledge. This would help to empower our people even further, allowing our culture to thrive. Unlike the currently dominating Consumer/Taker culture, we would not be interested in consuming physical goods, but would instead be interested in consuming knowledge, and using such knowledge to make further discoveries, and create more wondrous visions. More projects would arise, and the Giver community would strengthen.
So, how to begin? We have already begun, and if any of you, reading this article, feel that you are, in spirit, a Giver, please let me know and we can find practical solutions to start bringing this culture together.
Our new evolution starts now.
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[…] This matches one of my ideas for a Giver Culture themed project, that I mentioned in the article ‘Foundations of a Giver Culture’ which outlines the idea for educational software designed for children. In my article, I […]
[…] This is a continuation of ideas presented in part 1, “The Giver Culture“.In this time in history, a number of dividing opinions exist regarding whether humanity is progressing towards an improved world or whether we are dooming ourselves (and countless other species). Answering the question, “Are we doomed?” is a little more complex than offering a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.One group of people might suppose that we, as humanity, are fine. Why add more complexity and divisions by creating yet another cultural branch of humanity? This group may argue that science and technology will help solve our problems, that we are living in a Golden Age of humanity, and as we progress, current problems will be rendered meaningless, as some of our old problems were rendered meaningless by current advances. Another ultra-positive viewpoint heard in some circles—is the belief that humanity is on the brink of a spiritual revolution and that we will become collectively enlightened. (I’m personally hoping for this one, however I feel that we have much more progress to make before this happens.)Yet these are others who tend to think that we on the verge of extinction due to an imminent and devastating environmental catastrophe. They point out that our way of life is based on growth and consumerism—that this lifestyle the majority of us live is destroying the Earth. Often technology is blamed. Sometimes human nature is blamed. Either way, I seldom hear truly practical solutions presented. A few solutions, such as the New Tribal movements, wish to turn the clock back to our pre-civilized past arguing that was the only time that human beings fit naturally into the circle of life. It would take all of humanity, simultaneously in alignment to return to a Hunter-Gathering society—and it is obvious that is not going to happen any time soon, if ever.So are we doomed to extinction or will we somehow transcend these problems?When I was in my early twenties, I read an excellent book by Daniel Quinn that echoed some thoughts I had been having about the problems that civilized culture was facing. Before I read this book, had been doing some science fiction story writing at the time and wrote a short story that hinted at two cultures of humanity that ended up living amongst the stars. One culture was based from Earth, one was based from the colonists of Mars. Each had opposing viewpoints on how to colonize the Galaxy. The Terrans, having discovered faster-than-light travel before the Martians, were the first to discover planets with life outside our solar system. They colonized these life-rich worlds. The Martians, having created a life-rich world on the previously dead planet of Mars, skipped the life-filled worlds and gave life to dead worlds with potential. In hindsight, the Terrans of my story were part of a Consumer Culture, based on the one that is dominant on Earth today. The Martians were a Giver Culture, one that is just appearing on Earth now.(This was just a subtle background for a story, in which the Terrans finally face a sentient species. These aliens viewed the Terran world snatching as sacrilegious—thus wordlessly declared war on them.)Daniel Quinn’s book, Ishmael, allowed me to put this little science fiction back-story into a truer perspective. It seemed to me that the Consumer Culture that Daniel Quinn talked about in this book (he calls it the Taker Culture), was truly a cultural anomaly, believing in unlimited growth and consumption, that would and could truly bring humanity and countless other species to the brink of extinction. This book also widened my perspective by showing that, since we seem to view history as only existing when civilization appeared, we often forget that we existed for far longer without civilization. Countless other cultures preceded the rise of our Consumer Culture . The Consumer Culture was not the only way humanity could live. Ishmael never truly gave any solution besides stepping outside the Consumer/Taker culture to try to find a way to live.With my Martian society, I realized that there could be another way for humanity to live. I expanded the idea of the Giver culture, somewhat, for a science fiction novel that I had planned to write. Eventually, however, I started to think that this culture should not be regulated to simply one of countless ideas in the world of speculative fiction, but should, instead, become a real way for humanity to live.One thing I noted, after reading Ishmael, and thinking about these questions further, is that the Consumer/Taker Culture simply had to appear. Take a time machine, for example, armed with a powerful ray gun. Go back in time, and blast the initial Consumer/Taker cultural anomaly out of existence—before it had a chance to spread. Would this solve the problem? Is this cultural mess-up simply a one-chance wonder, or would it have appeared in a different form, at some other time, regardless? I place a strong bet in the latter.This brings me to branch of mathematics called Game Theory. Many people have seen the movie or read the book, A Beautiful Mind, about a Nobel Prize winning game theorist, John Nash. Many students of sociology and psychology are given a peek at Game Theory, by playing one of its most well known examples, Prisoner’s Dilemma. Without going into many details (although some of the details in Game Theory are fascinating) Game Theory often deals with what is called Evolutionary Stable Strategies. An Evolutionary Stable Strategy is a strategy, if adopted by a population, which prevents invasion from an alternate, competing strategy. In Ishmael, Danniel Quinn’s two major branches of human cultures are, the Takers (what I term as Consumers) and the Leavers, which are tribal, hunter-gathering oriented societies. He shows that the early Leaver societies dominated human culture on Earth until some indeterminate point of time roughly around ten thousand years ago when the first Taker cultures appeared. The Taker culture then systematically drove the neighboring Leaver societies into extinction, either by absorbing them, or by destroying them by waging wars for local resources. The reason the Taker lifestyle was more successful, at first, is that they waged war with any competing species to increase their food supply. With an increased food supply, their population increased, forcing them to step up resource gathering—including more vigilant attempts to cut off any competition for their growing demands of food. Eventually, in the present day, you can only find a handful of Leaver cultures. Most humans live in Taker cultures, and we are nearing our limitations of this type of lifestyle. The Taker Culture, in comparison to the Leaver Culture seems to be an Evolutionary Stable Strategy, at least until our resources run out.The fact that the Taker Culture can only be a superior strategy when there are newly available resources, strongly hints that it is not a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy. It is just simply one that has not run its full course. And if it is not, what alternate type of strategy could truly be a more stable solution? Would this new idea of a Giver culture be closer to a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy? Evidence exists that it might be so.Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist and science popular writer, wrote a chapter, in his critically acclaimed book, The Selfish Gene, titled ‘Nice Guys Finish First’. He pointed out that game theorists have often shown that cooperative strategies beat out competitive or purely selfish strategies in the long term. Although the Consumer/Taker Culture may seem, at first glance, to have strong elements of cooperation, it also has a very marked history of competition, especially when resources dwindle. Much evidence suggests that we are nearing a major problem, as the population explosion on Earth is accelerating, and resources are becoming increasingly harder to find.This is where a Giver Culture may be a more stable strategy in the long term. A Giver Culture, would have the technical know-how to create solutions to our problems. Food could be grown with the most limited of resources using cutting-edge scientific knowledge. Having high levels of education, especially amongst women, would prevent population growth. To ensure that the Giver Culture grows in numbers, families would become larger partially through adoption. As members of the Consumer/Taker culture grow beyond their ability to feed themselves, many of their children may be abandoned, just as what happens in famine stricken areas today. The Giver Culture, a compassionate culture rooted in spirit of cooperation, would be a natural place for these abandoned children to turn. A Giver Culture could also lessen the Consumer Culture’s resource thirst, by weaning them off the purchase of material goods somewhat, by the consumption of virtual entertainment and goods in their stead. As energy costs spike, in response to global oil shortages, people will be unable to travel as often. Improved virtual worlds, evolved from today’s video games, combined with generations of new consumers, who are increasingly more computer-savvy, will help generate a large market for such goods. Their social standings in these virtual worlds may slowly surpass their social standings in the real world (this is already happening). A Giver Culture may take advantage of this by being the creators of the most premier content—since it is a culture where creativity is practically worshiped. The profits of such creative endeavors can help to secure land that is protected against the machinations of the consumer lifestyle.So do we need a Giver Culture to survive? Unfortunately the answer to that question is uncertain. It has a good chance, however, of increasing our likelihood, as there is evidence that such a culture may be closer to a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy. In the beginning of this article, I divided the question of whether humanity survives or thrives into two possible answers—‘yes’ or ‘no’.But is that the most important question, whether we, as a species, survive? Is life only about survival? For many members of the Consumer/Taker society, it seems so. The pinnacle of the consumer society is a comfortable existence. In this modern age, we surely have almost mastered this goal, yet for most it is a very unsatisfying way to live. In modern countries, where most people live a fairly comfortable existence, people are often left wondering whether there is anything more to life. Many members of modern society are increasingly finding themselves to be depressed, lonely, anxious and with deep feelings of despair. To choose a Giver Culture simply on survival, so that we may lessen our chances for extinction, is a choice based on fear. Fear of extinction feels like an extension of the individual’s fear of death. Living a life centered upon the fear of death is often a very poor choice. Human beings grow and thrive on risk and experience, none of which can be had if the fear of death is too strong. Likewise, the Giver Culture does not simply exist so that we may stave of our own extinction.The Giver Culture is necessary for humanity to raise the bar, for us to start living more authentically. It exists for us to find out exactly what are the limits to what we can know, experience, create, love, find, make. What are humanity’s limits? How can we find out what they are? A creative culture, such as the Giver Culture, would seek out the limits of these questions. By exploring the inner and outer universe, we can find out what it truly means to exist. This reason alone is why we need a Giver Culture.For more on this subject, please read part 2, “Foundations of a Giver Culture“ […]