»Free donation is a
crucial part of our economic system. While it used to be important to make big
profits, the intention of free donations is to benefit yourself and others as
much as possible with as little expense and work as possible. With this it
isn’t so important to get something in return because the benefit and joy come
back severalfold to the person who freely donated. «
– Joytopia
Similarly to freedom the subject
of »donating« arouses strong emotions with us. There are things you cannot buy.
You get them as gifts, or not at all. They include love, recognition, trust,
attention, thanks…, that basically means intangible goods that make life worth
living. But material things are sometimes also donated. Rituals and festivals
where gifts are exchanged exist in all cultures. Children sit down at the table
to eat with their parents as a matter of course. And when friends invite each
other round, a meal together is often a gesture of friendship.
There is a free lunch!
Scarcely any other economic dogma causes more
harm than the seemingly insignificant sentence »There is no free lunch«. This
basic economic assumption means that everything has its price. Thus, everything
in the world has become purchasable. Everything that is sacred to a person in
their innermost soul, their yearnings, their wish for love and security, their
basic trust, their hospitality… thus changes into a marketplace or is dismissed
as naïve social romanticism.
The sentence »There is no free lunch« and the
commercial philosophy behind it have destroyed a great deal of potential trust
in us. »Once bitten, twice shy« now applies to all of us. »What does the other
person want from me?« – »What gift does he or she expect from me in return?« –
»How can I make it good to them?« These are the thoughts that automatically
flash through our minds. It does not seem appropriate to us to accept a gift
»simply like that«. And to be honest, can we still make a gift without any
expectations? Don’t we, too, expect something in return?
Expectations can never be satisfied in the here
and now. They always concern the future. When we donate something expecting to
get something in return later a debt relationship is created. We make the other
person indebted to us, no matter if they are aware of it or not. The sentence
»I owe you thanks« hits the nail on the head. As soon as we make a gift with
the expectation of something in return, we have committed ourselves to the
concept of indebtedness. And the system of creating money from debt derives
from the concept of indebtedness.
Donating freely has to be relearnt just as does
unconditional love. Nowadays love is often linked to expectations as well –
unfortunately. For only when we can let go of our expectations can we
experience true love. The little sentence »There is no free lunch« makes a
business deal out of every gift and prostitution out of love. It has
contributed to separating human beings from their true nature and marketing
their most precious treasures at a global bazaar.
How can we relearn how to make free donations?
How can we free ourselves from the entanglements of conscious and unconscious
expectations? How can we become innocent and free of debt again? As always,
bionics – the observation of living nature – comes to our aid. We can copy the
art of freely donating from those who have not forgotten it: animals and small
children show their needs quite openly. We adults call this »begging« and try
to break them of the habit. But what is wrong with showing your needs? Wouldn’t
communication with each other be much easier if we said what we wanted quite
openly without being offended or ashamed if the other person does not fulfil
our wishes?
But animals and small children do not only show
their needs quite openly. They also give us unconditional love without any
ulterior motives, at least as long as we have not trained them to expect
something. A small child’s smile is a gift to us – simply so. The child is not
yet able to think »If I give Mummy a smile, she will give me something to eat«.
Neither does it think »If Mummy gives me her breast, I must be really good in
return afterwards and sleep through the night«.
Two things belong to giving freely: on the one
hand, communicating one’s needs openly and, on the other, giving freely when we
feel like it without ulterior motives. The more we relearn the quality of
freely donating, the easier it will be for us to create true prosperity for all.
How can donating freely work in a community?
Let me tell you a story about that…
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