Absolutely loved the call to action at the end. Sure you enjoyed the concepts discussed in the book but what are you willing to do about it? How will you introduce a gift economy into your life?

I can’t help but lament that the people who will gravitate to this book are those who are already community/sustainability minded. The people who I want most to read this never would, or wouldn’t be sensitive enough to absorb the lessons. When I hear a passage that particularly tugs at the heartstrings, I’m like “someone call Zuck! Call Bezos!”

”When systems of governance and market economies of debt are disrupted, networks of mutual aid arise”

Perhaps we should make more of an effort to help each other BEFORE times of crisis arise. Share more openly with each other. If your neighbor gives you extra veggies from their garden, make an extra loaf of bread next week to give back to them. Or better yet, just make them that loaf of bread for the hell of it. Just to be kind. Give more than you receive always and maybe we can avoid so many full on crises.

I need to quit my job and become an ecological economist

”When the mother nurses her child, the boundary of the individual self becomes permeable and the common good is the only one that matters…The currency of this economy is the flow of gratitude, the flow of love, literally in support of life. By analogy, can the sustenance from the breast of Mother Earth be understood as a maternal gift economy?”

Say it with me...individualism will be the death of society! It is not normal to be self-serving. It is not normal to constantly put the needs of others aside to meet your own. On the other hand, it is not normal to kill yourself to be everything for everyone. Balance is important, and part of that balance is giving back to each other and the world without expecting anything in return. Yes it's tacky to say you expect something in return, but how do you really feel about doing acts of service with absolutely zero recognition?

The challenge is to cultivate our inherent capacity for gift economies without the catalyst of catastrophe.

something i like about this book is that the author kind of predicts where we will have learned gift economics from & then gently pushes us past that every couple pages. the conversations in the forum will be like

•30%: i know gift economies from hurricane cleanup - forum post •35%: “we cannot wait for hurricanes to experience this” - author

this is just an example (of a post i both made & comments i saw in other posts) but it’s like that for lots of ideas over the course of the first 35%, at least for me. she seems to know where we will logically go & continues to gently say “but that’s not enough - why would we stop there” at every turn. just a really good handle on predicting the cultural touchstones & basics we will turn to next. really really cool