symbioticspiritist's Book Journey

Bear with me, as these thoughts are just kinda swirling but not necessarily cohesive yet.

I keep thinking about the Gift Economy, the lesson of the Tragedy of the Commons, and how communal structures often break down because of a few bad actors choosing to hold themselves as more worthy over their community. In the past few years I've seen lots of comments under silly (or presented as silly) videos of people showcasing their ignorant/harmful/just plain embarrassing habits that say "bring back shame", seemingly calling out the comfort with over sharing in today's digital landscape. Shame is so interesting to me because I think in the past 10-15 years there has been a lot of work done in certain movements to let go of the shame we carry for things largely out of our control (the body positivity movement is a big one that comes to mind), but I think it's also one of the most effective tools we have to impose morality, especially onto those who would otherwise not give a damn if they hurt other people.

Humans are community oriented creatures and as such they all want to be a part of a community. Modern society has hindered finding community in many ways, but in other ways it has allowed an expansion of community to the point where Shame is not nearly as potent, because anyone shamed by one group of people can easily find another (through the digital landscape, moving towns, or simply through having a much larger number of people in one place available to them). I forget exactly where these examples come from, but I remember reading in several different books about hunter-gatherer groups where if one member was not doing their share, or acting in ways harmful to the community, they would be shamed and shunned by the community at large until they either changed their ways or were completely kicked out of the community. Shaming and shunning was such a powerful tool that it often kept there from being issues in the first place, and where there was an issue it often worked quickly to resolve the harmful behavior.

This type of shaming in our spread out, enlarged communities nowadays is not nearly as effective. People have a lot of other resources and communities they can turn to, and it's hard to get hundreds or thousands of people on board with Shaming an individual, or even a large entity. However sometimes people do still effectively organize this, boycotting after all is just such a large scale Shaming and Shunning of companies until the desired behavior is produced. (A note on this though which I think a lot of people get stuck on is that Shame only works if once you see the desired behavior there is a positive reward for that, you can't just continue to shun even after behavior has changed).

How does this concept of Shaming balance with a Gift Economy where everyone is deemed worthy of receiving though? The land will produce berries for an evil person just as readily as a kind one. How do we effectively curtail the people who only take in our modern world? Perhaps by building these smaller Gift Economies we can bring back smaller communities where people are more reliant on each other, and therefore Shaming and Shunning from a community can have a greater impact again.

Who else is eating berries while reading this one?