We live in an increasingly and blatantly transactional world in which even war is now openly discussed as an opportunity for a deal to be struck – Trump’s ‘minerals for security’ offer.  A lot of this was hidden in the past.  Of course, it is no coincidence that the Middle East is oil rich and has been wracked by war. 
 
In these times, it is useful to be reminded that there are different ways of being and ones which may allow us, as a species, to survive better.  For me, no book communicates it better than ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer.  Without romanticising or generalising, there are aspects of indigenous wisdom that have deeply shaped my thinking as we leave behind our old paradigm and enter the new. 

‘Reciprocity’ and the ‘gift economy’ are two of those.  To survive any length of time, we need to give first.  To give to our community and back to the rest of nature.  We can expect others and the rest of nature to gift back too, but we don’t necessarily know what, how much and when. It’s not a quantified transaction.  It’s about responsibilities to give, not rights to take. 

Here is one example of how I realised this plays out in very practical ways.  Modern farming has become transaction.  We put in X amount of fertiliser expecting Y amount of yield back in return.  This might work in the short term but long term this approach is disastrous.  Modern farming increased yields in the short term but focussing on the transaction made us blind to the wider implications: modern farming has destroyed half of all soils on the planet, created dead zones in the oceans through fertiliser run-off, drove an insect apocalypse through use of pesticides and delivered food with low nutrient density, impacting our health. 

Reciprocity in farming means working with the land and the rest of nature. Having worked in farming, it is about gifting compost and manure to the soil, working with water and weather cycles and gratefully accepting what nature gifts back to us.  

To some, what I am saying sounds wet, woolly, weak and foolish.  I can assure you it is not.