making Economy of Joy work

I was thinking about Economy of joy a while ago. I thought about how hard it would be to make even just a small and actually money free economy.

To make a gift economy you need everyone in it wanting, willing and brave enough to actually live with no money. It would be very hard to get everyone that way because normal people who rely on large corporations are afraid to change. Also, with the way the world is now, to make things on land that you do not already own (in Economy of joy you would not own places) you have to pay money which would be not very useful when it comes to Economy of joy.

human societal evolution

My mother and I watched a video today by a evolution biologist named  Elisabet Sahtouris about the evolution of living things (ranging from cells to cities) and I thought it was very interesting (the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrfPRju8hxg) . I am especially interested in human societal evolution.

It all starts with unity where everything is the same then, individuation where some things become different then, tension/conflict where things start to not work so well together anymore, next comes negotiation where things are starting to be figured out then, resolution where most of the problems are resolved then comes, cooperation where everything is going well again last is, unity. It is like a simple story line. I think that as a society, right now we are in between negotiation and resolution.

a diagram by Elisabet Sahtouris

trees communicating and helping each other

awhile ago I posted about Economy of Joy in garden plants but it did not say anything about trees. I have always thought that trees could communicate and share. this video describes it really nicely and in a scientific way which I think is sort of cool.

trees communicating and helping each other

jobs

people sometimes get confused and think that a job is something that is not fun or is hard work that you don't want to do but, that is not true at all. a job is something that you do and get back payment. the payment is not always money (for example sometimes you get back joy or you simply clean your house and get back a clean house (also joy).

often when people do hard work they want something physical back in return so they can hold it and look at and show their friends their treasures. when we make ourselves think that a job is something hard or not fun to do we also make ourselves think that otherwise fun jobs are not fun then, it becomes hard work and you want something physical back.

how would we deal with this in Economy of Joy if you only get back joy?

I guess we just have to start remembering what a job really is.

Economy of Joy in Plants

Recently while I water the garden I have been seeing Economy of Joy in plants. It is in all plants but it is Especially noticeable in rhubarb.
 

If rain is falling everywhere the rhubarb leaf is sort of like a Venn diagram. "O.P." stands for "other plants" and "P." stands for "plant". If the rain lands on the plant part of the Venn diagram it will go into the hole at the bottom of the leaf and feed the plant who owns the leaf. If the water lands on the other plants part of the leaf the water will go off the edge of the leaf to the other plants. If it lands in the middle of the Venn diagram it could go either way.

I think it is really awesome to think about how if plants do economy of joy naturally, does that mean that humans might do it naturally too?

Look around your garden (if you have one) for other plants that do economy of joy.
post your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

birthday parties

At a birthday party in Economy of Joy, would there be presents or, no presents? The words gift economy seem to say that there should be presents but, if there are gifts everyone feels obliged to give gifts and some people might not give them with joy. It seems then that the perfect thing is to say is that you can just give gifts if you want but, if you do that people might still feel bad for not bringing a gift.

I guess the word "gift" in "gift economy" means anything you give with no physical payment except for joy coming back to you, not only objects. If you are talking about birthday party gifts you are usually talking about an object you are obliged to give. If we acknowledge that objects are not the best thing in the world maybe we would live more healthy, less cluttered and, more joyfully.






What do you think a birthday party in Economy of Joy would be like?

Post in the comments.

Economy of Joy: the meaning to me

to me, the Economy of Joy is an economy of people who care about each other and are willing and happy to give to others. mostly you need to give joy. if you give a gift of singing and dancing to someone at the same time as feeling sad that you have to do it, the person will get sadness instead of joy. if you give someone your old drum at the same time as feeling sorry for yourself that you are giving your drum away, the person will get a sad, un-enjoyable drum.
 in Economy of Joy, every person has a job. the job does not have to effect the other members of the community for example, you could be a mother or something. there would be no people who live in giant mansions with servants and once in a while call their employees and say "go make another Save on Foods store over there.



to put all I just said together in to one sentence, I will say this "Economy of Joy is where everyone contributes to the community something (i.e. a service or an object or, multiple of them.) and gets back joy, knowing that joy is the greatest gift a living being could ever receive.

free awesomeness

I love free awesomeness! it makes me so happy!!

here is a link to a place where you can hear about some more free awesomeness.

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Forward%20group%20takes%20root%20Vancouver/9915767/story.html

this is awesome!

singing for joy

this is a lovely video about a man who teaches kids about singing and gets back joy. I wonder how many people do these types of things. you never know where these types of things are or when they happen because they are always hidden by the big corporations and businesses. it makes them seem as if they are wearing an invisibility cloak, put on them by the big system. 

get joy!

unsung hero

here is a video of a man who just goes around being friendly to people and helping people and getting back joy. I think it really explains Economy of joy.

I hope you enjoy watching it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWA2GbcnJU
 

Inportant things for Economy of Joy

The Economy of joy is where you give whatever you can and instead of getting payment you get back joy.   
Like all economies it depends on people participating in the economy.

The Relationship Between Enviromentalism and Economy of Joy

In Economy of Joy, most people would probably not want to wreck the earth. Assuming that a lot of people go into businesses like oil mines, tar sands, forestry, ( other such subjects that completely destroy and rip apart the earth, create global warming and other such things.) hoping for a lot of money and, not really noticing the damage they are doing to the earth, why would they want to go into the business if there was no such thing as money? I definitely would not want to do that!

Now, Economy of Joy would not mean that no one would do those types of things. Many people probably would just want to do those types of things because they think they could not live without the the resources that they can make for themselves and others by doing those things but, at least there would be less of a reason to work to wreck the earth.

Sacred economics

I saw a video about our world and the problems we have. It was called Sacred economics.
It was to remind people about how money is bad. 

If one person has lots of money others will be sad and jealous. Money is not fair. With money there are poor people. Without there are not. What would you do if everything was free?
I would make food and make people happy. Or make the house I've always wanted and be a wizard and teach.

Store does not mean a place to buy stuff, it means a place to store stuff.
Shop doesn't mean that ether, it means a work place.     

Here is Sacred Economics if you want to watch it:

My Interveiw with Robin

This was at the money free valentines market in Vancouver.

Rhiannon: what's your name?

Robin: my name is Robin.

Rhiannon:did you start with stuff here or did people just bring stuff for a while?

Robin: um, we started by... a few of us that were planning the market brought our old stuff, and by now it's the fourth one so people are starting to bring stuff. People off the streets are also starting to bring a bag full of stuff, so yeah.

Rhiannon:how did you get the idea?

Robin:um, well, I work with a group called Food Not Bombs, and that's a group that gives free meals to people. We find food that would otherwise be thrown away and we give it out for free. And so Food Not Bombs does these things called the Really Really Free Market so we just thought why don't we do one in Vancouver I think I’ve never been to one before. 

Rhiannon: well we've been to Food Not Bombs 3 times before actually.

Robin: oh really? Cool! Well yeah, the idea came from Food Not Bombs.

Rhiannon:is there any way I can help with this market?

Robin:well yeah, definitely. You can do anything. What do you want to do? Do you have a skill?

Rhiannon: um, I don't know.

Robin: well you could... you could, uhhh... Well, you could definitely help by taking things with you, when you go. You could help by spreading the word, and telling other people about it. You could help by organizing the clothes in a nice way, you know, or just like do a little dance, sing a little song, it's kind of open to whatever you want to do.

Rhiannon:ok, uuuuummm, do you know of other money free markets and which?. 

Robin: well I know of one in London, Ontario. I found it on the internet. And I know sometimes things like clothing swaps happen, where people all bring their old clothes, and then everyone gets to try on clothes like crazy, ummm.... yeah... but I mean not too much! Not too much. That's why we wanted to try doing one here.

Rhiannon: Oh.

Robin: Do you know of any other ones?

Rhiannon: The only other one I know of is Food Not Bombs.

Robin: Cool. Yeah.

Rhiannon: And the one I'm going to make.

Robin: Yeah! That's so awesome! I'm excited. I want to come!

Rhiannon: do you have to bring something or do you just... can you just come or just give?

Robin: Either. Whatever you want. If you come with nothing and leave with a whole bunch of stuff, that's perfect. Or if you want to bring all of your stuff... I mean, the only difficult thing is [that] everything gets transported by car, so if people bring, like couches and beds and that kind of thing it's a little bit hard to deal with, so, yeah... but you can just come empty handed and leave...

Rhiannon: So, since every store is not like this yet, how do you get money without having any... thing...?

Robin: Hmmm... the cool thing about this is that we don't really need money yet. The only thing that we need money for is like, gas, like when we have to drive things back and forth? But I think, eventually... you can apply for grants from the government or from different... like the art councils can give you money, if you apply...

Rhiannon: Yeah.

Robin: So that's one way, or you could have bake-sales. You could do a free market one week and then a bake-sale the next week. Yeah. You could make a little bit of money from bake-sales.

Rhiannon: And that... is all my questions.

Robin: Cool! Thank you. So are you going to stick around for a little bit?

Rhiannon: yeah.

Time bank

Time bank is where you write down what you can do for people and the amount of time you spend doing stuff for people is the amount of time they can do stuff for you. So if one person spends 3hours gardening then one day someone will do something for them in 3 hours or less. I like this idea and one day I might join the group. Maybe one day you will to. Here is the link http://lmtimebank.org/blog/
Hope you have fun!

money free garden

Seattle is building a garden where you can just come and pick what you want for free. it is Economy of joy. here is the link http://planetsave.com/2012/02/24/seattle-to-creat-nations-first-public-food-forest/   
 I wish we had one where I live! maybe we can make one.

the money-free-Valintines-market in Vancoover

On Feb 12, we went to the money-free-valentines-market, we were a-few minutes early so we went to Turks at the park on commercial drive(it's a good coffee shop)we had not seen anything yet.This is me writing my questions I asked Robin (the one who organized the money-free market) for the interview.  

This is the kissing booth where you can get a free kiss. This dog is hoping for a kiss, or maybe giving them. 

This is the money free market. many nice people are here. 

This is a picture of the lanterns Tali and I made for the money free market(we didn't make the magazines!) 

This is Tali and I at the camera having our picture taken by Keiran.  

This is Pappa Tali and I. I am writing my E-mail address in Keiran's address book so he can E-mail me my picture. 

This is Tali and I choosing stuff to take home. I chose a stuffed pig, hair elastics and food.

This is me getting organic potatoes and beets from Sema. 

The potatoes and beets were very muddy because they came straight from the farm .

This is me with the heavy basket of potatoes, beets and colaflower.

Here is me thanking Eli for the food he made. He made cooked vegggies. 

This is a sign that is saying love is better than money. And this is true.

Economy of joy story

characters:Bob, George, Anne and Mike   

Bob:wood giver

George:windows expert

Anne:library keeper

Mike:trucker

                                                   

Once upon a time in a land without money there was a small town being built. Anne and Bob heard of the little town being built and quickly moved to it.They had a wonderful life until Mike moved in.It was a disaster! Mike was their worst friend and now he was their neighbour! the only thing they could do is order from him.They ordered seeds, a pet and a rose. Mike came with a big smile on his face. Bob came out and said "why are you happy? I thought you hated me!"

Mike said "I am happy to bring the things you ordered to you"

Anne said"well then, I shall lend you a book"(since there was no money you did not have to pay if the book is late back).Meanwhile George who built all the windows in the town was listening to the conversation and said

"what a happy ending for a story" and it was.

                            


                                                                             THE END   

Why I am doing this

I thought of this project partly because my family already does stuff like it and partly because I am interested in money-free systems. I am hoping to make a money-free market for my project.      

The point of economy of joy is that you give something out of love instead of  expecting something back. Economy of joy is one way of doing a decentralized system.

This is a diagram of a centralized system. The little dots mean how much money they have. The bigger the more money. The little lines show who they trade with. They all add up to the people in the middle. In this system people think that their value depends on how much money they have.

This is a diagram of a decentralized system. There isn't a group of centre people. Instead everyone just shares with whoever they want. You can tell how much people are worth by how nice they are. It does not have anything to do with what they can trade or money.

In my family we get no birthday presents at our parties, just cards, and we like it (we still give presents to family and friends and give out party favours). We are unschooled. (Unschooling is where you do not go to school and you have more choice, we learn from life.) I love unschooling. Unschooling is decentralized learning.