Lynne Twist describes the myth of scarcity simply in The Soul of Money. She asserts that the myth rests on three tenets: more is better, there isn’t enough, and that’s just the way it is.
Assuming those, then you can expand upon them. If more is better, then less is worse. We look at someone’s mansion, and we assume that they are better than someone living out of their RV. We don’t question whether they are happy or whether they’ve impacted the world in helpful ways, we assume that the wealthy person is successful and better than the itinerate.
You then add in the idea that there isn’t enough. We live everyday questioning having enough: time, sleep, money, everything. If there is not enough, then we draw a line between those with whom we will share and those we will not. This line becomes judgmental. In order to justify not sharing with the other side, we begin to see that the more side as better than the less side. We assume that less is not only worse, but those with less must be less deserving. We craft stories and suspicions about the less side and how they want to take what we have from us. Of course, we live in a world of multiple strata, we justify not sharing with those less than us by pointing to those with more than us and expecting them to share. We hoard our money, our assistance, our compassion.
The kicker is that we accept that that’s just the way it is. We let people: friends, leaders, elders, politicians, fuel these ideas. We let advertisers convince us that we need to have more to be more. We build artificial and often real walls and fences around ourselves isolating us from our communities. We share sparingly within our own communities. We let this happen because we cannot conceive of it any other way.
I, myself, ponder these things with shame. Shame that I don’t do more, that I don’t give more, that I haven’t altered the way we live. I suspect many of us let guilt paralyze us.
But I want to believe that I can change. I want to believe that we as a people can change. Let us begin with community. Lend a smile to a stranger on the street, let someone go before you at an intersection, wander through the neighborhood just a bit less than you with an open heart and a warm energy. Take a moment of time to envision someone with less than you and consider that maybe they don’t threaten your way of life.
Oh, and this holiday season, maybe spend a little more to get a little less by shopping locally. Support your community. Shop small.