I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about different aspects of the Give Freely Receive Freely concept and how it applies to our current economic and political system, and how it can address those problems at a fundamental level. As I’ve thought about all the different applications of GFRF I have been planning in my head a whole series of blog posts discussing the different issues, how the GFRF relates to dominant recent political models such as communism, socialism and capitalism, why previous attempts to live in ways similar to this have generally been unsuccessful and what I think needs to be tweaked in order for this to be successful in the future.
I have been really interested in the wider implications of groups of people choosing to interact in this way and it has been an interesting experience thinking about these wider issues. But when I think about writing all the blog posts they seem to stretch out before me infinitely, each one takes a long time to write because there are quite complex issues to address (and even then I am only really giving them a very superficial treatment, I currently have a half written post about greed being the basis of our financial system and why this is not a good thing), and there are MANY different fundamental issues to be looked at. It seems like it will take me so much time and effort before even getting in to the really valuable stuff, which is my experience with actually trying to make it work in the current environment.
I have just realized that I had fallen into the trap of focusing on the negative instead of the positive. When you focus on the negative you see endless problems which take infinite work to deal with. On the other hand, when you focus on the positive, the path becomes clear and simple. This is what I want to focus on from now on in this blog.
From now on I want to refocus on my own efforts to live in this way and my experiences with it. I think spending time thinking about the wider societal implications was a useful experience for me, and in a way maybe something I needed to do to convince myself that what I am doing is good and would actually be good for everyone else if it was adopted on a wider scale, because if it wouldn’t work on a wider scale then I probably shouldn’t do it small scale either. I am satisfied now that I have thought things through far enough to know that it could or would work on a large scale, and if it did, it would create a utopian society that most of us have not even dreamed of (lots of standard capitalist theory indoctrination to work through to get to this point). I feel like I can now with good conscience put those thoughts aside and focus more simply on my own efforts in the here and now to live as close to the ideal as I am able to. I may refer to these wider issues from time to time as I go, but at this point I want to set aside all the problems and focus on the solutions which is living based on love, compassion and sharing instead of greed and selfishness.
This is a big shift, and one which I think has been enabled by my experience trying my best to give freely and receive freely. Little by little I think actually experiencing this has started to change my perspective and reshape me as a person.
I think the true power of GFRF is to change the individual, I want to live this way regardless of the society around me, so I’ll stop worrying about those social problems and get on with living my own life in my own way.
I think I can feel my life getting simpler already 🙂