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THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

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The evidence for this relationship between gifts and community is<br />

overwhelming. It has been documented all over the world and at all<br />

times.<br />

Some examples<br />

It is odd that I needed anthropologists to discover the relationship<br />

between gifts and community building. The etymology of the word<br />

'community' could have provided even more explicit information<br />

about the link, without all that hard fieldwork by anthropologists.<br />

'Community' derives from the two Latin roots: cum, meaning together,<br />

among each other and munus, meaning the gift, or the corresponding<br />

verb munere, to give.<br />

Hence 'community' = 'to give among each other:<br />

Could it have been more obvious'<br />

I will now provide three examples of communities where this<br />

unwritten rule that community is built over time as a result of gift<br />

exchanges - has been operational since time immemorial.<br />

Monastic community<br />

Benedictus of Aniane introduced some Celtic concepts into early<br />

Christianity and founded the Benedictine Order during- the fifth<br />

century AD, the first Christian monastic organisation in the West. Its<br />

rulebook specifies that communitas is created by the way one<br />

organises the economic necessities of these monasteries. The monks<br />

should be self-sufficient as a group, but totally inter-dependent<br />

between themselves. Everybody has a function From abbot to<br />

doorkeeper, from cook to scribe, from ironmonger to cheese maker.<br />

But each job has to be contributed as a gift to the community.

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