[ICYMI] Adventure Not Obligation

It’s tough to be generous when paying the bill for groceries every month is a struggle.

This is one of the fist pieces of feedback that we receive here at Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT) when we blog about trust and “giving it away to get rich later” in an abundance economy, as we did here, hereand here.

Generosity in an abundance economy is rewarded when every piece of content—words, pictures, videos, comments, etc.—are shared, “liked,” posted and re-posted on the internet via social media.

Being generous with what you have is not limited to the disruptive, conflict-ridden development of the connection economy through which we are all living now.

One of the key principles of Christianity and the Bible is the idea that believers in Christ are called to be generous: with their time, their money, their talent, their resources and their lives.

And this philosophy is based in the idea that God rewards a generous person mightily. This extends both to the rich man (who is generous out of an abundance of material wealth (see Luke 10:29-37) and the poor man (who is generous out of an abundance of love (see Luke 7:36-50).

This is where the work of charities, missionaries and people such as Mother Teresa comes about. This is also where 16^th, 17^th and 18^thcentury European colonialism had part of its roots.

Now, in a world where generosity is seen as something done out of abundance for someone else, being generous (as opposed to being greedy and promoting scarcity) has long been seen as a “sucker’s game” because anyone could (and would, and did, and still do)take advantage of such generosity while giving nothing back in return.

However, with the internet and social media (and wearables and disruptive tech start-ups and on and on) upending the economy of scarcity that we have all lived in for the last 100 or so years, the New Normal will increasingly be the old school “sucker’s game.”

In the connection economy, it doesn’t take a religiously observant believer to understand that the more content is given away for free, the more generosity becomes an adventure, not an obligation: Which of course, requires us to rethink the values that we have around ownership, access and privacy, long held values that no longer work in a world of shareable movies, downloadable Mp3’s and Facebook posts.

So, if everyone is sharing, posting, reposting, creating and giving generously, who’s getting “rich” and who’s getting left behind?