I am scheduled to speak at the UnMONEY Convergence on April 14, 15 & 16th in Seattle, Washington. The subject of one of my talks will be GIFTegrity.
Students of synergic science learn that there are
three types of humans to be found in our present world--Adversaries, Neutralists and Synergists. Which type you
are depends on what you believe about how the world works.
Adversaries believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively dependent on others, and they best understand the language of force.
Neutralists believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of yourself. They believe humans are financial independent and should be self-sufficient unless they are too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of money.
And, finally a new type of human is still emerging. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are interdependent and can only obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language of love.
But, to be successful in our present world, the synergist must
understand all three languages and know when to use them. Synergists
must sometimes use the language of force, and sometimes the language of
money, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists
are seeking allies—when synergists are seeking to build community—they
must speak the language of love.
We believe that you should, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
What is it that most of us want others to do unto us? Synergic
scientists answer this question as follows: Help and support others as
you would wish them to help and support you. Or, more simply, "Treat
others the way they want to be treated."
Synergists are trying to heal the wounds inflected by those who don't understand how the world could work.
This then is the essential challenge to the synergists. Can we work
together and act responsibly in time to save our ourselves on this
planet? ... Only by helping each other.
Today's world is dominated by Aversaries and Neutralists. The best of our present economics system is a Neutral system. What would a Synergic economic system look like?
GIFTegrity
Timothy Wilken, MD
Tensegrity is the pattern that results when push and pull have a
win-win relationship with each other. The pull is continuous and the
push is discontinuous. The continuous pull is balanced by the
discontinuous push producing an integrity of tension and compression.
This creates a powerful self-stabilizing system. The term tensegrity comes from synergic science.
The gifting tensegrity is a newly invented mechanism for the
exchange of human help. Let us begin by describing how a GIFTegrity
might be structured and how it could work. Every member of a synergic
help tensegrity would participate in two roles. That as a giftor and that as a giftee.
The continuous pull of the giftees' needs are balanced by the
discontinuous push from the giftors' offers of help. Again we see as
an INTERdependent life form, there will be times when we will help
others and times when others will help us.
The GIFTegrity works on trust. I give help to those in need
and trust that when I am in need there will be those who will give me
help. Synergic Trust was discovered long ago, and was once known as:
The Spiritual Principle Of Giving And Receiving
“When we give to one another, freely and without
conditions, sharing our blessings with others and bearing each other's
burdens, the giving multiplies and we receive far more than what was
given. Even when there is no immediate prospect of return, Heaven keeps
accounts of giving, and in the end blessing will return to the giver,
multiplied manyfold. We must give first; to expect to receive without
having given is to violate the universal law. On the other hand, giving
in order to receive--with strings attached, with the intention of
currying favor, or in order to make a name for oneself — is condemned.”
And while, The Spiritual Principle of Giving and Receiving relies on
“Heaven to keep account of giving.”, the Gift Tensegrity relies on a
public database to keep account of giving.and receiving. This database
of the synergic help exchange is a public space where the exchanging of
help is made visable to all members who are participants in good
standing.
When you join a Gift Tensegrity you sign in and register as a Giftor-Giftee.
You will fill out two profiles. The first profile is for your role as a
giftor. Your giftor profile is the list of the types of help you would
like to give to other members of the synergic help tensegrity.
The second profile is for your role as a giftee. Your giftee
profile is the list of the types of help you would like to receive as
gifts from other members of the synergic help tensegrity. A third
profile will develop as Giftor-Giftee members use the synergic help
exchange. This is the personal history of each member’s giving and
receiving. This profile is transparent. It can be seen by all members
who are particpants in good standing. It shows all the gifts you have
given, all the gifts you have received, and any comments made by other
members of the synergic exchange tensegrity that you have interacted
with in relation to the exchanging of help. Every exchange generates a
Giftor’s comment rating the Giftee, and a Giftee’s comment rating the
Giftor.
Now once a new member has completed their Giftor and Giftee
registration and entered all their data into the data base, the
computer sorts and matches gifts of help with needs for help.
Now initially within the Gift Tensegrity, the role of Giftor
is active. The role of Giftee is passive. This means that once the
computer has completed sorting and matching registered gifts of help
with registered needs of help, the lists of matches are presented to
the Giftor. These matches are not available for viewing by the Giftee.
The list of matchs are sorted with those who have the highest
ratio of giving/receiving and most positive comments being sorted
higher on the list than those who have lower ratio of giving/receiving
and negative comments.
Freedom of Choice in the Synergic Help Exchange
However, the Giftor is free to offer his gift to anyone on the
list regardless of the order presented. The Giftor is in control of his
giving. Once the Giftor has made his choice and selected a Giftee to
receive his offer of help, then the Giftee is notified that an offer of
help has been made.
The Giftee is then presented with a list of offers of help
from those Giftors that have selected them for offers. With these
offers of help comes access to the profiles of the offering Giftors.
The giftee is then free to examine the offer carefully, read the
profile of the Giftor and decide whether to accept the offer or not.
Freedom of choice is an absolute tenant of the GIFTegrity. The
Giftor decides when and to whom to offer a gift of help. The Giftee
decides when and from whom to accept a gift offer of help. Giftors are
unknown to Giftees unless the Giftor offers help. The Giftee is under
no obligation to accept an offered gift. At this point the Giftee may
contact the Giftor with questions or clarifications about the offer. If
the Giftee accepts the offer, than that action is recorded as a
synergic help exchange and both profiles are updated. Both Giftor and
Giftee can make comments about the interaction then or at a later time
if more appropriate. If the Giftee declines the offer of help, the
Giftor is notified so they can offer their help to some other member.
What you might give or receive...
How do you registering the types of help you might choose to
give or like to receive?. It would seem that almost any good or service
could be exhanged in a synergic help tensegrity. I would suggest three general classes of Gifts as a way of organizing the data base. Also considerations of Local, Regional and Global come into play.
1) Human Knowing — KNOWLEDGE: Expertise, Consultations, Counseling, and Advise.
Those humans with expertise in almost any field can make that
expertise available to others as a gift. Physicians, Attorneys,
Accountants, Engineers, Scientists, Teachers, etc., etc., etc..
Location may be less important with telephone and internet
communication.
This can also be available in the form or books, art, courses, online files, etc., etc., etc..
2) Human Action — WORK: Sevices, Projects, Labor (skilled and unskilled), Jobs and Tasks.
This could be as simple as baby sitting, or giving someone a
ride to as complex as building a room on someone’s house or writing a
custom software program, etc., etc., etc.. It could be a million and
one different forms of helping provided by humans in action. Location
is very important. Many services would only available locally.
For the third category, I have borrowed the term lever from
synergic science. It means any device that provides the user with
leverage.
3) Human Levers — THINGS:
Tools, Appliances, Equipment, Automobiles, Trucks, Tractors,
Lawnmowers, House Furniture, Household Goods, Furnishings, Materials,
Supplies, etc., etc., etc..
And, you can give these things away fully or only gift the use
of them for a specified time. Location is very important for the gift
of using a tool or appliance, perhaps less important if the item is
given away fully. Shipping costs might make a difference, but you can
Gift an item with the provision that the Giftee pay shipping.
In fact you can gift anything with conditions. A gift is an
offer of help. The giftee is under no obligation to accept the offer.
Synergic exchange is fully voluntary. The giftor makes offers of help
when and to whom he chooses. The giftee accepts offers of help when and
from whom they choose.
Conditional Gifting
If I gift the use of a tool for a weekend, I may do so with the
condition that it be returned in clean and in good condition.
Conditions of gifting is both intelligent and synergic.
Things that are gifted can be new or used. Working or not
working. The important thing is to describe the offered gift
accurately. A television repairman might like the gift of an old TV,
that he will repair and use or gift to someone else.
Since your giving-receiving profile is based not on the number
of gifts offered, but rather on the number of gift offers accepted, it
is of great importance to have a good relationship with the giftee.
That means your discriptions of an offered gift needs to be very
accurate. No one will be criticized for gifting junk as long as they
describe it accurately as junk. Those seeking junk will be happy.
Remember one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
Status in the GIFTegrity
Your ranking on the help offer lists is determined in part by
your ratio of giving-receiving. Everytime your offers of help are
accepted your ratio goes up. Those who give the most to others will be
the most honored members in the community of the GIFTegrity. So you
will want to give as much as you can. Likewise every time you accept a
gift offering from others your ratio goes down. So you will want to
accept others gifts carefully and only when you truly value them.
The other factor in determining your ranking on the help offer
lists is your comment mean. This the average score for comments made
about you during help exchanges. Every encounter will be rated. +10 for
it couldn’t have been any better to -10 if couldn’t have been any
worse. To be successful in the gift tensegity you need to give and
interact in a positive way with other members. This means you want to
accurately describe your offered gifts and make sure those accepting
your gifts get what they expect from your descriptions. You also want
to be courteous and friendly in your encounters. If you have an
encounter that earns you a low comment from an exchange partner, you
will want to repair that encounter as quickly as possible so that that
exchange partner will modify or withdraw their low comment.
For instance, if I gift a used computer to someone and it
doesn’t work as described, I need to be willing to take it back at my
expense if the giftee paid for shipping. Or pay for disposal and give
up my credit for the gift. Remember, every exchange effects ratio of
giving-receiving for both the giftor and giftee.
Gifting — Local, Regional & Global
Knowing is one of the most global of gifts. With the internet and modern communication devices, I can help people all over the world.
Human action will usually need to be local, occasionally regional, and rarely global.
Levers and especially use of levers
will usually be local. However, it may make sense to gift a major
appliance or automobile regionally. And rarely, smaller lighter items
might be shipped globally especially if they are unusual one of a kind.
Bringing Dead Wealth to Life
One major advantage of the GIFTegrity is that it resurrects Dead
Wealth. Dead Wealth is that wealth within the human community that is
not being used to help self or others. Dead Wealth is found in all
three forms — Knowing, Action and Levers.
Knowing — Almost
all of us have significant expertise in some areas. Some knowledge of
how to solve problems that we have encountered in our lifes. However,
in our present world we trade the hours of our lives to others for just
enough money to earn our livings. Our employers don’t want our
expertise and knowledge unless it applys to the limited task they hired
us to perform. Yet in the larger context of community our unwanted
expertise and knowledge could help others. The GIFTegrity gives us an
outlet for sharing that expertise and knowledge.
Again, this might be in the form of knowing and action joined
together such as consultations, couseling, analysis and real time
problem solving, or it may be available in the form of knowing and
levers such as reports, books, video or audio tapes, artwork, photos,
computer files, etc., etc., etc..
Action — We all have some
hours in our lives that could be available to help others. The Gift
Tensegrity gives me an outlet for all of those other skills and
abilities that I am not currently trading to some employer for money.
Some of us can do home and automobile repair, handyman work, cleaning,
cooking, sewing, child and elder care, teaching, etc., etc., etc..
Or, it might be that if we knew what help others needed, we
could combine their errands with our own when we are out running around
anyway. The Gift Tensegrity allows you to quickly find out how you can
turn those wasted hours into help for others.
Levers — And finally, we
all have lots of perfectly good things we have in boxes in our garages,
attics, and closets. Used tools, appliances, furniture, clothing,
furnishings — things we never use but are too good to throw away. Now
they can be easily liberated by simply describing them acturately and
gifting them away. Or how about just gifting away the use of some those
great tools you only use one day a week or one day a month.
GIFTegrity Servers — Local, Regional & Global
Because so much of our need for help is a need for local help. I
see the need to establish Neighborhood GIFTegrities. This is where you
will get help with household repair, automotive service, child and
elder care, transportation, etc., etc., etc..
I envision this being started when someone with the time and
interest decides to gift the use of their home computer and DSL line to
run a neighborhood GIFTegrity Database. Then anyone in the neighborhood
could use a computer with dialup connection to the internet to connect
to the local GIFTegrity and enter into synergic help exchange.
These Local GIFTegrities servers would then be linked to
Regional Gift Tensegrity servers which in turn would like to Global
Servers. This would lead to a disseminated system with high level of
redundancy.
This system will work easily with today’s home computers and off the shelf database software.
Need Help — Look First to the GIFTegrity
The GIFTegrity is a synergic help exchange. And as
INTERdependent form or life, we all need help. As a synergic help
exchange that means that the relations between the members of that
exchange will be synergic. Remember synergic relationships are those
that make me more productive, more effective, and more happy. When I
need help, this is where I will look first.
In the beginning the gifting tensegrities will not instantly
replace the fair market. It will begin as simple an alternative to the
fair market. I will begin to meet some of my needs at the GIFTegrities.
As I begin gifting and finding that some of my needs are met this way.
I will have less need to sell the hours of my life for money to use in
the fair market.
Once I am gifting 10 hours a week.I will then be able to
reduce my working week from 40 to 30 hours. This is how the transition
will occur.
Out of Work — Look to the the GIFTegrity
The gifting tensegrities can be enormously important to those
individuals finding themselves out of work. When there is no market for
the hours of your life. There is still no shortage of people who need
your help. The gifting tensegrities acts as an immediate outlet for
those with help to Gift, but no market for their help to Sell.
In fact the GIFTensegrity becomes a new type of insurance for
all humans who are at risk for losing their jobs. In this society, that
is all of us.
GIFTegrity — Not Just for Individuals
Synergic TeamNets are groups of individual humans that form
themselves into Synergic Teams for the purpose of performing a larger
and more complex task than they can perform as individuals. These
individuals co-Operate through a network based on synergic
relationships and synergic compensation mechanisms to accomplish those
larger and more complex tasks. Barry Carter has written extensively
about this concept in his book Infinite Wealth. And, I have developed a
mechanism for organizing Synergic Production Teams called the Ortegrity which is available elsewhere.
TeamNets can register with a gifting tensegrity and list the
Needs of their TeamNet Project. They may be able to attract the help
they need thought the free synergic gift exchange, or they can attract
help, by inviting others to join their team for Synergic Revenue Shares
if the project produces revenue.
Synergic Economist Wayne F. Perg, Ph. D writes:
“My concept and understanding of the GIFTegrity is one of a radical
move away from trade-oriented or materialistic sort of exchange.
“In the GIFTegrity there is no accounting, there are no prices,
there is no barter (no tit for tat), and there is no medium of
exchange! For me, it is the road to a post-monetary, post-barter
economy.
“Barter and monetary economies both tie together giving and
receiving. One cannot be done in the absence of the other. It is this
"tying together" that is the ultimate source of "dead resources" and
unemployment.
“The GIFTegrity frees giving from receiving and receiving from
giving and will, as it is implemented, bring all resources to life and
eliminate unemployment.
“The GIFTegrity does this by creating transparency, i.e., by
creating good information on the SEPARATE giving and receiving actions
of all members of the gifting tensegrity. Because there is no trading,
only gifts given with no requirment of payment, there are no market
prices and no accounting of trades. What there is is an open exchange
of information on needs and resources available to fill those needs and
ongoing individual negotiations around actions that will meet those
needs.
“I see the GIFTegrity bringing the exchange relationships of a
living organism to human society. As Elizabet Sahtouris has pointed
out, the heart does not hold an auction for the supply of oxygenated
blood and it does not withhold blood from those organs who are
currently unable to pay.
“I see the GIFTegrity as a powerful new vehicle for first
supplementing and then eventually replacing our present exchange
economy that relies on money and barter to facilitate exchange.
“I see the GIFTegrity as a powerful step forward from money
systems and barter because it separates the acts of giving and
receiving whereas both money systems and barter tie giving and
receiving together into formal exchange transactions. It is this tying
together of giving and receiving that creates "landlocked" resources
and unemployment.
“I do not see the GIFTegrity replacing informal, undocumented
and recorded giving and receiving within families, groups and
communities within which all participants are known to each other and
within which trust is well established. In fact, I see the operation of
the Gift Tensegrity increasing the number and size of the groups within
which informal, undocumented giving and receiving is the norm.
“It is my understanding that, in the GIFTegrity, I do not make
any commitment to giving in advance. As a giver, I have access to
information on the needs of those who are seeking what I have to give,
but potential receivers of my gifts have no access to me as a giver
until I offer my gift to that person, organization, or community to
which I decide that I would like to give.
“Also, given my big picture vision for the GIFTegrity, I see
givers and receivers including organizations (including for-profit
businesses) and communities as well as individuals.”
