Scarce resources

Unconditional sharing is the beautiful idea of giving without expecting anything in return and taking without creating any kind of debt. It is based on the idea that humans are trustworthy, honorable and honest if just treated right. Philip Engelbutzeder writes

"unconditional sharing initiates community. Unconditional, but committed to the whole. It is a statement of "we are one", that is transcending the separation of me and you, while it is opening the doors to a new room full of opportunities for people to come together as they are and to share whatever they love in their lives."

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? I think it does...

But I also think that we cannot say that we are already doing this, because so far all our sharing was born out of the situation of abundance. In the case of foodsharing the sharing often is not even altruistic but needed, because all this saved food needs to get eaten by someone. If you take it from me I'm glad, because I don't want to see it spoil after all...

So far, we never shared scarce resources. I'm sorry if I sound pessimistic, that's not at all what I'm trying to do. Again: I really like the deeper idea of unconditional sharing as presented by Philip! It is maybe just a bit too visionary for me to just believe that it works without pointing out the difficulties.

The positive idea of man, that is axiomatic for the concept of unconditional sharing, works via positive feedback. That means, if we approach people openly and with honest and kind intentions, they will feel it and resonate with this flow and thus behave as excellent as they can. This creates an upward spiral that leads to everyone affected being a better human.

But:

What if this important premise is violated? If anger, mistrust, fear or greed comes into the equation, the whole model can fall apart pretty soon, because the spiral can revert to a downward one, if there's only one person feeling wronged even if it isn't even the case!

The most probable scenario to start such an unwanted development is one that is not abundant: When something attractive is not accessible for everyone, there will be feelings of disappointment. Even if there was a perfectly balanced distribution system in place - which is not - at some point people would be unsatisfied, unhappy and looking for someone to blame.

When there is only one piece of chocolate to eat or one computer to use, there will be problems. More or less official and transparent hierarchies will form and differend kinds of reasonings about worthyness, neediness and who deserves what will emerge and seperate people. This is why it is of utmost importance to maintain well-functioning communication at all times: When there's trust everything is possible; the chocolate is just a nice treat and the computer just a tool, but as soon as there is doubt and mistrust the chocolate becomes a symbol of appreciation and the computer a measure of my personal usefulness to the group. Then very soon it won't be about the objects anymore, but about hurt feelings and disguised vulnerabilities and then rational communiation gets way harder...

But then again, Joachim Thome says that abundance is a very natural state and that nature itself is always abundant. Just look how much fruit one single tree or bush bears and you understand, what he means. So in a natural environment, where there is enough space for everyone, resources probably won't be scarce anyways...