convowithmike

 Mike in Berkeley - 12-13-03

     5:48pm  Mike gave me a whole dollar. I appreciate it, Mike.

                   Mike offered to tell me a little story. He said, "In the ancient East there is a story about a man who was planting a date tree. When you plant date trees you'll never get to enjoy them. Only your children will, because it takes eighty years for them to flower. So, the sultan came by in disguise and said, "Old man, why are you planting this date tree? You will never enjoy the fruit." He said, "I am planting it for my grandchildren." The sultan went over and gave him a gold durham. The man says, "Behold old sultan, not even in the ground and the tree has already produced it's first crop." The sultan gives him another gold durham. Then the man says, "Behold old Sultan, not even in the ground and already it has produced two crops for one year." The Sultan was very impressed."

                   Mike: "Now, you are quite correct on the generosity thing and that's why I'm giving you that(that dollar). You should check out the book Journey to the Ancestral Self by Tamarack Song published in 1994. Basically he talks about how all indigenous cultures have survived without money. He talks about the basis of how they work.
                   I would note also that www.solari.com talks about a similar model. It is possible to live without money. Money is simply one form of energy and we can reflect the energy in another form.
                   No, you're not crazy, my friend. You're one of the few prophets and we need to have you out there doing what you're doing. The key point here is that all successful people share one thing, persistence. They are persistent. Every single great idea came about by a certain process. The first was ignoring it. The second was ridiculing it. The third was attacking it. The fourth really was the younger generation growing up with it and accepting it as part of the natural course of things.
                   May I suggest to you that generosity does work. It's part of the gift-economy. It works very well. I live in the gift-economy as much as I can. The fact is that the gift-economy is the only way you can realistically deal with the problems you speak of. It's absolutely true. Because it has already been proven over tens of thousands of years. That's the way nature works. The gift-economy."

                   Mike's email address is MPatterson@fastmail.ca

                   Whoa, when Mike left he gave me three more dollars and told me not to give up on the mission. Badass.