The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Why then have we permitted the dominance of economic systems that commoditize everything? That create scarcity instead of abundance, that promote accumulation rather than sharing? We’ve surrendered our values to an economic system that actively harms what we love. Our metrics of economic value like GDP count only monetary value in the marketplace, of that which can be bought and sold. There is no room in these equations for the economic value of clean air and carbon sequestration and the ineffable riches of a forest filled with birdsong. Where is the value of a butterfly whose species has prospered for millennia and lives nowhere else on the planet? There is no formula complex enough to hold the birthplace of stories. It pains me to know that an old-growth forest is “worth” far more as lumber than as the lungs of the Earth.

Because these are not shared values. Especially not in America. Individualism reigns. Make the most, the best for me and you do you. So destructive.

“Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter.

I love this quote; it reminds me of another favorite, if you have an abundance, it is better to build a bigger table than a higher wall.

The challenge is to cultivate our inherent capacity for gift economies without the catalyst of catastrophe.