Lend me some sugar!... I am your neighbor! (Or Mark 2: Sharing Economic Resources with Fellow Community Members and the Needy Among Us)

This summer, I have seen the following means to human flourishing shared amongst ourselves and our neighbors:

-fresh eggs
-canned food
-kale
-lawnmowers
-meals
-houses
-bedrooms/bathrooms
-sugar
-ice cream
-finances
-bus passes
-cat-catching services
-diapers
-peanut butter
-oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
-bread
-Chicken Elmo
-movies
-cooking oil
-snack food
-the pancake cooker thing

Sharing is easy at Hyaets. Here are four reasons why:

1) People are intentional about being dependent on others.

Most of us will spend a great deal of our time trying to achieve some degree of economic independence. Even if we do not direct our lives towards the consumption of more and more material goods, we at the least have a desire to live comfortable lives. We want an economic lot greater than one that means just "getting-by" and we do not want to have to rely on others for our own welfare. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with this common desire. It does a great deal, I think, for our self-esteem and stability for us to have independent control over our lives.

But economic independence presents obstacles to sharing. When we have no need ourselves, it becomes difficult to have empathy for or attend to those with real needs.

At Hyaets, we can experience empathy for our neighbors because many of us are as poor as they are. And to the extent that we are better off than our neighbors, we remain dependent on each other, pooling and sharing our resources as a community (and as an economy of scale!). So reciprocal sharing becomes a way of life within our community, and thus enables us to share with our negihbors.

2) People realize that their neighbors are in need and often deserve help (and if neighbors don't deserve help, they try to be merciful and share with them anyway) .

Growing up, I often believed (for one reason or another) that poor people were poor because they were either (1) lazy bums, or (2) that they had made some very bad decisions. This summer, I have found that while some poor people are both lazy bums and very bad decision-makers, some are not either of these things, and there is not usually a causal relationship between a Tuckaseegean's economic status and his or her work ethic or decision-making track record.

So without trying to answer the question of why the poor are poor, I think it is important to say that we know that most of our neighbors are not entirely, or even mostly, responsible for their poverty, and sometimes entirely not responsible in the case of intergenerational poverty.

I have spent a bit of time on the question of desert because I believe that many of our neighbors are poor unjustly. But even in the case where some person ought to be poor for the rest of her life; that is her just desert, we still ought to share with her. (Cause we got that whole WWJD thang going on!)

3) People do not measure their happiness by the accumulation of material things.

Hyaets members would be pretty miserable if they did. We don't have a lot, first of all. Second, if we did measure our happiness in this way, it would be difficult to share as much as we do. For we would necessarily be diminishing our own expectations by sharing our resources with others. Instead of having more, we would have less, and this in and of itself would be against a conception of happiness-as-the-accumulation-of-material-things. But we do not subscribe to this conception, and I imagine that those who do would have a difficult time sharing with others.

4) People love each other.

So why do we share?

The best reasons for sharing seem to be neither egoistic nor moral. Obviously sharing is not egoistically motivated. If my neighbor comes to me asking for an egg and I only have two, both of which I am planning on using to make Mom's oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipie, sharing may have a detrimental effect on my own welfare. Yet I still give my neighbor an egg.

Yet, the strongest reasons for sharing are not moral. While it may be morally good to share, say an egg, with my neighbor, it does not seem to be a requirement of morality that I put myself in situations that would be conducive to sharing. As Christians we are required to practice acts of charity, but we are not required to share as such. Nor does sharing seem aimed at improving the welfare of society. At Hyaets, if our goal was to better our neighborhood by maximizing the welfare or utility of our neighbors, we would not be doing a very good job. We do not manage our resources or direct our actions toward this goal.

Alternatively, I think our sharing is motivated by love- love for our neighbor. If explained by love for neighbor, sharing is motivated by a reason outside of our self, but is at the same time bound up in interest. In order to share, we have to be passionate about sharing and about neighbors. In my experience, a disinterested act of sharing is not usually an option. We love our neighbor, and we usually have some interest sharing with this neighbor we love, usually along the lines of making our lives more meaningful.

Sharing is bound up with hospitality, which is the realm of Mark 3, so this post will be continued in some fashion tomorrow.

Pax et bonum
Matt