Turned out that little book on mutual aid was just the entrance to the rabbit hole. And it was no surprise to encounter old friend David Graeber once I got down here in the hole. This book is an incredible exploration of all we owe, and all the ways we give back. From pillage and tribute, to mutual aid and friendly trade, the ways we exchange reveal and illuminate the most basic elements of human nature that allow us to communicate, relate, and bond. One simple way to understand a major part of what we do here at The Wonderment is through the lens of distribution: We take large pools of traditional philanthropic resources, often sidelined or stagnated in different holding places, and bust those funds up into a wild array of small grants in support of the community building at the grass rootiest level. Are these distributions gifts? Loans? Exchanges? How can or should each of those aspects be best considered? Graeber repeatedly invokes the saying that "by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs." ow you give really matters, and this book is helping me understand better ways to think about both our intentioned and our unintended consequences. I was reminded about this book hearing it mentioned last week by economist Gillian Tett on the Ezra Klein show in my response below. And check out the first few chapters here to get yourself hooked: Preview of Debt: The First 5000 Years

Times are tough. And weird. Acts of governmental neglect and even abuse against the most vulnerable among us seem to proliferate day by day. And yet as these depressing stories seem to fill our feeds, is it still possible to see the opportunity we have to band together and change the story altogether. In these times of unprecedented connectivity and global awareness, it seems that often the resource most lacking is simple connection among neighbors, friends, and even increasingly fragmented families. No politician is coming to save us, which means WE have to be the ones we've been waiting for. Who is this WE? What is this WE? Thankfully, we have decades of incredible work and storytelling from inspirational community activists and organizers to draw on. I first encountered this little, incredibly (almost beautifully) hideously bound book, Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next), at the beginning of the Covid lockdown, another moment of incredible insecurity and vulnerability. Another time when it seemed likely that no one was coming to save us. I browsed through it, ingested a bunch of ideas that made their way slowly but surely into our Wonderment process, and then spent the next three years on Zoom calls and Netflix. But now it''s back, baby, and I can't express how enthused I feel even just reading the TOC of this little gem of a book. So for the next few weeks, read along with me! I'll be posting periodic quotes, reflections, and connections from the real world and from the world of the Small Scale Visionaries we get to meet here in the Wonderment community--imdividuals whose lives and communities reflect the incredible potential of the real world application of the patterns and processes spelled out in this book. So, let's go, read along with me. --MT