Hey, we're going to meet in an hour, and I wanted to remind you about it and also remind you of the things we read. We read these pieces over the last few weeks:

• part 13: Maps to Statelessness
• part 14: "All of Them Carrying Yesterday"
• part 15: Gizhewaadiziwin
• part 16: Flowing

I've been thinking about the system of care and the network of reciprocity Simpson describes in "Gizhewaadiziwin". "Our system of care is complex, and it is never transactional" Simpson writes (emphasis added).

I spent a while reflecting on this and thinking about the implications of such a system, or rather reflecting on transgressions within such a system. It makes intuitive sense that within a system where everyone is cared for, and where you don't expect direct transactional reciprocity when you offer a gift, but it started to click for me that it can become so obviously dangerous to the entire ecosystem if a couple of participants in this system started to trade back and forth just among each other; they would start to accumulate and pass resources back and forth amongst each other, intensifying the accumulation of resources that they have, while everyone and everything else makes offerings and gives gifts to the greater cycle.

What a bleak outcome it would be for a vanishingly narrow group of participants to pass their wealth around amongst themselves and become a leak in the balance of all the world's resources, disappearing from the world whenever they passed into that nested circle of exchange and gifts.

...

Separately, I appreciated the opportunity to linger in this thought Simpson relayed from an Elder, in the same piece:

Bologna, he taught me, is just as good as tobacco if it is honest and offered with an open heart.

Maybe I just found the idea of a profound lesson about sharing what you can out of earnestness... that circled around a bologna sandwich... disarming, or charming, or maybe just funny. But I felt a lot of affinity for this, and I want to spend more time reflecting on this.

video chat details

In about an hour (at 5p ET, or 9p UTC) let's get together¹ and chat about whatever we've read this week. The link to join is here (if that doesn't work, the url is below)

https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom

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