A while ago I had the pleasure of meeting a truly great man, one of the White Fathers maintaining the presence of the Catholic faith in Africa (a man who I won’t name here). However, among the great thinkers, innovators and leaders it has been my pleasure to meet, he stands a proud shoulder above them all. There are a number of reasons I hold this man in awe, but the most important of all is a question he led me to ask myself: In developing our commercial world have we forgotten the importance of our own happiness?

In the world I live in it is far more pertinent to think about the developments, the solutions and the tools, that will drag us into the 21st century kicking and screaming. In doing so I focus on the ‘problems and issues’ that face us, the lucky locals of the OECD countries, in our daily lives. Problems like ‘Why is it so hard to manage my money?’ or, ‘How can I preserve my physical fitness well into my 80’s?
However, while these problems may seem major and insurmountable to us, they really do pale into insignificance when faced with those that plague the Third World. This isn’t a charity call so I won’t drag you through the plight of the Ethiopian slums, but just weigh up the things that get you down in life against war, famine, pestilence and death

My friend, the White Father, lives within this world day in and day out. He has been a missionary in Africa for longer than I have been alive. It was through talking with him that I made an interesting personal discovery. Firstly I learned about the negative effects that applications of western living had created in the Third World. But I also learned about the joy and vigour that these people have for life. In fact it was true to say that they were far ahead of us in the most intangible of assets: happiness.
I found it deeply wonderful that we could learn a lot from the gift-led communities of Tanzania and Kenya and from the way that these people lead their lives. We could take back so much learning from them into our own culture. In our world, where we live in a solitary confinement of our own making, among tiny nuclear family units, where we pay in every relationship with the outside world in cash, we have discarded the most important thing of all. We have lost our network of friendships.

So I feel there is an exchange that can be made. We should be pulling together the best bits of both societies to find a way forward for us all.

In the west we should learn to give within the community once more. We have lost this way of life because we don’t need it. We are self-sufficient and we do not need to rely on the kindness of others. However in sharing and giving we build the threads that pull community together and in doing this we reduce the threat of crime and unemployment as a side effect.
How is this so? Well it’s difficult to quantify, but essentially it stems from the respect of others. This is something we have lost. We distrust those that we don’t know and we perpetuate this within our family groups. We have created a kind of community tension, but without this we could be driven to build a better place for others as well as ourselves. In doing sowe create space for community ‘work’ through teaching, creativity and in cleaning and building in the space around us.

There are tools to rebuild these relationships. Money tools like Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) encourage this kind of growth and allow us to build the kind of world that our African friends still enjoy. They bring us together in a gift-based economy and are proven to create the utopian view I have described within our ‘developed’ world. By trading in a gift type currency we create the open-ended relationships, or friendships, that we are missing.
If you would like an example, look to the Japanese. They have used this kind of tool to ease the stress that social care was having on their economy with a local currency tool they call ‘the caring relationship ticket’. This is used in payment of care for the aged. They have also created a currency that they call ‘LOVE’. This is being used as a community building tool in Kanagawa and is the first Japanese local currency to use new digital technologies.
Finally, back to the question of what we can give back to those suffering in the Third World? It’s a question that is too big to answer here. Having seen the work that the Catholic faith is doing in Africa I think that the best we can do is help to educate and let these societies learn and find a way forward that suits them and not us. We should look to repairing the damage we have done through the introduction of ill-fitting Western ways and through trying to enforce monetary devices in a world that can not sustain them.

I have learned that we are so often convinced of our wisdom, when actually we are driving into the future on the back of a foolish kind of pride. So often we develop commercially and in doing so we lose the most important things for us. Perhaps when we create solutions we should look further than the obvious business case risks, issues and effects. Who knows?
I hope we can turn the ship around and start to use things like local money tools to repair our disparate communities and I hope in time we can start to take a more enlightened, less heavy-handed approach in the work we undertake in the Third World. I hope that we learn that our happiness, and the happiness of others, is a more important measure of success than the money we earn. But it all seems so far away.

Humanity
Catholic faith in Africa, commercial world, OECD countries