On Learning to be Generous
Some meditations on human potential
I. Birth
It is true that we are not born generous. When an infant first erupts blinking into the light of our world, there are many things that she may be thinking about, but she is certainly not considering her right to give. In fact, if her first thoughts are not simply curious (“Why is it so bright and so cold?”, “What are these warm, lanky creatures, and why are they shuffling me around?”), they are probably plainly self-centered (“I’m starving!“, “I’m scared!”, “Where is my mother?!”).
But she learns generosity very soon and very suddenly, when she is first wrapped in the arms of her mother (or another caregiver), and she learns what it is to be made to feel safe. Through physical touch, the child’s heart rate and temperature are regulated, her stress levels are lowered, and oxytocin — the love hormone — rushes through her body. This is calming, she recognizes. This feels good. The first lesson she learns is that she exists in relation to another, and that it is better to be together than it is to be alone.
You might ask: hasn’t she learned only dependance, not generosity? Of course, at this point, the child is thinking only of her own concerns, not those of her caregiver. But we should still give her some credit. Dependance is the foundation of generosity — it is only when we see ourselves as reliant on others that we can understand ourselves as part of a network of generosity. And more importantly, what the child learns in her mother’s embrace is not only dependance, but connection — not taking from, but being with. The benefit of the embrace is mutual — the mother is also calmed and flushed with oxytocin. Generosity is not simply about letting go of what we have, but about reaching out to another — true giving is always an act of connection. Sometimes, in fact, the most important gift we can give is simply choosing to be present; being a friend.
Not everyone experiences their first moments in exactly this way. Worse, some of us were born into trauma or painful neglect. But we should find some hope in the fact that generosity is learned. We are not born generous; we become so when we learn that the act of giving is what best meets our most basic needs.
II. Apology
As she grows, there will inevitably come a time when a child harms another child. At this point, a good caregiver will teach her how to apologize. Unfortunately, this first apology is rarely meaningful. This is because the apology is tainted by the aura of coercion — the caregiver hovers over the child, telling her what to say and how to say it. The child, for her part, knows that she must do what she is told or else she will disappoint her caregiver, or worse, be punished.
The reason a coerced apology carries little weight is because what makes an apology valuable is not the words themselves, but what the words signify — the apologizer’s posture of contrition and understanding. A true apology, freely given, is a sign that the something inside of the giver has shifted away from selfishness and towards generosity. In turn, the receiver feels seen, understood, and respected. But a forced apology is different, even when the content of the apology is the same. The receiver rightfully suspects that the apologizer remains oriented towards their own self-protection; they’re just doing it to save their own skin.
In other words, when we assert the right to give an apology, both giver and receiver are changed for the better — they feel a bit more at peace and a bit more connected than they felt before the apology. But when we are obligated to apologize, the act loses its meaning — neither giver nor receiver is changed.
So, why do parents tell their children to apologize, when they know that the coercion will empty the apology of its meaning? They do so because they want to teach their intemperate child how to apologize, and in doing so, to provide their child with the ability to give apologies in the future. In other words, by walking them through the motions, they aim to provide their child with a new skill — the right to give an apology.
If a child is never encouraged to apologize through a parent’s gentle coercion, they may never learn how to apologize. And that may mean growing up into the sort of person who is incapable of apologizing. This sort of person is not just frustrating to others, they are also (sometimes unknowingly) frustrating to themselves — limited in their capability to repair relationships that they have broken. In other words, they are unable to access their right to give an apology, simply because they were never taught.
Parenting — like forming good societies — is hard. It is never clear which sort of instruction will be effective: when to apply gentle, protective coercion and when to let them fall and learn to get back up on their own. But a good parent is not a parent who always or never coerces, but one who seeks to use the tools they have to teach their child the values and skills they need to live a fulfilling life.
III. Guidance
When a child enters adulthood, she leaves the guardianship of her parents, only to find herself governed by new forms of authority. As an independent member of society, she now participates in a process of collective self-regulation, through the dual guidance structures of government and culture.
In a democratic society, she votes for government leaders based on her values, with the expectation that they will make choices that affirm those values. Then, their choices become the laws and policies that form the context in which she goes about her day-to-day life. Where she chooses to live, how she spends her time, what work she does and how much of it, where she stores and spends her money, how she structures her relationships, when and whether she has children — all of these decisions are made in the context of the incentives and punishments determined by her government.
Meanwhile, she is an active participant in her culture, which influences her in ways that are more subtle, but also more direct. Her culture tells her what she should aspire towards, what she should and should not say, how to think, how to dress. But she is not just acted upon by her culture — she is, with all of her community, its co-creator. Like a soft clay, it responds to every action she takes — as she conforms, her culture hardens; as she rebels or reimagines, her culture shifts.
For some of us, the influences of culture and government feel like the gentlest of coercion, so aligned with our desires that for long stretches of time, it becomes easy to forget that they even exist. For others of us, the coercion feels oppressive and ever-present. In either case, our culture and our government are like parents that we appoint for ourselves, teaching us the skills and values that we collectively believe will help us to live fulfilling lives.
And in our society, what skills and values have we chosen to teach ourselves? It’s a mixed bag. At our nation’s founding, we emphasized a spirit of democratic collectivism and private enterprise toward the common good — contributist ideals which shocked and inspired the entire world. But at the same time, we devised laws and culture that encouraged white men to steal land from its native inhabitants, silence women, and enslave black people — all practices that were deeply destructive and dehumanizing to everyone involved.
In the modern era, we have become better on civil rights, but worse on common good. Our government now promises to extend rights equally, but the rights it extends are far from contributist — we are often encouraged by policy and culture to hoard wealth and power, to take rather than to give. The result is that equal rights do not result in equitable distribution, and where we once dehumanized primarily on the basis of sex and race, we now dehumanize primarily on the basis of poverty. If the winners continue to be overwhelmingly white and male, it is because they entered this era with nearly all of the wealth, and we now, through policy and culture, encourage them to hold onto it.
If we are a self-centered and dysfunctional nation, this is not because we can’t be taught otherwise — it is because it is what we have chosen to teach ourselves to be.
But forming good societies — like parenting — is an ongoing practice, in which every day provides a new opportunity to re-evaluate which values we teach, and how we teach them. We do not have to have a perfect past or present to create a better future. We must only be able to recognize what skills and values we have been teaching, and be willing to correct our course.
IV. Maturity
And so, here the adult finds herself. She is a member of an imperfect society, which teaches her to live by values which have been decided collectively, some of which she agrees with, and others which have been imposed upon her. At times, it can be hard for her to remember which are which, having lived a life so deeply embedded in her culture. Ideas that she once found foreign or distasteful have gradually slipped into her unconscious belief, as she has been guided by her culture and government through the motions of living by them. Just as she was not born generous, she was not born believing in autocracy or democracy, in slavery or freedom of speech, in the right to retire at sixty-five. She was taught her values over time, and as a participant in her society, she is also a participant in their perpetuation.
But as she matures, a type of clarity does begin to develop. Even as her behavior is guided by her society, her experiences begin to prove to her which values and lifestyles bring fulfillment and which ones leave her feeling stressed or empty. She begins to notice the ways in which law and policy disadvantage some members of her community. She begins to develop her own ideas about what is good. She is not perfect — perhaps none of her ideas are right — but she is becoming, more and more, her own.
This process never ends, though it perhaps slows over time, as her life experience deepens and she encounters fewer surprises. But she is always capable of learning, and she continues to evolve. She gravitates towards some ideas that feel counter-cultural, while holding some normative ideas (like, perhaps, the idea that she is an economic actor) more loosely. Over time, she becomes less self-conscious, and even begins to speak about them with others — advocating for and embodying change, in her own way.
As she lives, she considers: what do I truly value? What skills and values do I want to reinforce? What type of society do I want to inhabit, and what type of society do I want to create for others? Just as her beliefs and values are shaped and constrained by the society she inhabits, she participates in the process of shaping the beliefs and values of those around her. Contributism asks her, as it asks all of us, to consider elevating the right to give.1
A contributist society is like any other, except that its members believe in the value of generosity and participatory contribution for creating a fulfilling life. And because of this, they choose to produce a society — culture and government — that teaches them to be generous.
Notably, this sets it apart from capitalism, which nearly always elevates the right not to give — its primary emphasis being the right to private ownership and the employment of capital for private gain. But it also sets it apart from socialism, which nearly always elevates the obligation to give — its primary emphasis being the right to public ownership of capital, whether through the denial of private ownership or confiscation. To be clear, contributism is not against either private or public ownership of capital; ownership of capital is simply not its focus. Instead, it is focused on everyone’s right to participatory contribution. (For more on the right not to give and the obligation to give, see “What is the right to give?”)