The means we use to access material goods influences the relationships we establish with those goods. Did we acquire them via a robbery, a conquest, a barter, a purchase, a loan, a donation, a gift? Did we use a currency, and if yes, which type? Depending on the mean of acquisition, the fates and social dynamics attached to each good differ wildly.

Purchasing and owning, as neutral as it may seem, binds us to an original robery. Proudhon wrote: “Property is theft“. Theft of a land, of a thing, of a living being. The scarcity of money we have to “earn” triggers the spirit of conquest, of competition, of proprietarization, of possession. It floats in the air, in the culture, to the point we don’t think about it anymore. These flows will fade out when we use sufficient currencies that will flow in direct proportion with our individual capacity to engage economically. As for the gift economy, it will take us to a whole new level if we know how to scale it up.

Therefore the way we design of a currency triggers specific states of consciousness. Predatory, archaic, conquering in the case of scarce money. Open and generous in the case of sufficient currencies. Compassionate and creative in the case of technologies supporting a gift economy. The obsession of possessing torments us less in an economy of free currencies than in an economy of scarce money. It leaves us completely in the case of gift economy.

More and more people will realize how the evolution of consciousness of humanity implies the use of a new alive language: the language of flows. A revolution as important as the writing in its time.