Desiree Clark’s Reviews > The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World > Status Update

pg 77 - “this specialization to avoid scarcity has led to a dazzling array of biodiversity, each o species avoiding competition by being different.”

pg 80 - “Lewis Hyde writes, ‘to assign a market value to a gift, destroys the gift.”

pg 62 - “if we think of Earth as a big warehouse of commodities, as mere objects, we claim a kind of privilege to exploit what we believe that we own.”

pg 72 - “I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do.”

pg 44 - “the challenge is to cultivate our inherent capacity for gift economies without the catalyst of catastrophe. we have to believe in our neighbors, that our shared interests supersede the impulses of selfishness.”

pg 50 - “you can store mean in your own pantry or in the belly of your brother. both have the result of keeping hunger at bay but with very different consequences…”

pg 22 - “I imagine if we acknowledged that everything we consume is the gift of mother earth, we would take better care of what we are given.”

pg 12 - “the practice of gratitude puts brakes on hyper consumption.”

pg 17 - “abundance is fueled by constantly circulating materials, not wasting them.”

pg 19 - “gift giving is the most primal of human relationships.”