Entry 39. Give more than you receive

This is a big universe, and there are essentially two views of it – either it’s growing or shrinking. Newton and the imaginary physicists confused the issue with their statement that matter can’t be created or destroyed, because they overlooked the creative nature of human beings.

A fellow named Wallace D. Wattles shook up the issue in the early Earthian 20th century with a little book called The Science of Growing Rich. He confounded the physicists by claiming there is some kind of creative stuff in the universe, and that by digging your hands into this stuff you could have whatever you want. The problem with saying such stuff exists is that no one has ever seen or handled this stuff.

But metaphorically speaking Wattles had an intriguing thought. Each of us is a new and unique individual with an innate creativity, and so we are creating anew and expanding the universe every day just by being – whether we’re making new thoughts or building new civilizations. In Wattles’ vision of the universe, life is not a zero-sum game because we are each adding our new creations minute by minute to the wealth that has come before.

He wrote:

You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created.

You do not have to take anything away from any one.

You do not have to drive sharp bargains.

You do not have to cheat, or to take advantage. You do not need to let any man work for you for less than he earns.

You do not have to covet the property of others, or to look at it with wishful eyes; no man has anything of which you cannot have the like, and that without taking what he has away from him.

You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now.

Or, to put it in fewer words, as I did in the third of my Tenets of Common Wealth:

Give more than you receive.

We are all creative persons, and we each make art every day – whether our art is making furniture or stringing words together or processing waste. Our every action adds value to the universe. If each act is focused on giving, we each receive what we need – and Wattles would say we each receive what we want. Another 20th-Earth-century philosopher put it this way: “You can have anything you want if you help enough other people get what they want.”

Imagine a world with this view of the universe as one of its central tenets, where taking and confiscating and redistribution is not part of the equation because our intentions are all about giving. Perhaps you begin to see why we decided to abandon the old forms.

Entry 40. Conflict of interest