Giving With No Expectation of Something In Return

The original utopia

So we were living in this original world where everything there was simply was. Again, this may not have been this Earth and we may have been different life forms, but for the sake of simplicity we will pretend it was. You may wish to visualize a round faced petite woman called Akemi, living happily in harmony with others.
She picked berries and ate them, but there were so many, so after she had eaten plenty, she went out and shared the rest with others. Both my alter ego and her neighbors were happy.
She was not very good at fixing things, so when there was a leak in her hut, she asked her neighbor if he could help, and of course he did. He liked doing this kind of work and was pleased looking at his clean work. Both were happy.
Notice she didn’t ask for the repair work as a “return” of her giving him berries. They just did what was natural to each of them, and all were served.
It was the same with relationships. When my alter ego saw a nice cute guy, she went up and told him she liked him. If he liked her, too, they made love, and both were happy. If he liked staying around, they had a long-term relationship. If he didn’t, it was no big deal because there were other cute guys. No drama, just love and joy.
All kids were looked after by all the villagers. For women, the children she gave birth were special, and for men, their women’s children were special, but really all kids were well loved and cared. In fact, not just kids. Everyone was loved for who they were, and everyone loved all there was. All in harmony and peace as it was....

Then something unusual happened. Someone came up with the idea of getting more than there was by seeding the idea of lack to people’s mind.
Say, one day, there was a traveling merchant who showed pretty red stones to my alter ego. She liked them and wanted one of the pendant. The merchant said she had to pay. So she offered a basket full of berries.
. . . and to her surprise, he said “That is not enough to get the pendant.”
He wanted something more. The next door guy offered him big chunk of dried meat and could get a pendant for his wife. My alter ego’s berries were valued less because they didn’t store well. She was shocked. Until then, she never even thought something she had to offer may not by “enough”.
The merchant also told everyone that there were only limited supply of red stones. So the value of the stones would go up – that next door guy was lucky to get it with five pounds of meat.
This affected my next door neighbor’s mind. He started to think he is “better’ than others. He began saying things that put others down and stopped doing kind things for them. He “fell” and became a darkworker. At first, he just did a little bit of darkwork occasionally. Eventually, however, he became good at manipulating others.
The idea of lack and scarcity affected relationships as well. Suddenly, there was a rumor that there weren’t enough cute guys! Any smart woman was to “keep” a guy so that he would bring the paychecks to raise their kids.
Things were even worse for men. Suddenly there was a rumor that there weren’t enough good women, so they had to secure a woman who would bear their children. It became important to make sure their woman weren’t seeing someone else because resources were considered to be limited and he could afford only to raise his own kids. The village was no longer functioning as community of care.
Our health deteriorated, too, because of the increasing negativity and stress....