There are a number of big ideas that are part of the Generosity Game concept. Some of them, like encouraging generosity and fostering spiritual values, are pretty familiar. Others, like memetics, network economics, and the generalized application of currency structures, are not so obvious. We'll go over them one by one here, from most obvious to least obvious.

  

Generosity, Goodness, and Giving

Our Thoughts on Generosity

Steal This Idea!

Memes: Infectious Ideas, Viruses of the Mind

What Could We Really Do with the Idea of Money?

  

Most obviously, the Generosity Virus Cards are about, well, generosity. They encourage creative, generous acts. We hope that they open something up in the hearts of people who receive them and pass them on. We are committed to fostering creativity in generosity.

Note that the cards are very open-ended: they don't say "give something to someone else." They don't even say "make someone happy." They say "Go do something good for someone else." And what we mean by that is: get creative. Go think about it; see what you could do. Have fun!

This is also part of the concept: fun. We want giving to be fun. Maybe even a little devious, a little subversive. Subversive goodness, a secret conspiracy of generosity. Do you love it?

Another core part is selflessness. Doing good anonymously is by its nature selfless. You can't receive anything in exchange for what you've done. The best you'll get is a glimpse of a happy face. Which is actually pretty nice. But you can't really feed your ego very well on this.

We intend to expand the Generosity Game. At some point soon, we would love to see millions (dare we say billions?) of these cards in circulation. We're very interested to see what broad cultural effects might result.

While we consider this to be a spiritual mission, we do not attach it to any particular denomination or faith. We understand that these cards may be used in ways that some might object to, like buying drinks for people in a bar. We are not going to try to impose a particular moral position on the use of the cards. The spirit of generosity is the true core of this project, not a particular moral code, ours or anyone else's.

Our Thoughts on Generosity

You can do what you like with these cards. In fact, we're fairly sure you will do what you like whether we tell you to or not. That said, we have some thoughts and ideas on the nature of generosity we would like to share.

First, in our understanding, generosity is incompatible with obligation. There's a lot of meaning for us in the response, "Oh, you shouldn't have:" generosity is outside of what you should do. Don't get us wrong, you should fulfill your obligations. We just don't think that that is being generous. Generosity is giving, and giving freely.

Also, while material sacrifice may occur in giving, we think that generosity is more connected to a form of spiritual abundance: that what I give to you, what I sacrifice, is somehow smaller than who we are, and generosity acknowledges that interior greatness. Anonymous giving says more: that who I am is larger than the ego that could be pumped by this act.

For an excellent book on the subject of giving, check out The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, by Louis Hyde. The idea for these cards actually fell out of Hyde's book.

Steal This Idea!

We anticipate that these cards will be used in many ways. We wouldn't be surprised to find Generosity Virus Cards in a shoebox, emblazoned with a Nike swoosh, or at the bottom of our Burger King breakfast bags. Which raises a question:

Is that OK? Wouldn't it be plagiarism? Wouldn't it be using something noble in a crass way?

We think the better question is: who's using who? Would they be using us to market their products, or are we using them to spread the Generosity Game? Would we be infecting them?

Here's how we draw that line. If you want to use this idea that way, we have two requests:

1. Keep the cards open-ended. It's our request that you don't make cards that say "Buy a drink for someone else. Do it anonymously..." for circulation at your bar. We'd like to see these circulate as widely as possible.
2. Put the URL of this site on your version of these cards, because we are keeping a repository of creative ideas for the use of these cards here. We think it's important to keep that information in one place.

And also, if you're going to use this idea in the promotion of your business, we'd appreciate it if you would give us a donation.

All of that said, these are only requests. We have no basis to bind anyone legally to any particular use of these cards. When someone receives one of these cards, it's a surprise gift. There's no committment on their part that we could base a legal claim against, even if we wanted to.

And anyway, do we want to? In the spirit of generosity, should we try to control this? Our answer is no.

But we would certainly appreciate it if you complied with our requests.

One corrolary: if you see www.generosity.org used anywhere, it is does not constitute our endorsement of anything. We don't give any quid pro quos, and we don't take any.

Memes: Infectious Ideas, Viruses of the Mind

The Generosity Game is an example of applied memetics. Memes are ideas or thoughts that spread among people, like infectious diseases. They can be said to spread "with a mind of their own," or an intention of their own, as though they were using our minds to propagate themselves. This effect is most noticeable on the Internet. The originator of the idea is Richard Dawkins, in the book The Selfish Gene. There is a lot of very good information about memetics on the Internet. One site we recommend is Richard Brodie's Meme Central.

Further, memes can be packaged for optimal spreading. For example, the Generosity Virus Cards are a standard business card size. They are concise, easily understood (in context), and they have the URL of this site on them. And they pass themselves on. The idea of packaged memes is attributed to Douglas Rushkoff, in the book Media Virus.

What Could We Really Do with the Idea of Money?

When you think about it, money is a pretty ingenious idea. Make these little slips of paper, agree that they have value, and use them in trade for stuff. Simple, elegant, useful...allows people who don't even know each other to do business. Very slick.

But have we taken this basic idea as far as we could? Are there other ways of assigning value to pieces of paper? And what possibilities open up when you use bits on a computer network instead of paper? Are there other modes of exchange besides economic ones that might be facilitated by little bits of paper?

We think of the Generosity Game as an example of the generalized application of currency. In our view, currency is a technology. And what do we do with technology? We innovate. We invent. We create. We play.

Viewed from here, the technology of currency has been fairly moribund for a long time. Even the advent of credit cards and electronic cash is only a change of form, not a leap into a new creative space.

We are not necessarily talking about a total economic revolution. Money as we know it will probably continue to be important. It would be interesting to try to build an entire economic system based on Generosity Virus Cards, but we're probably a couple centuries away from having a society on Earth that could carry that off.

The closest thing we could compare that to would be the potlatch economies that flourished in what is now the Pacific Northwest of the United States. A potlatch economy is an economy based on parties. You have a party, and your guests bring gifts, and then when they have parties, you bring gifts. This was a viable economic structure for centuries before the white man came with industrialization and lots of cheap stuff.

The Generosity Game is an example of what we call a semieconomic system. Not sufficient to support an entire economy (we think), but still valuable and worth promoting. Another example, more institutional, is the Dollar Democracy idea, which would exploit network technology.

A few useful resources: The Economics of Networks Site, The Bionomics Site, and a short document by John Stoner.