the concept of Economy

A sweet Tuesday en la casa.... doing nothing.  Doing nothing?  No.  I'm writing.

Yesterday, Yves-Marie Abraham - associate professor at the prestigious HEC and one of the main organizers of the De-Growth Conference - did a presentation about the concept of ''the Economy.''
''What,'' he asked, ''is the definition of the economy? "
He didn't mention the etymology of the term: oiko-nomia = management of the house, but he instead gave us the definitions of those who play at the top of the field.  And it turns out that the modern concept of ''economy'' is inextricately tied to the notion of ''rarity''.  He didn't use the word scarcity, but the idea is the same.  Economy has do to with the managing, that is the production and distribution, of our rare resources.
 (I didn't write the definition verbatim, because I was busy doing some half-assed whisper translation for my anglo neighbors.)
Abraham went out to ask, ''Is the concept of economy then fundamental to all of humanity?''   What he found out, is that a brief research through anthropological lenses and research (what he called ''the anthropological detour) shows that many societies of hunter-gatherers do NOT live with this notion at all.  Even though they do not accumulate as much as we do (my addition), they do not know ''rarity'' (perhaps they know scarcity, however, and perhaps this is where the difference lies between those two words!), simply because they don't seek to satisfy a increasing number of their needs.
They are a-economical.

And this uproots our conception of human nature as homo economicus, doesn't it?

We can envision another mode of social patterning.  We could reconsider individual value as coming from other realms than ''professional'' or ''marketable'' value.  We can come out of our isolation and wake up to each other, and the ties that have been there all along: you are not alone.  And once you see and know that, you don't have as much of a need to go out and buy things.
It's become a cliché already and it doesn't seem to affect people anymore, but it is so true:  capitalism sleeps in the same bed with the advertisement industry (which has benefited so much from modern psychology uncovering our fundamental fears and insecurities) by creating more insecurities and fears, more needs...

Seeing this side of reality makes me sick to my stomach.  Because I participate in it everyday.

How can we change an entire system then?

By creating another one at the periphery.

In a post-economical world, we won't be working 40hours/week.  We'll work much less in fact, and we'll spend more time together.