Reciprocity is the ancient recipe for equilibrium.
Reciprocity is the belief system of The Huon Settlement. They each find ways to give back and look at the balance of how much they take, and the services they return. The frog ponds at the kindness circle fosters the lives of frogs, an endangered species, while also using them as a way to reduce the mosquito population, providing them with a source of food also reduces the chance of the spread of disease. Reciprocity.
Everleigh, dying, willingly gives up her bones to foster the lives of Tasmanian Devils and unwittingly inspires young men to commit their bodies, when they’d done with them, to the same use. Meanwhile, they ensure the animals survival by leaving food for them in lean times.
‘It’s Reciprocity,’ Nero explains how the group has two tenets. Kindness and Reciprocity. Reciprocity is keeping things in balance by giving at the same rate they take. A wallaby eats grasses and shits, spreading nutrients and seeds around, Nero explains, just by their act of living they enrich the environment. When they die they break down and feed the soil. The place they lived is better for them having been there. That’s the goal with this group, and looking out for a species on the brink of extinction is one of the ways they’ve chosen to give back. It’s an interesting idea. I jot it down in my mental notebook to discuss with Father. Maybe there are ways we can give back.
I run my fingers over the ridges [of the scar on his arm] and remember the moment it leaned down and, with such delicacy, tore the flesh from my arm. I don’t begrudge it a little of my meat. We had taken its world. Finn on the White Goshawk
My next book, The Quiet Revolution is about reciprocity and eudaimonia – a flourishing world.
