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Comments

Ben

I'm not so sure that it is selfish.
Yes, our worship and life is "to the audience of one" as it were but I think Andrew was talking more about the way we communicate with others.

In a commerce society the main way connections are made is through buying and selling. When the Europeans arrived in the new world they started links (that led to control) through trade with the indegenous peoples. In the mondern/contemporary church we often do the same. Our the sermon, music or whatever is for sale at the shop.

Andrew's point was (I think) that much of the new media world is based on gift rather than commerce. Certainly this is how share-ware and open source software operates. Google honours those who give cool stuff because their reputation grows.

This is selfish if reputation and status are the end, but in many gift societies they aret. As status grows it enables us to give more gifts, to be more generous. The gift relationship is more messy than the trade one, we don't neccacerily see an immediate return for our efforts, but I wonder if, in the long run, it will draw us into deeper levels of engagement than a commerce model.

Sorry Phil, long comment.

Wolfie

Hi I've just come accross this site by pure chance but happen to be studying biology and reading the selfish gene. The important part in understanding the selfish gene is that it is our basic nature to be selfish because our genes wish to preserve themselves. This does not mean by any means that we should allow ourselves to be consciously selfish! Hope I've been some help! if not the book is a good read and explains it a lot better, even if it does rquire some attention to the details.

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