Over the next few days I will be helping friends and family with various moves, construction projects, and the like. It’s stuff that happens every year in the Canadian spring after a long winter spent groggily shoveling snow in the dark. Just like the grass and trees, Canadians wake up and start moving around a bit more when the snow finally goes. Um, the trees and grass don’t actually move around, unless you have spent your winter consuming pharmaceutically interesting things.
Anyway, it seems that these tasks that are too big to do alone mean that we usually end up spending some social capital and asking for help. You don’t ask just anyone, you ask those who you have helped in the past, usually. It’s the most basic form of economics, bartering and probably dates back to when we helpfully clubbed the sabre toothed tiger from a hunting buddy’s face. We help people out because we know there will no doubt come a time when we just might need some help ourselves, and by depositing something into the social bank, we can reasonably expect to make a withdrawal sometime in the future.
No matter how saintly and helpful and available you are however, social credit does have a limit. Much like your real bank if you try to withdraw too much or too often (without making a deposit) you may find yourself with a body to move, and nobody there to help you, and that’s not good….
I realize that at least some of the people I am going to be helping may actually read this before I can actually assist them in their endeavours, so realize that this is not a snarky comment on the state of anyone’s social capital. I just started thinking about how that kind of stuff works, and realized it’s almost exactly like money, but it’s easier to make.
Neat.
It is nice to be able to give something back, I totally see what you are saying in your social capital theory. I know we are more than willing to jump on an opportunity to help out so we don’t feel like we are the ones always calling in the favours. It just makes it ok for everyone to not feel bad about asking for help. It’s a perfect system so long as people ask for favours in return.
When I think of our nice painted walls/ceiling in the family room, our ridiculously difficult play structure nightmare, our finished side of the basement and many sanity weekends we were able to have due to willing baby/dog sitters, it feels good to say, “Yep, we’ll be there.” It’s a way to feel as though we can show our gratitude, rather than just say it.
I guess in the old days, it was barn raising and quilting bee’s. Won’t see much of that these days. Moving and roofing it is then.