The idea of Mutual Flourishing has a place of honor in The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, appearing first in the book’s front matter. “All Flourishing is Mutual” greets the reader in large font on page ix, well before the book even starts. It also appears on the back cover, suggesting that Mutual Flourishing is a concept Kimmerer wants lingering in our minds before we start and after we finish her book.
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TAB p 77-78
“But that approach has been increasingly questioned, and scientific evidence is mounting that mutualism and cooperation also play a major role in evolution and enhance ecological well-being, especially in changing environments. Mutualism or reciprocal exchanges create abundance for both partners, by sharing.”
TAB p 85-86
“At one point while writing—as I was struggling to imagine how the model of Serviceberries and ancient gift economies could help us imagine our way out of the mutually assured destruction of cutthroat capitalism—I needed a break from the Windigo shadows that were creeping toward me.”
TAB p 91
“You might rightly observe that we no longer live in small, close-knit societies, where generosity and mutual esteem structure our relations. But we could. It is within our power to create such webs of interdependence, quite outside the market economy. Maybe that is how we extract ourselves from a cannibal economy. Intentional communities of mutual self-reliance and reciprocity are the wave of the future, and their currency is sharing.”
TAB p 75
“A perception of abundance, based on the notion that there is enough if we share it, underlies economies of mutual support.”
TAB p 95
“She writes that thriving depends on more than meeting basic physical needs, and includes goods like a sense of community, mutual support, and equality..”
TAB p 99
“Their rampant growth captures nutrients and builds the more stable conditions in which their followers can flourish. Incrementally, they start to be replaced.”
TAB p 105
“To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people, we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants.”
TAB p 101
“Succession relies in part on incremental change, the slow, steady replacement of that which does not serve ecological flourishing with new communities.”
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