Simply put, to pay something forward means that if you receive a gift or act of generosity, instead of paying back the giver, you pay the act of generosity forward by giving to someone else. If practiced fully, this would lead to a much friendlier world with greater abundance for all of us.
The book and movie titled “Pay It Forward” put it this way: A person helps three people. Those three people then help another three people each and very quickly this can lead to an abundance of generosity and kindness in the world.
Mathematically speaking, this is an interplay between the realistic and the exponential. Three people is a realistic enough number for a person to help, yet it can lead to a rapid acceleration of people helping people.
If this successfully got through 21 levels, it would go through the world’s population and start again.
Why pay it forward?
Nature works on a pay it forward system. Imagine that a plant produces more fruit than necessary, then several animals eat the fruit, produce manure and the manure fertilises new plant growth. This is why the natural world before widespread human exploitation was so abundant.
Contrast this with colonialisation and scarcity economics; what once belonged to everyone gets hoarded away by the few. Now there’s a smaller pool of resources and everyone’s materially and spiritually poorer.
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of unconditional kindness, it’s a beautiful thing. For example, the rise of hospitality exchange sites like Couchsurfing has led to an abundance of free places for people to stay at and has forged friendships amongst many strangers.
As writer and activist Mark Boyle put it, if we fully practiced the principle of paying it forward, we’d have a wider network of friends and would enjoy the warmth that comes with doing something just because we can. Plus generosity is a sure fire way to feel wealthier.
How would the world look if members of the wealthy class, middle class and working class in the world’s materially wealthy countries used a decent portion of their advantage to help others less well off (locally or globally) instead of just pursuing more wealth?
Imagine how barriers between the poor, the working and middle classes and the wealthy could be broken down.
Smart Renting as an example of paying it forward
Smart Renting is a completely free service. We do not charge fees and we do not sell you out to advertisers. We are able to do this because we both come from wealthy countries, grew up with access to good services, decent healthcare and education and have never had to deal with serious oppression or illness.
The information on here and the time taken to learn it was roughly the equivalent of a years’ full time work for both of us, plus there’s the cost of hosting this website but we don’t want you to repay us.
Here’s what you could do instead: If something off Smart Renting has really given you a boost in life (financially, freeing up time or otherwise), how about sharing some of that advantage with three people or a larger community project that needs it?
Paying it forward compliments institutional giving and the fair share of resources
Paying it forward is not meant to replace large scale government spending in this area, in fact, it compliments it. Nor is the concept of paying it forward meant to replace fair pay for workers in services where professionalisation benefits us all (e.g. health care, social service professionals, scientific research, etc.).
In a world with far more generosity, there would be much less resistance to public money being directed to where it’s needed to address major inequality and regenerate our communities and the biosphere that we’re part of.
If you’re lucky enough to be able to give to someone else, pay your advantage forward to help improve someone else’s life or the life of a community. The more generosity there is in the world, the better off we’ll all be.