Half full or half empty?

glass half full
Originally uploaded by artfulblogger

I ran across this post on the Dollar Philanthropist today.

Michelle Martin, The Bamboo Project Blog, discusses mindsets. She uses the term scarcity and abundant thinking. (I have these other terms running through my mind–generous/grasping, open source/proprietary, half full/half empty, walled garden/open content. . .)

The relevant text is:

I’ve come to believe that there are two types of people in the world—those who act from a scarcity mindset and those who act from a fundamental belief in abundance.

Those who believe in scarcity see the world as a pie with a fixed number of pieces in it. Their goal is to grab and hold onto as many pieces of that pie as they can. They live in a world where resources are limited. There’s never enough time or money or people. Everything is a fight for survival of some kind.

Those who believe in abundance also see the world as a pie. But to them, that pie’s size is not fixed. The pie can grow indefinitely, so the goal is not to figure out how to get your piece and to hold onto it. The goal is to figure out how we can grow the pie so that everyone can have a larger slice. These people live in a world where resources are abundant, where you can always find the time, the money and the people if you’re willing to think differently. They aren’t fighting for survival. They are fighting to grow the pie so that everyone benefits.

I think of these two ways of thinking in education and in technology. Don’t those of us who support open source software work from an “abundant” worldview? And do those of us who surround ourselves with copyright restrictions, authentication requirements, and intellectual property concerns tend to work from a “scarcity” viewpoint? “Walled gardens” are sometimes about privacy, but many times are also used to guard resources.

I am well aware that I am oversimplifying here, but in general, this made me think. I think I enjoy being generous. My glass is half full, and the fact that I can find others who share and live this philosophy via the internet is a source of great joy!