Ross Gay’s “Inciting Joy”: An Unconventional Book for the (Armchair) Economist

It’s hard to be happy.

But we can do it.

Together.

That’s the central thesis of award-winning author and poet Ross Gay’s newest book “Inciting Joy”. And it’s an essential read for anyone interested in economics, why? Because I think what Gay is saying is that modern economic institutions are what makes it so hard to be happy and the path to happiness comes from reforming these institutions.

Before I explain that claim though, I just want to take a moment to clarify. It’s not just me right? It really is hard to be happy and oh so so easy to be stressed, sad, tired, angry, pessimistic, etc etc. Why does it take so much to be happy? For all the college students, why do so many of us have to spend most of our week positioning ourselves for a job that we may not even love but makes money? For everyone my parent’s age, why do you have to wait the whole workday doing sometimes uninspiring work so you can go home and finally be home with family? We’re told that’s just how the world operates, but does it have to? Why do we have to cash in tons of unhappiness to finally deserve some time for unhindered happiness? It’s not just me right?

I know it’s not just me. It’s you too. It’s all of us.

Gay conveys this complicated message in just six words: “Joy is an act of resistance” (p. 345). He explains this best in the fourth of his thirteen essays that make up this book. Titled “Out of Time”, this essay explores the capitalistic idea of productivity and how it hinders interpersonal connection and by extension joy. In his classic delightfully digressive tone and refreshingly unique lens Gay explains our tendency to overemphasize productivity by saying “Our bodies, maybe someone has already said this, are cogs in a machine that can’t stop won’t stop, and to step out of cogness — which means, often, simply stepping out of time, or rather, out of productive time (e.g., sacks of cotton per day — you come from these people?)…” (pp. 67). He goes on to explain how this productivity that a capitalistic society forces on us has affected his own family when his Dad was struggling with cancer and his mom was struggling to pay the medical bills. In what is one of the most heart-wrenching accounts I’ve read, Gay portrays how his mom had to spend several extra hours mechanically working at her factory to continue to support her husband and to keep her family’s health insurance. His mom could not step out of being a cog in the larger capitalistic machine that was her factory — because she wanted to keep her husband alive. Heartbreaking enough? Well, he ends the account with: “His time ran out while my mother gave her time to the factory.”

Let that sink in.

You probably realize that this tug of war between love/connection (that thing that gives all our lives meaning and happiness) and our “responsibilities” (activities imposed on us by the invisible hand of capitalism) is a terrible soul-sucking sport we’re all subconsciously engaged in. All the effing time. Is this really the best way we can organize ourselves? Organize society? That question is exactly what makes this book so important for all you econ-buffs like me especially because it’s a question we don’t consider often. We all assume that capitalism is the only way of life because no other system has worked as well (in terms of lifting people out of poverty, increasing health standards, etc). In fact, economists have tried (and failed) to find an economic system that can effectively replace capitalism. But. What if the solution is not an economic one relying on the assumption of self-interested individuals but instead it relies on (and allow me some idealism here…) our common humanity?

Remember how I said that it’s hard to be happy but we can do it — together? Yes, here’s where I finally explain what Ross Gay means by that… by giving you a taste of his essay on gardening. In this essay titled “We Kin (The Third Incitement: Gardening)”, he illustrates the power of reciprocity in building connection and the need for it in today’s interdependent world. He does this through his experiences of gifting within the gardener community: “Amy tells us we should come to harvest some of their persimmons, and I bring some of these purple hot peppers that are coming up like crazy. Or, and perhaps this is the crème de la crème, when our friend Kayte gives me a packet of seeds she saved from tomatoes we’d given her that were given to us as seedlings by our friend Mark. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth it goes.” (p. 29). He explains that while they don’t expect anything in return for their gifts, the common human feeling of reciprocity leads to them usually getting something in return. In that way — simply through love and connection — the author ends up with a more diverse mix of freshly grown produce than he could ever grow himself. And as a bonus the food is not sprayed with toxic chemicals to maximize productivity but is instead sprinkled with love and care. In fact, you could even say that each plant is a wish made by a loved one for him to be happy and healthy. Further, as a by-product of this gifting, he ends up with stronger friendships and connections. Because gifting is an act of love, acts of love foster relationships, and strong loving relationships inevitably bring joy and meaning to our lives.

What if we consumed more goods gifted to us with compassion by our people rather than sold to us by faceless corporations motivated by greed? I’ll be the first to admit — capitalism isn’t going away anytime soon, but can we construct a parallel economy that relies on strong relationships and reciprocal gifting to plug the hole that capitalism has left in our hearts? Or as botanist and award-winning author Robin Wall Kimmerer states let’s “create incentives to nurture a gift economy that runs right alongside the market economy, where the good that is served is community. After all, what we crave is not trickle-down, faceless profits, but reciprocal, face-to-face relationships, which are naturally abundant but made scarce by the anonymity of large-scale economics. ” (2022). Unlike a capitalistic society, a gift economy doesn’t put on a pedestal greed, competition, and resource hoarding (otherwise known as wealth accumulation). Instead, “in a gift culture — the more you give, the richer you are” because, with every gift given, you are seen by the community as someone good, generous, and giving (Eisenstein, 2012). In such a way, we can balance out the “joyless cogness” of the current reality of capitalism with the joyful connection that gift economies provide us.

You with me?

Let’s take it even further.

What happens when gifts are given to people who don’t have the ability to reciprocate with anything of the “same value”? That is, what happens when gifts are given to those who need them the most. In other words, what happens when reciprocity becomes redistribution? What I’m trying to say in a roundabout way (but we’re friends by now so you’ll stick with me right?) is how can people like Ross Gay’s Mom benefit from the gift economy during times of financial need? She didn’t have much to reciprocate but really needed help paying for her husband’s treatment, right?

Enter: “the shared commons”, an economic idea that Gay explores in his eighth essay titled “Free Food For All!”. The story starts when he sees a newspaper advert for the establishment of a community orchard to combat food insecurity in his university’s neighborhood. A fresh gardener, he got involved in the creation of this orchard and after months of work and thousands of dollars of shared investment, they were ready to begin planting. But they had one final question that strongly divided the (by then tight-knit) group of people working on the orchard: should we put a lock on it during the night to protect the expensive plants from theft/destruction? Stacey, The leader of the project was extremely against this idea and emphatically stated “the point of the orchard is to give it all away. If someone needs a tree, or a bunch of apples, or harvests all the blackberries, shouldn’t they take them? Isn’t sharing the dream? […] Isn’t it the commons? Which, caring for, we realize could never belong to us, we could only belong to it? […] someone yanking a few trees or busting something wouldn’t be the worst thing. The worst thing would be putting a lock on the dream of free fruit for all.” (p. 151)

Doesn’t that sound like something you know? Social safety net? Nordic Socialism? Arguments against these social safety nets (whether it’s universal healthcare or public education or anything else) often rest on “What if someone exploits it?” or “These people (insert some marginalized group) shouldn’t have access to it” …and the whole thing is shut down. But what we’re missing in those arguments is both humanity and morality. In specific, the idea that the world and its resources don’t belong to us in the way that capitalism assumes but in fact, we all belong to it equally. And so it must be shared. In fact, not sharing it means putting a lock on the dream (more like a north star) of a world where everyone is happy, healthy, and prosperous.

Guess what.

This, in a nutshell, is what “inciting joy” is about. It’s about bringing back the carefully considered humanity to how we organize our lives, our communities, our economies, and the world in a way that prioritizes love, care, solidarity, and connection. And as a result, a way that prioritizes our shared happiness. On similar lines, the final quote he leaves his book with — and I want to leave you with is — “We belong not to an institution or a party or a state or a market, but to each other. Needfully so. Which we must practice, and study, and sing, and story, and dream, and celebrate. Belonging to each other as though our lives depended on it.” (p. 346). Sharing, loving, connecting. That’s what this book is all about. Because — that — is what leads to a joyful life.

I hope you choose to read the book. I hope he convinces you too of his vision of a world centered around connection and love. I hope that one day we can all recognize the immense joy and meaning that will exist when we build a world on those two ideals. Finally, I hope for us all to have hope. As John Lennon puts it in his song “Imagine”:

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one.

• John Lennon (1971)

Works Cited

Eisenstein, Charles. “Charles Eisenstein: “In a Gift Economy the More You Give, the Richer You Are” — Video.” The Guardian, 30 July 2012, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2012/jul/30/charles-eisenstein-gift-economy#:~:text=Economic%20growth%20(GDP)-. Accessed 2 Apr. 2024.

Gay, Ross. Inciting Joy. Algonquin Books, 25 Oct. 2022.

Kimmerer, Robin. “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance — Robin Wall Kimmerer.” Emergence Magazine, 26 Oct. 2022, emergencemagazine.org/essay/the-serviceberry/.

Lennon, John . Imagine . 1971.

Peng, Christina. “Peng ’26: Why Most Gift Economies Fail.” The Brown Daily Herald, 16 Sept. 2022, www.browndailyherald.com/article/2022/09/peng-26-why-most-gift-economies-fail.