Devotion's Currency: What Gets Hoarded in Favoritism

Rabia gave her devotion—her attention, presence, and emotional energy—as a freely circulating gift, not a scarce resource to be rationed strategically. Yet in most communities, devotion operates as a jealously guarded currency. Favored members receive disproportionate attention from leaders, their concerns are addressed first, their growth is invested in more heavily. This creates artificial scarcity: if the leader's attention is finite (which it is), then attention given to the favored is explicitly withheld from others. This hoarding of devotion's currency has cascading costs. First, it breeds competition as members vie for the limited resource of care. Second, it creates learned helplessness in excluded members—they stop seeking support because they've internalized that it won't be available to them. Third, it exhausts leaders who must now manage the political economy of favoritism alongside their actual work. Rabia's model suggests a radical reframing: treating devotion as generative rather than scarce, building structures where care circulates equally, and training community members to offer each other the devotion that leaders alone cannot provide. The legacy benefit is immense—communities practicing equitable devotion develop resilience independent of any single leader.