> Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home > hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting > expedition, he found one of the successful > hunters droppi

> Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home > hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting > expedition, he found one of the successful > hunters dropping off several hundred pounds > of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man > objected indignantly: > "Up in our country we are human!" said the > hunter. "And since we are human we help > each other. We don't like to hear anybody > say thanks for that. What I get today you > may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by > gifts one makes slaves and by whips one > makes dogs. > The refusal to calculate credits and debits > can be found throughout the anthropological > literature on egalitarian hunting societies. > Rather than seeing himself as human because he > could make economic calculations, the hunter > insisted that being truly human meant refusing > to make such calculations, refusing to measure > or remember who had given what to whom -- Graeber , Debt: The First 5,000 Years