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Anyone else find something distastefully cynical in the description of "gift-giving" as "credit extended on a personal basis with an inter-personal balance main

Anyone else find something distastefully cynical in the description of "gift-giving" as "credit extended on a personal basis with an inter-personal balance maintained over the long term"? I'm not saying its wrong exactly, it just tastes awful.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
2 people in my own family do this. it's absolutely horrific and has cost me the relationships with both.
fsloth 5y ago
No, that's what gifts are for in some cultures. They come with strings attached, and everyone is aware of the deal, and it's how it's worked always. Where things break down if one party expects to receive a "no strings attached gift" and one is expecting to participate in a complex system of social and economic credit balance.
- helpfulmandrill 5y ago
  Do they have gift bailiffs who come and take your couch if you can't give an expected gift at some point? What's the interest rate on gifts? I'm not sure how to make the above sound less snarky - I'm genuinely interested in how this stuff compares to more formalized systems of debt in modern societies.
  - fsloth 5y ago
    The main difference is I suppose is the gift giving perceived as an obligation or an expression of caring and love. If you are culturally conditioned on one of these interpretations I presume the other feels plain wrong. If it's an obligation, then I suppose the retributive action (if any) from not meeting this obligation probably depends on the society and the event. Different societies have different responses to individual who don't play by the rules. In general even non-literate human societies are pretty good in carrying a common ledger of who-owes-what-to-whom. I suggest the book "Debt the first 5000 years" by David Graeber on the details. But overall, when traveling, check the local customs around gifts from a cultural guide :)
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > Do they have gift bailiffs who come and take your couch if you can't give an expected gift at some point? Small groups of people (tribes, essentially) can and do use peer pressure (ostracisation) to enforce the agreed upon social contracts. IOW, if you get a reputation as a non-giver amongst your group of friends and family who are all givers, they'll soon stop associating with you.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    > Do they have gift bailiffs who come and take your couch if you can't give an expected gift at some point? You become a bad neighbor and everybody stops helping you. Things may get as bad as nobody trusting you at all, and you becoming the escape goat for some problem. People organize this way up to today, even in mature economies. There's mystery to solve.
agumonkey 5y ago
It might be a naive attempt at describing the rituals through a cold economic grid. Or it might just be a cynical view of life. That said, I think a lot of economy is rooted in emotional bonding. I'm helping a lot of neighbors (people that saw me growing up). Offer my time for free since most of their issues are trivial computer stuff. They want to pay me even when it's a 3 minute check and there was nothing to do. Many times they say they don't want to feel indebted. Even though I clearly state that I'm really happy to spend time doing this for free, and will really have no future request to them because I moved a usb cable or something like that. Money is a kind of shared agreement on help here. If you don't use an intermediate medium, you get deeper but also messier relationship because no one is sure how the other party feels and if they'll think they will want more retribution later. With good and intimate relationships it's rarely an issue because you know they'll provide, there's no risk no fear.. but with many people you run into it's creating a lot of unknowns.
- danielvaughn 5y ago
  This is what killed my interest in crypto. I was fascinated by the idea of money as a technology, but in reality, money is a culture.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    Interesting.. My only real interest "in" crypto now is the idea of ubiquitous planet wide management of petty stuff (ala vechain supply chain management). To me there's so many lame jobs, waste and friction that could be absorbed by systems like these, because a lot of inefficiencies are just information tracking and forwarding.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - archibaldJ 5y ago
    crypto can still Work out as intended iff we become a Type I civilisation [1]. Now it’s more like some kind of anthropological stress test (and an emerging culture too. Hopefully it’s one that helps to drive people to see the urgentness and inevitability of reaching Type I or-we-are-doomed) [1] eg Large-scale application of fusion power. According to mass–energy equivalence, Type I implies the conversion of about 2 kg of matter to energy per second https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type_I_civilization_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type_I_civiliz...
lkrubner 5y ago
It has a long history in anthropology. If you take a course in anthropology, especially if the focus of the course is on the so-called "primitive tribes" who were the focus of so much research in the early and mid 20th Century, then you realize "gift-giving" is, in this field, a bit of technical jargon, given a very specific meaning in this kind of research.
legulere 5y ago
You feel this way because debt has been demonized for centuries.
dqpb 5y ago
I believe in this context, the “gifts” are primarily staple goods that people need to survive. So, reciprocal balance takes on a level of urgency when one party finds themself in need.
gumby 5y ago
As a society we love to talk about meals (menu, conversation, ritual) and don’t like to talk about the output stage which is just as important and has just as many rituals. I’m glad there is a Wikipedia page that discusses the reciprocity of non-cash relationships. It’s an enormously important element of social societies (of humans and other species) and is probably 60% of the content of advice columnists (my child isn’t calling me / I have a clingy friend / I didn’t get invited to a party though the hosts were at my house for dinner …)

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

2 people in my own family do this. it's absolutely horrific and has cost me the relationships with both.

fsloth 5y ago

No, that's what gifts are for in some cultures. They come with strings attached, and everyone is aware of the deal, and it's how it's worked always. Where things break down if one party expects to receive a "no strings attached gift" and one is expecting to participate in a complex system of social and economic credit balance.

helpfulmandrill 5y ago
Do they have gift bailiffs who come and take your couch if you can't give an expected gift at some point? What's the interest rate on gifts? I'm not sure how to make the above sound less snarky - I'm genuinely interested in how this stuff compares to more formalized systems of debt in modern societies.
- fsloth 5y ago
  The main difference is I suppose is the gift giving perceived as an obligation or an expression of caring and love. If you are culturally conditioned on one of these interpretations I presume the other feels plain wrong. If it's an obligation, then I suppose the retributive action (if any) from not meeting this obligation probably depends on the society and the event. Different societies have different responses to individual who don't play by the rules. In general even non-literate human societies are pretty good in carrying a common ledger of who-owes-what-to-whom. I suggest the book "Debt the first 5000 years" by David Graeber on the details. But overall, when traveling, check the local customs around gifts from a cultural guide :)
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > Do they have gift bailiffs who come and take your couch if you can't give an expected gift at some point? Small groups of people (tribes, essentially) can and do use peer pressure (ostracisation) to enforce the agreed upon social contracts. IOW, if you get a reputation as a non-giver amongst your group of friends and family who are all givers, they'll soon stop associating with you.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  > Do they have gift bailiffs who come and take your couch if you can't give an expected gift at some point? You become a bad neighbor and everybody stops helping you. Things may get as bad as nobody trusting you at all, and you becoming the escape goat for some problem. People organize this way up to today, even in mature economies. There's mystery to solve.

agumonkey 5y ago

It might be a naive attempt at describing the rituals through a cold economic grid. Or it might just be a cynical view of life. That said, I think a lot of economy is rooted in emotional bonding. I'm helping a lot of neighbors (people that saw me growing up). Offer my time for free since most of their issues are trivial computer stuff. They want to pay me even when it's a 3 minute check and there was nothing to do. Many times they say they don't want to feel indebted. Even though I clearly state that I'm really happy to spend time doing this for free, and will really have no future request to them because I moved a usb cable or something like that. Money is a kind of shared agreement on help here. If you don't use an intermediate medium, you get deeper but also messier relationship because no one is sure how the other party feels and if they'll think they will want more retribution later. With good and intimate relationships it's rarely an issue because you know they'll provide, there's no risk no fear.. but with many people you run into it's creating a lot of unknowns.

danielvaughn 5y ago
This is what killed my interest in crypto. I was fascinated by the idea of money as a technology, but in reality, money is a culture.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Interesting.. My only real interest "in" crypto now is the idea of ubiquitous planet wide management of petty stuff (ala vechain supply chain management). To me there's so many lame jobs, waste and friction that could be absorbed by systems like these, because a lot of inefficiencies are just information tracking and forwarding.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- archibaldJ 5y ago
  crypto can still Work out as intended iff we become a Type I civilisation [1]. Now it’s more like some kind of anthropological stress test (and an emerging culture too. Hopefully it’s one that helps to drive people to see the urgentness and inevitability of reaching Type I or-we-are-doomed) [1] eg Large-scale application of fusion power. According to mass–energy equivalence, Type I implies the conversion of about 2 kg of matter to energy per second https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type_I_civilization_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type_I_civiliz...

lkrubner 5y ago

It has a long history in anthropology. If you take a course in anthropology, especially if the focus of the course is on the so-called "primitive tribes" who were the focus of so much research in the early and mid 20th Century, then you realize "gift-giving" is, in this field, a bit of technical jargon, given a very specific meaning in this kind of research.

legulere 5y ago

You feel this way because debt has been demonized for centuries.

dqpb 5y ago

I believe in this context, the “gifts” are primarily staple goods that people need to survive. So, reciprocal balance takes on a level of urgency when one party finds themself in need.

gumby 5y ago

As a society we love to talk about meals (menu, conversation, ritual) and don’t like to talk about the output stage which is just as important and has just as many rituals. I’m glad there is a Wikipedia page that discusses the reciprocity of non-cash relationships. It’s an enormously important element of social societies (of humans and other species) and is probably 60% of the content of advice columnists (my child isn’t calling me / I have a clingy friend / I didn’t get invited to a party though the hosts were at my house for dinner …)