Things Hosts Do

Answer With Their Absence

Belong Elsewhere

Carry Consequence

Carry Meaning

Change Hands

Change Ownership

Change Their Meaning Over Time

Corner You Politely

Cost More Than Planned

Create Obligation

Create Obligations

Create Reciprocity

Create Ripples

Cut Both Ways

End Without A Period

Exist To Be Opened

Feel Forced

Feel Heavier Than They Look

Feel Heavy In Your Hands

Feel Intimate Too Soon

Feel Like A Blessing

Feel Misplaced

Feel Overwhelming

Feel Secondhand

Feel Staged

Feel Too New For The Room

Feel Too Personal To Explain

Feel Underdressed

Feel Underseen

Feel Understood Too Late

Feel Underwhelming

Feel Weatherless

Fold Into The Background

Forget Their Own Name

Forgive By Forgetting

Get Lost In The Shuffle

Get Lost In Transit

Get Saved For Later

Get Thrown Away

Glitter Without Warming

Keep The Secret Too Well

Land Wrong

Miss The Mark

Need A Label

Need A Receipt

Reduce Distance

Reward Generosity

Ripen In The Hallway

Touch The Scar By Accident

Transfer Value

Things You Stop Noticing

gift

Christmas

Star Wars

dad joke

Darth Vader

Santa Claus

spider

marriage

wife

subpoena

wedding invitation

offering

is a kind of generosity which is motivated by a will to power, to show you that I have the power to help you, to put you in my debt.

THE GIFT IS AN OF GENEROSITY WHICH IS MOTIVATED BY A WILL TO POWER.'Nietzsche even suggests that acts of generosity are ultimately motivated by a will to power. If I do you a favor, I am essentially showing you that I have the power to help you, to put you in my debt' (spark geneology).

debt

generosity

selfishness

superiority

is a mechanism for the regulation of relations between different social groups or societies, binding them together in circuits of reciprocity.

The gift, as Mauss defined it, is a mechanism for the regulation of relations between different social groups or societies, binding them together in circuits of reciprocity. If you give something to another individual or another group, then the obligation of the other party is always to return the gift, to reciprocate. For Mauss the act of donation is therefore never disinterested and never arbitrary. The gift is never a pure gift: it is always motivated, consciously or unconsciously, by this primary function of articulation, the joining and relating of distinct social groups. (Johnson in simmons on Levi-strauss)

sacrifice

is at the center of creation of community... the true purpose of any exchange or transfer of objects is of increasing social cohesion.

The picture of a gift economy that Hyde presents is thus tied very closely to the creation of community. In fact, one theme of the book involves the nature of a gift: that its property value or consumption value is largely irrelevant, and that the true purpose of any exchange or transfer of objects is of increasing social cohesion.

is greatest when it is a portion of thyself.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself. Ralph Waldo Emerson

is less important than the spirit in which it is offered.

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered. Robert Louis Stevenson

attitude

spirit

manner

is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return.

A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return. (The Bhagavad Gita)

is simultaneously a relationship of solidarity (of sharing what one has or what he is) and a relationship of superiority (of forcing feelings of debt upon the receiver).

The act of giving seems to create simultaneously a two-fold relationship between giver and receiver. A relationship of solidarity because the giver shares what he has, or what he is, with the receiver... and a relationship of superiority because the one who receives the gift and accepts it places himself in the debt of the one who has given it, thereby becoming indebted to the giver and to a certain extent becoming his 'dependant', at least for as long as he has not 'given back' what he was given. [. . .] By its very nature, gift-giving is an ambivalent practice which brings together or is capable of bringing together opposing emotions and forces.' (Godelier 1999: 12)

gift, n.Memes

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