Hi everyone. I will try to provide feedback in one message here.<br><br>Chris: In that second paragraph, I wanted to consider the possibility that gifts are not really gifts at all--that the existence of various fake givers can disprove reality of the gift. For instance, I used to work at a telemarketing mill (a dark chapter in my life). Our marks had always "been selected in a drawing" to recieve "gifts"--"free magazine subscriptions!", "a free tennis bracelet!!", "a free Ginsu knife!!!"--provided the person on the other end was able to claim their gift by paying the appropriate shipping and fees. On the one hand, I really needed money, but on the other hand, I knew that I was exploiting basic human emotional needs--the need to feel special, the desire to break out of the economic cycle, the enjoyment of a freindly voice. After several months of trying to eke out a living this way, I was overcome by ulcers and panic attacks (a diet of dumpster food and coffee combined with constant guilt on one hand and the fear of eviction on the other had wrecked me, and to top it off, I had no health insurance), my telemarketing career bottomed out. I was spending my time talking to the people I was calling about the evils of credit card companies and the dangers of trusting telemarketers, how we got their number because they had been profiled as susceptible to these pitches, and that they would most likely be hearing from other telemarketers. At that point, I was only showing up to hang out with the other scoundrels working the phones, and they were great fun, a real bunch of pirates. The good news is that I lost my job as a telemarketer. To get back to the point of this long detour, I think the importance of gifts are reinforced by the instances of their exploitation. The sociopathic "giver" gives because he/she KNOWS that other people are going to believe in the gift, even in spite of contrary evidence. The business that gives "gifts" knows that people are sensitive to gifts. To tie it to my own experience as a telemarketing jerk, even with the knowledge that the gifts I were giving was really just a part of a scripted transaction, I still could not square the fact that I was calling these things "gifts" when they really were something else. I knew, at a very deep level, that my simple act was contributing to a cold world... that someday, I might find myself unconscious in a ditch, and the world would be too cynical to stop for me. Even the bosses knew that it was important that we refer to the worthless products we were selling as "gifts." I hope this explains a little bit better.<br>
<br>Nick: I think that the question of "fairness" is very important, and in one sense, it implies a rational approach to mutally agreed upon standards or rules which can be applied consistently. The very appeal of these rules is that they can be viewed as something operating quite independenty of love or hate, because they are "the rules." But I would like to offer a more specific definition of love... on which might be best understood by reading Badiou's "What is Love?". <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cdheckman%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cdheckman%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cdheckman%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><style>
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</style>According to Badiou (and I am cannibalizing a piece I wrote for <a href="http://netpoetic.com">netpoetic.com</a>), love (which he distinguishes from
simple desire or submission) is the process through which “the Two” experience
“disjunction” in its very “unicity.”<span style="">
</span>In other words, Badiou’s love is the union between two people by which
their difference is experienced as a truth.<span style="">
</span>It disrupts the narcissistic tendency of the
Self, validates the subject position of the Other, and establishes between the
two a relationship which is marked by the truth of this event.<span style=""> </span>Of course, when we talk about love, we might really mean that narcissistic process through which we admire ourselves by validating aspects of ourselves in others.... but for Badiou, love is a relationship between the self and the other. It is a relationship across ontological difference, it is the place where we experience difference as real, and knowing this, we still proceed. In this respect, I think that "love" can be embodied in this spirit of fairness or rules. It is the collective decision to say, "even in a heterogenous population, where we are not all the same, we are going to agree to honor certain rights and freedoms, even if it costs me." In a certain sense, this thought process is an extreme instance of love, precisely because it honors not only the direct experience of interpersonal difference, but it is committed even to unforeseen differences. The gulf between the self and the other is hypothetically as wide as one can imagine. I still haven't answered your comment about the desiring impulse and capital itself, and I don't know that I am equipped to. Although, I would say that capitalism as a technique, certainly serves as an instrument of desire. On the other hand, it seems important that we maintain a flow of responsibility... that capitalism has to be regarded and weighed as a tool of human desire, and compared to other tools for pursuing these desires, both on an individual and collective level. The current thinking, in general, is that financial markets are a given and that they represent an evolution of human civilization and consciousness, and that protecting the tool is the same thing as protecting the worker. <br>
<br>Ken: Thank you for the book suggestion!<br><br>Sean: Thank you for your theses (and the Roller citation, it sounds fascinating). One concrete example of the individual/collective dynamics of the gift is "the wedding gift." Historically (especially for working and middle class folks), the wedding served an interesting social role. On the one hand, the wedding as an abstract event reinforces collectively held values (heterosexuality, the family, the divide between childhood/adulthood, the home, the responsibilities of the community, etc.). But in a more concrete terms, the parents of the young couple would throw a party to both publically acknowledge the new union (both to remind the couple of their obligations and to mark them in relation to the community). People would respond by bringing gifts, typically to build the home that the couple would create together. Ostensibly, out of practical concern for the couple, gift registries arose to help givers fill the homes of the young couple with things they would need and to prevent redundancies (In the past, many wedding gifts were dicated by custom). In addition, it made "giving" easier, because you just had to buy something available in the store without having to think about it. But today, the wedding registry has become like a letter to Santa Claus. Since your "needs" as a new family are not dictated by custom, they are dicated by individual desires. Most couples have most of the things that they need by the time they get married, but wedding are getting more expensive, people want more things, and guests probably have a latent guilt about weddings (they cannot carefully choose or make the gift, so the only "sacrifice" you can make is to select a commodity whose price-tag appropriately reflects your level of generosity and kind wishes). The shift from gifts that reinforce social norms to gifts that reinforce the identity of the individuals requesting them might illustrate the multiple aspects of giving that you highlight (personal, interpersonal, collective)... and, on the one hand, the "collective" that this implies certainly would have some very positive aspects to it (perhaps along the lines discussed by Gilles Lipovetsky in Empire of Fashion), but on the other hand, the stakes of this community are much lower, which might dilute the impulse to protect this collective. <br>
<br>Peace!<br><br>Davin<br><br>Davin Heckman<br><<a href="http://www.retrotechnics.com">www.retrotechnics.com</a>><br>