Sunday, April 11, 2010
Spontaneous Spirit ?
This spirit of given that is further with every gift one gets and then gives, does it matter where it came from? Should we concern are ourselves with the origin of the first gift which began this now ongoing exchange? If this spirit is more of spontaneous eruption inside of the individual is there significance in when it happens? So can there maybe be more value placed on gift that is given at random than one which is brought on by occasions, such as kind of potlatch or a birthday? The question of value is important in trying to determine how one should reciprocate.
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I agree that different gifts have different values attached to them. I don't think that it follows, however, that we should attribute more value to spontaneous gifts than gifts bought for a specific occasion. I might buy my friend a soda one day if I;m at the store, and give it to him as a gift later that day. I hesitate to say that that gift has more value than a gift that I gave him for his birthday, so long as I placed a lot of thought or effort in the gift that I presented him. I think that the value of the gift is based mostly upon the effort that went into procuring it, or the thought that went into selecting it. Therefore, in my analysis, neither spontaneous nor "expected" gifts are inherently more valuable than the other.
ReplyDeleteI agree that what gives something value is the effort or thought that went in to it. However what I was leaning towards was whether there was something to be made of the initial push to acquire the gift.
ReplyDeleteSo then in your soda example would that gift have less value than the birthday gift since its seems that the amount of effort or thought that went into that was less? I mean you did not spend a great amount of time thinking about whether your friend would want the soda, you just got it.
Also does the value come from you or from your friend?