Giving the Gift

I was thinking about Brett's last post and I remembered a lecture I went to see while I was in Germany, by Larry Lessing, who is a Stanford professor whose main focus is on copyright issues. This lecture is about the problems that can come from putting certain limitations on the kinds of property that people can use.
The concern becomes what is society doing by putting restrictions on artist property, and how much damage could this be causing?

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

p.s. I would also suggest for those of you who have never been on ted.com to check out some of their other lectures, it is a great site.

Gifts Reflecting

I was thinking about Hegel and the notion that the things you own are a reflection of who you are, but what about the things that you own which were gifts? I was recently at a gas station and the guy at the counter asked me which car was mine ( which I found a bit odd considering it was the only car at the pumps)so I told him it was the mustang. At this point he proceeded to ask me about the year and tell me that it was a really cool car. All this got me thinking about the kind of impression I give due to the car that I own. The thing is that I did not choose the car, my Dad gave it to me, and only due to circumstance ( I needed a car, when I moved back and it just happened to be what he had to give ). I do not drive a mustang as a reflection of myself, but as a matter of circumstance, however, since I own it seems to reflection of me, but I own because it was a gift.

Autographs

What is it that we think we own when we get someone's autograph? Understandably if that autograph is on a guitar or book, we own that which it is on, but that is not what we put value in. Does it link us to the individual who wrote the name? and what does this add to our lives, I mean the achievements for which we admire the person do not change if we get their autograph, but how does our life change by owning their name on something?

Philosophy and Children

I just found this on the NY Times website. It is an article discussing the possibilities of children being able to think abstractly and do philosophy. It is philosophy done through children's books. I thought it was interesting that one of the books being discussed philosophically was The Giving Tree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/education/edlife/18philosophy-t.html?hp

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.

An Ideal/ Pure Gift

In class we touched on the notion there being something called a "pure" which is what most seem to think of when they think of gifts. It is a kind of benevolent gift which needs no reciprocation and how this is in contrast to what an actual gift is. An actual gift needing something in return even if that something is just a thank you. I was wondering if anyone had ever read "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein as a child or an adult and what we could take the message of that book to be. Is it the case that the tree is acting in a manner in which it is exemplifying the ideal form of gifting giving and portraying it to be the way it should or criticizing this ideal?

The story is really easy to find online, in case you have not read it. I also found this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TZCP6OqRlE
It is the youtube link of an animation of the book being read by Shel Silerstein, although I must admit that the sound is not that great, so if you do not know the book already it might be a bit a hard.

A gift ?

I just thought that maybe the video shared something with the notion of a gift in the community that we have been discussing.



sorry video might not work all the time so this is the link:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY/r:f