The Gift That Keeps on Giving

The concept of valuing creative generosity and community as a whole is hard to understand in a country like the United States when we tend to worship wealth before anything else. We tend to put values on everything, from clothing to physic, education to employment, house to car. Everything around us is given a value and we must compete with others to ensure that we, individually, have the best and stand out from the rest. When we do this, we tend to strive away from what Hyde places emphasis on: gift economy. When a country worships wealth over all, we do not have a gift economy. Instead we focus on what the gift is worth, if we like the gift or not, and what we can do with it. By doing this, we are taking what the gift may be and replacing it with a monetary value- nothing more.

 

However, Hyde suggests that even a country that worships wealth as much as we do here in the United States can bring back the idea of a gift economy by putting focus on what a gift economy actual is. From reading Hyde’s The Gift, I was able to pull a couple points out that struck me the hardest and made me think. The first is the folktale “The Girl and the Dead Man.” This tale stood out to me because I feel like it breaks down the concept of gift economy in a simple and effective manner. The bread given to each girl by the mother is the gift and it is not until the third daughter that we see gift economy coming into play. The final girl passes the bread out to the birds so that they have something to eat, she does not keep it to herself because she never gave it a monetary value, unlike the first two.  She is willing to take her gift and share it with others so that it keeps in movement, one of the important aspects of gift economy according to Hyde. By sharing her gift, she is allowing something else to benefit and hopefully continue to share with others. Hence, the bread stays in motion and reaches as many as possible, before it is all eaten of course. 

While reading this section of Hyde’s piece, I kept on going back to the play/film Into the Woods. The concept of the play and film, if you do not know, is a mash-up of fairy tales such as Cinderella and Rapunzel. Obviously, the clear connection between the two is the set: the dark and scary wood. However, upon thinking more about Into the Woods, I began to think about how gift economy is portrayed to the audience. Key items, such as the slipper and golden hair are ever moving and given from one to another in order to help those in need. These gifts remain in constant motion and continue in motion throughout the film. It is even said that the gifts will continue to move within the hands of others in order to reach as many as possible. Instead of being content and idolizing important belongs and keeping them to themselves, like so many others, these characters are able to come together, connect plots and fairy tales and separates become one. Into the Woods, is an example of how Hyde’s theory of gift economy can still be relevant in today’s culture. One of the biggest movies of 2014 was centered on keeping ‘gifts’ in motion and helping the greater good. 

The second is the example of the Kula gifts. The armshells and necklaces are giving from one to another, moving between island and island. Hyde points out that when even the Kula gifts make it back to the originating island, it is not to the same person nor will the second path be identical to the first. Each of those who possess an article of the Kula are touched and cannot wait to hand off this gift to another to ensure that as many people as possible can have it within their possession. 

I think it is interesting that the article “What Is Art For?” talks about Hyde visiting Walden where Henry David Thoreau went to leave beyond society as he knew it to try and see the world from a different view. This pairing if very interesting because Hyde focuses on the environment and not having any sort of monetary value on certain objects, just previously mentioned. Thoreau, in my own opinion, did something very similar and was able to reach the first major step in a gift economy: throw out the monetary values of items and focus on something else, which in his case was stepping back and looking at the world differently. In order to have a gift economy in today’s world, I believe that this is what would need to happen, we as a whole would have to step away from what we know the world to be today and look at it from a new perspective. I believe it would be impossible in today’s society to be able to have a strong gift economy in nations that place monetary values on such a vast number of articles. However, if we were to take Thoreau’s work and try to apply it to such a nation, gift economy could become a major player. 

In addition, gift economy could be taught to future generations over time. I do not believe my generation would be able to change however, if we taught the next generation and they taught the next, and so on, we may be able to have a strong gift economy throughout the world. We would be able to show our children and grandchildren artwork like Indra’s Cloud to show that how gift economy could work and add to a community. Take something that can be harmful to wilderness, such as trash, and transform it into a unique art piece for neighbors to enjoy. At this same time, like Indra’s Cloud, attention would be given to show the effects of pollution and the terrible conditions. Many do not realize that the wild gives us many gifts such as oxygen or habits for wild animals and we do not continue to give these gifts. We use them and forget about them- they are only there when we want them to be.  In the future, it may be possible, via gift economy, to realize that we must protect our planet more in order to help it survive like it helps us survive and be prosperous. Only time would be able to tell whether or not gift economy could survive in the United States or whether we would go back to our current roots of a market economy.