9. Give It Away

When a gift is an object rather than an action, "mannerly" people usually work hard on granting as little importance as possible to the thing in itself. Take, for example, the way people commonly organize meals together. They try to remember that food should not be the entire reason for the gathering. No one denies the relentless necessity of being fed, but human beings attempt—once they have secured for themselves a regular supply of food—to make mealtimes into something more: occasions for meeting, for talking and sharing, and incidentally for dramatizing their agreements about how people should behave in company, all in the course of considerable enjoyment, to say nothing of relief and gratitude that there is enough to eat. Concrete objects other than food are also essential to our lives and our well-being. But again cultural wisdom often decrees that human attachment to such objects should be played down.

Many societies do this by consciously placing honour above material satisfaction, provided, of course, that material need is sufficiently supplied for a space to be created in which people might work on displaying nobility. We have already seen examples of people being offered gifts they greatly desire—but disdaining to show any emotion whatever.¹ It is considered "low," and certainly unwise, to be thrilled: to grab what is proffered and exult. A noble person's demeanour is unmoved, impassive; his or her sights are on "higher things."

There may also be a determination not to lose one's "cool" simply because it is agreed that tranquillity is effortlessly "high" while excitement, its opposite, is "low." A noble person should be free from greed, magnanimous, and immune from the pressures of base desires. The restraint of the honourable is "refinement," which is artificial and therefore difficult to learn and hard to keep up. It requires turning down immediate satisfactions of a material kind and preferring simplicity, stillness, self-control, dignity, hauteur. "The aim ... is to display generosity, freedom, and autonomous action, as well as greatness," Mauss writes of the Trobriand Islanders' kula exchange. He dismisses these aspirations as in fact a subterfuge: "Yet, all in all, it is mechanisms of obligation, and even of obligation through things, that are called into play."² It is the external structure and its enforcement that interest the social scientist, rather than the feelings of the participants themselves; Mauss focuses on the obligation rather than on the kula chief's desire to rise above his own base impulses.

A noble man accepts subservience to another only in extremity. He is "great," which most obviously means "large"—"larger" than others. The comparative degree is important because it is most easily in comparing that others are able to judge, it being the opinion of others that is the decisive factor where honour is concerned. The greatness of a conqueror needs to be displayed and is commonly dramatized: he will be depicted on a monument (as Great Men were in ancient Egyptian and Assyrian art), posing with his foe, who might be depicted as much smaller than he, crouching at his feet. A man of honour will prefer, of course, that this foe be himself an honourable man, for the greater the fallen enemy, the greater his conqueror. Honour can be "taken from" others; it is added thereby to one's own stock of honour. One would rather "take" a large amount of honour than the little possessed by a puny enemy.

The Three Graces wore little clothing or none, Seneca says, because benefits "desire to be seen": favours given want to be admired by all. People believe that part of "paying back," of showing gratitude, is telling everybody about the benefit one has received, and so enhancing the reputation of the giver.³ We still say in English that we feel "beholden" to someone who does us a large favour. Most of us today would take this word simply to mean "obliged." In fact, its origin is the same as that of the verb to behold: one beholden was "being watched," held under the gaze of others who have firm ideas about how we ought to react. And, where honour reigns, that is enough to create obligation.

When a Trobriand nobleman is the protagonist in the drama of receiving an extremely prestigious ornament, he remains apparently unmoved because to show pleasure and pride would be to "reduce" himself. It would mean that another has the power to grant him what he longs for. (Although honour is no longer the mainspring of action in our own culture today, honour syndromes still make themselves felt from time to time. We might resent saying "thank you" out of an obscure suspicion that to show gratitude is to accept a reduction in status.)

For protagonists in the kula exchange, things—even famous shell ornaments—should not have the power to make a great man lower himself by displaying desire or gratitude for them. As for pleasure, it can be expressed later, when the gift bearer has gone. Meanwhile, the bearer flings down the shells and shows "exaggerated modesty": he too is constrained to behave as though the handing over of the treasure were no great matter. Honour is a prickly, sensitive thing, quick to be aroused to anger. A modest demeanour is therefore wise in the gift giver, however important the gift.

In all this Mauss thought the "mechanisms of obligation" most impressive and important. Certainly the man "could not but" accept the gift after its long voyage by canoe, and would one day feel "constrained" to hand it on to someone as highly favoured as himself, just as its previous owner had had to let go of it and send it to him. One could also say that he had an obligation to behave with admirable restraint because such behaviour is what defines a noble man (noblesse oblige). But perhaps we should be impressed as well by the will to avoid the natural reaction, which would be simply to seize with exclamations of joy and carry off the longed-for object. Openly to welcome the present at once as an expression of esteem would have been "common sense." To recognize the gift for what it "really" was, namely useless bits of seashell, would have been more commonsensical still. Shame is the opposite of honour, but also honour's prerequisite, the reverse side of the same coin. What honour is not is common sense. We express our own commonsensical culture when we insistently ask for what things "actually" are, and what the power play is, or the greed, that many of us feel must invariably be the point of any transaction.

Honour deems that it should not be the thing but the meaning that counts—the meaning that inflates the great man's "size," his honour. And this honour can never be constituted by merely material riches, even though having things might sometimes be a prerequisite for the expression of honour. He who gives with generosity, in such a culture, is magnified in the eyes of watching others, whereas he who receives with a satisfaction too manifest is diminished. In any event, within a group of men "of honour," both the natural and the commonsensical are averted. An honour system avoids forced "giving" to the powerful; it prevents receiving from being more advantageous than donating; and it denies permission to the powerful to return nothing.

An outstanding example of things counting for less than honour is the North American Indian potlatch. Here First Nations chieftains and other nobles struggled to establish and readjust rank among themselves. Many guests—the witnessing crowd that is essential to the recognition of honour—were invited to a dinner and a potlatch ceremony. Should the existing ranking not be a foregone conclusion, a contest would begin, in which one man would destroy a certain amount of his property—say ten blankets—and challenge his rival to respond. As though he had received a gift in seeing his counterpart's blankets burn, the other contender, because of the battle of comparison, had to burn a larger number of his own blankets, say twenty. "The most valuable copper objects are broken and thrown into the water, in order to put down and to 'flatten' one's rival," writes Mauss. "In this way one not only promotes oneself, but also one's family, up the social scale."⁴ The destruction of possessions went on, rising in fury and in amount, until one of the rivals was forced to give in because he had nothing left to break or burn. The winner, in the sight of all, had gained the higher rank.

The potlatch struggle has often fascinated Europeans because there seems to have been nothing in it of "common sense." Large numbers of objects had to be collected before the ritual began, and it was true that given great determination on either side, the chieftain with the greatest resources won. Clearly it was not the accumulation of things that made a man great, but a daring readiness, in the pursuit of honour, to divest himself of everything. The Canadian government fought to stop what it saw as an entirely reprehensible, "crazy" waste of goods. But for the First Nations, mere stuff counted for nothing in comparison with honour. The emotions felt while the "big men" fought with property included pride, of course, but also fury. Anger, like pride, is an emotion that inflates one's "size." Rage (which we commonly describe as "towering") typically causes other people to cower, to make themselves "small." Honourable heroes are often transported with fury. ("Rage"—menin—is the first word in European literary history. It opens Homer's Iliad, an epic whose subject is honour and rage and heroism, and which sings to us of rejection upon rejection of "common sense.")

Another instance of detachment from things is the custom, found in many cultures, that if someone admires one of your possessions, you must immediately and without a sign of regret give it to her. The obligation to return might hold for this gift as for any other, and modern Europeans (typically) speculate that the requirement that something else should be given back must soften the fact of having to give something away simply because someone else expressed a liking for it. (Not surprisingly, polite people in these cultures never say they admire other people's possessions. Usually only foreigners are uncouth enough to do so.)⁵ But an important aspect of gift-giving becomes clear here: someone who receives a gift in return for something given has no control over what that return gift will be. To have admired something, say a locket, is to get that locket. But the locket-giver cannot be sure what gift might take its place—unless she is herself rude enough to praise some object she likes among the other's possessions.

Raymond Firth, describing the behaviour "beneath the crust of social decorum" of the New Zealand Maori, says that after a first present had been given, a tacit understanding was created between the two people concerned as to the nature of the return gift, and what its quantity and value should be.⁶ Firth believes that this practice of dropping hints as to what return gift would be acceptable, by means of praising things "in a significant manner," gave rise to the custom of giving away something that had been admired. Interestingly, giving away what has been admired always takes place at once—the locket is snatched off the neck then and there and handed over—whereas, as we shall see, gift return usually requires time to elapse first.⁷ In the case of the admired object, the owner's honour is engaged. There must be no question about a detached attitude to mere personal possessions, and therefore no time is taken—none needed—to consider what the response should be. A Maussian anthropologist would no doubt be convinced that such giving is merely an instance of "the obligation to give." If we were to listen to the person giving away the locket, however, we would hear her say that she gave because she was free from attachment to possessions—and had proved it.

In traditional Maori culture there appears to have been a powerful obligation to give when a hint was made. Firth recounts the story of a man who was "of such greedy disposition that when anyone was passing up or down the valley with fish or other products he always hailed him, saying, 'I am very fond of that food.' This was equivalent to a direct request for it, so of course the food was handed over to him. So tiresome became this practice that at length the people of the district, to end his begging, sent a war party against him and slew him." Firth concludes, "One is almost entitled to conclude from this that in old Maori days true politeness demanded that one should slay a man sooner than hurt his feelings by refusing him a request."⁸ What was presumably being safeguarded, however, was the continuance of the possibility of asking and giving within limits and in an honourable manner, through "hints"—not requests—that left the other free to give. The man, taking advantage of the honour game, had placed an intolerable burden upon people's resources: insatiably repeating his trick, he had become a sort of highwayman and a shameless beggar, with the honour of travellers along the route as his pressure point.

Two types of beggar exist in Spain, and no doubt elsewhere as well. There are those who kneel quietly on the pavement with their money-box before them and a written notice enumerating their misfortunes; and there are those who run along beside their prey, nudging and cajoling. The first are honourable, the second shameless. The first leave it to passersby to give or refuse; they rely on people's consciences and try to arouse pity; they "make hints" through giving information but asking only by making non-aggressive, non-verbal signs. The second kind are deliberately and physically bothersome. They take advantage of irritation and even fear, and they ask outright; they have no honour and "no manners," and run the risk of vociferous or violent refusals. There was, if the story of the shameless Maori is to be believed, a greater taboo in that society against shamelessness than there was against killing.⁹

An honour system is one way of making people play down possessions and exalt noble behaviour instead. The reward for doing this is not only the satisfaction that arises from being noble oneself or from witnessing nobility in others, but also the achievement of peace, by means of exchanging goods while reducing as far as possible a fixation on the things themselves. In a different kind of society, the group may simply share with one another everything they own. Egalitarianism will be the hub of this kind of social system, rather than honour, which is by definition hierarchical. And where people cannot be said to own any material objects, there is little danger of their becoming too attached to things.

Lorna Marshall's exemplary study of the Bushmen of Nyae Nyae in South Africa, published in 1961, shows how methods may be worked out by small groups of people, who have no avenues of escape from one another, to cast out violence and maintain goodwill among themselves. The methods involve talking, sharing, and giving. In this society giving is obligatory. Things are "on the move" always, passing through people's hands, but always on their way to somebody else. Violence being the greatest fear, immense efforts are made to lower temperatures and disarm hostilities—wherever possible, in advance. A great deal of learning, understanding, practice—in short, of "up-bringing"—needs to be undergone by everyone to keep things on an even keel. But it is felt to be worthwhile, for this carefulness is believed to be vital to everybody's survival.

To begin with, the Bushmen talked, says Marshall, all the time: they were "the most loquacious people I know." Conversation was "a constant sound like the sound of a brook." The main subject was the availability of food and the giving and receiving of food, and about gift-giving in general, and the persons to whom they had given or proposed to give gifts: "They express satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what they have received. If someone has delayed unexpectedly long in making a return gift the people discuss this." When gift-giving is done incorrectly—not enough, not to the right person, without a proper return—other people talk, and complain, until matters are sorted out. Then they can all "start again in peace."

Speaking could be shouting in alarm, all together, "in extremely loud, excited voices, volcanic eruptions of words" when there was a powerful common emotion such as fear. When all did it at once, there was no dissension. Or it could be an individual's long, murmured repetition in the presence of others, a lament out of a sense of injustice: "In an extreme instance we saw a woman visitor go into a kind of semi-trance and say over and over for perhaps half an hour or so in Toma's presence that he had not given her as much meat as was her due. It was not said like an accusation. It was said as though he were not there. I had the eerie feeling that I was present in someone else's dream." The woman was in no sense arguing; there was no reply from Toma. But she made her feelings known; the controlled performance, insistent but low-key, was a release of tension, "keeping pressures from building up until they burst out in aggressive acts." People were expected to control their tempers and did so to a remarkable degree: "If they become angry, aggrieved, or frustrated, they tend to mope rather than to become aggressive, expressing their feelings in low mutters to their close relatives and friends." Indeed, "any expression of discord ('bad words') makes them uneasy." Marshall reminds us that deadly poisoned arrows, the Bushmen's hunting equipment, were always at hand; tempers could not be allowed to get out of control.

The Bushmen's table manners strike Marshall as extraordinary: nobody revealed eagerness to eat, or took more than a modest share of food. "I found it moving to see so much restraint about taking food among people who are all thin and often hungry, for whom food is a source of constant anxiety," she writes. "We observed no unmannerly behaviour, no cheating and no encroachment about food." Once again we hear about the need to share everything, but food in particular: I have now, but later I might desire your goodwill. "People are sustained by a web of mutual obligation." It would not be possible, in this small and sharp-eyed group, to kill an animal secretly and eat it oneself, because "actions are printed in [the] sands for all to read." There was no fighting about whose poisoned arrow actually killed an animal, because each hunter got a share of the meat anyway: sharing prevented tension. Once everybody had received an obligatory portion of meat, he or she was free to give bits of it away at pleasure. This convention, says Marshall, had "the quality of gift-giving"—but the person who received such a gift was obliged to make a return gift later. The motives for giving were "to measure up to what is expected of them, to make friendly gestures, to win favour, to repay past favours and obligations, and to enmesh others in future obligation." Marshall admitted that she could not know when or if feelings of "genuine generosity and real friendliness" existed, but she is sure that they too would have been expressed by giving.

Gifts circulated constantly among the Bushmen: "Everything a person has may have been given to him and may be passed on to others in time." Artifacts, well made and carefully looked after, "last for generations and move in a slow eddy among the people." Marshall describes how she gave a necklace of cowrie shells, unavailable to the Bushmen, to each woman as a farewell present when she left the band in 1951. In 1952, when she returned, there were no necklaces left, hardly a shell to be found in the band itself; the necklaces had been broken up and every shell given away: "They appeared, not as whole necklaces, but in ones and twos in people's ornaments to the edges of the region."

Every object was known within the group, and also who had given it to whom in the recent past. (Unlike some other peoples, this Bushman group was not given to placing value on antiquity, or to holding the distant past in mind.) They traded, but only with outsiders, never among themselves: trading with each other was considered undignified, too likely to stir up bad feelings. The visiting anthropologists did not receive gifts in return for what they offered: "They gave us a few things spontaneously which they thought we would enjoy—python meat, for instance." They were outsiders, and therefore not included in the sharing that drew the group together.

Stealing simply never happened: it was practically impossible in any case because everybody knew each person's footprints, the whereabouts of every object, and who was at present using it. More importantly, one Bushman said, "stealing would cause nothing but trouble. It might cause fighting." Things were for giving, for creating bonds and relationships. Jealousy and envy were strong, but there was always a remedy: if an object should be the cause of dissension, give it away. People who had more than others needed especially to give, to pre-empt jealousy. The two unbreakable rules of gift-giving were these: never refuse a gift, and be certain to give one in return. Refusal to make a return gift made a giver exceedingly angry. Not returning a gift was also noted by other people, and censured in the incessant talk that went on.

It was permissible for a giver to ask for a return gift, and even for someone to ask for any particular object he or she wanted. One man said that a person could ask for anything. He did, he said: "He goes to a person's fire and sits and asks. (I could imagine him with his black glancing eyes sitting and asking!) He asks usually for only one or two things, but if a person has a lot he may ask for more" and, he said, "to be refused too many times makes a person very angry."

Lorna Marshall says she saw no signs of altruism, kindness, sympathy, genuine generosity, or desire to help the weak in Bushman behaviour. Giving back, however, was obligatory and underwritten by the insistence and the possibility of deep disapproval of others in the group; social obligation precludes gratitude, which is never mentioned in Marshall's report. The "worst thing" was not being ungrateful, but not giving in the first place. Other bad things were not accepting a proffered gift and hanging on to something when somebody else had asked for it. The Bushmen aimed at achieving security, closeness, and peace; and this they did to a large extent through constant, obligatory giving and receiving. "The worst thing is not giving presents," said one of the Bushmen. "If people do not like each other but one gives a gift and the other must accept, this brings a peace between them. We give to one another always. We give what we have. This is the way we live together."

As we have seen, the price of refusing to give something back to a donor often means hostility. Refusing to receive also wounds, while refusing to give in the first place prevents a cycle of exchange from beginning. Human societies must engage in exchange (as Aristotle saw).¹⁰ If they do not, they fall apart and collapse into violence. Being fixated on possessions is exceedingly dangerous. The philosopher René Girard shows that people learn to desire objects by watching what other people do and want, and learning from them what it is that is desirable. If they start fighting over who will own the things in question, they soon turn to hating each other so violently that the objects initially coveted almost drop out of view in the heat of a battle to the death.¹¹ Traditional societies have always set out to discourage a fascination with possessions; ancient experience told them that the consequences of a failure to avert covetous desire were potentially catastrophic.

A peculiarly modern solution to our propensity to what Girard calls "mimetic violence" is to make large numbers of the objects desired. We actually incite people, through advertising, to desire specific objects, to find them "indispensable": we are so sure of ourselves that we feel we can run this risk. (The main method of advertising, of course, is inducement through mimetic desire: showing us other people enjoying the object to be sold to us.) "Demand" having been built up, mass production then steps in to ensure that there are enough identical examples of the commodity to go round—for those, at least, who can pay for them. The solution is brilliant—provided that enough people have enough money to feel they are part of the charmed circle of buyers, and that have-nots can be kept quiet. We are increasingly and painfully aware that we shall reach material limits to "growth" sooner rather than later. Then—or perhaps before that happens—we shall realize that there is no sustainable alternative: we shall have to share what we have, or rather what is left, among all of us. Human beings must either give, or fight.