Return
of Gift
(…the persistence of gift).
(Foundational:
of our networks of exchange; web of connections; intricate social weave and
woof; social, psychological, intra-personal; multiple in kind. Fabric of society and sense of community. Giving definition
to the above…).
(Identity
exchange: what is gained, what is given; recognition; recognition of
connection… sign of ability to give, to give value to, to value…).
(Recognition
of connection as recognition of debt/guilt; family, friends, peers, community,
religion, language and ethnic grouping; membership of the human species and
assertion of the new internationalism…).
(Recognition
of connection as recognition of the existence of others. Or of the right to recognition of others (not the same thing)?
Or only for significant others…? And so to the possibility of
sacrifice of the other. The ‘othering’ of
‘All’ (that is not ‘our’ family, community, those ‘we’ define by their
proximity, their self-sacrifice). Or only of ‘Some’ others;
the scapegoating, abjection of minorities (Jews, Gypsies and more…) sacrificial
others… those ‘available’ for sacrificial abjection?).
(Forgetting
presents; forgetting to return gift; forgetting presence, the presence of
others… The denial of existence… the existence of others).
Process potentially infinite, exponential… If
recognized: if not; finite, terminal, terminated… (opening…
or closed; creative… or destructive…). Enabling. Or foreclosing.
Lack of return, no sign of… the refusal to
value, to show value… signals, of no value.
(…no sign of… the
refusal of value, to show value…)
Plenitude or poverty; a choice permanently
alive in the present, whilst we are present, here perpetually posed in the
eternal present… our here and now, the Eternal Present. Present we may pass on;
gift ours to give…
(Begins…)
(…the
persistence of gift).
A gift
that will not be given away.
Try as we might…
Gift that cannot be given away. Neither
by religion (appropriation and handing over of the gift to somewhere, or
someone, else, real or mythic, or someone real standing in for something
mythic) nor science nor logic nor reason (denial and so misrecognition of this
gift when it appears in our midst, in
medias res, as the retrospective foundation of reason… of ‘universals’, so
requiring a ‘place’ for the ‘universal’ to be so… – for example ‘civilisation’ as a performative,
the gift we give ourselves, exchange between ourselves, collectively). All the
stuff we like to think of as ‘outside’ is inside… sublime (beauty, indicating),
the heavens, gods, immortals (entities), value/s, universals (eternals) etc…
(All gifts of our imaginations, our cultures… humanity’s ‘spiritual culture’,
our ‘humanity’). And if we are aware of this, this insistence of gift in the
self, its foundationality with respect to so many
cultural institutions and assumptions (so no longer simply -unconsciously-
prone to ‘belief’…).
Beyond
belief. (Belief unnecessary? Unnecessary to the functioning of these
institutions and assumptions…?)
Then
the question: what do we do with this knowledge? With this discovery, welcome
or unwelcome, that the origin of much we ‘put down’ to belief, we have now
again ‘picked up’ our responsibility, picked up on our responsibility. Again picked up the challenge of responsibility. May no longer put it aside, ‘put it down’. Once aware no
longer able to forget (even no longer prone to ‘active forgetting’…?). A power
we used to, were used to, pass on, or pass over, ‘over there’, ‘elsewhere’. Now here. Present. Ready to be given… So what to do with
this…? What to do with this plethora of (imaginary) entities and places, labels
and functions – many of which we could not live without? What does this
acceptance of gift entail? What is it to accept this gift…? This gift that
demands that we return it, that we too give.
Pass
it on… but not as a passing away, as a ‘passing away’ – a gift that does not
die with the giving.
The well
that does not empty with the taking of water. The cup that does not run dry…
The gift that cannot
be denied…
‘It
doesn’t belong to me…’
To
disclaim the right is to claim the right to disclaim the right. Either way you
claim a power and right of use (even if in the negative). Denial of the gifts
of others, or of ones gift to give (gift of the Other,
the Other that runs through the self)
it’s all the same;
‘I
have no right…’
Denial (self-denial).
Personification, and deferral to the Other as prior,
exterior and superior (god making). The Other as
superstition and not existential, experiential category (we sense that much of
what makes up ourselves, comes from elsewhere…). The Other
as projection outwards of what is our own (the Sublime, the Sacred,
value–bestowing, gift giving). Deferral to an exterior
entity, the wrong entity; superstition. The ‘right’
exterior entity? Our environment and habitat, our social,
intra-linguistic, cradle and cocoon – the air we breathe, the sea in which we
swim - from the cradle to the grave…
‘I
have the right /I have no right…’
Yes!
You have because you gave it (the right) to yourself… Even if you claim, as
others have always claimed, some universal or external place as its origin or
foundation… Conversely, there is no right (there are no ‘rights’) unless given,
by you, by me, and by others, by culture, by society… So in the claim to
universality, it is the claiming that is important, the ‘universality’ is a
fiction, as is the absoluteness, the otherworldly origin, or root, or
foundation or guarantee…). The process of giving and with-holding has already
begun… We are (always) in medias res…
Once we become conscious of such issues, we have already been practicing them
for some time… our habit, or habitat, our culture… (You cannot ‘give it away’…
who gave you the right…?)
Refusal of gift.
Return
of gift. (Unopened).
Guilt. As
the perception of, but not always acknowledgement of, debt. As the
perception of the necessity of the return of gift… the recognition of guilt, of
owing (of implication, of one’s own, not of another’s ; which is usually just a
way to avoiding one’s own guilt in what one wants to do to Them, to the other,
to somebody, or, minimally, to justify a sense of moral superiority…). An
admission, then, of one’s own past or actions or inactions and omissions (or
the past actions or inactions and omissions of one’s culture, of one’s species)
as ‘part of ‘the problem’… as part of the process of sacrificing the other
(different) and not the self…(same)… community…(however defined). It is a
question of the acceptance of historical responsibility (the acceptance of
debt, the recognition of value denied, and the gift of restitution). Of
responsibility for the memory of the victims of the past (and not just the
strategically convenient victims of immediate utility, but all of them - not
some, but all (this is the test of value in history, its historical trial…)).
For we are, afresh, every generation, care-takers of the past… care-givers as
regards the memory of the past…
Gift of
value as the gift of care (the gift of care giving).
(Negative
…)
Refusal
of gift or debt or guilt, as the refusal of the other, of the relation to the
other(s), or other… of connection, of interconnectivity, of our co-implication
in life and society, of our reliance on others and on society. On ‘community’ as inclusion. Otherwise partaking in
other-exclusion… denial of commonality, of community or responsibility… an
aspect of anomic individualism, which sees only use in human and other
relations (as in the attitude to others, to life, the environment, to cities,
to architecture – the negative results of which we see everywhere). All of which should look and feel better, and would if they were
valued… or subject to the valuation that reflected popular feeling. For common feelings and values are enough to guarantee this; this
‘revaluation of values’ (and not constructed according to a restricted notion
of price… often with a closed monopoly of people set to benefit…). So a
restricted economic sense and a restricted set of decision-makers and economic
beneficiaries are allowed to destroy the look and feel of our dwelling places,
of the places we call ‘home’.
Or
there is the selfish recognition that believes it must deny recognition to
others, because of a paranoia, or reactivity, which
believes that to give in this way - is to lose… (Is to give in… to give up…
something…). Thus focusing steadily of personal aggrandizement, on all fronts,
not least that of the self, of personal self-image… of self as defined against
all, above all (yet ironically part of ‘another’ community… elsewhere…). Denial of all claims on the self as the assertion of (a certain
kind of) self. Including even, extending even to the claims of science…
what august personal sovereignty, how god-like in omniscient aspect, to be
above even the claims of science…
So also ‘beyond
belief’ beyond any and belief that might entail an action, a debt, some loss,
some gift…
Politics. The attitudinality and defensive viciousness, the denial of
connection and accompanying sense of entitlement, that accompanies such
refusals of gift, of responsibility, of connection – all fodder for the
politics of lost, reactive causes, of strategic bigotry, of the creation of a
political underclass (not necessarily coeval with an economic underclass, but
often with an educational underclass) which can to be relied upon to be deaf to
all reason, blind to facts, and eager to disavow the rights of others… deny the
obvious (in the name of the hidden conspiracy).
Utility. Bulwark against
the connectivity that requires compromise. Bulwark against the giving away of
value beyond the narrow confines of the self – political function: to provide a
ready constituency for society’s most privileged when under threat (nothing
dramatic, just the usual suspects: of being made to pay their taxes… or have their
profits limited by public health and safety…). The political utility of the
refusal of gift (extending even to refusal of personal health-cover or care,
let alone education…).
(Positive…)
‘Call
it a gift’.
Education. Gift
to the self. Enabling the recipient to give all the
more to others. Education: multiplying the ability to give over time.
Gift un-depleted by giving… Self-replenishing. The
definition of ‘active’…
The
awareness of the sacred in Nature and in Others; but not yet the awareness of
our ability to give (usually understood as to find… ).
To locate what is hidden; and not to bestow as a gift; as a blessing… So long
has elapsed since the ‘death of God’ (in reality the meanest blink of an eye,
yet a blink in which we have missed something – that it was we who gave ‘Him’
birth) so we have not yet taken responsibility for our filling of the vacant
position… custodians of the performative. The true
custodians of performative gift of value… Deciding,
in the withdrawal of the imaginary entities which we used to hide behind, on
what is sacred… or to ask: ‘is nothing sacred’?
(‘Is nothing of value?)
For
‘the sacred’ is only another way of talking about values. Our
values. Valuing, finding or, more cogently, ‘making sacred’, something
not found in things, in nature (so not a paganism, nor
a pantheism, not a projection, nor disavowal of our responsibility…). But
something in us and of us, a human gift to our self, (our)selves
and to the world… The gift of value.
Our
sensitivity, or better, propensity to the set of feelings we call the ‘Sublime’
(which began with an intimidating quantity and a shaking of the self, and
turned to our ‘Outside’ inside, the sense of the Beyond, Absolute Otherness, or
Eternity -gods, heavens, univerals- which we use to
‘ground’ beliefs) turned around and given right back… In reality a gift we
already gave once, unwittingly. With us as we have evolved and finally learnt
from; now waiting to declare the spaces of the world, sacred places; the
universe a place of shining colours… ours to
re-enchant. Replete with entities of unique value, each with
its unique glow. A value which we will have given.
So
settling our debt to the world which nurtured us… return of gift to the world…
to repay and renew (‘re-value’). To be repaid by valuing… by giving value…
Recognition:
the gift of which a gift as a gift of value; the value of the others; the
valuing of others. Connection as entering gift exchange
relations. Acknowledgement of connections as
recognition of return of gift, as recognition of debt. On a wider
canvass, recognition of history; our past, our ancestors. Their valuing as we
value the contents of our museums, our debt to the past…. as recognition of
guilt, our debt to the past as its ‘proper’ use, of which first memory is
required…
And memorials. Our debt to the past – the last, and most valuable, trace of
‘ancestor worship’.
And our debt to the future. As we
value our foresight, our hope for future generations and their conditions of
life, which we now herewith bequeath them… gift in our power, our gift to the
future… our debt to the future…
Or
curse…
Leaving
us now with our… guilt for the future.
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2015