My least favorite occasions are those where people are obligated to give or receive gifts. And no, it’s not because I’m stingy. It’s because gift giving as a tradition embedded within our consumerist culture feels ingenuine. While the word gift is defined as “something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation,” the norm of reciprocity always has its way. To put that in simple terms, almost every gift demands something else in return.
Whether it be gratitude or a gift that mirrors your own, few things are truly given with nothing taken in return. French philosopher Jacques Derrida characterizes this in his 1992 book “Given Time” by saying, “It is perhaps in this sense that the gift is the impossible. Not impossible but the impossible. The very figure of the impossible. It announces itself, gives itself to be thought as the impossible.”
While not literally impossible, Derrida views the notion of a gift in its grammatical sense as impossible. Even if a gift isn’t directly reciprocated with another, it still creates some degree of social debt. This then alters the dynamic between the giver and the receiver, which makes the gift not truly a gift in its purest sense. A true gift is one where neither the giver nor the receiver knows that a gift has been given. In this sense, gifts are only given between those who possess no pre-existing bonds. All of this is to say that the vast majority of the things that we perceive as gifts aren’t so. Maybe this is obvious from a non-philosophical standpoint when we consider that a significant portion of gifts that people receive are unwanted or eventually regifted.
Anyway, let me get to the point. In a world where hyperconsumerism has hyperaccelerated the destruction of our planet, maybe we shouldn’t be trying to do “the impossible.” Genuine relationships are built more on commitment and common understanding than any material goods. Things like normal gift exchanges or white elephant exchanges may be fun, but when gifts remain unused and forgotten, they might as well be pointless. I’m not saying that we should abolish gift-giving, but that you should reconsider the role that gifts play in your relationships with others.
(And definitely don’t try to just throw money at your significant other on Valentine’s Day instead of any other kind of present… that might not go over well.)
