CJ The X
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The Gift: Conclusion - On Being Good Ancestors
🕑 Added 2025-10-02 18:47:17 +0000 UTCI write to u from the throes of pestilence, sneezing coughing leaking outo f m y fuckin face. But all in perfect time with a full week to recover before I head to San Francisco to perform at the KTi Summit with Michael Burns nad Dr. Fatima (limited tix still avail)
Done the book, donezo, complete.
Let us review some choice quotes:
"The patron’s support is not a wage or a fee for service but a gift given in recognition of the artist’s own."
Thankf or your support on patreon.com/cjthex
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Isee you all catching up in the prev thread, going there happily after posting this to keep up. Lots to turn about in the head after reading this, to process and hold onto.
Conclusion
Provisional definition of art: “unless the work is the realization of the artist’s gift and unless we, the audience, can feel the gift it carries, there is no art” I always enjoy definitions of art that are a bit more evocative and slippy than "object-definition".
“[In the gifted state] those things that are not gifts are judged to have no worth, and those things that are gifts are understood to be but temporary possessions.”
Nice articulation of an artistic ethos that I try to promote, embodyL
Leviticus records the Lord’s instruction to Moses: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me.” Likewise, we are sojourners with our gifts, not their owners; even our creations—especially our creations—do not belong to us. (279)
“The root of our English word “mystery” is a Greek verb, muein, which means to close the mouth. Dictionaries tend to explain the connection by pointing out that the initiates to ancient mysteries were sworn to silence, but the root may also indicate, it seems to me, that what the initiate learns at a mystery cannot be talked about. It can be shown, it can be witnessed or revealed, it cannot be explained.”
“I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvellous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses—that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.”
Afterward:
It felt like drinking ice water to hear Lewis Hyde acknowledge how his book felt "out of time." He describes it as a "prophetic essay", one that retain relevance by not placing itself aggressively in its current historical context. That was noticeable to me, as I'm reading this 1980s original print copy and it just feels completely ignorant of that fact. It reminds me a bit of The Fall of Public Man by Richard Sennett, which I've been working through, which was released in the 70s, but since it's analyzing historical developments between the 18th and 19th century it doesn't really reek of 70s in any notable way. Learning this was an intentional effect was really cool, as well was having that effect go away as Hyde started talking about our particular recent history.
I didn't know the CIA did so much arts funding. Thanks....?
The American "Democratic-propaganda-patronage” was haunting, to know that these eras of high public investment into thriving arts scenes that are partially motivated by 9D chess global security concerns.
“...we found, we were the cold war. We’d been getting all this money for quark research because our leaders decided that science, even useless science, was a component of the cold war. As soon as it was over, they didn’t need science.”
As an independent scholar the bit about the science / academic journals hiking up in price made me -_-
“the cost of subscribing to these journals has been a growing problem for many libraries (the price of publications in science rose by about 260 percent during the 1990s). A one-year subscription to The American Journal of Human Genetics now costs over $1,000 and a good science library needs scores of such subscriptions. At current rates, poorly endowed colleges and, more importantly, the poorer nations, literally cannot afford to enter the scientific community, no matter its internal ethic of generosity.”
Marxist Platform Capitalism (?) (huh)
Finally, Hyde really clearly lays out the exact argument I was reaching for when I had that debate with JJ Mccullough on public funding of the arts.
“Papp’s habit was to underwrite a great many theater productions and take a small ownership stake in each. Those that succeeded helped pay for those that came later. In the most famous example, A Chorus Line began at the Public Theater and then went to Broadway, opening in the summer of 1975. It ran without interruption for fifteen years, a commercial success that allowed Papp to support the work of less-established playwrights and companies. David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Elizabeth Swados, the Mabou Mines theater group, and dozens more received support during the years that Papp managed the Public.
Potential profitability is not a criterion for funding awards at Creative Capital; as with other arts funders, we ask our panels to look for originality, risk-taking, mastery, and so forth; we respond especially to projects that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. That said, the principle of sharing the wealth is essential to the Creative Capital model. It makes explicit the assumption that all who have succeeded as artists are indebted to those who came before, and it offers a concrete way for accomplished practitioners to give back to their communities, to assist others in attaining the success they themselves have achieved.”
Joshua Citarella has talked about how ironically, the massive platform capitalist giants using a Marxist centralized planned economy in their internal operations.
Apple TV+ litreally loses 1 billion dollars per year. This unprofitable, losing investment is subsidized by the excessive success of their flagship cash cows, like iPhone sales. Basically, Apple is doing what the USA did in the cold war; invest a bunch into platforming original artistic projects for the sole purpose of building a brand identity and stealing some thunder from other platform competitors like Amazon.
"Of course, $1 billion in annual losses are practically a rounding error for Apple in the context of its overall business, which is mostly fueled by iPhone sales. Apple generated $391 billion in revenue and posted a net profit of $93.7 billion for its fiscal year ended in September 2024." (Variety, 2025).
Marx points out how although an industrial factory utlimately exists to create market value, on the inside of the factory they use a gift economy. The internal expenses of a company don't each individually have to earn their keep, they are considered part of a unit, and so long as there is enough money in the company to keep everything going, an unequal and creative distribution of the money is completely acceptable. This is precisely how a government or community managed mutual aid fund can manage finances, or how Hyde's Creative Capital or Papp's Public Theater works. The financially successful projects aren't the point, they are the flagships that keep the whole values based operation running. They the commercial load bearers for the culture bearing risks, and for the value that isn't 1:1 represented by the market.
Even this book club wouldn't exist if I dedicated myself exclusively to the activities that were maximally profitable. I have the freedom to use the highest earning pieces of my company to make space for the nicher, and more delicate work I do.
Anyways. What do with all that. Id on't know right now, I'm tooo sneezy.
Another great KTi book club down. As per usual thankful to all of you for making this thing possible. I'm meeting w some people today to discuss the future of this thing to keep it going, growing, more regular, open to more people as we work to make Kill The Internet a more open access thing, communally run & consistent. Appreciate those of you who have been riding with it intrinsically and generously like true gifters for so long. Inspiring. Thanks.
x
Comments
azalea water
Kinda late on this one because I didn't have a lot to say on the last few chapters. I think my only take away of note is my love for Hyde's practical advice. He's spent a long time setting up a very complicated, vibey, and beautiful philosophy of gifts and comes to the wall which faces everyone in the social sciences: is this *actually* useful? The shocking answer to almost every one of these queries is simple: yes. Somethings are useful for the sake of culture and people do (surprisingly) have reasons for writing monographs. No one in the social sciences sets out with the soul purpose of dicking about with theorists with no end in sight. These are sciences, after all. And science has goals. However, it is absolutely possible to get lost in the source. I personally love Judith Butler's idea of gender performativity. While I'm not 100% down with everything that theory implies, it's a great way to start thinking about how gender informs out day-to-day lives. But when in "Gender Trouble" they begin going on tangents about Freudian theories of sexuality for its own sake, it can feel like you're wading through sand. So I really appreciate Hyde tying all of this up with how his theory can impact everyday social interactions. “I still believe that the primary commerce of art is a gift exchange, that unless the work is the realization of the artist’s gift and unless we, the audience, can feel the gift it carries, there is no art; I still believe that a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed. In working out the details of the chapter on usury, in particular, I came to understand that gift exchange and the market need not be wholly separate spheres. There are ways in which they may be reconciled, and if, like the Jews of the Old Testament, we are a community that deals with strangers, or if, like Ezra Pound, we are artists living in a market society, it is the reconciliation we must seek.” — p343 Absolute banger of a quote.
phil e the theyby
"Someone, somewhere sold his labor in the marketplace, or grew rich in finance, or exploited the abundance of nature, and the patron turns that wealth into a gift to feed the gifted." (360) "...fidelity to one's gifts often draws energy away from the activities by which men become rich." (365) Let's be 100% real and transparent about what we're doing here; anyone who succeeds financially is "problematic," in that they in same space or another have debased the sanctity of the gift and entered into the crass logos of the market. Mentally moving away from actually having a PROBLEM with what is "problematic" has been a really important shift in my own life. As someone who grew up a counterculture, "fuck the world" and "humans are bad" type, getting to a point where I actually consistently WANT to be alive has required making a kind of peace for the necessity of market logic. We could all live in small communities built on gift economies. We could! We'd just have to eradicate most of the human population to do that. Since I'd rather not eradicate most of the human population, I've needed to develop a more understanding view of the market, seeing it as uncaring in the way that a wave on the ocean is uncaring rather than the way an asshole is uncaring. The part in the afterward about public institutions being encouraged to think of themselves as private businesses, and the commodification of natural abundance, was depressing as fuck. There are some parts of the market we have to make our peace with, and there are some parts of the market we have to fight. I think to me, this feels like a very necessary fight. This book came at a VERY interesting time (and taking longer to read it because of the pause in posts was oddly serendipitous). I'm at a point of preparing to leave my university counseling center job at a large public university to go into private practice (for the sake of making more money and being less financially reliant on rich in-laws....make a lot of money is the move right now). Leaving the infrastructure and gift economy that's built into a public university system leads me to think a lot about how I enter into private practice in a way that embodies the spirit of community and the gift in a (suburban) community that doesn't value it the way that a public university does. Since we've started reading this book, I've developed a whole long-term business plan for creating a group practice whose operation is heavily inspired by the ideas in The Gift (and especially the idea of the syntheses of market-based and gift-based economic principles) and the things CJ's been writing/saying about this book and about business more generally, as well as trying to bring general Kill the Internet ideas into the community for free, in ways that actually draw people together. Jreg probably deserves some credit too, as his rants about community are definitely fuel that inspires me to channel resources and energy in that direction (against my more natural state of staying in my own lane and not talking to anyone). I don't have much more to share about that (though I'm happy to answer any questions about specific details) other than, I guess, thank you? To CJ for making the space, and also to everyone here (in this book or in all the other book club posts) and elsewhere who made Kill the Internet bigger than just CJ. I'm excited for what comes next, and hope to honor the gift that's been given here by giving it away with some solid increase. EDIT: I am also sick like CJ and Ayana. Disease, it abounds!
