CJ The X
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BOOK CLUB - The Gift Ch 3 & 4
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"Chance had made me a man, generosity would make me a book." - Jean-Paul Sartre
Probably the most frequent creative / life advice I give out is to get involved in an objective craft or culture of some kind. Become part of the world by immersing yourself in something that is outside of you, something tangible in which you can invest your identity (from which you can pull your identity?)
I am performing a lecture for my biggest audience yet this coming weekend, around 300 people (Vancouver, I am looking forward to Being In You this week) and although it feels good that my performance is novel and original in some way, it feels even better to think of it in the context of stand-up comedy, or to be doing the work of 'scholar-without-institution', like Lewis Hyde was for a time, and Baruch Spinoza for his whole life.
(I learned Spinoza was an independent scholar through Clare Carlisle's book Spinoza's Religion, which I found through John Vervaeke, whom I found through his professional relationship to Jordan Peterson. My ability to describe that chain of thinkers is a evidence of an objective orientation in the world. Not a flex, it just genuinely makes me feel at home in the world, like I am something, someone, somewhere, in culture and history. Part of something.)
I have been toying with the idea of contribution defining membership to a community or culture. This echoes of The Labor of Gratitude's overarching shape. You may first recieve the boons of culture, being enchanted or shaped by it, and then you labor in its service.
To be contributed to and to contribute back is a sign of membership in a culture or community. And what is your social identity if not the cultures and communities you have tied your being up with? Chance makes you a human, generosity makes you a member of society.
Maybe love makes you an individual, or something. Anyways.
FRESH DICHOTOMIES
Returning To The Essence vs. Wandering Forever
We should really differentiate two sorts of death here: one that opens forward into greater life and another—a dead-end death—that leaves a restless soul, unable to reach its home. This is the death we rightly fear. And just as gifts are linked to the death that moves toward new life, so, for those who believe in transformation (either in this life or in another), ideologies of market exchange have become associated with the death that goes nowhere. (45)
No notes.
I am reminded of Byung-Chul Han's Ritual Death vs. Production Death.
Work vs. Labor
Lewis Hyde defines his terms nice and clearly here, but I immediately find this dichotomy a bit problematic, not because Hyde's frame is invalid but because I have so many emotional associations with the words Work and Labour, and how they interact with Play, Sacrifice, Instrumental Value and Intrinsic Value
In speaking of gratitude as a "labor" I mean to distinguish it from "work," and I must digress here to elaborate my distinction. Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and ends at a specific time and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus—these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it's harder to quantify...Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms—these are labors. (The Gift, Hyde p. 50)
This kind of insinuates that "work" is instrumental action that we endure only as long as we are required to, while "labor" is more associated with the intrinsically valuable activities in life.
There's also an idea that "We can't predict the fruits of our labor; we can't even know if we'll really go through with it." (51). I don't really understand what he means by the second half of that, even in context, but labour being something with mysterious, uncertain results, seems to seriously exclude a lot of the most valuable activities in my life. Reading on, I think the most useful way for me to conceive of Hyde's "labor" is that of being pregnant and giving birth. Sets its own pace, cannot be forced, must be ridden and adapted to.
He also seems to equate labor with the voice of the muses.
Work is an intended activity that is accomplished through the will. A labor can be intended but only to the extent of doing the groundwork, or of not doing things that would clearly prevent the labor. Beyond that, labor has its own schedule. Things get done, but we often have the odd sense that we didn't do them. Paul Goodman wrote in a journal once, "I have recently written a few good poems. But I have no feeling that I wrote them." That is the declaration of a laborer. (50)
I don't mean to harp on this definition of labor, maybe I could be trying harder to accept it in this context as it is, but in a book about art "work" that will shortly launch into Das Kapital Vol. 1 by Karl Marx, it seems like a weird duality to go far out of your way to establish.
I don't mind the daemon/genius/muse talk at all, I think that the intuition and nonlinearity of life, creative and otherwise, is very much worth its due. But the emphasis on labor as so sacred and mysterious and opposed to 'work' gives me this sort of decadently subjective Rick Rubin impression, of the man atop the mountain who indulges in the pure sage-like process of carrying the heavenly realm of individual intuitive beauty down into the mortal realm. It makes beauty the domain of this timeless spirit force without regard to its interactions with social pressures or the material world.
In Art As Experience (the secret meta KTi book club book) John Dewey identifies the exact opposite instrumental vs. intrinsic dichotomy between Work and Labor, describing true Work as an evolved form of play, to be contrasted with "mere" labor, or toil.
For any activity becomes work when it is directed by accomplishment of a definite material result, and it is labor only as the activities are onerous, undergone as mere means by which to secure a result. (Art As Experience, Dewey p. 290)
This framework makes way more intuitive sense to me. Re-dignifying work as the instrumental and intrinsic fused, the creative and the practical, the play and the purpose.
I think of washing dishes and raising a child. Hyde suggests one of these is on the clock, ideally paid "work" and the other is the more on-its-own-rhythm "labor". But I would think of these both requiring immense discipline, attention to material conditions, effort, intentionality, patience, purpose.
Suppose I simply think it a messy dichotomy and definition. Lmk if you gleamed something from it I might be missing.
El Problema es el Capitalismo
"Spacial proximity becomes social life through an exchange of gifts." (57)
I quite like the further instrumental versus intrinsic value splitting that emerges from the Marxist analysis, as market exchange requires comparison, difference, and separation in order to have any meaning. Although I already have a similar (but not as extreme) gripe with the Worth vs. Value dichotomy... -.- when "value" is sitting so close to morality and aesthetic philosophy, what is the point of moving the goalposts to make it 100% market value, while making "worth" exclusively correspondent to use-value, or even like the intrinsic value of a kidney transplant or a family member.
Regardless,
We derive value... from the comparison of one thing with another... Value needs a difference for its expression; when there is no difference we are left with tautology ("a yard of linen is a yard of linen"). (60)
I was always stirred by this opening flourish in Marx's Capital vol 1, as it immediately confronts you with the limitations of such a system that requires all things be cleanly comparable to each other by dollar amount, as well as the problem with capitalism's assumption that human beings "deliberate in this quantitative and comparative manner" as rational individual actors optimizing their lives.
I particularly enjoyed the study of human reasoning re the kidney transplants. The positives of the "decision" were not weighed and found to outnumber the pains. There was no calculation. "the term decision appears to be a misnomer. Insofar as decision-making implies a period of deliberation and conscious choice of one alternative, most individuals do not feel as if they have made a decision." (65)
We do not deal in commodities when we wish to initiate or preserve ties of affection (65)
The Dark Side of Gifts
I also adored the brief dalliance into the dark side of gifts, or the value of refusing them, despite Hyde's introductory assurance that was not the subject of this book. I have seen many a time firsthand that someone's continued acceptance of gifts ties them up with something they do not want to be part of, that drags them down, making them less, or compromised when they do not have to be.
But few seem to have the strength to refuse a gift...... parents, lovers, friends, communities.
It is because gift exchange is an erotic form that so many gifts must be refused. (73)
The principle of eros is the overall macro education I feel I am getting from this book. It seems to tie very powerfully into all my artistic and spiritual philosophy. I have been loosely aware of the logos/eros contrast as a major intellectual idea, but now I feel like I have an in on it.
Also stan the fae morality. The need to discard fairy gifts, less you become bewitched and trapped in fairy world, or the gifts are too powerful for the mortal world.
Folk wisdom... advises silence before evil. Conversation is a commerce, and when we give speech we become a part of what we speak with. (73)
Dope.
Chapters 5 & 6 next week.
Logos & Eros Below
Comments
benedict.m
deeply into your yapping, PLEASE resist the temptation to curtail it!! "Certain transformations seem to call for a sacrifice so complete, that the moment you let any kind of self-preservation enter, you're cut off." so deeply powerfully True. scary and True. but I wonder if we can't always expect this of ourselves. maybe sometimes what we need is to dive into transformation/sacrifice so completely that when the self-preservation does inevitably kick in, it's too late. sometimes you gotta trick yourself into changing. "I bought a coffin. I dug a hole. I got inside and I closed the lid. [...] And then finally, the first spadeful of dirt hit the top of the box. And then another. And then another. I sang songs to myself. I counted to 10,000 without skipping any numbers. I pissed and I shit my pants, and I forced my mouth to produce whatever saliva it could muster just so I would have something to drink. I screamed as loud as I could for help. I apologized for the whole thing. And I begged God for someone to come along and save me. I tried and tried to claw my way out, but that burnout guy had packed the dirt in too tight just like I had asked him to do. And then, after I don’t know how long, I felt myself start to leave myself. [...] And then I was clawing my way up out of the ground. And then I was at the surface, gasping for air, rain pouring down on me. [...] And just like I was waking up from a bad dream, that whole life…that whole reality where I was Maddy Wilson…drifted away." (from I Saw the TV Glow, spoken by the character Tara)
benedict.m
ok i love chef jae now too, what a beautiful story. it's sooo so powerful to just be kind to someone!! for no reason! (obviously the "reason" here is that someone else provided for him in the past, but i mean that he wasn't being kind to you bc of some specific thing you did to deserve it, just bc you were the right person to give the gift that he had received.) it's possible you won't ever be in a position to give the same exact kind of gift chef jae gave you, but i'm sure you'll be in a situation where you think of him and transform his gift into a different kind of gift that someone around u needs. incredibly beautiful, makes me think of all the best parts of The Bear. it's sad how often you see the opposite of this situation though. people who have this attitude of like "nobody ever took care of me, why would i take care of other people?" and instead of passing on a gift they pass on a LACK of gifts. but the gift cycle you're a part of must have started somewhere right? at some point, someone just decided to give a gift, not cause someone else did it for them but just because. you can't always wait for somebody else to start the thing!! my weird version of this story is more abstract, but i think has the same spirit. i hiked on the appalachian trail for a while a few years ago, and really had to confront my discomfort with bugs. it wasn't fun at first but it was unavoidable, they were all around me at all times cause i was intruding in their world. eventually though i started to reach a point where i would let small things land on me or crawl on me, and just look at them. i thought about how unbelievably beautiful it would be if i came across a giant, something so much bigger than me that it could barely even see me, and instead of crushing me or flicking me away, it just let me exist around it. gently picked me up and moved me somewhere safe, or just said hello. being nice to bugs doesn't benefit me in any way. i don't even have reason to believe bugs are gonna pass on my kindness to other bugs. but there's also no good reason NOT to be nice to them. and it feels beautiful to picture myself as that giant befriending the small folk for no reason. so not really the same as the chef jae story, cause i'm not participating in a gift circle in the same way, but the spirit is there u know? somewhere at the origin of chef jae and the sous chef before him and whoever was before him, is someone just deciding to be kind for no reason.
Seoyoung Park
Lalala!! Late again! Sooo fucking late!!!! c'est la vie!!! These chapters had me thinking about my brief stint in BOH fine dining. I thought I wanted to be a chef so i staged without pay at a restaurant in flat iron, and i was ok with it until a boy with the same qualifications as me walked in and immediately started getting fucking paid. i realised i wasn't being exploited because of my inexperience but because of sexism, which suddenly made it unbearable. during this time, the sous chef was EXTREMELY KIND TO ME. he would send me home with the leftover cuts of meat that were left after they made their beautiful little meat cubes (very expensive meat), would make us a second family meal with lobster in the evening, ask me what my favourite food was so that he could make noodles for family meal, send me home with all the leftover rice. every time i think about dear chef jae, my eyes well up. it was to the extent that if he didn't have a girlfriend that he didn't talk about LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SECOND i would have been a little scared (lol). One of those days, he took an uber home and told me i could ride with him (we were neighbours). In the uber, he explained that when he was a wee line cook at a fine dining restaurant in korea (where hours are longer, the grunt work even gruntier, and the staging even more unpaid), his sous chef used to do the same thing for him. he bought him dinner on days he couldnt afford to (oh the fucking cruel irony of being a fine dining chef in a capitalist world), let him take over leftover ingredients, became a shoulder to cry on, and gave him so much support. he told the chef, "i dont know how to repay u" and the chef said, "one day, you'll see someone just like you. treat them like i'm treating u." I don't know where this gift begins, or where it ends, but i do know that every time i think of this story, i am so so grateful to chef jae. after this story, i am so so grateful to sous chef that chef jae knew. i'm tearing up writing this T^T... i think that after hearing that story, i always think: one day there may be fortune upon me, and i might be in the company of someone else who needs/deserves my care. I am going to be just like chef jae then... and thus the gift increases, and the full gift blossoms through me... wah crying..... i love chef jae so much. be famous one day sir. our head chef was a james beard nominated freak and he didn't give a fuck whether i lived or died. Fuck Sol Han at little mad nomad. _______________________________ Re: the genius. made me cry. it reminded me of internal family systems parts work. there are so many helpful ways to separate myself, and one part of myself carrries such great potential. if only i care for it, it will blossom too. _________________________________ i make it a point not to become indebted to people i hate. i dont ask favours, dont return favours, and any gifts i receive i reciprocate with exactitude so as not to leave lingering debts. i think that courting evil only beckons return, and this also applies to corporations! i have a distant acquaintance who is a small business owner, who said that their ethic is to always accept free money. i was truly BAFFLED by this, and maybe its because i dont know how difficult it is to run a small business, but i was like "even from amazon bro???" (they were taking money from amazon...) the ending to ch4 really solidified the "don't take gifts from the devil" argument for me. free money is never free. if amazon has free money it's because they killed a pregnant woman in a warehouse, and still managed to get a tax write off. i also really liked the part about conversation being an opening... never talk to people u hate.... when he was like "this is clearly about schizophrenia" i was like "since when??" and then he mentioned ireland. made me laugh!!! the part of the psychedelics also is so important though. even a gift, in non-moderation, can take u out and burn ur mother fucking house down. there are some gifts that you don't want to live with. some gifts are for sometimes... so true dawg cj. please dont go to chapter 7 before i get to it. i stg i'll get there by friday. plz... jkjkjk..... unless....... 0w0
Bee
Im returning to the Gift after a little meander in my reading, and Im stunned at the material here. It strikes me that it is impossible to somehow do justice to every passage that fucks me up. I also begin to realise that the value I see in Hyde's text is the spiritual vision being presented. This is my particular bias, my lens, and the thread that I am interested in exploring. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I would like to speak of all transformations as involving death" p.44 I have not surpassed and successfully passed through anything that I would call 'death', but I feel that I have approached it, and caught a certain smell which gives me something to chew on. Why use the word 'death'? From a detached, rational point of view, its obvious that we are just talking about transformation, but the experience makes it clear in a way that can't be philosophised about. Certain transformations seem to call for a sacrifice so complete, that the moment you let any kind of self-preservation enter, you're cut off. I'm reminded of various monks and Saints of all traditions who embark on impossible vigils and fasts and pilgrimages. You go to the mountain for a decade, and you sit and pray. And surely the thought appears, that you might... fall ill. Or that your hunger will impede your work. The physical body will cleverly provide all sorts of very reasonable justifications to not do what you're doing. So why do you do it? Who in you is controlling you? And what would it mean to be able to keep acting against the physical body, that maybe even knows that it's life is under threat? What would it mean to act, knowing you would die? These examples bring the idea into high relief, but the same self-preservation acts within our sub-conscious on a much subtler level. I claim that this is what is happening when you begin a contemplative practice and can't sit still for more than 2 minutes; there's something in you that feels it will die if it went on. And you push against this, and everyone has had the experience of overcoming hurdles, and so then you're told about the idea of spiritual death, and it seems like just another one of these hurdles that someone is being very dramatic about... It has to do with an emptying and a letting go, that is so complete that self-preservation doesn't enter; that the part of you from which self-preservation comes, doesn't enter... "...the gifts we give up at times of transformation are meant to make visible the giving up we do invisibly. And of course we hope that there will be an exchange ... so we might say also that the tokens we receive at times of change are meant to make visible life's reciprocation. They are not mere compensation for what is lost, but the promise of what lies ahead." p.45 This continues to build on the image of the monk from the previous chapters, who makes visible the generosity (or lack there of) in the world. So here is another way in which the gift makes tangible something intangible: life's 'reciprocation' in exchange for a transformative sacrifice. In moments I've approached an experience like this, you really can't think of anything beyond the present moment, and that means thinking of any reward. When does the reward come? Maybe we sacrifice our life to be given the awareness of meaning that exists in one present moment. Cloud of Unknowing - "This work asketh no long time or it be once truly done, as some men ween, for it is the shortest work of all that men may imagine" Eckhart: Sermon 144 - "If you could naught yourself for an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all that this is in itself. But as long as you mind yourself or any thing at all, you know no more of God than my mouth knows of colour or my eye of taste" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... I got this far and decided to stop yapping, so here are just bits that fuck me up on the labor of gratitude: "An insight may come quickly, but the gut transformation is slow... the teachings are 'in passage' in the body of their recipient between the time they are received and the time when they have sunk in so deeply that they may be passed along. The process can take years" p.47 fuck yes "if the teaching begins to 'take', the recipient feels gratitude... the labor of gratitude [is] a labor undertaken by the soul to effect the transformation after a gift has been received. Between the time a gift comes to us and the time we pass it along, we suffer gratitude." "the transformation is not accomplished until we have the power to give the gift on our own terms" yes yes "It carries with it the fullness of our undeveloped powers. These it offers to us as we grow, and we choose whether or not to accept, which means we choose whether or not to labor in its service. For again, the genius has need of us" p.54 !!!!!!!!!!!!!! "man ought to be flowing out into whatever can receive him" "The fruitfulness of a gift is the only gratitude for the gift" yes yes yes yes yes yes yes To briefly comment on the ways I see this in my own practice: I often hear of the responsibility that comes with unique talents, gifts, which we must hone and then use to serve others. And in receiving the teaching, we become indebted to our teacher, and the debt is repaid either by some service to the teacher directly, and/or by passing on the teaching to another. It is said that the pupils are as essential to the teacher as the teacher is to the pupils, as for anyone to ascend one step, they must first place someone on the step below them. It is also said that one can only learn from one who knows. so that the reception of knowledge has an integral link to the ability to pass it on, and vice versa. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Even briefer now on the Bond (I concur with Halley that I'm glad to be doing one chapter at a time going forward >_< Hyde is too good !!!): "Sacrifice turns the face of the god toward man" p.60 "We forgive once we give up attachment to our wounds" footnote p.60 Touching again on sacrifice, transformation, death. The most difficult thing to sacrifice is our suffering. All of us, especially those with a Religious bent, believe our suffering is a righteous thing, and to give it up would be to have it too easy. We feel that it is too justified. But it must be sacrificed. "Logos-trade draws the boundary, eros-trade erases it" - p.63 "Commodity exchange will either be missing or frowned upon to the degree that a group thinks of itself as one body" - p.63 "These are attachments to be desired" p.73 To see reality as an interdependent whole is to see reality for what it is. And if you value the truth, then to be bound to act in according with this truth can be no bad thing.
