The Nomadic Alternative – Page 160

an unvalued thing is at best thoughtless, at worst insulting. Inert things, charged with symbolic values, are vehicles which convey emotional messages of goodwill from one individual or one people to another. The Society of Equals is not thingless but highly thing-conscious, and the disinterested gift is unknown. But this exchange system can only function properly between equal trading partners. To put oneself in the position of unequal trading partner - in the Chinese sense of 'losing face' - is to put oneself at the mercy of another's generosity. This situation is to be averted at all costs. Fear of being unable to repay is real fear, since the refusal of a gift is an automatic declaration of hostility towards someone stronger than yourself.

For reasons I shall hope to show later, possessions disquieten their possessors. And the man who has hoarded more than enough for two, may try to ease his guilty conscience by channelling off some surplus onto a poorer man. The dangers of this aggressive act of generosity are considerable. First, the giver is almost inevitably tainted with the morality of things - in the sense of owning things - and has mental reservations on the moral worth of someone who lacks them. Second, in accepting the gift, the receiver acknowledges a psychological defeat. Embittered by his own inability to return the gift in equal measure, he excuses this impotence to himself. The giver, he argues, would be in no position to give so open-handedly, had he not grabbed so viciously in the past. This may or may not
be true. But the anguish of a man in an inferior position is fuel /s /M ☷ for revenge against his benefactor. He "bites the hand that feeds him". When the Germans say revanchieren (which is the same as the English 'revenge') they mean they are repaying a debt or discharging a moral obligation. There is, by definition, no such thing as an 'underdeveloped country', because no standard exists by which develop- ment can be assessed. Nevertheless those nations, who manage to refuse the imposition of benevolence by richer countries, are likely to survive with their self-respect intact.