I give you the gift of my blog.

Gifts are a tricky thing when you think about them in reference to the reading. The Maori act of giving seems like a never ending cycle and it reminded me of that one movie.. okay I don't know what it was called but it was that kid from the sixth sense and he goes about doing good things for people and those people have to do good things for three people and those three have to do good things for three people etc. etc. etc. When I think about this Maori act of giving or giving in most tribal atmospheres it's yes, a display of kindness and obligation but at as a whole it seems like it's meant to create a larger communal happiness. A certain feeling of stability and care for the people that surround you even if you don't like them perhaps, in essence, it's a manner of maintaining a healthy working community.
From this perspective it's essential to the survival of the tribe, being a small society where every hand is needed the last thing you need is two people fighting. It's about more than just giving gifts it's representative of the larger picture. I give you this gift and you give someone else a gift and that person gives you a gift, sounds like I grow this corn, you make the tools I need to harvest the corn, I give you corn because you made the tools you need meat you give some of the corn I gave you to a herder he gives you meat so on and so on. In the respect of a community you're not giving your trading but you're trading because it's an obligation. If you refuse to trade then you're screwed you need that corn and the person that grows the corn needs your tools, already with only two people the tribe begins to collapse.

Like that kid from the movie it's about trying to create an atmosphere where you care about each other, a communal atmosphere. Granted in larger societies its a lot harder because every one's stuck in their own world but hey some should call the ambulance when a biker gets hit, right? Maybe I almost fell down the stairs and somebody caught me before I cracked my skull in response to this intangible gift I pull out a phone and call the police because I know I appreciated someone helping. It's a natural reflex of having received kindness. Why? I don't know probably something to do with emotional response systems in our brains this however, is a lot harder to explain and I don't think science has an answer so back to the tribal perspective. Giving and receiving gifts feels nice, for the Maori it's an obligation an obligation that later teaches you the grander scheme of how to live harmoniously with the people in your clan. You show kindness to a clan member they show kindness to another, these atmospheres are essential to the success of a clan, tribe, community otherwise you're fighting from within and that always leads to the downfall of even the biggest empires. Maybe this sounds really confusing but that's because I'm still working through the ideas myself, hopefully I made some kind of understandable point..