Posts Tagged ‘transactional economy’
Conversation: Transaction or Gift?
Ours is a transactional economy: we pay cash-money (well, plastic money) for a product or service. We don’t need a relationship with the product or service provider. Our cash-money relieves us from relationship and moves us to ownership. In a gift economy (See Lewis Hyde’s The Gift) we receive a gift and are obligated to a relationship. We give the gift back, though not to the one who gave it to us. We give the gift on to someone else. The gift finds its way back.
Is conversation a gift or a transaction? The answer is yes. But where does conversation live as a spontaneous wild-child?
###
Image via 2headedsnake
conversation is an engine 