Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

10 6 DEBT
people would really want to eat a superb meal at a French restaurant
all alone On the other, things can easily slip into games of oneupmanship--and
hence obsession, humiliation, rage . . . or, as we'll
soon see, even worse. In some societies, these games are formalized,
but it's important to stress that such games only really develop between
people or groups who perceive themselves to be more or less equivalent
in status.29 To return to our imaginary economist: it's not clear that
he would feel diminished if he received a present, or was taken out to
dinner, by just anyone. He would be most likely to feel this way if the
benefactor were someone he felt was of roughly equivalent status or
dignity: a colleague, for example. If Bill Gates or George Soros took
him out to dinner, he would likely conclude that he had indeed received
something for nothing and leave it at that. If some ingratiating
junior colleague or eager graduate student did the same, he'd be likely
to conclude that he was doing the man a favor just by accepting the
invitation-if indeed he did accept, which he probably wouldn't.
This, too, appears to be the case wherever we find society divided
into fine gradations of status and dignity. Pierre Bourdieu has described
the "dialectic of challenge and riposte" that governs all games of honor
among Kabyle Berber men in Algeria, in which the exchange of insults,
attacks (in feud or battles), thefts, or threats was seen to follow exactly
the same logic as the exchange of gifts.30 To give a gift is both an honor
and a provocation. To respond to one requires infinite artistry. Timing
is all-important. So is making the counter-gift just different enough, but
also just slightly grander. Above all is the tacit moral principle that one
must always pick on someone one's own size. To challenge someone
obviously older, richer, and more honorable is to risk being snubbed,
and hence humiliated; to overwhelm a poor but respectable man with
a gift he couldn't possibly pay back is simply cruel, and will do equal
damage to your reputation. There's an Indonesian story about that too:
about a rich man who sacrificed a magnificent ox to shame a penurious
rival; the poor man utterly humiliated him, and won the contest, by
calmly proceeding to sacrifice a chicken.31
Games like this become especially elaborate when status is to some
degree up for grabs. When matters are too clear-cut, that introduces
its own sorts of problems. Giving gifts to kings is often a particularly
tricky and complicated business. The problem here is that one cannot
really give a gift fit for a king (unless, perhaps, one is another king),
since kings by definition already have everything. On the one hand, one
is expected to make a reasonable effort: