The general reaction to Mr. Trump’s acceptance of a luxury jet from Qatar is that Mr Trump has done it again. We are accustomed to him acting grossly. But it would be a mistake, however, to turn our eyes away or see him as alien to our culture. He is a mirror as well as a spectacle in revealing aspects of our culture that are uncomfortable. One of these is gift-giving.
Our naive understanding of a gift is that it is given freely, without expectation of anything in return and is accepted gratefully, without considering its cost. In our culture, however, gift-giving is commercialised. Festivals like Christmas and birthdays, Mother's and Father's Days are stuffed with advertisements for food, drink, cosmetics, ride-on mowers, washing machines toys and clothing. Children soon learn to compare the cost of the presents they receive with those given to others. Businesses and workplaces, too, send out cards to their customers, and HR Departments are taxed with measuring gifts to the recipient’s importance. Gifts are given with a view to receiving loyalty in return. They are signs of merit. As the advertisements for chocolate or holidays say, ‘You deserve it.’
In a culture where gifts are seen as a transaction they are tied to the expectation of return. The Qatar Government clearly hoped for, and won, favourable treatment by the United States Government under Mr Trump, who is comfortable with transactional relationships. That expectation, however, stands in conflict with the ideal of public service. This assumes that people who are entrusted to make decisions that will benefit or cost people will be paid by the Government for their service, and will distribute benefits without recompense from the recipients. They will not accept gifts that might create the expectation that they will give something in return.
In Western democracies, public servants and politicians have codes of conduct that advise them how they should respond to and make public gifts received. Despite these provisions, however, the quid pro quo clearly is part of the status quo in government. It is reflected in the frequency of corruption in local government and in the speed with which Government ministers after retirement legally accept employment with companies seeking to influence government. Mr Trump has simply ignored the ideal of public service as a gift and flaunted his view of it as transactional, a view in which the power attached to wealth or office entitles people to gifts. In doing so, however, he has raised uncomfortable questions of how business and politics, not to mention society itself, work.
The tension between the gratuity and the transactional quality of gift-giving that sees it as an entitlement runs deeper than politics. It is inherent in our understanding of human life. The experience of gratuity is precious though always partial. To give or receive a gift in which there is no expectation of return but only a pledge of continued giving remains a precious memory. Even when we acknowledge later that there was a hidden hope for return, we treasure it as an act of love, not as a transaction.
The tension between gratuity and transaction is also present in understanding of the relationship between the gods and human beings. In Greek mythology the gods are capricious in delivering benefits but demand gifts in return. Prosperity is a sign that the gods are pleased. Judaism was based in belief in a God whose creation of the world and choice of the Jewish people was an unsolicited gift. The relationship between them was one of gift on God’s part. It was tied, however, to observance of the Covenant, though this was gratuitously renewed by God, after repeated breaches by his people. The prophets emphasised the importance of justice in human relationships was central to God’s relationship with his people. God’s choosing of the people was a gift, but it demanded an ethical response.
Christian faith introduced an even more radical vision of God’s gift to humanity, and invited questions about the appropriate human response to that gift. At the centre of faith was belief in the God who entered the world through Jesus, accepted crucifixion, and rose in order to model a way of life and to offer eternal life. This was an undeserved gift for which there could be no quid pro quo. Gratitude and service were the only proper response.
'In a culture ruled by the gods of the neoliberal economy, the religious underpinnings of gratuity are weak. Transaction reigns. Emphasis is placed on the freedom of individuals to shape goals in life which are usually conceived in terms of material prosperity, career and status.'
Nevertheless, Christian faith included commitment to a communal way of life that was lived out of love and echoed God’s love. That could be described in terms of duties and responsibilities. Many saw this facet of faith as a transaction in which observance of Church rituals, responsibilities and duties could secure salvation. On the other hand, gratuity would seem to exclude such conditions. The relationship between gratuity and transaction became more complex, giving rise to deep reflection and often bitter division.
The tendency to transform Christian faith from gratuity into transaction led Augustine, and later Protestant thinkers, to emphasise that God’s salvation is not a transaction but is totally unearned, and that living a Christian life is a pure gift of God, not a quid pro quo. In Reformed theology at a time when Christians were preoccupied with salvation, living a Christian life did not win salvation but could be a sign of belonging to the saved. Catholics insisted on the importance of good actions in salvation, but argued that God gave grace to enable every good action, so enabling people to merit salvation. In practice, however, many Catholics and Protestants saw life in terms of transaction in which salvation is a reward for a good life and not a gift that is totally gratuitous. Transaction kept crawling in.
In a culture ruled by the gods of the neoliberal economy, the religious underpinnings of gratuity are weak. Transaction reigns. Emphasis is placed on the freedom of individuals to shape goals in life which are usually conceived in terms of material prosperity, career and status. The path to this goal is competitive, and the successful deserve their good fortune. It is not a gift. In this view, a public service and conduct of international relationships that resists transactional logic will seem anomalous. They infringe on the transactions that lie at the heart of individual success and public prosperity. In such a culture, Qatar’s offer of an airliner and Mr. Trump’s acceptance of it become an emblem of good governance, not of its abandonment.
With gratuity's roots in religious tradition long severed, those who are shocked by Mr Trump’s behaviour face a sobering challenge: to argue for gratuity in a culture that no longer believes in it, and to embody it in a world that no longer expects it.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.