4. What is the right to give?
The distinction between the right to give, the obligation to give, and the right not to give is critical to the contributist lens, but it is subtle and can perhaps be felt more easily than it is understood. So let’s take a moment to explore the three through a close study of the feelings involved when we tip a cashier.
Many of us complain about the proliferance of “tipping culture” in recent years. It has become increasingly commonplace to feel socially pressured to give a tip even in circumstances where we don’t think tipping is fully justified, like when paying a cashier a fixed price for a pre-packaged snack at a café or a bakery. Often, when we tip due to this social pressure, we leave feeling disoriented and upset, because we have given against our own will. In fact, giving against your own will is not giving at all — it is having something taken from you.
It isn’t wrong for us to feel upset at being forced to “give” in this way. This sort of practice upsets us so deeply precisely because there is a special joy in tipping, when it is done properly. When we choose to give a tip, of our own accord, there is a grand elixir of positive feelings that courses through us: we feel the towering independence that comes with recognizing that we truly do have more than we need, the sublime humility that comes with having seen and seen to another, and the reassurance that we as humans really can transcend all of the nonsense sometimes and simply be good to one another. By our generosity, we remind ourselves of our humanity.
This is why a coerced tip feels worse to us than it would have felt if an extra fee was included in the base price. A coerced tip promises the joy of giving, but is quickly recognized to be a scam, the act of giving distorted beyond recognition. Take note of this feeling — the biting sense of exploitation that comes when we tip unwillingly. This is not the right to give — it is the feeling that comes from the obligation to give.
But let us put that feeling aside for a moment. Consider instead that, when the underpaid cashier turns the point-of-sale machine around towards you — mumbling that “it’s going to ask you a couple of questions first” — this time, you select the “No thanks” option, choosing not to give a tip at all. In this case, you have successfully asserted your right not to give. But while you don’t quite feel exploited, because you have managed not to give, this is not a wholly positive experience either. You feel, in varying measures, depending on your disposition and financial circumstances: relieved, because you have not been forced to pay more than you wanted to; justified, because you have resisted what you see as an attempted act of injustice; annoyed, because you just experienced what you see as an attempted act of injustice; disoriented, because you just had an awkward encounter; and a bit sheepish, having saved yourself perhaps at some expense to that underpaid cashier.
In this way, the right not to give is a qualified good — it certainly prevents you from being exploited, but asserting it doesn’t leave you any better off than it found you, and often leaves you feeling a little bit worse. Yes, this is partially because it accompanies a close call with the obligation to give. But it is also because the act of asserting the right not to give stirs up within us the opposite of all of the feelings I mentioned above that make tipping feel so good. To be protective of your resources is to admit insecurity rather than independence — it is to acknowledge that you are afraid of loss. And rather than basking in “the sublime humility of seeing and seeing to another,” refusing to give forces you to navel-gaze and self-justify — to defend yourself against the creeping feeling that you may have acted in selfishness. Finally, rather than feeling reassured that we can transcend all of the nonsense and be good to one another, you have reinforced the idea that we must protect ourselves from one another, and thus you feel more distrustful and more socially constrained. These feelings may take place in small measure, but the result is that you are not more connected to your humanity, but more estranged from it. Take note of this feeling — it is the feeling that comes from asserting the right not to give.
But let us now imagine one last attempt at this tipping situation. Try to clear from your mind the feeling of asserting the right not to give, and try instead for a moment to put yourself into the mind of that unusual person who we know must exist, who, upon the dreaded turn-around of the point-of-sale system, chooses to tap not the lowest suggested tip, but the highest. What fresh insanity might be going on in this person’s mind?
The generous tipper may seem unhinged, but she is not — there is a logic to her choice. You may think that she is oblivious, but allow, for a moment, the possibility that she is not. Imagine that she, too, notices the coercion of the situation, and is disturbed by it. But by choosing to give even more than is expected of her, she oversteps the coercion — calling its bluff, so to speak — showing that her own will extends beyond its power to control. In doing so, she is essentially declaring herself unexploitable, triumphing over the obligation to give by forcefully reasserting for herself the right to give. While the rest of us stand bewildered by her behavior, she actually finds herself better off than any of us. Because in the place of the various frustrations that the rest of us feel, she has instead reclaimed for herself that aforementioned warm elixir of giving — she has demonstrated her independence (see how much she has to give!), seen and seen to another, and proven herself capable of transcendence and humanity. Take note of the feeling that she feels — this is the feeling of asserting the right to give.
To be clear, I am not arguing that anyone should feel obligated to tip generously — that would simply be asserting the obligation to give, and defeat the point entirely. I am only trying to point out that there is a clear and notable difference between the right to give, the obligation to give, and the right not to give, and that this difference is of immense importance — it is the difference between the right to affirmation and the right to oppression, between what is humanizing and what is dehumanizing. At the heart of contributism is the recognition of this distinction, and the decision to settle for nothing less than the right to give.
There is much left to say about contributism, but the true coherence of all that follows can only be seen when one understands this point: that the contributist’s goal is to ensure that all of the members of society can affirm and humanize themselves by asserting the right to give.
And if this is the contributist’s goal, then it is important to note that there are three preconditions to the generous tipper’s circumstance that made it possible for her to assert her right to give, and that these are the three conditions that the contributist aims to ensure are in place for all.
First, she has the opportunity to give. This one is the most obvious, but it is worth noting nonetheless. If, for example, she had skipped the counter altogether and ordered what she needed on Amazon, splayed out on the couch in her pajamas — the entire transaction facilitated end-to-end by online, automated processes and all human interaction abstracted away — then there would be no cashier, and no opportunity to give. And worse, she would have rightly marveled at the convenience of the transaction, the obfuscation of technology having rendered her incapable of knowing what she had truly paid for it. There are many places where the opportunity to give can be found — and many ways that we can be robbed of it.
Second, she has enough to give. If she could not afford to pay beyond what she felt obligated to, choosing to assert her right to give would not have been an option for her. She would instead have had to choose between being lightly exploited (by succumbing to the obligation to give) or being lightly estranged from her humanity (by asserting the right not to give). For this reason, the contributist is determined to ensure that everyone has enough resources that they are able to take advantage of opportunities to give.
Third, she is capable of generosity. This is often the hardest for us to grasp. It is easy to understand that sometimes we just can’t afford to give. But if we are honest, there are many times when we have enough to give, but still choose not to, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps we are in a hurry, or too flustered in the moment to make a generous choice. Perhaps we are angry at what we see as an attempt at exploitation and we don’t want to dignify or encourage it with our generosity. Perhaps we are afraid that being generous now will prevent us from being generous later. Whatever the reason, the result is that we are constrained in a way that the generous tipper is not. And ultimately, this means that she is free to assert the right to give and experience the many human benefits that this brings, and we are not.
Under the contributist lens, we see that this incapability is just as much an infringement on the right to give as being under-resourced is. Because if we are too hurried, flustered, angry, or afraid to give, and these things constrain us such that we are ultimately not able to give, then we haven’t really been afforded the right to give at all; we only truly have the right not to give. Rather than settle for shaming the one incapable of generosity, the true contributist is determined to find productive strategies to erase all barriers, and ensure that everyone has what they need to become capable of giving.
In other words, the contributist sees A Christmas Carol’s Ebeneezer Scrooge as a man badly damaged — lacking the right to give and in need of its restoration — and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future as wise contributist agents of change, providing him with exactly the service he needs to be restored his right. And crucially, the contributist sees the world at the end of the story, in which Scrooge regains the right to give and is thus reconciled to his community, as a more just outcome than any world in which he goes to his grave still unable to give.
Hopefully, it is clear to you at this point that the contributist’s task is complex, and requires a different way of thinking — a different lens — than we are used to. It is essentially the same lens that the generous tipper uses, except that the true contributist is not only interested in her own right to give, but in ensuring that this right is provided to all.
Like the generous tipper, the contributist is willing to look beyond the usual options, and sometimes acts in ways that others might see as ill-considered, or even foolish. But this is only because she is able to operate by a more expansive logic, seeking what is fulfilling and humanizing rather than what is sensible (or even fair) from a limited economic point of view. And in doing so, she gains access to a way of life that is not just better, but more joyful — promoting and experiencing a higher class of success, and reconnecting herself to her humanity.
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