Emerson + Gift Cards = Drama. Oh dear....

Gifts
Emerson has put an awful lot of thought into the act of gift-giving; and considering that I’ve never taken that much time to think about such things, I thought he had some good points to make. He says that the very act of gift-giving is “barbarous” and that the only good gift is one that comes from the heart. A gift purchased with your money and another person’s skill isn’t much of a gift at all; in fact, he says it’s more of an insult than a gift. The person who is given the gift doesn’t want to be helped out; they want to independent. Physical objects are just burdens, then. But if a person needs a gift, like a barefoot man needs shoes, then does Emerson recommend that we give him shoes? This is kind of confusing; he says that not only are gifts “barbarous…apologies for gifts” but also that at the basal psychological level a human doesn’t want to feel dependent on someone else for patronage. And I think I have an idea about this: almost no one in history has spent as much time thinking about the psychological effects of giving gifts on the giver and receiver as Ralph Waldo Emerson, so I assume that if you give shoes to a man who desperately needs them, he’ll appreciate the gift. Now of course this is where the giver must balance the receiver’s needs with that of his pride; Emerson does make a good point that the giver should be very careful with giving gifts that might unintentionally degrade the other person.
—This whole process of giving gifts is a deadly trap, I see; I agree with Emerson that no good can come out of giving artificial gifts and thus one is better to just stay out of that business—
But gifts given from the heart…that’s worth everything. Well, that was one of the few things in this essay that I already knew. Good thing too—because I think it’s the most important. A gift like that is the kind which you can give to anyone, at any time, for free. Emerson was talking about lofty things like loving your best friends (like how the poet should give a poem. Those things don’t exactly come a dime-a-dozen, nor does one give a poem to a random stranger), but I think he should have mentioned the everyday things that anyone can do to make someone’s day better. Just common kindness; if you live in that state, you will inevitably give invaluable gifts to everyone you encounter. Too bad that’s such a rare commodity today. Life is not a philosophical dream world; the giver of common compassion and kindness—the giver of (philosophically) the most valuable gift one can give—is not appreciated like he should be in the real world. This is a perverse world indeed, where the cruel get ahead and the rule of the few over the many prevails. Emerson, your philosophy is among the most admirable I have ever seen, but I simply can’t see the majority of America accepting your philosophy of “love thy neighbor” over their primal human instincts of “kill or be killed.” Philosophy is a human construction, really; and you can’t use it to fight three-billion years of evolution. Some smart people might understand the value of your deep reflection, but for most of the people out there, the time required to think it through is time better spent on something else. That's what has happened all throughout history; and in neither Emerson's time nor our own will it change in any great measure. What the Senatus Populusque Romanus want—what the basal majority out there want—is what the world as a whole has to live with. Good try though, Emerson.