Marcel Mauss: A Century of Symbolic Gift Giving

The 'Gift' of 9/11

The twin towers were not destroyed by terrorists. The twin towers committed suicide. They collapsed under their own weight. When the two towers collapsed, you had the impression that they were responding to the suicide of the suicide planes with their own suicide. It has been said that even God cannot declare war on himself. Well he can. The West in the position of God, divine omnipotence and absolute moral legitimacy has become suicidal and declared war on itself.

-Jean Baudrillard, "The Spirit of Terrorism"

from Google AI:

Continental Philosophy (The Event as Rupture)

In Continental philosophy, an "event" is often viewed as a sudden, unpredictable rupture or breakthrough that changes everything—it alters how we perceive truth, language, or history. 

• Alain Badiou: A French philosopher who defines an event as an unpredictable, ground-breaking rupture that brings forth new truths. According to Badiou, an event shatters established norms and forces individuals to take a leap of faith to remain faithful to this new truth (e.g., a revolutionary political movement or falling in love).
• Gilles Deleuze: Drawing from the ancient Stoics, Deleuze viewed events as "incorporeal" entities. Rather than physical actions, events are the meaning or sense of what happens, which subsist at the surface of things and transform how we understand ourselves and our realities.
• Martin Heidegger: In his later work (Contributions to Philosophy), Heidegger conceptualizes the event (or Ereignis) as a moment of appropriation, where human beings and the meaning of "Being" come into a mutually revealing relationship.

The End of Pure Positivity

The 3 Social  Obligations of Gift Exchanges

1. Give Gifts

2  Receive Gifts

3  Make Worthy Return of a Received Gift (Hau)

Capitalism is an "equal" gift exchange that obscures/ hides/ eliminates the future social obligation through its' pure "equality" and satisfaction of the 3 social obligations of gift giving stated above.  In such an exchange, there is no sacrifice on the part of the giver.  There is also no surplus generated on the part of the receiver.  Thirdly, there is immediate satisfaction with no future obligation to establish/ disestablish (or signify) the social bond between the parties to the exchange.  There is no time delay that extends the bond's duration, just an immediate cui pro quo (absent a contract to extend credit).

That, and all the terms for "worthy return" are directly/contractually explicitly spelled out.  Taxes paid in return for State Protection of self or property from State seizure.  Installment payments for goods received.  All aimed at achieving a parity of exchange that states and meets the specific terms of the immediate social obligation (and infers no future others, unlike the bonds of a vassal to his Lord, or a marriage bond joining two families w/o a dowry or bride price paid).  The "worthiness" of the gift (hau, as in "haunt") exchanged is not undetermined/ left "open", and meant to exist only in the minds of whom the gift was exchanged to imagine an  yet unspecified "worthy" return.  One requiring sacrifice and adding a surplus to make it more "worthy".