louis_xiv

What is a request?

You may wonder about this question - of course, everybody knows what a request is, be it in your century or in mine. Request, demande, Bitte, ruego, domanda - it's part of everybody's life. But what is it? Can you define it?

You can, of course, define "request" as the act of asking somebody for something - but that's just replacing one expression by another. It does not explain anything. Imagine you meet a being who is not familiar with this concept - maybe a Golem or a creature from the stars - how would you explain to him what a request is?

I will try it. A request is not an isolated phenomenon. It's part of a social mecanism which can be considered as fundamental for human society. It's basic to all human cooperation. It has to do with the exchange of favours.

Let's start with defining what a favour is. A favour, one might define, is any action - or, more generally, decision - of a human A which is beneficial for another human B. In general, a favour has a certain cost for human A - material, time, work, dislike, whatever. It may be a material action (like giving B a bread), a service (like giving B a backrub) or something more abstract.

The case that A benefices from the favour as well (like me sleeping with a beautiful courtisane) is not very interesting, as A doesn't need any other reason to do the action. So let's assume that the favour has a cost for A and a benefice for B. from an egoistic point of view, why should A do the action?

Civilization has developed basically four mechanisms to incite people doing actions which are beneficial to others but not to themselves.

Direct favour exchange
That's the simplest one: A does a favour to B, and B does a favour to A. One example is direct exchange of goods, another one exchange of goods against service. A buys B jewelry, and B sleeps with A.

Money
Money has been invented to make favour exchange more flexible. It consists basically in introducing a good which has value by definition - be it gold, paper, crown caps, mussels, whatever.

Ethics
The most common variant is religious ethics. The principle is simpe: A does a favour to B, and G does a favour to A, where G is usually some omnipotent metaphysical entity. Atheist ethics are the same, but without G.

Gratitude trade
The principle is similar to the "money" principle - but without money. Instead of money people use something called gratitude. A does a favour to B, and B gives A some "gratitude". You can't measure gratitude, you can't numeralize it, you can't say "I give you 1500 Thx" - but it's there, it's part of our society. "I ow him something", "i will return the favour", "I won't forget what you did for me" - these expressions imply the existance of virtual, unnumeralizable "gratitude points". (Unlike money, gratitude points are bound to the person who gave them to you.)

Now, back to our initial question: What is a request? In terms of gratitude trade, one can say that a request is a gratitude trade offer. I'll give you an example:

Imagine a person A who urgently needs bacon bits for his Boeuf Bourguignon. He asks his neighbour B if he has some. Usually, B wouldn't have had the idea of trading bacon bits against gratitude with A, but now A is standing in his door and makes - what? Yes, he makes him a trade offer: "You give me bacon bits and I give you lots of gratitude". That seems a good trade to B, and the trade is made : B gives A the bacon, and A says "thank you very, very much!!!" which is symbolizes the gratitude point and gives also B some hint about how many gratitude points he just received. Maybe, some weeks later, B is looking for someone to water his plants while he is on vacation - and he remembers that he has those gratitude points from A, so he rings at his door and makes him another trade offer.

See how it works?

To resume, one could define:
- A request is a gratitude trade offer from the "buyer"
- An offer is a gratitude trade offer from the "seller"
- A thank is a quittance the "buyer" gives to the "seller"

i don't know why I wrote this entry - it has nothing particularly to do with the differences between our centuries. But I found this question interesting. You too, I presume, if you read this entry up to here...