State Farm is what passes for a neighbor now. Instead of trusting people in their integrity, our habit, our law, has become to instead focus on financial agreements and being legally bound with strangers.
I've long wondered why in Southern California neighbor is synonymous with stranger. I think I've found my answer. In the suburbs, these wealthy elite are so bound up in their finances that rarely do they feel the need to say hi to the people they live near. Doing so can in fact open up new avenues for.. risk. Being out of touch with the rest of the world, and with the vast majority of those merely trying to imitate the things rich people do, in cheaper ways, this cultural distancing is permeating the world in overt and subtle ways.
As one who is about to experience America's criminal justice system I'm a bit worried about the fact that most of the language centers around debt. This, coming from the mixed metaphor of Reformation theology, is a concoction I'm fairly familiar with. Who do I owe? What do I owe? Who says who I owe? Why?
I think if a crime is committed with damages to a person, that person is owed something relative to their involvement. The context of the engagement is the deciding factor. Depending on how much money you have, you can afford someone who knows how to establish a context convincingly. This may or may not include indirect efforts at manipulation, such as gifts, strings pulled, and acts of coercion. So the system benefits the wealthy, and is framed in terms of debt. Not only is time a currency (the most expensive currency), more specifically time in geographic space, but, actual money will be owed throughout my parole. Fines, obviously, but also many little fees that add up. My minimum wage destiny will serve to keep me indentured. If I crack and feel like trying to navigate other economies (with the higher likelihood of recidivism), maybe I'll make some cash, but to what end?
And, everybody dies. So, what's the goddamn point anyway? Camus was right. This life is absurd.
6 months later....
Sure, Life is absurd. But absurd is a relative term.
If state farm is the means by which human beings live in peace than perhaps it's not all that bad. If contracts preserve time in this existence, and contracts are merely snapshots of integrity, than how are we not holding to integrity by abiding in them? Sure contracts are made without our knowledge, like the contracts of culture and nation. These are not chosen, but inherited. Eventually we may leave them, but with immense difficulty. Perhaps this is why law school might be a good idea. Here you make the contracts, you learn to see where they may be useful, and not. Where they are useful you have some understanding in forming and implementing them. Contracts and their lesser form, agreements, are all that we have really. They are the contexts for story, and the means by which we engage others. "Hello"s are merely preambles.
Comedy is another contract. Comedians are lawyers in a way, but they navigate with language to absurdity for power. Lawyers navigate with language to contracts for power. Power is whatever moves.
Money moves things because humans arrived at the conclusion that an intermediary, inherently with no value, once given value via contract, is a more peaceful exchange than direct exchange, blood for blood, or "give us your women!!!", for instance. Peaceful is defined as whatever serves further time in this existence. Time is the most brutal currency, it cannot be returned and money cannot move it backwards or forewords. Yet. dun dun dun...
I say all this in 2018, when the population of the world is approaching 7.5 billion. We are living longer. We are living closer together than ever before. We are more connected than ever before, what has been written down in time is more accessible than ever before. We have found that when we exchange goods and services using an intermediary such as paper, we don't kill each other as readily. Where there are fair and open courts, there is a means of recourse when paper doesn't preserve the peace. When fair and open courts still don't curb our madness, usually only then are enforcers called up by the powerful to coerce whatever end. The wealthy are those that use their languages to gain via the currencies of the day.
The question is whether the privileged, the visible, those that can write their own stories, are so privileged fairly. What do we mean by fairly? They didn't choose to be borne only son to Bill Gates, in the US, with its plumbing, roads, schools, healthcare, and safety nets. The only son to Bill Gates, we'll call him Bill jr., didn't choose to go to the best schools, be surrounded by the best coaches, instructors, tutors, and security guards. Little Billy J, didn't will his dad to invent the world's most popular operating system. So should we shit on him because of the things he never chose?
Of course not, but we should approach this little metaphor of privilege with some awareness. Plumbing, among other things (like not falling down the outhouse hole in the middle of the night), guarantees a minimum standard of health, even psychological (especially if you take into account the fear of falling into the shitter at night). Roads guarantee access to places you wouldn't otherwise have access to, like schools, and hospitals. Safe roads and law enforcement reduce the risk of your children from being kidnapped by entities like the KKDouche of the American South and the Janjadicks of Sudan (I might be spelling KKK and Janjaweed wrong). I believe not being kidnapped by the KKdouche and Janjadicks come with inherent physical and psychological health benefits.
I've long wondered why in Southern California neighbor is synonymous with stranger. I think I've found my answer. In the suburbs, these wealthy elite are so bound up in their finances that rarely do they feel the need to say hi to the people they live near. Doing so can in fact open up new avenues for.. risk. Being out of touch with the rest of the world, and with the vast majority of those merely trying to imitate the things rich people do, in cheaper ways, this cultural distancing is permeating the world in overt and subtle ways.
As one who is about to experience America's criminal justice system I'm a bit worried about the fact that most of the language centers around debt. This, coming from the mixed metaphor of Reformation theology, is a concoction I'm fairly familiar with. Who do I owe? What do I owe? Who says who I owe? Why?
I think if a crime is committed with damages to a person, that person is owed something relative to their involvement. The context of the engagement is the deciding factor. Depending on how much money you have, you can afford someone who knows how to establish a context convincingly. This may or may not include indirect efforts at manipulation, such as gifts, strings pulled, and acts of coercion. So the system benefits the wealthy, and is framed in terms of debt. Not only is time a currency (the most expensive currency), more specifically time in geographic space, but, actual money will be owed throughout my parole. Fines, obviously, but also many little fees that add up. My minimum wage destiny will serve to keep me indentured. If I crack and feel like trying to navigate other economies (with the higher likelihood of recidivism), maybe I'll make some cash, but to what end?
And, everybody dies. So, what's the goddamn point anyway? Camus was right. This life is absurd.
6 months later....
Sure, Life is absurd. But absurd is a relative term.
If state farm is the means by which human beings live in peace than perhaps it's not all that bad. If contracts preserve time in this existence, and contracts are merely snapshots of integrity, than how are we not holding to integrity by abiding in them? Sure contracts are made without our knowledge, like the contracts of culture and nation. These are not chosen, but inherited. Eventually we may leave them, but with immense difficulty. Perhaps this is why law school might be a good idea. Here you make the contracts, you learn to see where they may be useful, and not. Where they are useful you have some understanding in forming and implementing them. Contracts and their lesser form, agreements, are all that we have really. They are the contexts for story, and the means by which we engage others. "Hello"s are merely preambles.
Comedy is another contract. Comedians are lawyers in a way, but they navigate with language to absurdity for power. Lawyers navigate with language to contracts for power. Power is whatever moves.
Money moves things because humans arrived at the conclusion that an intermediary, inherently with no value, once given value via contract, is a more peaceful exchange than direct exchange, blood for blood, or "give us your women!!!", for instance. Peaceful is defined as whatever serves further time in this existence. Time is the most brutal currency, it cannot be returned and money cannot move it backwards or forewords. Yet. dun dun dun...
I say all this in 2018, when the population of the world is approaching 7.5 billion. We are living longer. We are living closer together than ever before. We are more connected than ever before, what has been written down in time is more accessible than ever before. We have found that when we exchange goods and services using an intermediary such as paper, we don't kill each other as readily. Where there are fair and open courts, there is a means of recourse when paper doesn't preserve the peace. When fair and open courts still don't curb our madness, usually only then are enforcers called up by the powerful to coerce whatever end. The wealthy are those that use their languages to gain via the currencies of the day.
The question is whether the privileged, the visible, those that can write their own stories, are so privileged fairly. What do we mean by fairly? They didn't choose to be borne only son to Bill Gates, in the US, with its plumbing, roads, schools, healthcare, and safety nets. The only son to Bill Gates, we'll call him Bill jr., didn't choose to go to the best schools, be surrounded by the best coaches, instructors, tutors, and security guards. Little Billy J, didn't will his dad to invent the world's most popular operating system. So should we shit on him because of the things he never chose?
Of course not, but we should approach this little metaphor of privilege with some awareness. Plumbing, among other things (like not falling down the outhouse hole in the middle of the night), guarantees a minimum standard of health, even psychological (especially if you take into account the fear of falling into the shitter at night). Roads guarantee access to places you wouldn't otherwise have access to, like schools, and hospitals. Safe roads and law enforcement reduce the risk of your children from being kidnapped by entities like the KKDouche of the American South and the Janjadicks of Sudan (I might be spelling KKK and Janjaweed wrong). I believe not being kidnapped by the KKdouche and Janjadicks come with inherent physical and psychological health benefits.
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