Abuse with an Excuse

Ah, I’m getting them mixed up a bit, but basically, the last one is about the hard feelings from the normal, money economy of normal life, that’s only halfway there, isn’t it, don’t I need to do one just about morality and punishment and maybe conformity. I think it will involve that cookie thief again, but we don’t have to do the role playing, don’t have to extrapolate it all from them, maybe.

So, Part Five shows the emotional flow in the money economy, which is surely intrinsic, part and parcel, this is not analogy at all but the actual facts of the matter. We need to try to draw the moral “economy,” now, where the goods are not literal goods, but this virtual currency with which moral and not financial debts are settled.

I want to make excuses; I’m finding this difficult and every tiny step is taking me real time, but if I can make a second step, then perhaps Part Five will have been a good first one. Gawd.

But how to proceed? Same, posit some generic “exchange?” Well, I didn’t really posit anything did I, I just jumped in and started making pronouncements. AST is that way, it’s the nether world, it needs my set of presuppositions, my Autistic set, and that’s what I try to do when I start like that, warn you you’re not in Kansas anymore and force you to just jump in – or not, I guess. So let’s do that. Welcome to the other side.

Of course moral exchanges are unequal, I mean if an exchange is equal, morals or reputations are not altered? Scanning the last one, I see it was as I started saying in this one, about the normal economics of life, goods and services, food and labour up until the French Revolution and then I switched to crime and punishment.

I suppose the flow of bad feelings from the money economy also happens in the moral economy, that some good flows in one direction and hard feelings in the other. Perhaps there’s something in determining what the “goods,” going the other direction are supposed to be. I haven’t apparently read it or understood until this moment, but I’ve already said, haven’t I that when we pay our debts, we pay by having bad feelings. Why, is that what we stole when we transgressed, someone’s bad feelings, left them stranded on the high moral ground?

Ah, the book is here. I should stop talking and try to learn something instead.

Jeff

Sept. 23^rd., 2023