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coberst
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Politicians like to start with a bit of humor, I thought I would try it. Accountants A and B worked at desks side by side for thirty years. Accountant A dies. B had observed for thirty years that every morning A would go to his desk open the drawer and meditate a few seconds then close the drawer and start work. B decided to check this out and went to A’s desk opened the drawer and saw taped to the bottom of the drawer this message: Debit on the Left—an expense. Credit on the Right—owed me.
George Simmel (1858-1918). A pioneer in the field of sociology wrote “The Philosophy of Money”. I have been reading a small selection from this book entitled “Individual Freedom”.
“The development of each human fate can be represented as an uninterrupted alternation between bondage and release, obligation and freedom.” “Each obligation that does not exist with regard to a mere idea corresponds to the right of someone else to make demands. For this reason, moral philosophy always identifies ethical freedom with those obligations imposed by an ideal or social imperative or by one’s own
ego.”
When reading I often record an idea that resonates for me. The following is just such a beautiful paragraph: “All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one’s own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance; men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living what it is they find themselves owing the dead.”
“Follow the money”. For our purpose we might change this adage to “Follow the obligation”. Perhaps a good way to analyze ‘freedom’ is to analyze ‘obligation’.
We might say that, at birth our ‘pie chart’ shows full freedom and zero obligation. Since this might be considered as a zero sum game: our parent’s ‘pie chart’ might debit freedom and credit obligation. Maybe this is not a zero sum game. Maybe debits do not have to equal credits.
Do the dead still have a balance sheet in this game? Does the creditor or the debtor determine obligation? If they disagree what is the court of last resort?
George Simmel (1858-1918). A pioneer in the field of sociology wrote “The Philosophy of Money”. I have been reading a small selection from this book entitled “Individual Freedom”.
“The development of each human fate can be represented as an uninterrupted alternation between bondage and release, obligation and freedom.” “Each obligation that does not exist with regard to a mere idea corresponds to the right of someone else to make demands. For this reason, moral philosophy always identifies ethical freedom with those obligations imposed by an ideal or social imperative or by one’s own
ego.”
When reading I often record an idea that resonates for me. The following is just such a beautiful paragraph: “All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one’s own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance; men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living what it is they find themselves owing the dead.”
“Follow the money”. For our purpose we might change this adage to “Follow the obligation”. Perhaps a good way to analyze ‘freedom’ is to analyze ‘obligation’.
We might say that, at birth our ‘pie chart’ shows full freedom and zero obligation. Since this might be considered as a zero sum game: our parent’s ‘pie chart’ might debit freedom and credit obligation. Maybe this is not a zero sum game. Maybe debits do not have to equal credits.
Do the dead still have a balance sheet in this game? Does the creditor or the debtor determine obligation? If they disagree what is the court of last resort?
