Did it replace obligation, or feelings of gratitude? I think i'd rather be paid in solidarity, though i recognize the big world running on interest-barring-debt based currency and getting out of that bind is somewhat difficult.
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Eric Frank Russell wrote a short SF story about a society that was based on obligation that satirised that concept, sorry I forget the title. In Japan 'obligation' is called Giri, another four letter word, and it controls many aspects of Japanese behaviour. Giri may also be translated as duty or burden of obligation which you suggest you suffer from.
No, no. I don't suffer from the "burden of obligation", I suffer from it's lack seen from a different lens than "burden". Don't you? Every concept get's corrupted eventually. I'll check out that story, though i'm attempting to tip the other side of the "either-or" pendulum in favor of... huh, what can i call it? Human fellow-feeling maybe.
I lack social skills and look at everything with cold logic. I am struggling but I seem to sense that you don't feel appreciated at times.
Well, yes, but this piece is not a bid for sympathy. Nor is it about not feeling appreciated. It's about losing (or never having had) a sense of tribe, and what that's done to people, and about reclaiming it and what causes it to go. Cold logic might be what's needed, but even more than that, what's needed is to observe and feel separation and closeness, and their causes.
I almost expect you to ask 'who am I?'. Some New Australians seem to feel marginalised in the same way and ask that question.
I dont have that problem as I was educated in a boys grammar school and then joined the armed forces, I have always had a tribe.