transact: to carry on or conduct (business, negotiations, activities, etc.) to a conclusion or settlement.
transaction: Psychology. an interaction of an individual with one or more other persons, especially as influenced by their assumed relational roles of parent, child, or adult.
A friend of mine, let’s call him “Morton”, several years ago, asked me to help him move his daughter. He wanted me to drive out with him to where she lived about 800 miles away, and assured me, kindly, that he’d pay for all our expenses. I found I wanted to help whether he paid for my meals or not. But he did pay. We had some good talks on our long drive there and back, and became better friends as a result. Another friend, “Joey”, asked me and some other folks to help him move a year or two before or after that. When we’d finished the job we all went out for lunch, and Joey insisted on paying for all of our meals. I felt conflicted. On the one had I understood that he wanted to repay our kindness, but on the other it seemed to me that “our business was concluded”; an intuitive sense of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. We were still good friends up until recently (when my iconoclastic nature reared it’s ugly or beautiful head), but I’ve wondered since then why any of us feel that we must “conclude our business” as quickly as possible.
I asked him about that shortly afterward – it might’ve been the same day – and while I don’t remember just what he said, the sense I got was that he felt indebted to us for helping him on the one hand, and uncomfortable on the other because we might feel used if he did not at least buy us lunch. That is something I can relate to.
I have another friend, “Skills” let’s say, who is an excellent mechanic. He says that he helps people work on their cars for free if they are someone who wants to learn how to do it themselves, and will in turn help others as well. He is extremely busy working his ass off for no pay being an activist working toward homeless rights and homes. When he helps me work on my truck I always give him some money because i’m worried he will think i’m using him, because he has no money and I admire his activism, because he is my friend, because i’d have to pay someone anyhow, because i’ve hardly ever helped him with anything, and because I want to learn how to work on my truck, and am quite pleased to be doing so with him, because I know what it’s like to be relatively poor and overburdened with things to do, and because my iconoclastic nature would rear its ugly (or beautiful) head if I were to join him in his activism and be surrounded by what I perceive to be the ideological excesses of some identity politics (selfish, I know).
“Used” is four letter word, but how did it become such a dirty word. I mean, I am most definitely using Skills for his skill as a mechanic, just as some of my other friends have used me for my skill as a mover (though I don’t like to brag). The thing is, I want to be used by my friends for whatever I might be useful for. I want to be needed, and I want to need Skills to help me fix and learn how to fix my truck. I don’t want “someone” to fix my truck. Quite apart from the fact that it’s hard to know who to trust, I want the friendship, peerdom, reciprocity; the tribe of it all. But so much of life is ruled otherwise. We don’t need our friend to paint our house; too often we don’t need her. We just need “someone” to do it. We don’t need a village to raise our children (what village?), we just need “someone” whom we will pay, whether by paying property taxes, or writing a check directly… “Transaction complete, thank you very much, here is your reward, our business is concluded. Have a good day.” Where did the web of fellow-feeling go? Where that lovely sense of tribe? Where good-humor, and being yourself? And how?
I think we sold it, and are still selling it. Not even to the highest bidder, this is a bargain deal, “All villages must go! Rock bottom prices at the human solidarity close-out sale!”
I think someone robbed us, and are robbing us still. “Take a look out there gentlemen. I’ve been casing these villages for 10 millennia cooking up a heist. We can go in and take them, do a little creative reframing, build nuclear families and cities, and sell them to the people at multi-trillion dollar profits! In order to accomplish that human solidarity and dependence on the earth must be destroyed. The people must believe their dependence is in us!”
I think we forgot, and I think we never knew.
Those aren’t very profound insights, and many others have had them before me, but it hurts my heart.
My heart is warmed though when Skills helps me, and warmed when I am useful to my friend “June” who I stay with. She in turn helps me very much. There is that sense of tribe, like the forearmed hand clasp I might’ve used in old Scotland, “Ceud mìle fàilte!”
Yesterday Skills and I fixed the water pump in my truck. I learned something, and i’m back on the road. I brought coffee and breakfast, and gave him some cash, not because I had to and not because I was worried he’d think I was using him, but because I wanted to. Seems Skills want’s to be useful to his friends as well, “Ceud mìle fàilte to tribe with me, Skills!” And a thousand thanks; if you should need anything from me, you’ve got my number.
Unfortunately, one of his housemates – an ideologue of course – decided to take her frustrations out on me, at which point my iconoclastic nature reared its ugly (or beautiful) head. Will I ever learn anything about losing? Apparently i’m entitled and have no respect for their space because I spilt some coolant. She didn’t bother to ask whether I cleaned it up or not, which in fact I did immediately. But it wasn’t about that. It was about being an (insert ideological second class identity here). So now I may be banned forever from the house. My crime, as far as I can tell, was that I talked back to her instead of letting her emotionally urinate in my face. Yay, social justice! It’s changing the world!
Of course, Skills and his partners brand of social justice and activism is changing the world, but it seems there are just as many ass-wipes on that “side” of things as on any other (hey everybody with agendas, maybe there aren’t “sides”, maybe there’s just cause and effect. i’m just spit-balling here, but give it a think please, for fuckssake). So, I wonder, what can I do better when confronted with the ideological excesses and power-mongering ass-facery of fundamentalist “true-believers” in the future? Blowing my brains out seems a little excessive; I guess i’ll keep tinkering away at systematic understanding, while continuing to undermine my own obsessive need to be understood and treated with some fucking dignity. Not a very good start I know, given my language, but my own obsession is bound to go away at some point. Isn’t it?
Maybe i’ll just bring back some canebrakes and some warblers and that’ll be enough. Canes and birds rustling with the wind don’t care a penny whether I believe like they do. They just want a little room to sway.
---- Am i a student, steward, and dependent of primarily human made systems, and conceptual structures? Or am i a student, steward, and dependent of the immediate lifeworld of which i’m a part? Which are you?----
You remind me of an episode in the 'Big Bang Theory' where Penny had a spat with the attractive new girl who had just moved in upstairs. If its any help, money was invented to replace the obligation system, always pay your way and let others pay you.
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.
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.