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Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

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Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#41

Post by camperman »

moneyguilt wrote: post #39
camperman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In honour-shame societies, there is simply no concept of internal remorse or guilt. The correctional vectors are external rather than internal. A member of such a society - and they're almost always collectivist rather then individual - will strive to be honourable while avoiding shame. Here's a Chinese person talking about the difference: "...A majority of the world is Chinese. So am I. We emphasize the extended fam…

Have you read James Bowman's Honor, A History [1] or any of his other writings on this subject [2]? 1- http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/honor 2- http://www.jamesbowman.net/honor.asp

I haven't - thanks for the link. I've read The Japanese Mind, Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes, Malina and Rohrbaugh's Context Group work and The Syrian Christ as well as a number of academic works on group-vs-individual and honour-vs-shame.

I live in a unique society - most of it is group-oriented (and frustratingly, present-oriented rather than future oriented) but there is a large minority that is thoroughly Westernised - guilt, individualist, future oriented. Needless to say, we don't understand each other much.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#42

Post by dredmorbius »

jnbiche wrote: post #3

"We must recognize then that money is a pure abstraction." Yes, this is a fact that people in the Bitcoin, and recently, Dogecoin communities have come to realize. I think this realization is a gift that cryptocurrencies could bring to the general population. There's nothing magical about a US Dollar. It's a unit of account, nothing more. If you really want to fall down the rabbit hole, then learn about the (original…

I'm rather unconvinced that the cryptocurrency folks (or at least large numbers of those who're following the movement) have grasped Alan Watts' meaning in that "money is pure abstraction".

Rather, what Watts is saying (as I understand it) is that money itself is a derivative of real wealth, it's the abstraction of wealth. It's a tokenization of wealth, but it isn't wealth in and of itself. What it is, principally, is an exchange mechanism, one which also, over short terms, tends to be reasonably consistent in value.

The crypto currencies suffer from the challenge that in order to be accepted, they've got to be acceptable. For national currencies, this is accomplished largely in taxes and petroleum transactions (both very significant aspects of the present financial system). Probably also reserve currency status, though I won't pretend to fully understand that.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#43

Post by dredmorbius »

howeyc wrote: post #27

That was a lot of rambling and tangents that don't relate to what I assume was the central point: If we keep automating and laying off people, eventually there wont be enough people with money (jobs to get money) in order to purchase goods made by machines. The proposed solution seems to be: Alter the structure of the system such that the government creates debt and distributes money as income to the people, this way…

It helps tremendously to know that in some languages, the words for "debt" and "guilt" are the same (in German, the word is "Schulden", as in "entshuldigung" meaning "excuse me").

If you're familiar with the Lord's Prayer, you should know that there are two forms of it in English: the Catholic ("forgive us our debts") and the protestant ("forgive us our trespasses"). Where again, the meanings of "debt" and "guilt" or "offense" are entwined.

Money-as-abstraction then has significance: money isn't true wealth, it's the representation of wealth, and that representation can be modified. Hence such confusions as "governments have to balance their budgets" -- not necessarily true as a governments can vary the value of money, either through inflation (fiat) or devaluation (specie). What the goldbugs fail to recognize is that when governments find themselves with debts they cannot repay (denominated in currencies under their control), they'll devalue those currencies. Regardless of the underlying standard. Look to the Roman denarius (covered by Joseph Tainter in Collapse) or the devaluations of British currency (detailed at length, as he does everything, in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations).

If you're interested in more of Soddy's work, his Role of Money is available online (I've skimmed it briefly, haven't read it): https://archive.org/details/roleofmoney032861mbp

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#45

Post by gethoht »

dredmorbius wrote: post #42
jnbiche wrote: post #3

"We must recognize then that money is a pure abstraction." Yes, this is a fact that people in the Bitcoin, and recently, Dogecoin communities have come to realize. I think this realization is a gift that cryptocurrencies could bring to the general population. There's nothing magical about a US Dollar. It's a unit of account, nothing more. If you really want to fall down the rabbit hole, then learn about the (original…

I'm rather unconvinced that the cryptocurrency folks (or at least large numbers of those who're following the movement) have grasped Alan Watts' meaning in that "money is pure abstraction". Rather, what Watts is saying (as I understand it) is that money itself is a derivative of real wealth, it's the abstraction of wealth. It's a tokenization of wealth, but it isn't wealth in and of itself. What it is, principally, i…

This is my interpretation of Alan Watt's concept of abstraction of wealth. You can't eat money, it's just paper or coins with no inherent value in and of itself. More than that it's also a unit of measurement, which is an itself an abstraction.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#46

Post by dredmorbius »

gethoht wrote: post #45
dredmorbius wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rather unconvinced that the cryptocurrency folks (or at least large numbers of those who're following the movement) have grasped Alan Watts' meaning in that "money is pure abstraction". Rather, what Watts is saying (as I understand it) is that money itself is a derivative of real wealth, it's the abstraction of wealth. It's a tokenization of wealth, but it isn't wealth in and of itself. What it is, principally, i…

This is my interpretation of Alan Watt's concept of abstraction of wealth. You can't eat money, it's just paper or coins with no inherent value in and of itself. More than that it's also a unit of measurement, which is an itself an abstraction.

The leaning I've been having is that money is a signalling mechanism. Bankers like to say they're the heart of the economy. I prefer to think of them as the pituitary gland. Money is somewhere between ion-exchange signalling and hormones. You can use it to get what you want, but it's not the thing you want in and of itself. Accumulations get out of whack, people become insensitive to it, or there's not enough of it, and things break down. But it's not of and by itself what drives the economy, and money (or hormones) without real resources still lead to failure.
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