Since I’m now going to speak of a debt to the center, one extending from the originary event to the latest Quantitative Easing of the Fed, the question of data as currency can be further clarified. That humanity is constituted in debt to the center is, first of all, a consequential enough thesis to dwell on a bit. The notion of an exchange with the center has been (perhaps an understated) part of GA from the beginning, and the undeniable observation that it is an asymmetrical exchange, with the center first giving and those on the periphery then responding in kind, makes talk of debt unavoidable. Why, for that matter, should we want to avoid it, unless we’re holding on to liberal fantasies, which take an even more devastating hit from the insistence on an originary indebtedness? The debt grows as the interval in which it is issued and then discharged is prolonged, and interest is accrued as we are indebted to all the previous debtors as well. Many features of human life which often become dysfunctional and, indeed, seem to many to be dysfunctional in their “normal” forms, like guilt and unwavering devotion to individuals, principles, causes, communities and projects, become much easier to understand in terms of originary indebtedness. The originary debt can never be paid back, but we can also never leave off paying our regular installments—a genuine compulsion, which is to say, imperative, is in place here. Originary indebtedness also helps us clarify one of Gans’s most important anthropological/historical counters to Girard’s assumption that human sacrifice founds the human—his observation that the earliest humans, those for whom the center is not yet occupied by a human, tend to sacrifice and have as their deities animals, with human sacrifice coming at a much later, imperial state of human development. As we get more and more distant from the center, and the interval between debt issuance and dischargement grows, the debt become overwhelming, even unbearable, to the point where even the sacrifice of the first-born to the God-emperor is not enough, and nothing less than total donation of all one’s property and capabilities to the center will serve even as paying down the minimum. No doubt, not everyone “feels” this debt, and many no doubt are gratified to have, in the modern, i.e., desecrated, world, no formalized debt to any individuals or institutions whatsoever (no doubt many are carefree), but that doesn’t mean the debt doesn’t come due, or get redistributed in some way. Why, in the end, does anyone feel they have to do anything?
Data as Currency and the Debt to the Center
Data as Currency and the Debt to the Center
Data as Currency and the Debt to the Center
Since I’m now going to speak of a debt to the center, one extending from the originary event to the latest Quantitative Easing of the Fed, the question of data as currency can be further clarified. That humanity is constituted in debt to the center is, first of all, a consequential enough thesis to dwell on a bit. The notion of an exchange with the center has been (perhaps an understated) part of GA from the beginning, and the undeniable observation that it is an asymmetrical exchange, with the center first giving and those on the periphery then responding in kind, makes talk of debt unavoidable. Why, for that matter, should we want to avoid it, unless we’re holding on to liberal fantasies, which take an even more devastating hit from the insistence on an originary indebtedness? The debt grows as the interval in which it is issued and then discharged is prolonged, and interest is accrued as we are indebted to all the previous debtors as well. Many features of human life which often become dysfunctional and, indeed, seem to many to be dysfunctional in their “normal” forms, like guilt and unwavering devotion to individuals, principles, causes, communities and projects, become much easier to understand in terms of originary indebtedness. The originary debt can never be paid back, but we can also never leave off paying our regular installments—a genuine compulsion, which is to say, imperative, is in place here. Originary indebtedness also helps us clarify one of Gans’s most important anthropological/historical counters to Girard’s assumption that human sacrifice founds the human—his observation that the earliest humans, those for whom the center is not yet occupied by a human, tend to sacrifice and have as their deities animals, with human sacrifice coming at a much later, imperial state of human development. As we get more and more distant from the center, and the interval between debt issuance and dischargement grows, the debt become overwhelming, even unbearable, to the point where even the sacrifice of the first-born to the God-emperor is not enough, and nothing less than total donation of all one’s property and capabilities to the center will serve even as paying down the minimum. No doubt, not everyone “feels” this debt, and many no doubt are gratified to have, in the modern, i.e., desecrated, world, no formalized debt to any individuals or institutions whatsoever (no doubt many are carefree), but that doesn’t mean the debt doesn’t come due, or get redistributed in some way. Why, in the end, does anyone feel they have to do anything?