I am currently reading Rebecca Solnit's book, The Faraway Nearby. And I am at the point where she is talking about money. I know I have often talked about money here but I think it is time to rant about it one more time.
Solnit is generally an excellent writer and a brilliant intellectual who I'd love to talk to some day, but I think she is wrong about money.
In my opinion we don't ask for favors because of the position it puts us in, Solnit thinks indebtedness, I think it puts us in the position of the person thinking they owe us something. I have asked people for things, like help opening jars for example, and the person thanked me for letting them help me. What I didn't realize was how he would grow to be obsessed with me.
People on the internet are calling this the Benjamin Franklin effect.
If anything, people want to reciprocate after a favor to make sure they don't incur unwanted attentions from the friend. And perhaps it works out as friendship for men, but for women asking for a favor from a man can provoke the obsession that I had no idea I was incurring. I don't know if it was the cause or if there was more at work, either way I think it is safer to stick to asking females for favors if you are female.
Money is the best way to avoid social interaction. You want/need something, you throw money at them and you don't have anything to worry about. You get your whatever... and you don't have to know anything more about the person.
Without money you have to talk to whoever is offering... whatever you want, and find out away to get it from them. Talking and time... I remember that when reading that book 'the kindness of strangers' as some guy hitched his way across America without money, in a vanity project where he carved a chunk of his life off and talked to people while they gave him lifts across America.
I think this is the root of why society has gone to a lot of trouble to keep money out of the hands of women. Women talk to people, find out about their lives, remember details, manage social interactions, because they have to to get what they want/need. But keeping money out of women's hands has the added benefit of making women a slave class.
I remember one guy who was writing something on a new economic model and I asked him about women being paid to raise children and he was shocked and said women do that for love. Love does not pay the bills or the rent or the mortgage. Raising children is expensive, time consuming, hard work. It's also a 24/7 job for pretty much all of two full decades and women are just supposed to do it for love? and if she does take a night off, and if something goes wrong, the first cry will be 'where was the mother'. And fathers who stay with the mother of their children aren't doing it for love?
But primarily it's about cheap labor. Women are largely treated as slave labor, domestically, and this is why employers resist paying women as much as men, because men think of women as slave labor at home.
I guess this is why men used to pay a price for a bride and then there was the dowry, I guess to get rid of a daughter that is of no economic use to her father.
Solnit is generally an excellent writer and a brilliant intellectual who I'd love to talk to some day, but I think she is wrong about money.
In my opinion we don't ask for favors because of the position it puts us in, Solnit thinks indebtedness, I think it puts us in the position of the person thinking they owe us something. I have asked people for things, like help opening jars for example, and the person thanked me for letting them help me. What I didn't realize was how he would grow to be obsessed with me.
People on the internet are calling this the Benjamin Franklin effect.
If anything, people want to reciprocate after a favor to make sure they don't incur unwanted attentions from the friend. And perhaps it works out as friendship for men, but for women asking for a favor from a man can provoke the obsession that I had no idea I was incurring. I don't know if it was the cause or if there was more at work, either way I think it is safer to stick to asking females for favors if you are female.
Money is the best way to avoid social interaction. You want/need something, you throw money at them and you don't have anything to worry about. You get your whatever... and you don't have to know anything more about the person.
Without money you have to talk to whoever is offering... whatever you want, and find out away to get it from them. Talking and time... I remember that when reading that book 'the kindness of strangers' as some guy hitched his way across America without money, in a vanity project where he carved a chunk of his life off and talked to people while they gave him lifts across America.
I think this is the root of why society has gone to a lot of trouble to keep money out of the hands of women. Women talk to people, find out about their lives, remember details, manage social interactions, because they have to to get what they want/need. But keeping money out of women's hands has the added benefit of making women a slave class.
I remember one guy who was writing something on a new economic model and I asked him about women being paid to raise children and he was shocked and said women do that for love. Love does not pay the bills or the rent or the mortgage. Raising children is expensive, time consuming, hard work. It's also a 24/7 job for pretty much all of two full decades and women are just supposed to do it for love? and if she does take a night off, and if something goes wrong, the first cry will be 'where was the mother'. And fathers who stay with the mother of their children aren't doing it for love?
But primarily it's about cheap labor. Women are largely treated as slave labor, domestically, and this is why employers resist paying women as much as men, because men think of women as slave labor at home.
I guess this is why men used to pay a price for a bride and then there was the dowry, I guess to get rid of a daughter that is of no economic use to her father.
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