Not surprisingly, Milton’s Satan has something to say about debt: “The debt immense of endless gratitude/So burthensome still paying, still to owe” (Book IV, Paradise Lost). His complaint is that debt is the ontological condition of all creatures.

My question is: on the one hand, debt is the unavoidable limitation of all human beings, on the other, might it be the only “game” we can play within the context of Western ideology of redemptive Christianity, and equally “redemptive” capitalism?

The word ‘real’ in real estate does not mean ‘real,’ it means royal…

- real; from French royale, from Latin regalis: royal, regal, from combining reg- (nominative rex), king, + adjective suffix -alis
- estate; from Latin status: condition, state

In spite of the name, real estate has no connection with the concept of reality. It derives instead from the feudal principle that in a monarchy, all land was considered the property of the king. Thus originally the term real estate was equivalent to “royal estate,” real originating from the French royale, as it was the French-speaking Normans who introduced feudalism to England in the 11th century and thus the English language; cognate to Spanish real.

Margaret, I finished reading the Lectures in book form this morning and turned on NPR accidently to hear you carrying on from your last sentence for me! Thank you!
Project management 101 courses teach the Project Triangle -Money, Quality and Time. Thus relationships are built to form the foundation of the build. Debt is incurred if the project will be pre-paid in stages perhaps before it is completed. Payment in contingent on the timely growth of each of those three items. The the project managers’s job is to track, falls off the rails, the project’s “reality” is threatened. Real work is done over real time and borrowed money is paid with real relationships to accomplishment over acceptable timelines, with acceptable quality and using acceptable amounts of real money paid for real labour. It doesn’t really matter whether the project is a Degree in Medieval Literature, an International Airport, a Symphony concert or a website. Theree is a direct line from value to accomplishment. On the other side is the sale of debt in a nether world where no relationship exists between a sum of money and anything of known value. Traders buy boxes full of potential to sell to other traders against an unknown set of possible futures. That to me is the true shadow on which real slavery is built -the workers are unrelated to the value, time or quality of the end product. So I think there are two kinds of debt. One is natural because the strings of relationships can be followed and one has free will. The other is unnatural and we are Absolutely unable to right debt overload because it is no longer related to real money, time, or quality.

I don’t think that debt is the only “game” that Christianity lets us play. Steeped in Christian scripture is the critical concept of stewardship and repeated warnings about the debt. The “game” that Christianity leads us to play is one in which we are called to determine what is enough. We are to live in a contented present. Debts (monetary and otherwise) tie us first to the future, and ultimately to the past with the false hope driven by discontent with our present.

i was intrigued by this: not even once during an hour-long discussion of the evils and virtues of “debt” did I hear the term “leverage” from Ms Attwood, her interlocutor, or any of the listeners calling in – interestingly enough, my try at bringing the term into the discussion via a call of my own met with rebuff.

It isn’t my intention, nor am I qualified, to enter into a technical, religious, sociological, biological – not to mention physical – discussion of levers and/or economic leverage. I’m curious to know if anyone else noticed this and agrees the failure to discuss leveraging left a gaping hole in the discussion.

thanks, karl

I recall seeing the factoid that there is a meme in Japanese culture which states, “The debt you owe your parents is too great to repay—so don’t even _try_ to do.”

In spite of the name, real estate has no connection with the concept of reality. It derives instead from the feudal principle that in a monarchy, all land was considered the property of the king. Thus originally the term real estate was equivalent to “royal estate,” real originating from the French royale,

Can you cite a source for this? I used to think the same thing but could never find a reliable source, and meanwhile Wikipedia says this:

“In law, the word real means relating to a thing (res/rei, thing, from O.Fr. reel, from L.L. realis “actual,” from Latin. res, “matter, thing”), as distinguished from a person. Thus the law broadly distinguishes between “real” property (land and anything affixed to it) and “personal” property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money). The conceptual difference was between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to. The oldest use of the term “Real Estate” that has been preserved in historical records was in 1666.”

Traders buy boxes full of potential to sell to other traders against an unknown set of possible futures. That to me is the true shadow on which real slavery is built -the workers are unrelated to the value, time or quality of the end product. So I think there are two kinds of debt. One is natural because the strings of relationships can be followed and one has free will. The other is unnatural and we are Absolutely unable to right debt overload because it is no longer related to real money, time, or quality.

What’s your point? Do you want to return to some primitive medieval existence where we never make or use anything that can’t be made by one person, and held in the hand?

Modern abstractions, lacking concrete reality can buy real food, houses, cars, and PC’s. It’s not just debt, but money itself, that’s simply an abstraction. And “backing up” that money with something “real” like gold doesn’t help, since gold has no intrinsic value, either.

Anyway, at some level everything is an abstraction. You’re just a collection of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc, and it’s not the concrete reality of that matter that makes you, you; it’s the abstraction of the arrangement. Replace this or that hydrogen or carbon atom with another and you’d still be you. So let’s not get hung up on what’s concretely “real”, and not just conceptual or abstract, or you might be disappointed to see how little rigorously qualifies.

Furthermore, none of this leads inexorably into debt. My wife and I have been married for 23 years and in that whole time all we’ve had is a small mortgage – no car debt, no credit-card-debt, no home equity loans; no student loans, nothing.

The point of the project management triangle is that in the most abstract of jobs -managing others work- there is a clear set of relationships to money and to a future outcome. And those that receive a wage or a salary usually have a real sense of the time/quality/money relationship as it applies to their own work. They also know that without it they loose their house and will have no food for their children. This is not abstract. For a middle class person’s working life, there is not one portion of labour which is abstract. I have no problem with money put into banks and used by companies giving them the capital to begin a project before it is completed. Provided the triangle is evident to everyone involved. I agree with the karl sklar above. Perhaps NPR didn’t want to start a “what’s wrong with the economy” conversation. Understandable.

Since the animal kingdom does not make sacrifice to the earth and since they too owe their lives to Nature and to their parents, what gives with cultural human entanglement with ideas like “debt” to the earth and “debt” to our parents?

In the animal world it is for each young generation to live fully with what they have and are according to their present needs and abilities. I would prefer to go to CG Jung here who constantly refers to the burden placed by adults onto children who must as they mature struggle with the unlived lives of their parents. Or, to put it another way, adults, including parents, project what is unknown and unlived or repressed or feared in themselves onto the *Other*, some of whom are strangers, some of whom are the other sex, and most are their own children.

The sins of this projection last “even unto the seventh generation” as the old testament says. The unlived and feared realities are woven into family, social, behavioural, environmental and spiritual truths over time. They become unconquerable mountains for future generations to to try to eat or to climb. Massive garbage dumps, mountains of gold, sweets or fears.

The result of that projection is that we as children are born enslaved to the blindnesses of many generations. Read Alice Millar’s account of how the Swiss managed their inheritance on the backs of their children. However, like all animals, Nature’s obligation in me is to know myself and the whole world as best I can, so that I can put an end to the cycles of ignorance, family feuds, retributions, secret desires, and unfulfilled dreams that have been passed on generation after generation in my own backyard. I have no natural past debt to pay to nature or to the older generation. Each new birth is Nature’s great attempt to live out a new distinct path, a new understanding of the worlds.

Children’s obligation to Nature and to their parents when they become adults should be a forward one, not backward. There are religious thinkers too, who suggest that we have the sense of sin and debt backwards. Some Christians suggest that Jesus, being a person with no sin, and therefore no human couldn’t therefore be accused of dying to pay any old personal or familial debts as other criminals and even Adam had been so accused.

That this act of sacrifice of the sheep forever wiped away the cultural idea of our need to uphold the immensely powerful ancient concept of “old debt” to the earth and to God (failed human nature so full of sin that death was the required single answer to human life). That Death shouldn’t be a punishment for life, but one of its natures. The cultural result of that new idea for human civilization was revolutionary for a while – that human beings in society with no exception (slave, freeman, woman, child, stranger) should now be free of having to live under debt to God, to religion, to other human beings, or to parents. That our new obligation, as expressed by Paul, was to take up our inherited lives (our own unique crosses) and not avoid suffering them in order to untangle old ideas and behaviors.

But of course, what was in that for those who wanted Power, the ones who wanted an Empire, the husbands who wanted to rule their own castles, the mothers who wanted to own their own children? Nothing whatsoever. And so Rome won. The men won. The Mothers won. And children lost.

The final problem is that we now are the inheritors of such screwed up relationships to our earth, to our children, and to our institutions, that we will not be able to untangle our way back to good relationships of our natural selves to everything else- technology, knowledge, the earth – very easily.

Is that DAME Joan Sutherland?

Fine thoughts.

Fine voice.

Thank you for both!

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