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It seems to me that one of the things that makes people more upset than anything else is when you refuse to believe in owing anyone anything.

Even if priviledge is granted by paying up somehow ("I'll buy you that toy if you clean your room"), it's still a logic of debt. You still have to clean your room to essentially have the toy owed to you. People go nuts when a kid refuses to clean his room openly but demands that he should have the toy anyway. People generally feel these kids are from hell.

But as much as kids that do that are annoying as ********, I feel we should recognize that part of the reason we get mad at those kids is because we believe in and have so deeply internalized a logic of debt (the other part of the reason might just be that screaming kids hurt your ears and give you a headache, lol).

But a logic of debt is completely arbitrary outside of political and cultural contexts. To make this more clear, think of ownership. Ownership is not a tangible real thing. It is purely an idea. In order for "ownership" as an ideology to hold up, all members involved with the ownership of a thing have to agree that ownership is a valid ideology. You can reject ownership. In fact, most human societies did not ever decide to construct such an ideology, and any attempt to do so was actively resisted by the society. Particular social structures created ownership to uphold certain social arrangements.

To put it simply, a logic of debt is just another form of social control. That becomes pretty clear when to get anything, you have to give something up first. No one who's been through high school can say that they haven't heard "there's no such thing as a free lunch" before. And our society really believes that's a universal condition. But in reality it's not.

In other societies, let's say some hunter gathering society, if a member of the band said "In order to eat, you have to bring me fire wood," you could either subscribe to a logic of debt by fulfilling his request, which may or may not be in alienation to yourself, but usually is, or resist validating a power structure that person is trying to construct by simply grabbing the food out of their hands and saying "no," and maybe remind them that they're being a controlling a*****e. The person could have said, "Can you bring me fire wood?" and then given you food afterwards, and that would not have been validating a logic of debt because the person did not connect bringing firewood with some sort of payment or exchangeability (unless of course you're in a situation, which is often the case with ethics, morals, and good manners in western society, where that exchangeability has already been established and you and the other person recognize that when the person asks for firewood, they're really saying that they'll feed you if you bring them firewood). In other words, sharing and helping is not the same as owing. Most human societies resisted owing but promoted sharing and helping, because owing constructs power relationships, but sharing and helping does not. This is why less complex societies (which are less complex because they do not have systems of exchangeability like western society, which depends on a logic of debt) are much more egalitarian than western society.

Disagree? Agree? Thoughts? Experiences?

the former paragraph is what I called sharing. smile

And the latter paragraph...
Yeah, in this day and age it's impossible to raise a kid without doing that. I still don't completely agree with it, but I know that there's really no better way to do things sometimes. You know, now that I think of it, I've never read anything, no ethnographies or anything on any indigenous less complex societies, where the kids are disrespectful and how the parents or community dealt with that. I'm curious to find something about it.... Anyone know anything?

You know, it might be because in less complex societies kids are considered adults a hell of a lot earlier than we do in our society. Hunter-gatherer societies usually decide a kid becomes an adult around the age of seven or so. That means there's a whole lot of maturity happening a hell of a lot faster, because "being an adult" in these societies means being able to do everything everyone else can do, like get food, build a house, and take care of a family.

You know, I think kids in our society figure they can't grow up now, so they might as well milk it. And that's why they're such brats most of the time, lol.

a lot of the stretching of childhood in western society has to do with civil rights movements, actually. lol. It was sometime during the 18th century a bunch of concern mothers came together to rally for child labor laws. Up until that point there were none, and kids rarely went to school. That's also around when education became mandatory. These progressive policy groups thought they were really doing something great for kids. Kids no longer worked from the age of 6 in the factories (where it was really dangerous), but from that point on had to go to school. Kids before that had to help their families as much as any other adult member, and were for the most part considered adults.

yeah. the sad part is, is when you're given the choice between factory and school, school is really the safer way to go. the problem is that they only viewed children's possibilities as either working in the factory or going to school. A world without work or education was out of the question. Kind of speaks to how western society percieves their own society and the world.

my brain fizzled out halfway through the paragraph. burning_eyes