When I was a child, the TV was running at our home a lot. When I left home, I didn't buy a TV on purpose. Visiting my family again was a weird experience: after a few words, someone suggested to go watch a TV. Nothing specific, just the default way of spending time. I was like "ugh, if you don't mind, I would prefer talking to you", but they were like "no problem, we can watch and talk". Except, it didn't work that way. Watching and talking means, you ask a question, the other person opens their mouth... but keeps watching the screen... and then maybe after a minute says something, very slowly, not even a coherent sentence.
If you are not used to that, it's like watching people you know turn into zombies. But of course, if you do it every day, you are just as zombified as others, so it feels okay to you. (Just like drunk people don't mind being in company of other drunk people, or stoned people don't mind being in company of other stoned people.) You spend a few hours in each other's company, saying less than ten sentences during all the time, and somehow it gives you the feeling of spending quality time together, when in fact everyone was only paying attention to the screen.
You could get an equivalent of that by having the whole family sit on a large sofa, everyone watching their own smartphone, sitting together in silence for hours. At the end, everyone would feel like they had a meaningful experience together. It only feels weird when the rest of the people are glued to their screens and you are not.
I wonder if your example is a different kind of trade. When we trade time in a leisure situation, we're trading something more immediate and tangible. Whereas the transactional nature of the grandparent comment is more describing something more distanced.
An example of this that was told to me is imagine you're going to dinner with the in-laws (or maybe your best friend's parents). What would their reaction be if you took out your wallet and offered to pay them cash for the meal? As opposed to offering to e.g. bring a bottle of wine or helping to set the table?
Offering to pay might be the "transactional" trade meant by the grandparent. While offering to contribute [food | labour | goodwill] is more of the trading time in a leisure situation.
Typically, in accounting contexts, tangible is used to refer to physical products, such as mammoth meat, or stone axes.
Intangibles would be the gain or maintenance of reputation from going to have a meal at your in laws and all that jazz.
Regardless, in this context, trade is trade, one entity giving up something for another. Simply spending the time to go to your in laws for a meal is a trade. And while many would not cough up cash to show the transactional nature, far more would simply not go to the dinner (or go less often) and opt to spend their time elsewhere.
Or, if the in laws have something you want, maybe you opt to spend more time with them.
I am not claiming one has to solely view every interaction through this lens, or should. But it is a component of most every interaction. You could strike up a conversation with a stranger with no ulterior motive and then it carries on too long and you start thinking I could spend my time better elsewhere.
Not sure that there aren't alternate pathways from "I'll take what I want" and "I'll trade you specifically this for that".
I remember reading on acoup that in agrarian societies, often they relied on favours and communal sharing in times of bounty. So say if I butchered a hog today, all my neighbours might get some. Not in exchange for something directly, but in the expectation that when I fall on hard times or they get a windfall, they'll do the same for me.
There's probably some potential for freeloading here, but these sorts of communities are likely often right on the edge of survival. If someone develops a reputation for being miserly, that might well result in them starving (or freezing) because they're rejected by their neighbours. So there's an incentive to at least appear generous and pay your fair share.
This touched a chord. For me it's a combination of both music and dance.
It's amazing to feel emotions I'd normally not want to express in everyday life and just let them flow out. Rage, jealousy, lust. The music is such a great trigger to tap into these primal feelings, and then expressing them through movement just feels incredible. It feels real and amazingly cathartic, but the transience of the experience leaves no consequences.
I guess that's why there's the saying dance like nobody's watching. Because for many people, that expression of feeling strips us down and leaves our feelings exposed and vulnerable .
I've only read one of Jordan Peterson's books - 12 Rules of Life.
Haven't reread recently, but it was interesting at the time, and sort of helpful for keeping me motivated to get myself out of a bit of a rut. What parts of his writing did you find to be indicative of abandoning intelligent debate?
I hope you're standing straight now, because... you know... "To stand up straight with your shoulders back means building the ark that protects the world from the flood, guiding your people through the desert after they have escaped tyranny, making your way away from comfortable home and country, and speaking the prophetic word to those who ignore the widows and children."
As much as I love metaphors ("Metaphors of Movement" concept and therapy by Andrew Austin or in general metaphors explained by Lakoff in "Metaphors We Live by") - Peterson is simply fantasizing. It might seem to be deeply thought out, but it's not. Would love to share with you great article about his book, but it's unfortunately in Polish. If you care to know then google translator might help https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=https:/...
But there are differences in the sexes with regards to the process of conceiving and rearing a child. And it seems to me that a big part of our social constructs that were developed to deal with those differences can be reduced to "the man doing something expensive and hard to fake". Which isn't really that different from "the man proving she matters to him by buying something".
I'm curious how to be intolerant of an idea while being tolerant of people?
Because practically, aren't ideas tied to people? I don't think you can have an idea survive without people keeping it alive. So how do you express intolerance for "bad" ideas without letting that expression bleed into an intolerance for the people propagating the "bad" idea?
You can hold the idea that a certain religion or philosophy is vile and evil, yet respect and even like certain individuals that are followers or adherents of those beliefs, because individuals are often more than just the essentials of those beliefs.
Take a certain popular religion, for instance. This religion can be judged as evil if you are secular or pro-reason (as opposed to faith). But individuals who practice this religion do so as individuals, and may place more emphasis on certain parts of their religion over others according to their own personal values. In fact it's impossible not to place emphasis on certain aspects of a religion or philosophy when adopting it - even religious zealotry implies an emphasis on perfect obedience and adherence. You can tolerate, accept, or even like a person holding an idea that you can't tolerate due to your own beliefs, for the personal values and virtues exhibited by the individual which are reflected in their emphasis of certain parts of their beliefs.
That might be the point. Few people are going to bother spending resources to fix a problem that doesn't exist. And by the time such a problem arises on Earth (inhospitable living conditions due to e.g. supervolcano), we might not have the resources to fix it. Whereas terraforming Mars creates the incentives to develop solutions while we have abundant resources, which means that we have a fix ready and waiting if something catastrophic happens on earth.
