Are you a wounded servicemember in a military hospital in Germany? Because if you are, I have your address already.
Just transferred in. I don't know the address number here, myself, so I'll give you the address of a close relative in the States.
On the veldt, money wasn't fungible.
On Kieran's recommendation I read part of The Social Meaning of Money. I never finished it, but it does cover this very topic. In short, there are many, many circumstances in which people do not behave as if money is fungible.
Too late to make a donation? As you know my daughter is in Iraq, so it is a cause I support. Shoot me an e-mail if the kitty is still open for donations (and where you would like me to send it).
I just realized the last comment might sound patronizing. If it did, that was unintentional. I just wanted to say, that the topic is interesting, that a good book on the topic exists, and I will second Kieran's recommendation despite stalling halfway through (the prose is, unfortunately, academic writing).
In short, there are many, many circumstances in which people do not behave as if money is fungible.
Penny-wise, pound-foolish!
I'm always stuck collecting money for baby showers, etc. at work and have the same reaction. Bah!
9: I work with 50'ish other folks, it's a god damn constant stream of birthday and baby shower cards. Money for a shower, maybe, but not for a birthday. If I know you, I'll buy you a beer.
I particularly love the birthday cards that have 45 signatures, nothing else. Gee, they really care.
Uhh, sorry, that must of touched a nerve.
LB, I assume you donated some money of your own. Keep the money, you performed your obligation.
On Kieran's recommendation I read part of The Social Meaning of Money. I never finished it, but it does cover this very topic. In short, there are many, many circumstances in which people do not behave as if money is fungible.
Yay! Yes, this is a perfect example of how money gets stuck in restricted circuits of exchange. Zelizer's book is full of other examples. Sometimes these circuits are literally demarcated in large and small ways -- a jar for drinking money, a special account for vacation money, a college fund, etc. (Remember when Homer wants to buy cable and says "Marge! Get the kids college money.") Other times the circuits are implicit but equally clear: not using gift money or windfall winnings to pay the electricity bill, for instance.
In the present case, what you really need is a ritual of some sort to clarify the transition and desacralize the money you were given.
As it happens I'll be seeing Viviana [Zelizer] in two weeks or so in New York at the sociology meetings. I'll have to tell her this story.
You should use the money to buy me a new audiobook of your choice on CD. Unabridged, of course. Please send it to Apo, since he's the only one who knows my secret identity.
Or quite a few audiobooks, since I must assume that you work at one of those law firms where a mass donative effort such as this results in assloads of cash.
Yeah, right. How many rosecutors can there be in NCP?
Damn, 15 was me. Stupid Firefox isn't remembering my fake name and e-mail address.
Oh, I guess I'm supposed to check that box down there. Stupid NCP.
16: Dammit, w-lfs-n, I spent time listening to that screeching audio nightmare you call a radio show the other day. The least you can do is help defend my pseudonymity.
On Tuesday, you mean? That was downright accessible.
No, the other one, last week, where it was followed up by the 12 year old doing a sports show.
None of my rss feeds are updating because all the lefty bloggers are getting blotto in the grotto in Chicago.
Oh. (The 12 year old is a regular feature.) That was a great show, hoser.
None of your rss feeds is updating. Also, I just put up a new post at my home blog. Snif.
I'm sorry, did you say something? I was over at ThinkProgress hitting the refresh button.
Yeah! No one reads my blog, either!
re: the post --
Hmph. When my roommates pay me their share of the month's rent in cash, I experience a very different effect. "Ooh! Cash!" I seem to say, and then the bills go into my wallet temporarily before being magically whisked away by a capricious gnome who knows I'm not going to deposit that money like I should.
25: I read your blog, heebie. I have read it this very day, actually. I find the commenting format to be strange and foreboding, so I never comment.
25: And is there a feed? I've never found it.
25: And is there a feed? I've never found it.
With most RSS readers, you can just put in the URL of the site and it will automagically find the feed for you.
There is a feed. It's at the link on the sidebar called "subscribe to this blog's feed".
I've tried to read your blog, heebie, but I have a phobia about toes.
Not every comment is about your blog, ben.
Other times the circuits are implicit but equally clear: not using gift money or windfall winnings to pay the electricity bill, for instance.
Or, say, what happens if say, your husband-to-be takes the cash from a wedding card and puts it in his wallet in front of your mother.
"He shouldn't do that. The money is for both of you."
"But he'd take money out of our joint account to use. And I'd just put this money back in the account."
"But you should decide what to spend it on together."
Off-topic: Clinton apparently thinks it might be cool to nuke Pakistan. Feel free to derail the thread/start up a new one!
Yay! I read YOUR blog, too, Stanley!
The comments style is awful and I don't think there's a feed. LiveJournal is PlaySkool Blogging for us impaired bloggers.
LB: Use the money to buy us drinks! NYC meetup w00t!!1!
Personally I would decline to voluntarily support this stupid and pointless war in any way whatsoever.
LB! Quit hassling James for donations! Enough already.
34: Actually, shit is alive with microflora!
38: So you're withholding all taxes then? Cool.
Okay, must go to bed. Night all.
OT - Holy crap, swampcracker. Your photography is fucking amazing.
Zelizer's guest posts at Credit Slips are worth reading.
Swampcracker-
I'm done with collecting money, but the appeal we were responding to is here, and that has the address to send cards to. You just buy international prepaid phone cards, and send them off to the address in the linked post:
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center,
ATTN: MCEUL-CH/Chaplains Office
CMR 402, APO AE 09180
James:
You know, if I could see any way that ensuring that wounded soldiers can't call their families in the US would bring the war to a faster end, you might have a point. As it is, unless you're in Concord jail for nonpayment of taxes like M/tch says, you're an idiot.
If it's that disturbing, why not just deposit it in one go? Then the inviolability should go away.
Unless that's exactly what you're having trouble with.
I actually handed the cash to Buck to cope with, figuring that he didn't have any reason to be weird about it. And the checks I'm just going to suck it up and deposit -- I may have irrational inhibitions, but that's no reason to actual obey them.
47--
kieran's right:
don't think of it as de-positing them,
think of it as de-sacralizing them.
just like the minister does
when he skims from the collection plate.
What jumps out at me about this post isn't the issue of an irrational attitude towards money in many circumstances, which is interesting and well-handled. It's this:
...whatever part of my brain functions as a rudimentary conscience isn't that bright
Now I would say, using the term the way I'm inclined, that LB has a pretty highly-developed conscience, which informs just about everything she writes. And she ususally makes no bones about it.
So why, besides the comical situation, did she phrase it this way? Has conscience become another word, like "evil" apparently, that people-like-us can no longer use without irony, without scare-quotes? Where we want to respect the idea behind it but find the word itself so tainted by its hypocritical and manipulative associations that we no longer care to use it? Or is this merely a form of self-deprecation, an unwillingness to use the word to describe oneself without this comic framing?
I don't think I'm being generally self-deprecating, I'd agree that I also have a less-rudimentary conscience that applies to conscious decisions about whether something I'm going to do is wrong. But whatever it is in my brain that looks at a stack of cash that really does belong to me now, and gets horrified by the prospect of spending it, is something conscience-like, but also genuinely not that bright.
It's not that I think I'm generally dim about moral decisions, just that in this context I have an extremely stupid angel on my right shoulder telling me to do the right thing without any actual understanding of what the right thing is.
No, that's clear, I was just struck by the language.
For me at least, reasoned guilt/shame and felt guilt/shame are completely different. Whan an action is diffuse (say assembling a document that should be honest and which will affect other people), doing the right thing is an exercise in thinking. When there's an action (the opportunity to hide or reveal an object, say, or speaking with someone in real time) unfolding in real time, feeling and reason both matter. LB's case dissasociates the temporal and consequential completely, a tidy metaphor for contemporary adult life, where almost nothing that can be seen or touched matters, and almost nothing that matters can be seen or touched.
It's not that I think I'm generally dim about moral decisions, just that in this context I have an extremely stupid angel on my right shoulder telling me to do the right thing without any actual understanding of what the right thing is.
I think it's a feature, rather than a bug, that our conscience can sometimes bypass our reason and even our intelligence. Otherwise it would be easier to rationalize horrible things without a "common-sense" failsafe.
I read the phrase "rudimentary conscience" not as a reference to LB's conscience as a whole, but as a reference to that "rudimentary" element of conscience that is separate from the rational, conscious conscience. The part arising from the primitive, reptilian brain, so to speak.
unless you're in Concord jail for nonpayment of taxes
And if he were in Concord jail, Emerson would visit him. I wonder what they would say to each other?
OT: My first reaction was "This is terrible, what's wrong with a country that fails to provide basic comforts for its wounded soldiers?" Then I had second thoughts. This is another sign of a great trend, the all volunteer government.
We have volunteer soldiers, and their friends and supporters voluntarily provide them with body armor, and volunteers help to put armor on humvees, and volunteers provide telephone service for the wounded.
Soon everything will be provided voluntarily. There will be appeals for bullets and food. We'll see pictures of starving American soldiers in Iraq and be told that a mere twenty seven cents can provide a healthful, nutritious breakfast for a needy pilot. Telemilitarists will ask us to send love offerings for Lyndee England.
And when the soldiers notice that airline tickets home are plentiful and no one is sending them bullets the war will be over.
45
Thanks, LB, for the forwarding info.
You had $90,000 just sitting in your checking account??
Heh. I was underimpressed by the generosity of the lawyers in the office -- the biggest donation was around $300, and there were only three over $100. Most of the donations were twenties from the staff.
Should have sent more nagging emails.
Or maybe just more persuasive nagging emails.
One of the ones I did send drew a response from one person of "I was going to contribute, but now that you've made it competitive I feel that I can't." That'll teach me to try and encourage people not to be outdone by the Jersey office.
Did he sign his response "Giant Tool"?
I hate sending people nagging charity or other fundraising emails. I think that means I'd be a terrible politician.
I was going to contribute, but now that you've made it competitive I feel that I can't
That is toolish, and I'd contribute whatever I'd been meaning to, but I would resent the competitiveness.
Not to dwell on unpleasant subjects but:
Comment #2: Posted by LB on 08- 2-07 8:14 PM
Comment #45: Posted by LB on 08- 3-07 4:46 AM
I really hope at least one of those comments was posted from home.
Oh, heavens, they both were. I haven't been overworked lately.
You said "Oh, heavens". You're old!
Aw, shucks. Now get off my lawn.
that's not old.
it's just her Donny Rumsfeld module coming out.
Don't joke about that -- I have a Rumsfeld-esque rhetorical questions problem that I find terribly disturbing.
65: Yeah, some people are turned off by competitiveness. But the faux-remorseful "I feel that I can't"? Come on, you wanker, do you have some moral prohibition against participating in any activities that have any hint of a competitive element? (You employee of a large law firm?) And if that's not it then what the hell are you trying to say? I don't think you're trying to say anything other than "I am a GIANT tool."
IDP, I realize you didn't write the email th LB and my 74 wasn't really directed at you.
It is exactly what I hope LB's response to this guy was, though.
if you find anything about your own personal style terribly disturbing, you are ipso facto not very Rumsfeldesque.
I mean--self-regard thread here we come.
That guy spent almost five years preening in front of the national mirror, showing off by allowing other people to die for his carelessness.
in other words:
do you have a Rummy rhetorical question problem?
maybe.
is it a big problem?
perhaps.
does it mean you have a more general Donny Rumsfeld module?
not at all.
My first thought too was "They have to pay for phone calls to their family in the States? W. T. F. ?"
And yeah, those really area amazing photos, swampcracker.