“Back in the day, in Hanson’s farmer epoch, public morality was maintained in part by cultivating in people a sense of gratitude towards God/the universe/society/one’s parents/the resident nepotist with a sword; that their existence entailed debts that in principle couldn’t be repaid. Nowadays under liberalism we’ve in principle thrown that out but everybody’s still linked in a web of very explicit debts, and the web doesn’t in principle have a center.”
(You might say that this is a massive oversimplification to the extent that it’s true, and you’d be right, of course.)
“Back in the day, in Hanson’s farmer epoch, public morality was maintained in part by cultivating in people a sense of gratitude towards God/the universe/society/one’s parents/the resident nepotist with a sword; that their existence entailed debts that in principle couldn’t be repaid. Nowadays under liberalism we’ve in principle thrown that out but everybody’s still linked in a web of very explicit debts, and the web doesn’t in principle have a center.”
(You might say that this is a massive oversimplification to the extent that it’s true, and you’d be right, of course.)