I'm not the religious type. If anything, I'm the irreligious type. I definitely do not harbor a theistic viewpoint. 'No gods, no masters,' etc. In spite of all this, I have a tendency to think in terms of a supposed dichotomy between the categories of 'sacred' and 'profane.' I've been meaning for a while to blog on this subject, and what finally broke that particular writer's block was a comment I received from David Gendron:
I disagree about your anti-market stance. Even sexual relations and gifting are realizations of market mechanisms.
I hear claims like this every so often. My reaction is always the same, and it is a verbal thought, and it's worded exactly thus: Is nothing sacred?
Perhaps it is significant that David Gendron refers to sexual relations rather than romantic relations. His hobby horse over at anarchopragmatisme seems to be the vileness of statism applied to the criminalization of so-called vices, including the flesh trade. I regard sexual relations as sacred in the context of romantic relationships and profane in the context of commercial ones. I should point out that I don't have any opinions whatsoever of the ethical or unethical nature of any kind of sexual conduct. Sacred and profane, to me, is not analogous to ethical and unethical. A slogan I came up with that I delight in throwing around: Friendship is sacred. Networking is profane. Here of course I mean networking in the careerist sense; networking meaning working with rather than against the fact that in the real world, who you know is more important than what you know. Friendship is the more organic practice of simply gravitating to those people with whom you are most at home, or who reflect your interests or values. Networking is the practice of sizing people up as useful or not, influential or not, in the loop or not. Who is worth spending time with is determined by pragmatic considerations.
Posts
