202206091334 📃 econo Culture

Let the nexus of economy and culture be called econo-culture. By this I mean: the intersection of resource management and tacit values, norms, and practices.

For this to operate, (1) the individual must maintain a construction of these norms from within, or at the ready for reconstruction with every act he takes. Reconstruction occurs iff expected results are not commensurate with apperceptive results. (2) Organizations must maintain a construction of these norms from without, or explicitly enumerated with a reward-punishment structure, typically furnished monetarily. (3) Society must maintain a universal binder whereby (2) takes up (1). Again, this is typically furnished monetarily, explicitly, but may also be so merely socially, that is, culturally and implicitly.

Thus operation demands (1) individual-cultural inness (2) explicit organization awareness of that inness (3) (a) explicit cultural awareness of that inness (b) implicit cultural awareness of that inness.

Now, organization serves a function to both (1) and (3), the individual and the cultural whole, implicitly and explicitly. Implicitly, by bringing to practice individual inness. Explicitly, by constructing spatio-temporal places of implicit practice with process and products regulated by explicit law. By process, I mean a task-chain delegation across multiple members. By products, I mean goods or services given to organizational contacts, as mediated by (3)’s awareness inness. This awareness takes explicit shape as law and implicit shape as kickback.

Econo-culture, therefore, is a tripartite mediation which circles back on itself (for culture enters into the individual) through the dialectic of implicature and explication. The balance of these two is the “status quo.” The implicit status quo is “human nature.”

Econo-culture uses explication for the compression of implicature. That is, it constructs desires through explicit task-chain delegation. Lipstick, for example, makes explicit the implicit feminine desire for attractiveness. This explication descends out of desire through (1) individual reponsiveness to objects pre-existing lipstick proper (2) organizational cohesion around the possibility of explicit task-chain delegation and (3) cultural rewards for individual responsiveness, both implicitly (social esteem) and explicitly (money, which bears its own implicit-mystical force). Hereby a circle forms which snowballs, insofar as (2) makes possible spaces of thought which repeat the dialectic between (1) and (2), namely, an implicit responsiveness which can be made explicit through organizational task-chain delegation. Thus, the lipstick company may see women buying perfume at the same time, leading the company to expand its offerings. Such is the inertial force of econo-culture.

Because (2) has rewarded its members implicitly and explicitly, its members feel (a) a motive self-confidence to return to (2) and generate new ideas / maintain the inertia and (b) have money to purchase goods provided for by competing snowballs. (3) is therefore a reward for (1), via esteem and purchase, and a reward for (2), via esteem and profit, which itself becomes purchase (cf. Marx’s CMC’). Such is the snowball of snowballs, the “circle of circles” in Hegel’s parlance. Through the money-distribution of circle C, other circles D and L might enter and take up what was distributed, thereby repeating C.

Econo-culture hereby develops as a trans-organizational mediation of individuals from within, where each feels esteem and confidence and gains profit for the furthering of that esteem and confidence. (Each might feel other things, too; in fact, he can feel whatever he wishes to, provided he has the money for its purchase. I maintain that confidence is the a priori base of this - he who has no confidence in himself mopes until he dies in a state we commonly call “depression.”)

Econo-culture’s organizational and cultural implicatures are cognitive and moral. Cognitively, a strict work-play divide is necessary, where work furnishes the confidence and money to purchase objects of play. The former tightens in directed mental labor, the latter loosens for return to tightening. Morally, constraint to duty is the law of work - do your job, and return peacefully to your abode.

Economists, or those who emphasize the one-sided economic aspect of econo-culture see market as the ultimate justification for econo-culture’s implicatures. The market is the crucible which melts implicatures down and skims off impurities which cannot be made cash-ready. Cash, as positive explication, is the ultimate justifier of an implicature. Humanitarians, or those working in literature, philosophy, and the arts who emphasize the one-sided cultural aspect of econo-culture see humanity as the ultimate justification for econo-culture’s explications. Hereby they are more dialectical, but nonetheless still too narrow-minded to see the totality. For the direction of the totality as groundless can only be seen by an econo-cultural theorist, like Marx, Nietzsche, Bataille, or someone similar. He who sees the enactment of the implicit through the explicit - he alone sees the totality. Thus, they do not talk of justifications of human explication except as their narrow disciplines allow; a literary theorist will talk of “stories,” a philosopher of “meanings,” and an artist of “creations.” When and where will any of them question the economists’ monopoly on the knowledge of material management? Nowhere except when they become econo-cultural theorists.

Thus, even if work be diminished statistically, the totality as work-engendering and cognitive-morally edifying perpetuates work existentially, as a thing that men must do despite their desire for life-otherwise. What is life-otherwise? It is not living alone, but living with, mitsein, in a mode which rewrites the necessary conditions for the implicit-explicit dialectic of econo-culture’s tripartite mediation. Instead, for instance, of real-property, life-otherwise conceives of something else and, thereby, an explicit limit on this or that commodity etc. The Amish are one such example of this otherwise for, by creed alone, they deny both the subjective-individual and objective-cultural conditions for organizational task-chain delegation and, thereby, delegate only insofar as their own creed allows them.

1. 📍 econo-culture
   1. its subjective conditions
      1. individual
      2. organization
      3. culture
   2. its objective conditions
      1. implicature
      2. explication
2. econo-culture’s process
   1. recognition of implicature
   2. compression of implicature into an explicit object (desire-construction)
   3. return-unto-self
      1. implicit esteem
      2. explicit profit
      3. possibilities of purchase → return to (2.1)
3. means of analysis
   1. economists: market-fetishists
   2. humanitarians: discipline-fetishists
   3. econo-cultural theorists: totalizers
4. life-otherwise
   1. escape of work
   2. explicit creeds

This line appears after every note.