Commerce

When we were young, we thought that money was the answer to all our problems. With a little effort, we imagined we will be past all our struggle and soon have more than enough money to spend. Having money to spend is a kind of privilege in the system. If we draw our privilege from something other than money then we are not really on the same ladder. We are not really geared up to reach the same place. Our sense of grief and our sense of joy are both calibrated against our sense of profit and loss. Our sense of profit and loss is based on the numerical distinctness of money. But if we discard this fiction, if we do not think about what we can hoard and whom we can cheat and what we can get away with, the narrative is much simpler. If there is nothing that we are trying to do, if we do not have any plan as such, it is much simpler. But to not be executing a strategy also betrays a lack of vision. And betraying a lack of vision is not becoming of us. It exposes our innocence. Innocence has been thought to be an irrational state. How can anyone truly be innocent in this strange and crooked world? We have toyed with denying innocence for a long time. Now for some time, we are not going to deny it. We are going to be simple minded and not plan ahead. We are not going to pre-visualise how situations and events are going to pan out. Enacting innocence in these times of sophistication and complication seems to be a choice that will not yield any benefits. The benefits will be there. Maybe not in terms that can be easily represented in our world, but as a non-contextual element which does not fit any meta-arch of meaning of our times.

Commerce could have been a way for us to exchange knowledge, but instead we are stuck with only the exchange of tangible things. We have hesitated to place a specific value on strands of knowledge. We have mistakenly thought that knowledge is beyond value. And still our antennae make us chase those who freely share knowledge. We know when there is a flow and when there is not. We know when there is something to learn and when there is not. When is nothing to learn we make things up. Because we cannot tolerate boredom. What we make up is our life. We are not particularly interested in the act of ascribing meaning to our life and how we live it. Because of our disinterest, we are not easy to manipulate. But this means that not many trade with us. And if not many trade with us, we cannot accrue a value. This bothers us. We want to correct this situation. We can correct this situation by finding a way to narrate ourselves as a commodity. Commodities have exchange-value. And to participate, you need to have an exchange value.