September 5, 2021

The Radicality of Care Part Two - Reclaiming Humanity

In the last part I drew on Graeber’s distinction between a human economy and an economy of debt to show how capitalism and consumerism systematically dissolve genuine human relationships in favor of relationships of debt. In this part I want to show how care can rebuild these relationships, thereby suggesting a path towards an alternative. Before doing so, however, I want to take a closer look at the ways in which a human economy maintains the network of human relationships, whereas it is dissolved by an economy of debt.

The difference between dissolving the network of human relationships and maintaining it is paralleled by the difference between ahistoricity and timeliness. I already pointed out that debt is imposed from a standpoint that disregards all past and future exchanges between creditor and debtor except for those that are of immediate relevance for the debt. Both enter into the relation of debt from a normatively neutral situation, and the goal of the exchange between the two is to return to this neutral situation by balancing the scale.1 In contrast to this, a human economy is characterized by the timeliness of the relationships between its members. As long as debt is not conceived in terms of exactly quantifiable amounts but rather in terms of ongoing exchange it can never be settled. This means that a community is held together by continuous interdependence that is secured through interdependence of mutual support so that at any moment everyone can ask a favor from anyone and can in turn be asked a favor from anyone. As I have tried to show, meaningful human relationships arise from a common past and future that is presentified by beings whose there-being is timelily constituted. When humans contribute to the network of mutual relations, they presentify the common past by acknowledging that they have received a favor from someone else or have done them a favor and that they are therefore in a position to do a favor or receive one now, as well as they anticipate the future in which they might again receive a favor or be called to do one. It is because of this, that meaningful relationships can grow and change. Debt economies, then, dissolve the network of human relations precisely because of their ahistoric nature2: they break through the ongoing cycle of exchange because their purpose is to deny both, past and present. Whereas meaningful relationships are alive and capable of change and growth, because they have a history, relationships between creditor and debtor are sterile.

Resistance against this systematic dehumanization must take the shape of re-building the fabric of human relations, and I suggest that care is a way of beginning this process.

Care is direct and not mediated through an institution. It is extended from one individual to another, motivated by the sheer fact that the other is a human being in need of something one can give. As such, care acknowledges an asymmetry between the persons involved in regard to the need that is salient in the respective situation. One is lacking, the other is free to give what is lacking. In that way, it is opposed to a relation of debt which stipulates an equality of being able to give and receive. Because it acknowledges this asymmetry, care is not extended in expectancy of an equivalent return. It is not even extended in expectancy of any return: if you ask your neighbor for a jar of milk, and they never ask you to return the favor, eventually move elsewhere, and disappear from your life, they most likely would not feel like you betrayed them. What matters is the tacit agreement that if your neighbor where to ask you to return the favor you would do so. (Here we can see how the timeliness of meaningful relationships feeds into the idea: in situations like this the two of you anticipate a future situation in which you may return the favor because you presentify the then-past favor your neighbor extended to you.)

In that sense, care can be seen as an offer to create a meaningful relationship. Since already a singular act of care anticipates the possibility of a future return, it establishes a relationship in a minimal sense. A hand, reaching out to a fellow human who may or may not take it. What matters, though, is that there is a hand to take.

I do not want to romanticize the picture of care I draw here. I do not want to suggest that the dehumanizing consumer capitalism simply will disappear when we act as if it already had. One of the reasons it spreads hopelessness is that it forces everyone to mind their own business by giving everyone their own problems. Who would, after an eight-hour workday, make a tour around the apartment complex and ask the neighbors if they need anything? Who would accept such an unprompted offer? The ideology of debt makes us skeptical towards acts of care because we are accustomed to suspecting an ulterior motive. After all, people give only something if they can receive what they are owed, right?

Under conditions that constantly dissolve meaningful human relationships, it is extremely hard to create and maintain them. But this is precisely why it is important and worth it to do so, just as it is important and worth it searching for water in a desert. Moreover, once a certain initial inertia is overcome, care has a tendency to sustain itself which, of course, is again due to the timeliness of meaningful relationships. That said, an act of care can be an act of resistance, of throwing a wrench into the machinery of hopelessness. In offering to create a meaningful relationship together, one shows that another life is possible. Given the current conditions that is all that can be asked for. But it might as well be enough.