A recent talking point re-emerges in another light....

[David Morris]

I forgot to include the attribution:
Norman O Brown, "Life Against Death"

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 3:02 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gold ain't shit, but it's the next best thing:
>
> According to Freudian theory the human infant passes through a stage
> –the anal stage- as a result of which the libido, the life energy of
> the body, gets concentrated into the anal zone. This infantile stage
> of anal eroticism takes the essential form of attaching symbolic
> meaning to the anal product. As a result of these symbolic equations
> the anal product acquires for the child the significance of being his
> own child or creation, which he may use either to obtain narcissistic
> pleasure in play, or to obtain love from another (feces as gift), or
> to assert independence from another (feces as property), or to commit
> aggression (feces as weapon).  Thus some of the most important
> categories of social behavior (play, gift, property, weapon) originate
> in the anal stage and –what is more important- never lose their
> connection with it.  When infantile sexuality comes to its
> catastrophic end, non-bodily cultural objects inherit the symbolism
> originally attached to the anal product, but only as second-best
> substitutes for the original (sublimations).  Sublimations are thus
> symbols of symbols.  The category of property is not simply
> transferred from feces to money;  on the contrary, ***money is
> feces***, because the anal eroticism continues in the unconscious.
>
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> So in the end the value of money depends on trust.
>>  Like so much else in this world.