This will seem even more relevant closer to the end of the month.

It's not just because of my massive student loans that my ears perk up whenever I hear people talking about anything related to debt. (That's a very big reason, but not the only reason.) It's intriguing how you can't talk about debt without getting caught up in a whole web of issues: morality, justice, fairness, retribution. The ties that bind you to your creditor/debtor are unlike any other human relationship. I've never "met" the entity to whom I owe much money, yet I feel a responsibility to that entity that outweighs and will outlast many of my other relationships.

For Christmas, Stonewall bought me a copy of Payback, by Margaret Atwood, which I just started reading. It's a sort of meandering but interesting long essay about debt and all of the different subjects that intersect with it. I think he got it for me because he knew of my interest in the theme of debt, but also because of how much I enjoyed reading the Handmaid's Tale and the Blind Assassin last year. I'm not that far into it, but I'm now reading her exploration of how notions of fairness and reciprocity are so central to human interactions that we see them in early childhood behavior, throughout centuries of literature, and in ancient mythologies.

To some extent, she's talking about the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."), but she also writes about the Eye-for-an-Eye Rule ("Do unto others as they have done unto you.") The latter is, of course, more directly related to the idea of fairness as retribution. If I expect that you might later mete out the same punishment--or benefits--that I have afforded you, it gives me the incentive to treat you fairly.

This whole line of thinking reminded me of a piece of an article in the Atlantic that I read a very long time ago. I tracked it down, and here is the relevant passage:

I'll be dictator. Here's how we play: An economist puts some money on the table—let's say $1,000. Since I'm dictator, I get to decide how you and I are going to split the cash; you have no say in the matter. How much do you think I'll give you?

Now, let's play the ultimatum game. We've still got $1,000 to play with, and I still get to make you an offer. But the game has a wrinkle: If you don't like the offer I make, you can refuse it. If you refuse it, we both get nothing. What do you think I'll do here?

As you've probably guessed, people tend to play the two games differently. In the dictator game, the most common offer is nothing, and the average offer is around 20 percent. In the ultimatum game, the most common offer is half the cash, while the average is around 45 percent. Offers of less than 25 percent are routinely refused—so both players go home empty-handed.

Economists scratch their heads at this. In the first place, they are surprised that some people are nice enough to share with someone they don't know, even in the dictator game, where there's nothing to lose by not sharing. Second, economists predict that people will accept any offer in the ultimatum game, no matter how low, because getting something is better than getting nothing. But that's not what happens. Instead, some people forgo getting anything themselves in order to punish someone who made an ungenerous offer. Money, it seems, is not the only currency people are dealing in.

So in the dictator game, there's little chance for your counterpart to get you back for unfair treatment. But in the second game, if your counterpart will have a chance to punish you for unfair treatment, they're likely to take it. So we have an incentive to avoid that situation.

I can see where Atwood might be going with this, too, although I haven't gotten far enough to confirm it. If you do something nice for me (lend me money), you expect me to treat you fairly (pay you back). There is a great deal of social weight involved in maintaining this standard of interaction. If I don't treat you fairly (skip town and leave no forwarding address), I'm therefore a deadbeat and can have my financial future and credit scored jeopardized. I have a very strong incentive to avoid that situation and to make my payments on time.

Maybe Margaret Atwood will have some tips on dealing with the stress of thinking about your debt. I'll keep reading.

I have an agenda. Does that make me an Agenda Girl?

I saw this little beauty at a Barnes & Noble today. I'm looking over the table with all the new non-fiction, and this title jumped out at me. I don't know if it was the bright pink or the jaw-dropping misogyny. Don't Be That Girl. Which girl, exactly? The author proceeds -- as far as I can tell -- to list out all of the "typical" behaviors of women that he finds pathetic and unappealing. And judging by this cover, he means women who let their makeup run, drink too much, and throw themselves at men. The level of disdain and condescension is staggering.

I read the first few pages in the store. He tells the story -- and I paraphrase, of course -- of working late at night in the ER. Yes, he is a doctor. A woman comes in with a badly swollen black eye. As he treats her injury, he asks her how she got hurt. She says she fell down the stairs. But, oh no, he knows something is up. He asks her what really happened. She confesses that actually her boyfriend hit her in the face with a shoe.

But why does he tell this story? What is he trying to convey? He explains that he was compelled to write this book because women are too insecure and they lack confidence -- and they allow themselves to be abused. He reasons, "if I could just show women how to be less pathetic, I would be doing them a service!" (Again, I paraphrase.)

"Don't Be That Girl cuts to the heart of what makes a woman cross into that girl territory and the red flags that tip guys off to the possibility that, yikes, they may be dating that girl. So who is that girl, exactly? She defies a simple definition. She may be the chameleon who turns into a completely different person the second a guy walks into the room. She could be the girl with the ironclad agenda that she's held to dearly since her first encounter with Modern Bride (and she'll do anything to make sure her plan materializes). Or she's the consummate "yes" girl who is always going along with his every wish. If she's not saying yes, she might very well be a drama queen who is always saying no because she can't seem to live without conflict. Then again, she might not be dramatic at all, just miserable inside, wearing her anger and bitterness as a badge of honor. In short, she's the girl who's trying fruitlessly to be someone she's not -- who's falling victim to the common pitfalls and patterns that lead to that girl behavior -- rather than believing in herself, following her passions, and maintaining healthy priorities." (from product description on Amazon.com)

But the icing on this cake is who the author turns out to be. I looked at the book and thought that the name looked familiar. Travis L. Stork, aka The Bachelor. I kid you not. I've spent my fair share of (wasted) time watching reality TV, and the Bachelor was one of my (extremely) guilty pleasures a few years ago. But like some sickly sweet candy that you gorge yourself on, ignoring everything you know about the evils of what you're consuming, until it becomes too much and you're left with nothing but a vomitous aftertaste -- I grew tired of the Bachelor a few seasons ago. But not before I saw this guy in action.

It is beyond ludicrous that Travis Stork -- the guy who went on a trashy reality TV show to "find love" -- is telling women how to behave rationally and develop mature relationships. And I've already spent too much time thinking about this.

Evidence of our idealism.

To pick up on something I sorta said yesterday, the blogosphere is a really freakin' ugly place. I spend a lot of my time on the internet reading blogs, letting one entry lead me to another, reading through peoples comments -- generally weeding through it all. And "weeding" is a fairly apt term, because there are definitely some weeds out there, clogging everything up.

No doubt, part of it is just my questionable desire to get myself angry and riled up. As in, angry that anyone could say or think that racist or sexist or homophobic or (on and on) thing, and the pleasure I get from when someone (namely someone else) steps in to lay it all bare and make it right. It's never quite right, though. Those ugly ideas are always there. If in my day to day life, I might suspect that someone's beliefs/thoughts would clash with my own (if he/she spoke up) -- on blogs, those people do speak up. And I don't know if I seek that confrontation out because it confirms my cynical expectations or activates my idealism.

Like this quote I read once, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie:

"Can you hear in my voice that I'm angry? Good. I've been reading a book about anger. It says that anger is evidence of our idealism. Something has gone wrong, but we 'know,' in our rage, that things could be different. It shouldn't be this way. Anger as an inarticulate theory of justice, which, when you act it out, is called revenge."

Yes, anger as an inarticulate theory of justice, but anger as a starting point too. I commented once to one of my mentors that I needed to develop a tougher skin, so that the wrongness of everything wouldn't bother me and so that I could approach it rationally, with a cool head. She said that, no, when you stop being angry, it's because you've stopped caring.