Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

12 6 DEBT
devils, will seek to turf the gods of both the greater and lesser
nations out from their nests in the heavens.
And what's more, if human beings owed nothing to one another,
life would "be no better than a dog-fight"-a mere unruly brawl.
Amongst human beings none will save another; it will be no
good a man shouting Help! Fire! I'm drowning! Murder! Nobody
will come and help him. Why Because he has lent nothing:
and no one owes him anything. No one has anything to
lose by his fire, his shipwreck, his fall, or his death. He has lent
nothing. And: he would lend nothing either hereafter.
In short, Faith, Hope and Charity would be banished from
this world.
Pan urge-a man without a family, alone, whose entire calling in
life was getting large amounts of money and then spending it-serves
as a fitting prophet for the world that was just beginning to emerge.
His perspective of course is that of a wealthy debtor-not one liable
to be trundled off to some pestiferous dungeon for failure to pay. Still,
what he is describing is the logical conclusion, the reductio ad absurdum,
which Rabelais as always lays out with cheerful perversity, of the
assumptions about the world as exchange slumbering behind all our
pleasant bourgeois formalities (which Rabelais himself, incidentally,
detested-the book is basically a mixture of classical erudition and
dirty jokes).
And what he says is true. If we insist on defining all human interactions
as matters of people giving one thing for another, then any ongoing
human relations can only take the form of debts. Without them,
no one would owe anything to anybody. A world without debt would
revert to primordial chaos, a war of all against all; no one would feel
the slightest responsibility for one another; the simple fact of being human
would have no significance; we would all become isolated planets
who couldn't even be counted on to maintain our proper orbits.
Pantagruel will have none of it. His own feelings on the matter, he
says, can be summed up with one line from the Apostle Paul: "Owe
no man anything, save mutual love and affection."67 Then, in an appropriately
biblical gesture, he declares, "From your past debts I shall
free you."
"What can I do but thank you" Panurge replies.