When he has cured the patient, it is the shaman who must give something in exchange. Having made good the body, he must make good the debt. Or the Japanese story of the woman who lets the girl drown because, she says, if she saves her life, the child will owe her such an obligation it will be unbearable. Our entire psychology fails before these ancestral rules.
p.51
For the Japanese, the most commonplace individual and the most mundane object are both singular, even in their repetition. The problem is not to be different. For us, by contrast, that is an obligation. But there isn't difference for everyone, just as there isn't a meaning for every word (the characteristic of meaning is that not everything has it). This is how everyone ends up alone, dispossessed of both their singularity and their difference. p.49
Shout by bodhikurnigkuBlockedParent2022-07-12T23:57:27Z
When he has cured the patient, it is the shaman who must give something in exchange. Having made good the body, he must make good the debt. Or the Japanese story of the woman who lets the girl drown because, she says, if she saves her life, the child will owe her such an obligation it will be unbearable.
Our entire psychology fails before these ancestral rules.
p.51
For the Japanese, the most commonplace individual and the most
mundane object are both singular, even in their repetition. The problem is not to be different. For us, by contrast, that is an obligation. But there isn't difference for everyone, just as there isn't a meaning for every word (the characteristic of meaning is that not everything has it). This is how everyone ends up alone, dispossessed of both their singularity and their difference.
p.49
Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000-2004